Little Girl Lost

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘So you’ve arrived,’ her mother said by way of greeting; a statement, not a question.

  Unsure where to start, and not trusting herself to express her concerns without losing her temper, Lucy sat in the chair in front of the desk. Her mother had aged since she had last seen her; her hair, once ash blonde, was now growing greyer and she’d cut out her perm and gone for a short, masculine cut. Her cheeks had hollowed slightly, and the deterioration in her eyesight had outstripped her vanity for she wore her glasses now, attached to a chain around her neck. Slight wattles of skin hung at her throat.

  She was not soft-featured, like Lucy, who’d inherited her looks from her father. Her mother had always looked sharp, a thin aquiline nose, tight lips, arched eyebrows that required no cosmetic accentuation. The tightness of the skin around her mouth gave her a choleric appearance. But then, as Lucy knew, she had the temperament to match.

  ‘Why did you move me from CID?’ It seemed like the best place to start.

  ‘On your application you said you wanted to come to D District; I didn’t think it mattered to you which unit you were in.’

  ‘I applied for CID.’

  ‘You’re still a detective, Lucy.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  Her mother’s skin pinched further. ‘Watch your manner, young lady.’

  ‘Because you’re my mother?’ Lucy scoffed.

  Lucy thought she winced, almost imperceptibly. She hoped she did. Regardless, the older woman continued: ‘Because I’m your commanding officer. You wanted to come here and I allowed it. Operational needs require someone in PPU at the moment. I thought the experience would be good for you.’

  ‘Inspector Fleming didn’t even know I was coming. The place is dead. How is that good for me?’ Lucy said.

  ‘You found this girl, I believe. That will be a good first case for you to work on in the city.’

  Despite her keenness to stay with the Alice case, if only to find out why the child was allowed out into the snow in her nightclothes, Lucy sensed she was being sidelined.

  ‘I want to work in CID. The Kate McLaughlin case needs everyone working on it.’

  ‘And what expertise would you bring to it that the hundred other officers working the case lack, exactly?’ her mother asked, leaning forward.

  ‘You don’t think I’m good enough, do you?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I don’t think you’re CID material. Not in D District anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her mother removed her glasses, closed the arms deliberately and set them on the table. ‘Look, I know Bill Travers. He’s already been on the phone; he has his eye on you. If he knows you’re my daughter, well …’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ Lucy said. ‘That’s no reason to block my promotion.’

  ‘I didn’t block it. I directed it elsewhere. You’re still a DS.’

  ‘But I wanted CID,’ Lucy said, her voice rising.

  ‘Look, Lucy, I really don’t give a shit what you wanted,’ her mother hissed quietly. ‘I worked my way through CID here. During the worst years of the Troubles. I made my name there; I made it to behind this desk from there.’

  ‘Are you afraid I’ll ruin your reputation?’ Lucy said incredulously.

  Her mother puckered her lips slightly, as if indicating that she would say nothing further.

  ‘So you think I’m not capable?’

  Again, her mother demurred from answering.

  ‘As you pointed out, I am a DS.’

  ‘Appointed by me,’ her mother said. ‘Because you wanted to look after your father.’

  ‘As if you cared.’

  Her mother’s tone softened slightly. ‘How is he now?’

  ‘He’s not well.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Lucy muttered.

  ‘Didn’t I bring you closer to home?’

  ‘Because someone needed to look after Dad.’

  ‘Your father has other helpers, other people to look out for him,’ she replied, a little bitterly.

  ‘He deserves better than other people.’

  ‘Don’t deify him just because he’s sick,’ her mother replied darkly. ‘No one’s perfect.’

  Lucy glared across at her mother, aware that there were layers to the conversation she couldn’t grasp.

  ‘You’ve been placed in PPU, Lucy. Work with Tom Fleming. He’s a good man and a decent cop. He worked with your father, actually.’

  ‘Does he know who I am?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I haven’t told him. It’s your choice whether or not you want to.’

  Lucy stood, pushed the chair in against the desk.

  ‘But don’t ever come blustering in here again, Lucy.’

  Lucy stared at her mother who had already put on her glasses and bowed her head to the paperwork on her desk.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said, then turned and left the room.

  Lucy was picking her way carefully back to Block 5 when her mobile phone rang.

  ‘DS Black? Tony Clarke here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I was at the hospital with you, this morning, with the wee girl. I’ve found something you might want to see.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Clarke was waiting to buzz Lucy in at the door to the Forensics suite, wearing the light-blue paper suit of his trade. As he led her through a series of small labs, he explained his concerns.

  ‘I was trying to find you,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked. ‘I called CID but they said you weren’t there. It took me a while to find you were at PPU.’

  ‘I’ve only found out myself today.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said, clearly unsure how to respond. ‘Well, I took the girl’s clothes. I’ve found something interesting.’

  As he spoke he keyed a code into the panel at the door leading into a darkened room, pushing the door open with his behind and stepping back to allow her past.

  Inside, the room was in semi-darkness save for the dim purple glow of a UV lamp. On a board on the worktop against the back wall, the girl’s pyjama top had been pinned up. A fine mist of luminous purple spots covered the front of it; so fine against the glow the UV light created from the white material that Lucy had to squint closely to see exactly what it was.

  ‘Blood,’ Clarke said. ‘Her pyjamas are covered in blood.’

  ‘Is it hers? The doctor said she wasn’t injured this morning.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to be,’ Clarke said. ‘I’ve typed this as O positive. I called the doctor in the hospital and had him check the tests they ran this morning. She’s O minus, apparently. I’ve sent it to be DNA tested, along with a few hairs I got from the girl’s head.’

  ‘Will those not just belong to her?’ Lucy asked.

  Clarke laughed at her confusion. ‘I combed out a few hairs that weren’t hers – blonde hairs.’

  Lucy peered more closely at the pattern on the pyjama top; the minuscule bubbles of purple gathered in the fibres of the cotton, each a part of a larger fluorescent arc that crossed her chest.

  ‘So whose is it?’

  ‘That’s what you need to find out,’ Clarke said, raising his eyebrows. In the light of the lamp his skin appeared scarlet red, his teeth flashed yellow as he spoke. ‘And you need to do it fast, too.’

  ‘Why?’ Lucy turned her head to look at Clarke and was a little disconcerted to find him closer to her than she had thought, with his face turned towards her, his eyes holding her gaze, despite the fact that the shirt was the focus of their conversation.

  ‘Whoever owns this is injured,’ he said, smiling lightly. ‘The misting pattern.’

  Lucy deliberately turned her gaze to the shirt again, pointed unnecessarily to the arc of the pattern to draw his attention back to it.

  ‘What caused it?’

  Finally Clarke shifted his position, took a pencil from his desk and gestured towards the blood spatter, following the direction of travel as he spoke.

  �
�Misting is caused by three things. Blow-back from a shooting, which seems unlikely in this case. I’ll have to residue test the girl’s hands as procedure. The second reason is blunt force trauma. Someone cracks you on the head with a bar or something, you’ll get a mist of blood as well as thicker spurts.’

  ‘But there are no thicker spurts here,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Which leads me to the third and, in this case, most likely cause. Expirated blood.’

  ‘But not her own?’

  Clarke shook his head. ‘Someone was breathing close to her and blood droplets were in their breath like a mist. This area,’ he added, pointing to a rainbow-shaped pattern close to the hem, ‘this pattern is probably continued on her legs. I need to check her for blood again.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you have seen it this morning?’ Lucy said. ‘I didn’t see any blood.’

  ‘The girl was walking through snow. There’s no reason why the surface blood wouldn’t be washed from her skin. You wouldn’t necessarily see it; but a luminol test will highlight it, if it’s there.’

  ‘I’ll take you up,’ Lucy said, then realized that her car was still in Prehen. ‘Or maybe I could cadge a lift with you.’

  Clarke smiled again, more broadly this time. ‘Gladly, DS Black.’

  ‘So, why would someone be breathing blood?’ she asked, shifting in her seat, clasping her knees together as Clarke took another bend and the rear tyres of the car briefly lost their grip.

  ‘Could be any number of reasons: someone with lung disease would do it, as well as coughing up blood; someone who’s been injured in an accident or through a beating to the face and head, causing bubbling from the nose or mouth; or a stab wound to the lungs. Any range of things. Whatever causes it, it’s not good news for whoever owns the blood.’

  Lucy nodded, glanced out the window at the dirtied snow piled to the sides of the road.

  ‘It might explain what she was doing wandering in the woods.’

  ‘It might,’ Clarke said.

  The girl was curled in a ball when they came onto the ward. A man and woman were in the room with her; the man, youngish, in jeans and a checked shirt, wore a pair of Converse trainers, the other, an older woman, was dressed in a charcoal suit.

  ‘I’m DS Black,’ Lucy said when she entered, in response to the looks they gave her.

  The man in the jeans smiled. ‘Robbie McManus,’ he said.

  The woman glanced at her irritably, then turned her attention again to the girl. For her part, Alice seemed desperate to keep away from her.

  Robbie nodded towards the door and moved towards it, taking Lucy by the elbow and guiding her out as he did so.

  ‘Dr Matthews is trying to get her to speak,’ he explained quietly as he closed the door, holding the handle until it clicked into place, wincing at the barely audible click of the lock.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m the assigned social worker,’ the young man explained. Lucy examined him in more detail now. His face was thin, tanned, lined in a way that revealed his age more clearly than the youthful clothes he wore. ‘Sylvia told me you’re in charge. We’ll be working together.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘This is one of our Forensics team, Tony Clarke.’

  Clarke raised his chin in greeting, lifted his hand to show that the bags of equipment he carried precluded shaking hands.

  ‘He needs to check the girl over again,’ Lucy explained. ‘We’ve found blood on her clothes.’

  Robbie smiled affably, put his hands in his back pockets. ‘Was she not checked over this morning?’

  ‘We found blood on her clothes,’ Lucy repeated.

  Robbie nodded. ‘I understand that. We try to limit the number of medical examinations a child has to endure.’

  ‘And I understand that,’ Lucy said. ‘We have reason to believe that the blood is not her own. Which means she has been in contact with another injured party. So PC Clarke will examine her again. Now.’

  Robbie smiled against the glare of the overhead lighting and glanced at Clarke.

  ‘You’ll have to wait until Dr Matthews is finished. If she can get her to talk, she might tell you what you need without any further tests being done.’

  They sat outside the room in hostile silence for the next twenty minutes while they waited for Matthews to finish and for a female doctor to arrive who would assist Clarke with his tests. Periodically, Lucy glanced in through the glass pane of the door. Matthews seemed to be talking a lot. The girl was not. Finally the woman stood up and stalked out to them.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, shaking her head at Robbie.

  ‘DS Black,’ Lucy said, extending her hand.

  Matthews took it, shook it lightly. ‘Your interruption probably didn’t help,’ she said.

  Lucy swallowed back a response. Her encounters with psychiatrists dealing with her father had eroded any residual respect she had for them simply by virtue of their profession. Still, there was no point in antagonizing Matthews unnecessarily.

  ‘What’s your opinion?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I avoid labelling patients,’ Matthews said, wrinkling her nose slightly as if to convey her distaste at Lucy’s request. ‘Still, the child seems to be suffering selective mutism.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I suspect she’s been through some form of an ordeal,’ Matthews said. ‘Something which has caused her to choose not to talk. There’s no physical impediment to speech.’

  ‘Some form of an ordeal?’ Lucy echoed.

  ‘Yes,’ Matthews said. ‘Selective mutism often signifies trauma.’

  ‘Would her experience of being lost in the woods be enough to trigger it?’ Robbie asked.

  Matthews considered this, nodded. ‘Possibly. Everyone has different thresholds,’ she explained. ‘What one person could handle, another won’t.’

  ‘We believe the girl has blood on her,’ Lucy said. ‘We think she might have been in contact with someone who had been injured in some way. Would that qualify as an ordeal?’

  ‘I think it’s safe to assume that it would,’ Matthews said.

  The Indian doctor Lucy had seen earlier arrived and Lucy nodded at Clarke, who excused himself and moved into the room. Alice eyed him warily from the bed as he approached.

  ‘So,’ Lucy said, turning her attention again to Matthews. ‘How do you get her out of it?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said, a little sharply. ‘She’ll come out of it herself when she’s ready.’

  ‘Can you at least speed it up?’

  The woman looked at Lucy, her glance sliding across her face wordlessly. ‘When she trusts me, she’ll speak. We can’t rush her recovery.’

  Behind her, Clarke was gesturing to Lucy that he wanted her to come in.

  ‘We might need to,’ she replied, then passed Matthews and entered the room.

  Clarke was removing his gloves as she approached. He manoeuvred her away from the girl’s bed before speaking.

  ‘She’s had blood all over her hands,’ he whispered.

  ‘How did you not see it earlier?’ Lucy asked. Despite her instinctive dislike of Matthews, she agreed that they should keep the number of tests to a minimum.

  ‘It’s not visible now. The snow must have washed it off as she came through the woods, if she fell or something. You can see traces of it under luminol; more than just misting this time, too. She was in contact with someone who was bleeding fairly profusely.’

  Lucy glanced back to where the girl was hunched on top of the bed.

  ‘So, who and where are they now?’

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucy spent the next hour checking the records of those who had been brought into the hospital over the previous twelve hours with bleeding injuries. None of them were connected with the girl. She then joined Robbie, who had been contacting other Social Services agencies from his office on the ground floor, to prepare a press release for the local media.

  That done, and with little reason to stay in the hospital, Lucy made her way back to
the station with Tony Clarke. She had only just got back to the unit, and was busy warming her hands against the radiator in the room she’d been given, when Tom Fleming came in with a yellow Post-It note in his hand.

  ‘Message for you,’ he said. ‘The principal at St Mary’s Primary School phoned.’

  When Lucy heard the woman’s voice on the phone, she remembered speaking to her earlier. She’d promised to keep an eye on the attendance lists for the day and to let Lucy know if anyone fitting the description Lucy had given her was absent.

  ‘I have one pupil I’m concerned about,’ the woman explained. ‘Mary Quigg.’

  ‘What’s your concern, ma’am?’ Lucy asked, jotting the girl’s name on the pad in front of her.

  ‘Mary’s a small child. She’s eleven but looks about nine. Tall and thin, brown hair.’

  ‘She does fit the description,’ Lucy agreed. ‘And she hasn’t turned in for school today?’

  ‘No,’ the woman replied. ‘She missed days last week too. I was away in London at an ICT award ceremony, so I hadn’t been informed. Mary’s a lovely girl but …’

  Lucy said nothing, knowing the woman would continue anyway.

  ‘I’m not being snobbish, but Mary often isn’t very … well, there have been hygiene issues,’ she said finally. ‘Her shirts are always grubby, her hands and face aren’t washed in the morning. Her PE teacher has spoken to her about personal hygiene, but even when she has sports she never brings soap or a towel to school.’

  ‘Have you informed Social Services?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘No, I haven’t. We’ve mentioned her to the Education Welfare officer a few times, but you can’t call a child at risk just because she’s untidy.’

  ‘Give me her address and I’ll call at her house and see if it’s the girl in question.’

  ‘Please …’ the woman began, then hesitated.

  ‘I won’t mention your concerns, ma’am,’ Lucy said.

  The house was the end of a terraced row in one of the warrenlike estates running off Foyle Springs. The air was sharp when Lucy got out of the borrowed squad car, her breath misting before her. The snow had eased slightly, the odd flake swirling in the wind. Tom Fleming, who had driven with her, slammed his own door, leaned on the car roof and scanned the street. To their left was a group of teenagers huddled at the corner of one of the terraces, football scarves wrapped around the lower halves of their faces. They returned Fleming’s stare, shuffled against the cold, but said nothing. Lucy knew that by the time they came back out of the house, the crew would have a stock of snowballs ready for their departure.