Find The Girl (DI Olivia Austin Book 1)

by Nic Roberts

  Find the Girl

  DI Olivia Austin - Book One

  Nic Roberts

  Copyright © 2021 by Nic Roberts

  * * *

  ‘Find The Girl’

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes.

  Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Book Two

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  About the Author

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  Find The Girl

  Now you see her, now you don't... A young woman who never made it home and a detective hell-bent on hiding her scars.

  Haunted by a vicious incident eighteen months ago, Detective Inspector Olivia Austin left the busy City of London Police to heal back in her home county of Cornwall.

  Working for the CID in touristy Newquay was supposed to ease her back into her job gently after a year and a half break, but when a young woman in the nearby fictional town of Peterly goes missing, and a gruesome package is delivered to her distraught parents, there’s a race against time to find her.

  Despite battling her own trauma, DI Austin doesn’t know if she’s dealing with a plain kidnapping or a murder case, but there's only one thing she’s determined on and that's to find the girl and bring her home.

  Dead or alive.

  Prologue

  Footsteps.

  Ella heard them the minute she turned off the well-lit high street of Felsham Green and started down the quiet country lane towards her parents’ farmhouse.

  The staccato click of shoes against the lane matched the escalating beat of her heart, quick and precise. She willed herself to only look forward. If she didn’t turn back, she could deny she had heard anything. It wasn’t as if she’d be able to see anything anyway. Just keep walking, she repeated in her head, a mantra as her fingers curled into fists. Maybe it’s just a thug looking for some quick cash.

  She swore silently to herself. Normally, she’d call an Uber for this last leg of her journey home. Her parents insisted. Ever since the Markwell’s daughter was attacked, she’d always chosen caution over blind luck. Until tonight. And now, she was accompanied by some unseen person.

  Quiet.

  Lurking.

  Had they been waiting for her? Did she know them?

  She pushed her hand into her pocket, clutching her keys with renewed vigour. If the stranger was the kind of person to attack, then they would have met their match. She wasn’t the type to back down easily, and as she fingered the sharpest of her keys—the one to her flat in London that she shared with her boyfriend of three years—she heard the footsteps stop.

  That was it. They’d disappeared.

  She turned her head, the quiet almost deafening amongst her fear and pounding heart. The lane was empty. Silent.

  Had she imagined it? Sometimes the darkness played with her head. No, it was real. Possibly the echo of her own shoes? She looked down at her muddy trainers. No. No, hers didn’t make the same muffled click.

  Someone had been there. She was sure of it, and now they were gone. She turned and quickened her pace, removing the phone in her other pocket to dial home. Her fingers fumbled over the buttons.

  Logic would have her turn back to the high street, but fear made sure she didn’t. Could it be a trap? Would whoever it was have expected her to go back and then pounce?

  Her heart pounded so fast that she thought she would vomit if no one picked up the damn phone. Voicemail.

  Fuck.

  Of all the times. Her parents practically lived on the phone. Someone had even joked that they would win the record for ‘most quickly answered call’, but not today. Today, it was almost as though everything was stacked against her.

  She wanted to get home. She needed to get home.

  She saw two lone headlights in the distance as a car pulled up the lane. Relief flooded through her. Thank God. I’m never walking back in the dark alone again, she thought as her body relaxed. She’d convinced herself that London had made her invincible. But a late-night ride on the Tube felt centuries different than a walk down a pitch-dark country lane in her hometown.

  The two circular lights neared, and she lifted her hand urgently, waving them down so fast that it made her vision distort. As the car came into full view, what she saw made her lower them slower and stumble backwards, her eyes wide with an unexplainable horror.

  No.

  She stood paralysed with fear as the engine stopped. As if she were watching a movie rather than doing it of her own free will, she noticed how she slowly wrapped her fingers around the sharp key in her pocket once more.

  She never would have imagined that a simple trip home to see her parents would end with her having to fight for her life.

  If only she’d listened to them.

  1

  Detective Inspector Olivia Austin opened the balcony doors of her cottage and looked out over the dusky blue horizon that stretched out in front of her. The sound of the rough frothy waves roared lightly in the near distance as she took a deep breath of the fresh air. It rolled over her sweat-drenched skin and made her shiver slightly.

  She’d had another nightmare. This one was etched in her memory long before this evening, although this time, she’d been powerless to help anyone. It was almost as though she was paralysed. With what, she didn’t know, but it had left her jumping out of her sleep and ripping the covers off her body, frantically trying to escape the night sweat that clung to her skin.

  Behind her, the alarm sounded, bringing her back to the present.

  Moving back to the coast had been what everyone said was best for her. Her family were delighted the minute she’d decided to leave the busy City of London Police for the Cornish countryside.

  Her sleepy coastal hometown was a welcome sight, but deep down, despite everything that had happened, she secretly wanted more. She craved that fire and action that she’d left behind, but in equal measures, she never wanted to see its destruction ever again.

  Olivia showered quickly, allowing the hot water to cascade over her body. Here, by herself, she could let the heat take over her thoughts and for a moment forget her ghosts. The shower worked to loosen the tight coils of muscle in her shoulders and torso. It seemed as if she was always on edge now, always clutching her sheets at the brink of dawn, screaming bloody murder.

  The shower couldn’t remove her pain, but it could definitely ease it.

  Stepping out, she dried herself off. Her morning routine
passed in a blur, blending with previous mornings. If anything, the monotony was nice. It helped her establish a schedule; her therapist insisted that was a good thing. Something constant.

  Before she knew it, she was massaging lotion into her scars. The skin still felt stiff, and she winced as she rubbed the cream in—more from habit than anything else.

  She let her eyes drift towards herself in the mirror as she circled them with deft fingers. She was met with the image of three rugged patches of skin on her right side. You’ve gotten this far, she reminded herself, lowering her shirt over her torso to cover them. They’d always be a part of her, but she need not let them control her.

  She saw her green eyes in the mirror, her auburn hair gently cascading around her face before ending just below her shoulders. In these early hours, before she let the world see her, she almost felt soft, as if she was someone capable of the kinder emotions—care, concern, even love. Things that she thought she wouldn’t ever be able to feel again.

  The sincerity in her eyes became too difficult to acknowledge, and she broke her own gaze before it could consume her. Don’t let it overcome you, she told herself as she tackled her long hair into a tight bun. The packet of Diazepam her therapist had prescribed her for the really bad nights sat just behind the mirror in her medicine cabinet, and she opened it briefly, considering taking one.

  Olivia opted for a splash of cold water across her face instead. She needed to be sharp today, and she could keep the panic down until night. She felt it. Besides, the prescription was starting to shrink in size, and her therapist had reminded her that it should really be reserved for those times when everything got on top of her.

  She was halfway through her breakfast when the call came in. Her phone recognised the number as belonging to the Detective Superintendent. Urgency leapt up her throat. Or maybe it was a sort of twisted excitement. Her work never called unless it was of the utmost importance.

  “Sir?” she answered, swallowing the large morsel of toast she had stuffed in with some hot tea. She winced as it burnt her mouth. “What happened?”

  “I know you’re due in a bit later,” he answered seriously, “but we’ve had a call of a possible abduction and query murder.”

  Olivia bolted up in her chair, glancing around her somewhat messy dining table for a scrap of paper. Her fingers snatched up an old envelope before she lunged across the table to grab a pen.

  “Possible?”

  Det Supt Collins cleared his throat and mumbled something to someone out of earshot.

  “I’d appreciate if you could come in, Austin,” he said to her eventually. “We’re going to hold the briefing and wait until you get here, but I’ll be assigning you and Dean to the case.”

  She hesitated.

  “Got it. I’ll be there.”

  There was a momentary pause, and she heard his soft sigh through the phone.

  “And you’re sure you’ll be okay to take this case?” he asked. “If it’s too soon, I can—”

  “I’ll be there,” she cut in, before the rest of his words provoked any emotion in her. “I’m fine, really. Ask the CoLP’s therapist; she wouldn’t have cleared me if I wasn’t fit for the job. I won’t let any of you down.”

  “Yes, good. Alright. I’ll see you soon then, Austin.”

  “Yeah,” she mumbled, her thoughts already trailing away from the conversation. She hung up her phone almost in a daze. Possible abduction. Query murder.

  She was quick to gather up her things, her mind playing through different possible outcomes like a chess player might plot out their next move. Everything told her she was ready for this case. She’d had a large break from working on the front line. From that incident. As far as her doctor was concerned, she’d put it all behind her. And she was doing so much better than she had before even three months ago. The anniversary had been difficult, but she quickly pulled herself back from that brink, sobered up, and then made a couple of calls to be reinstated. They’d done so after a rigorous mental health assessment. Clearly, she had to be ready.

  The pit in her stomach kept reminding her though that this was her first possible murder case since that day. I’ll be fine, she insisted to herself, scooping up her keys and her bag and greeting the crisp morning at her doorstep. I have to be.

  * * *

  The police station was set back a few roads from the beach right in the centre of Newquay. If the sky hadn’t been slightly grey and overcast, the building would have appeared to be in an ideal setting, and as the car rolled to a stop and she got out, she couldn’t help but remind herself that being here was what she wanted. If she’d preferred being out of the Force entirely, she could have given it all up. She could have taken extended leave and then retrained in something else, walked away, picked up something low risk, maybe even settled as a happy and content primary school teacher—or something administrative perhaps. Susan, the long-standing police administrator did nothing but sing the praises of how much she loved her job, but it was the buzz that had attracted Olivia in the first place. It was part of her now. She couldn’t turn her back on it.

  “Morning, Austin!” one of her colleagues hollered at her as they both ran for the same lift. She gave him a smile and a nod. Detective Constable Timothy Harris had been with the team even before she’d arrived. He was a pleasant man, always smiling, and no matter what the occasion, he always seemed to appear at her side with a cup of tea of coffee. He pressed the button for their floor.

  “You’re in early,” she said back. “Did you get briefed yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he commented. “But from what I hear, it happened in Peterly. Apparently, it’s quite a big deal. I bet you thought you were escaping this kind of drama.” He added the last part with a chuckle and then cleared his throat when he saw her expression. “Ah, sorry… I didn’t mean…”

  She waved away his apology.

  “Honestly, Tim, it’s fine. You don’t all have to walk on eggshells around me. It happened, I’m here, and I’m fine. Wouldn’t keep my badge if I wasn’t.”

  She could hear the desperation in her voice yearning to convince him.

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she wondered just how much he knew of what had happened. She’d never really talked to anyone at the station about it, but she knew the way the rumour mill tossed around atrocities far less devastating than her own experience. One day, of course, she’d have to set the record straight with her colleagues—her therapist had told her as much—but for now, it still felt too raw to speak into truth. Another day, she reminded herself.

  They reached their floor with a ping, and after the doors opened, DC Harris let her get out first before they made their way to the incident room.

  Det Supt Collins greeted them enthusiastically. He towered above everyone in any room he entered. His salt-and-pepper hair had recently become more salt than pepper, and although there were whispers that he was pondering retirement, Olivia hoped he’d stay on a good long while. She trusted him implicitly, and he kept his nose out of her business for the most part. If he did ask about her wellbeing, it was always gentle, and he knew when to back off. Austin always appreciated that in a boss.

  “So, what do you have?” Olivia asked, sitting at one of the empty chairs. A number of her other colleagues mumbled a greeting, and she flashed a quick smile back.

  “We have a missing woman,” he announced, pushing a sheet of paper towards her. It had a few Instagram photos on it and a screenshot of her Facebook profile page. “Ella Hebden. Twenty-three years old. Lives in London, but her parents still live here. Apparently, she was coming back for a visit but never made it to their house.”

  Olivia’s work partner, Detective Inspector Dean Lawrence, shifted in his seat. From her position, all she could see was the tousle of dark hair on the back of his head, but she was sure his brown eyes were squinted in thought, his thin lips stretched out in a confused line. Lawrence was nothing if not all business—something Olivi
a could respect, even if it wasn’t exactly her own style.

  “And we’re sure that she didn’t just decide to change her mind about coming home?” DI Lawrence asked.

  “We’re certain.” Collins answered. “Last message was received at 8.41 pm to her mother telling her she had arrived at the train station and was going to get a taxi home.”

  Olivia scanned her file and the smiling face of the young woman. Long blonde hair that skimmed all the way down her back framed a full face with warm features. She looked happy and full of life, as though she had a certain sparkle about her. She was pretty, too.

  “That’s not all,” Det Supt Collins said flicking the light switches. On the cold, overcast morning, it plunged the room into near darkness. The glow of his laptop and the projector illuminated the briefing room, and an image of a brown jiffy bag filled the screen. A white piece of paper was sellotaped to the front with a typed address, and in the top corner was a stamp and some postage marks. “This package was posted through to the victim’s parents’ house. The very same house she didn’t arrive at. This next slide is… unpleasant,” Collins warned with pain straining his voice.

  Olivia shifted in her seat, already knowing what was going to come next. Most people in the room kept their eyes fixed on the screen; a couple shifted their gaze down to their papers. Olivia cleared her throat as the superintendent pressed the button on his laptop to flick to the next photo.