Throwaways (Crime Files Book 2)

by Jenny Thomson

  I’d have to find a way of making her talk, preferable far away from her mother.

  Tommy was cursing away to a Radiohead track on the radio when I climbed in the car. When he hadn’t turned it off after thirty seconds, I leaned over and did it myself.

  “Hey, I was listening to that,” he said. “So how did you get on with Little Miss D? Did she dish up all the goss?”

  I shook my head. “It’s good that you’re still getting down with the kids.” My voice dripped with sarcasm. “But that’s not gonna help us here.”

  Tommy fluttered his eyelashes. “Oh, I don’t know. While you were in there chatting away to the sunshine girl, I was pairing my phone with hers.”

  “What?” I genuinely had no idea what he meant.

  Tommy showed me his pearly whites. “I saw it on Person of Interest.”

  Like that made sense.

  “It’s where you pair one mobile device with another so you can synchronize data between them. Say between your tablet, PC, and phone.”

  My brother Shug had tried to show me how to do that once, but it was over my head. “That’s to do with Bluetooth, right?” It was the only thing I did remember.

  “Aye. Anyway, it means I can read Little Miss Sunny D’s text messages.”

  He paused as if he was waiting for a drum roll. He’d have a very long wait. My session with Donna had tired me out.

  “Christ, Nancy, if we’re gonna do this, you’ll need to know stuff.”

  Still no reaction from me.

  “Okay,” he said, eyes twinkling. “After you left, Donna sent a text message to someone called Lorna, saying, and I’m quoting this...he looked down at his phone, ‘They know about Sheena.’ Assuming she means us, what do you think they’re on about?”

  “It could only be that Sheena lied about Fredericks coming on to her,” I said. “But how’s that linked to Sheena’s disappearance?”

  There was one way to find out who Lorna was.

  Tommy produced a cheap disposable phone he’d bought from Tesco. “We don’t want the number being tracked back to us,” he explained. He was turning into a proper spy.

  He outlined his plan. He’d pretend to be from Lorna’s bank and say that her account had been accessed illegally and emptied of funds. Hopefully, she’d be too flustered to be suspicious and she’d give out her details, including home address. Then he dialed. He got an answer on the sixth ring. The phone was on speaker, so I could hear everything. Tommy reeled off his lies, probably hoping the person on the other end of the line wouldn’t think it was strange he referred to her by her first name.

  A woman’s voice came over the line. “I’m sorry, but I’m not Lorna. This is her phone, though. She must have dropped it when she was last here. Hold on.” The woman sounded harassed. “I need to take this.”

  There was a click, but she hadn’t ended Tommy’s call, so we heard her when she said, “Helping Hands Outreach, how can I help you?”

  She must have realized he could hear, because the connection went dead.

  We’d never heard of the place, so I looked it up on my phone. It was a center that specialized in helping sex workers and drug addicts.

  “How would Donna Di Marco know someone from place like that?” I said.

  Tommy thought about it for a minute, then said, “I think our mysterious Lorna must work there. Why else would they know her name? I bet most of the people who visit those places use aliases.”

  He was right. We were on to something.

  “What are the chances Sheena visited this place?”

  Tommy grinned. “Let’s head over there and see if Lorna comes back for her phone.”

  Chapter 7

  The outreach center wasn’t what we’d expected. When we walked through the doors, we were met not by hospital gray or that ugly olive color everyone used to paint their bathroom in until they realized it looked awful, but by a calming sky-blue. Along the walls were black-and-white photographs depicting happy scenes: picture-postcard children playing on the beach, a family walking in the snow with their two black Labradors, and a happy young couple strolling along a Glasgow street arm in arm. From what I could tell, there were no puke stains on the dark-blue-and-white swirl-patterned carpet. And the place didn’t reek of desperation, either.

  If it weren’t for the posters on the wall advertising the center’s services—emergency contraception, condoms, and clean needles—I’d have thought we’d walked into a hotel lobby by mistake.

  Over in one corner of the room was a seated area consisting of a comfy three-seater couch and four comfy plush chairs, as well as two child-sized beanbags. The couch was occupied by a girl in her twenties with shoulder-length brown hair tied back with the ponytail poking out of the hole on her Yankees baseball cap. The wee mixed-race boy with her giggled as he played choo-choo with a wooden train. He was dressed in little-man dungarees and a Gap sweater. On the seats across from them sat a smiling but tired-looking middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun. She was wearing a suit and speaking to the girl in hushed tones as she jotted down notes in a binder.

  She must be the social worker. A poster above the couch said the center did supervised access visits. I felt a pang of sympathy for the young mum at being forced to have some stranger watch as she played with her own child. But then I didn’t know what the story was.

  Two security men in bright blue uniforms were in the foyer; both of them looked reasonably fit, unlike the ones you see in shopping malls. One was positioned at a cubicle next to the door, and the other stood in a corner across from reception, poised to deal with any trouble.

  A young receptionist with way too bright pink lipstick beamed up at us from her IKEA desk. “How can I help you?” she said, lips puckering when she saw Tommy. He had that effect on women. When we went out I’d catch them visibly drooling. For now, he was mine. Who knew if it’d be a long-term thing? We were just having fun.

  Tommy took the lead, asking if Lorna was in because we needed to speak to her urgently.

  “Lorna has left for the day, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can take your number and get her to call you?”

  Bingo, she did work here. We told her we’d come back.

  As we headed out the door we saw a list on the wall of all the staff at the center. We must have missed it on the way in.

  Lorna Chanderpaul was down as a counselor.

  Chapter 8

  We decided there wasn’t much point in going back to the Di Marco house and being stonewalled by Little Miss Pants on Fire. We’d wait until tomorrow and try and catch her alone at school away from her mum. In the meantime, I made a quick phone call to Sheena’s parents. Her dad answered in a weary voice, and I wondered if the media had been bothering him and his wife again.

  “Did Sheena ever mention a woman called Lorna Chanderpaul to you?” I asked him. “My cousin mentioned her, and I wondered if you’d ever heard of her?” By now I was getting good at lying, and I wasn’t proud of it. My dad told me never to become a liar, and I worried that he’d be disappointed in me.

  There was silence down the end of the phone, then, “Yes, I do remember that name. The surname stood out because there’s a West Indian cricketer by that name. I like my cricket. Sheena mentioned the woman to her mother. She said she was someone she’d met who was trying to help her. Get her to go back to college. I thought she was a social worker.”

  A pause, then a deep breath. “Sheena expressed an interest in going into that line of work so she could help people. She’s a good girl. If she hadn’t fallen into Fredericks’s clutches. she’d be at veterinary college by now. Not…”

  He broke off talking to compose himself. There was a beat, then he said, “If you find anything out, no matter how unpalatable it is, please let us know.”

  After I’d promised him that I would I hung him, then I turned to Tommy. “Why would Donna Di Marco be texting Lorna saying we know about Sheena? It can’t be that Sheena was a sex worker. It was hardly a secret.”

  There
had to be something we were missing. A thought occurred to me. “Did your policeman pal check to see if the delectable Donna had a record for soliciting?” How else would she know Lorna Chanderpaul? Posh little rich girls don’t move in the same circles as those who work with sex workers and drug addicts. It didn’t seem likely that Sheena would have introduced them.

  Tommy eyed me evenly. “They did and she’s clean.”

  “It doesn’t mean she didn’t give prostitution a go. Just that she was never caught.”

  Tommy grinned. “My, Miss Kerr. What a bleak outlook you have on humanity.”

  That might be so, but thus far I’d been proven right.

  ***

  When we pulled up across from the villa Suzy Henderson had once lived in with her parents in the leafy Glasgow suburb of Hyndland, there were two removal vans outside. When we got out of the car, a balding man in a suit and a red checked tie walked over to us, looking all officious.

  “Hello there. Can I help you?”

  He looked like the one who needed help. Too many liquid lunches had given him a paunch, and his suit jacket strained to contain the bulge that resembled an overstuffed pillow.

  “We’re looking for Mr. and Mrs. Henderson,” Tommy said.

  The man smiled, exposing nicotine-stained teeth. “Sorry, but that won’t be possible. They’re no longer in the country.” His expression darkened. “You probably know about this business with their daughter.” We nodded. “They couldn’t stay here after that. Not with the memories and the media hounding them. I’d be moving to New Zealand too if that happened to one of my girls.” A pause, then a worried frown crossed his chubby chops. “You’re not journalists, are you?” We shook our heads and walked back to the car.

  “Great, our first dead end,” I said as Tommy snapped on his seat belt. Even if we knew where they’d gone, our resources didn’t stretch to going overseas to speak to them.

  Tommy had a glint in his eye. “Well, it would be if Suzy didn’t have a brother.”

  I slapped him on the arm. This was the first time he’d mentioned a brother. “Who’s to say he hasn’t flown out with his parents?”

  Tommy tapped his nose. “My source tells me Suzy’s brother Matt’s estranged from his parents.”

  “Okay, smarty-pants. And did your source tell you why?”

  Tommy looked smarmy. “The Hendersons are typical pushy parents. They set high standards for their kids, who of course rebelled. Apparently, the son’s smart enough to pass the entrance exams for Oxford University, but he refused to go. Ended up working as a youth worker instead. And we know what happened to Suzy.”

  Once they discovered what she was up to, dear mum and dad must have washed their hands of her. “Where does he work?”

  “A youth center in Easterhouse.”

  I sucked in some breath through my teeth. “Wow, that’ll cheese off the parents.”

  Easterhouse was in one of Glasgow’s worst neighborhoods. With high unemployment and a gang problem, it wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see a clever-clogs rich boy. If you reached the age of sixteen without losing a parent or sibling to drink, drugs, or gangs, you were doing well.

  The youth center was located across from a newly built housing estate in a nondescript square building with a flat roof ominously covered with barbed wire. I wasn’t sure whether it was there to scare away the pigeons or the locals. When we reached the main door and walked through, there was a short carpeted hallway with two doors on either side. The one on the left was for the Citizens Advice Bureau and the other for the youth center.

  We turned right and into a large hall decked out for sports.

  “Can I help you?”

  We’d barely walked in the building when a tall, handsome Rastafarian spoke to us in a part Afro Caribbean, part Glasgow accent.

  “We’re looking for Matt Henderson,” Tommy said.

  The big man’s forehead creased. “Who wants to know?” The friendliness had gone.

  There was no point in lying. “We want to ask him about his sister because we think whoever killed her took our cousin too.”

  “Bullshit.” It sounded like “bull sheet,” and I suppressed a smile. “You parasites will sink as low as rattlesnakes to get a story.”

  Two teenagers who’d been playing table tennis nearby stopped to glare at us. A second man in faded jeans and a hooded top appeared at his back. He was much shorter than his friend but carried himself with confidence. I’d no doubt he could break up a fight. Chances were we were going to get chased, or worse. Then the man who’d appeared spoke.

  “Thanks for looking out for me, Daz, but maybe I should talk to them first. They don’t look like press to me.”

  He eyed us both in turn as he spoke. Matt Henderson couldn’t have been much older than his early twenties. He had a boyish face, and his hair was the same color as his sister’s. “The pond scum who’ve been hassling me haven’t even been bothering with lies anymore.”

  This time he was addressing us. We were making progress. “What’s your cousin’s name?” He’d dropped the attitude.

  When we told him, his features relaxed. “That’s tough.” There wasn’t much he could say. He assumed Tanya was dead just like his sister. “Okay. I can spare five minutes.”

  We followed him through into an office where there was barely enough space for a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. I took the visitor’s chair whilst Tommy stood. Matt Henderson swiped a concertina of bright-colored files off his chair and plonked himself down, body arched forward and one hand placed on his chin.

  “What do you want with me?”

  After the initial questions like “were you and your sister close?”—yes, when we were little, but not when we got older—I asked him about Lorna.

  He grinned. “I know her by reputation. She’s a tough lady. Good at what she does.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked, playing dumb.

  Matt Henderson gave me a stony look. “You’re the one asking about her.”

  I put up my hands. “Fair enough, but I’d just like to know what you make of her. She was helping Tanya.”

  Matt Henderson dragged his fingers through his hair, giving us a preview of how he’d look in twenty years’ time. His dad had a widow’s peak in the newspaper photo. “Is she linked to my sister’s death?”

  “We don’t think so.” Tommy was getting good at this lying lark.

  Matt went on. “Lorna’s one of the good ones. She has to be to get women off the streets. It’s a pity—” He broke off and stared at a dent on his desk. “—that Suzy never got to meet Lorna Chanderpaul. She might have saved her.”

  With those words ringing in our ears, we left Matt Henderson to his regrets.

  Chapter 9

  We waited until lunchtime, and I was the one who made the call. “Donna, its Nancy I know about the Healing Hands Center.”

  There was a gasp on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know what you mean.” She said it in her stroppy teenager voice.

  Picturing Donna with finger poised, ready to disconnect the call, I jumped in with “Which is it, Donna? Are you a streetwalker or a junkie?”

  She had to be one or the other or how else would she know Lorna Chanderpaul?

  A sob down the line, followed by a little-girl voice. “Please don’t tell my mum.”

  When I told Donna we wanted to see her, she didn’t resist. We arranged to meet at a nearby café where we could talk undisturbed.

  When Tommy and I strolled into Sam’s Café, Donna was sitting close to the door, her face tight with worry. The place was busy with workmen from a nearby building site, but she’d somehow managed to secure a table by herself, perhaps by the sheer dynamism of her personality. There was a mug of hot chocolate cupped between her hands as though she was trying to warm them. When she gazed up at us, her lips were set in a grimace, and I felt a bit guilty. Bereft of makeup and wearing her school uniform of white blouse, tartan skirt, and knee-high socks, she looke
d about fourteen and not like the sulky seventeen-year-old we’d met earlier. We slid into the bench across from her and indicated to the waitress that we wanted two teas.

  Being the one with the rapport with her—I think Tommy was being sarcastic when we’d discussed who’d try and pry her open like a can of sardines—I was the person who spoke first. “We talked to a pal of Tanya’s, and she said she saw you at the drop-in center.”

  The lies fell as easily from my lips as biscuit crumbs. We could hardly admit Tommy had hacked her phone. That sounded too stalkerish, not to mention being illegal. If she went to the police, the only crime we’d be investigating was which inmate had put glass in our food.

  “Why were you there? Do you have a drug problem or are you selling your body?”

  Donna had her head down. When she spoke, her words were almost a whisper. “It was only the once. I needed the cash, you know.”

  Now I was confused. “What was only the once? What are you talking about?” I thought I knew, but I needed to hear the words from her own lips.

  She stopped staring at her mug and slowly lifted her head. “I went with a man. Let him do things for money.” Her voice started to tremble. “It was horrible. He was old enough to be my dad.”

  “Why would you do it?” I asked. And I meant it. She lived in a fancy house, had a doting mother. She couldn’t be short of pocket money. “Do you spend a lot of money on party pills? Have a druggy boyfriend like Sheena?”

  She shook her head. “I like nice things, you know. My dad used to buy me lots of stuff; anything I wanted. But then he left Mum for his secretary.” She scrunched up her face. “What a fucking cliché. And she’s not even that pretty. Or thin. She’s at least a size 12.”

  Sitting there in my curvy size 14 clothes, I grimaced and resisted the urge to give her a good shake. I’d never had any complaints from men, including Tommy—they loved my curves. Then I remembered the way she looked when we first came in, like a child out of depth in an adult world, and instead of letting her have a mouthful, I patted her hand. “It’s okay, Donna. We all do things we later regret.”