Alice Teale is Missing

by H. A. Linskey

  Beth had texted her fellow former trainee, Peter Kennedy, with an ‘RU awake?’ and when she got an instant reply in the affirmative, had asked him for a chat. Her mobile rang a moment later and, when she answered it, Peter was so full of congratulations, good wishes and curiosity about how it was going for her in the new role she found herself instantly forgiving him for being a man and leapfrogging her in the selection process.

  They talked about the case and what he was working on, agreeing they should try and meet soon for a proper catch-up over lunch or, preferably, a beer. She noticed he avoided extending that invitation to Anne Hudson. Maybe he didn’t like her either.

  When they had talked for a while she said, ‘Listen, Peter, I need a favour, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ he agreed, without even knowing what she was going to ask of him. Beth told him about Lucas Black and Peter admitted he had heard of the man but never met him. ‘The guys in my squad probably know him, though.’

  I’ll bet they do.

  Beth described the shooting incident. ‘If you do hear anything about him, or if he should accidentally on purpose pop up in conversation, I’d be curious to know what other people think of him.’

  ‘I suppose I could mention that my friend just joined his team and see what they say. No harm in that, is there?’

  ‘Thanks, mate. No harm at all.’

  Beth arrived at Collemby so early she thought the doors might not even be open yet, but they were. Black was already there, too, his car in the car park, and when she walked towards the major-incident room, she spotted him through one of the glass portholes on the double doors. He was sitting there, looking at something intently. Black was side-on to her, so he hadn’t spotted Beth, but she had an uninterrupted view of him.

  For some reason, she halted and didn’t walk in right away. Instead, she peered through the window and watched him for a moment, as if that would help her to understand him.

  ‘Are you coming in, or are you just going to stand there gawping?’ He didn’t even look up.

  Flustered, Beth opened the door and walked into the room, wondering whether to apologize or bite back at him.

  ‘Where are we off to today, then?’ she asked instead.

  ‘We’ll split up again.’ Beth’s heart sank. How was she ever going to learn if she was always on her own? ‘But first I have to go through all of this.’ He indicated the pile of messages that had been placed there. ‘It’s the leads generated last night. I asked for them to be collated and brought here so I could hit them early.’

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’ll be quicker if I go through them on my own.’

  Beth took that to mean he didn’t trust her to sort the bogus calls from the genuine leads. ‘I’ll just put the kettle on, then, should I?’ She hoped he would detect the sarcasm in her voice, but he said nothing so she went and did it anyway.

  Beth came back with two mugs of instant coffee and handed him one. He actually thanked her, which was a surprise.

  ‘When I’m done here, I’m going to see the embittered ex-boyfriend,’ he said.

  ‘Tony? How do we know he’s embittered? Yesterday you told me never to assume.’

  ‘I also told you to look to the evidence. Tony left school because of Alice and is currently doing bugger all, his prospects all but ruined, so there’s a good chance he’s not her biggest fan. You don’t have to be a detective to work that out.’

  He might have been correct, but that didn’t make his tone any less exasperating. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Go and see Kirstie and Chloe.’ He handed her the file full of statements so she could get the information she needed on Alice’s two friends.

  ‘I went through her social media last night,’ she told him.

  ‘But you didn’t find anything.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘If you had, you’d have told me by now,’ he replied, as if she was a kid who couldn’t wait before blurting out a new lead.

  ‘There was one thing,’ Beth told him, then realized she didn’t have much and a man like Lucas Black was unlikely to be moved by it. ‘It could be nothing.’ He gave her a look of such irritation at her wavering that she felt the need to quickly plough on regardless. Beth told him about the photograph at the rehearsal and the beaming smile Alice Teale had given the young teacher. ‘It seemed as if something might have passed between them, that’s all.’ When she had said it, it seemed so inconclusive, she fully expected to be shot down.

  Instead, Black said, ‘Okay, that’s worth looking into,’ and she assumed he was giving her permission to check it out or possibly even ordering her to get on with it.

  Without explaining his change of heart, he took a sizeable number of the sightings and phone messages from the top of the large pile he was wading through and handed them to Beth. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit early to tackle Alice’s mates. Go through some of those for me.’ Maybe he trusted her after all.

  They had been inundated with leads, sightings and theories about the girl’s disappearance, all of which had to be read, analysed and prioritized, the more fanciful ones placed at the bottom of the heap, the conspiracy theories ignored and the dozen or so plausible callers put in a separate pile so that each one could be followed up on.

  They had been at it for more than an hour when DC Ferguson and DC Rodgers finally arrived. Black pointedly looked at his watch and Rodgers said, ‘Traffic’s a bastard this morning.’

  ‘You’re just in time,’ Black told them, handing Rodgers the pile of vaguely plausible sightings, ‘to follow up on this lot.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ferguson, ‘but I’ll make us all a brew first.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Black. ‘We’re out of here.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Rodgers, clearly irked by the exclusion.

  ‘People to see,’ said Black, and his dismissive tone made it clear how he felt about the other detectives and their late arrival.

  As he marched across the car park, Beth struggled to stay alongside him. ‘Do we have an issue with Ferguson and Rodgers?’

  ‘You might. I don’t,’ he said, and when he reached his car he actually explained himself for once. ‘I’ll get something out of them, but they won’t go the extra mile.’

  ‘Time-servers?’

  ‘You’re keen and you work hard but this is your first real case. If fifteen years of shit-shovelling and cost-cutting means your family hardly sees you, maybe you won’t be so motivated.’

  He opened his car door and was about to leave her to it.

  ‘You’re still motivated.’

  ‘I don’t have a family,’ he said, ‘and I want to find Alice.’

  14

  Black still had a long list of people to talk to that day, but he had to start somewhere. The ex-boyfriend, who had lost his girl, his best mate and all his friends in one go, seemed like a good place to begin.

  Tony’s mother was not pleased to see the detective sergeant. ‘My son didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said, her voice already sounding shrill, as if she had worked out that Tony might be quite high on the list of possible suspects in Alice’s disappearance. ‘That girl was single. She’d broken up with her boyfriend before he asked her out and he hasn’t seen her in weeks.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Black assured her. ‘Going out with your best friend’s ex isn’t a crime. I’m just here to have a word with your son, not arrest him.’ Unless he suddenly confesses to murder.

  He waited for her to admit him, but she said, ‘He’s in the garage.’

  Tony’s mother took Black round the side of the house. He expected to find the young lad working on something, but the double wooden doors of the old garage were firmly closed. She rapped on the doors with her knuckles. ‘Tony, it’s the police.’ Was that a warning?

  He didn’t wait to find out. Black pulled open the nearest door.

  The reason for her son’s lack of response was immedia
tely obvious. He was sprawled on an old sofa, his body motionless, and all Black could make out at first were the soles of his trainers, which protruded from one end because it wasn’t long enough to accommodate his lanky frame. It took a moment for Black’s eyes to adjust to the gloom but then he noticed that the boy’s left arm was hanging down the front of the sofa, his hand trailing almost to the floor.

  ‘Shit!’ exclaimed Black, and moved quickly towards the boy, fearing the worst. He needn’t have worried. The sight of a burly stranger bearing down on him caused Tony to stir and shout, ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘We knocked,’ his mother protested, but then both she and Black noticed the headphones that had fallen from the boy’s ears as he shot up from the sofa, a faint hiss coming from them as his music continued to play.

  His mother managed to calm Tony down as she explained who Black was and why he was there, then she offered her son the chance to leave the gloomy garage and come inside, but he turned her down. ‘I’m good in here,’ he said. It sounded as if they’d had this conversation many times before.

  She frowned at the makeshift room in her garage, which was lit by one bare electric bulb and a little veiled sunlight from a single dusty window. As well as the sofa, there was a rickety old coffee table which had three dirty mugs on it. His mother quickly scooped them up and left Black with Tony, who looked tired. Had he been sleeping, even as the music blared from his headphones?

  Once Tony’s mother had retreated, Black said, ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ and the boy gave him a withering look. ‘No, I mean it. I’d have loved something like this when I was your age.’ There was a dartboard on the far wall and an ageing stereo plugged into a socket. Cans of beer were stacked on the work bench next to it. ‘Unfortunately, my dad had other ideas. He wanted to use our garage for his car, which was most unreasonable.’ And he smiled at the lad, who was at least sitting up straight and taking notice of him.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ he asked Black as he reached into the old army jacket he was wearing and fished out a tin of tobacco, then opened it. The metal box contained a couple of hand-rolled cigarettes and a lighter.

  ‘What other one?’

  Tony put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it, inhaling deeply, then he threw his head back and exhaled. ‘The bad cop.’ He made a show of looking towards the open door. ‘Is he running late?’

  ‘We don’t really do good cop, bad cop, son. I can be either or both. It depends.’

  ‘On what?’ the boy sneered.

  ‘On how cooperative you are.’

  The boy watched him for a while, as if he were gauging how serious Black was. ‘And if I’m not cooperative. What then? You plant some drugs on me?’

  Black sighed wearily. ‘You know, that tends to only happen in films.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard. I should just trust you, should I, because you’re a police officer?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you trust me, Tony? I’m trying to find out what happened to a young girl who has disappeared. I want to bring her back to her family.’

  ‘You could twist something I said and lock me up for murder.’

  ‘I never said she was dead.’

  ‘You see.’ His tone was triumphant. ‘You’re doing it already – twisting my words when I had nothing to do with any of it.’

  ‘I’m not trying to trap anyone. You don’t know me,’ he conceded, ‘but you do know Alice Teale and her family. I think you can imagine what they must be going through right now. You don’t have to help me, Tony, but I was told you cared about her once. Perhaps I was misinformed.’

  Black had chosen the right words. Tony’s defiance ended immediately. The lad’s lip quivered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed, and he had to put his hand to his eyes to hide the tears that were starting to form. It took a little while for him to calm down. Black waited while the boy kept repeating, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right, son. You take your time.’

  Chloe had been given revision time. That’s what the school were calling the flexible approach they were taking with Alice Teale’s closest friends in the sixth form.

  ‘I don’t think they knew what to do with us,’ admitted Chloe, who Beth found in the local library after the girl’s mother had directed her there. It was a small building with a decent selection of books, but it wasn’t the best environment for revision. The tables in the middle of the room were occupied by two pensioners reading, a middle-aged man who was researching something – probably his family tree, thought Beth – and another man nearby was being taught how to use the library’s sole computer so that he could apply for a job. The coaching he was receiving from the librarian was loud enough to dominate the otherwise silent room. Chloe seemed to appreciate that this wasn’t the best place to talk about Alice either. ‘I was just about to stop for a coffee,’ she told the detective.

  ‘I’ll buy you one,’ said Beth, and the sixth-former closed her ring binder, stuffed it into her bag then followed Beth out of the library, across the car park and into Collemby’s sole café, a gloomy, decidedly old-fashioned-looking place without a single other customer. They ordered coffee and Beth steered Chloe to the furthest corner from the counter, which placed them next to the café’s window.

  ‘You’re one of Alice’s closest friends,’ Beth began.

  ‘We grew up together, lived in the same street, been best friends since we were three years old.’ She seemed proud of that fact. Chloe appeared a little nervous and awkward, but Beth reasoned she might be anxious around anyone, let alone a police officer. She spoke fast, almost blurting the words out, as if keen to make her point quickly, perhaps because she was used to being ignored. It probably didn’t help that she spent much of her time with Alice Teale, who seemed to be constantly desired.

  ‘If Alice had a secret, you might know about it.’

  ‘I would know about it.’ Then she qualified that: ‘If anyone did.’

  ‘And you don’t know of any reason why Alice might have run away?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But she did have secrets,’ Beth persisted. ‘I’m talking about her journal. According to her brother, she was always writing in it.’

  ‘I know about her journal,’ said Chloe, ‘but she wouldn’t write in it while other people were around and it was always locked.’

  ‘She kept it with her, not at home?’

  ‘In her bag,’ she said, ‘or her coat. She always wore a baggy green parka with these deep pockets.’

  ‘So it’s still on her,’ said Beth, her hopes of finding any clues from it seemingly dashed. ‘Chloe, do you know if anyone had a falling-out with Alice recently?’

  ‘No. I mean, Alice and Chris used to argue, but it was just bickering.’

  ‘What did they bicker about?’

  ‘He used to get jealous,’ she said, without expanding on it.

  ‘Did Alice give him cause to be jealous?’ Beth asked. ‘In your opinion.’

  There was a slight pause. ‘Not deliberately, but Alice was friendly to everyone.’

  ‘And that could be mistaken for flirting,’ offered Beth, ‘by an insecure boyfriend?’

  When Chloe didn’t contradict that, Beth moved on again.

  ‘What about her home life? I understand things weren’t always great there.’

  ‘With her dad, not so much,’ she agreed. ‘With her mum, so-so, but she is very close to her grandad. He lives in one of the Aged Miners’ cottages next to the school. She drops in all the time.’

  Beth noticed she had missed someone out.

  ‘And how are things with her brother?’

  ‘Good,’ said Chloe. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘But not always?’

  ‘Daniel’s a good guy, but he can be a bit controlling, too. Not on the same level as her dad, but he has a temper as well.’

  ‘You ever see him lose that temper?’

  ‘Daniel? No.’ She must have reasoned that Beth would now assume she had nothing to back up her ass
ertion about Daniel, so she added: ‘But he got barred from the pub.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few weeks back.’

  ‘What did he do to get barred?’

  ‘Threw a drink in someone’s face.’

  ‘Was there an argument?’ Beth asked. ‘Or did he just march up to the bloke and chuck a pint at him?’

  ‘He walked in, ordered a drink, took it over to the table and threw it,’ said Chloe. ‘And it wasn’t another bloke. It was a girl.’

  ‘Daniel Teale threw a drink in a girl’s face?’ This seemed both unlikely and bitterly ironic, considering Daniel’s dismissal of his father as little more than an angry man. Had Beth misread him entirely? ‘Why ever would he do that?’

  ‘He just went a bit nuts.’

  Beth Winter listened patiently then while Chloe breathlessly delivered the whole story of how Daniel had been barred from the Dirty Donkey for throwing the drink and now the landlord wouldn’t let him back in. The incident had obviously been talked about by everyone in Chloe’s social circle.

  ‘Why would a boy like Daniel suddenly lose it like that? He must have had a reason.’

  ‘He called her a load of names, too, then just walked out.’

  Beth noticed the girl still hadn’t answered the question. ‘Did no one go after him? A girl gets a drink chucked in her face and nobody bats an eyelid?’

  ‘I think her mates were in shock, and he’s a big bloke. Plus, he was really angry.’