by D. S. Butler
“That music, is it coming from your son’s room?” Mackinnon asked.
“Yes,” Peter Watson said, his eyes narrowing slightly in disapproval.
“Do you think we could have a quick chat with him?”
“Why?” Claire Watson asked. The question came out quick and sharp.
“He’s only a year younger than Ruby; perhaps he knows something that could help.”
Claire Watson shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re not very close.”
“Still, we’d like a word with him,” DI Tyler cut in.
He spoke politely but in a tone that indicated he wasn’t going to accept a refusal.
It was such a delicate balance. Mackinnon felt for Ruby’s parents. Their family had been pulled apart and their world tilted on its axis, but as investigators, they weren’t here to make friends. They were here with one objective: to find out what had happened to Ruby.
With a sigh, Peter Watson got to his feet. “I’ll get him.”
He walked off to get his son.
“Have there been any disagreements in the family recently?” Tyler asked when Peter Watson had left the room.
Claire Watson’s eyes flashed angrily as she glared at DI Tyler. For a moment, Mackinnon thought she might take out her frustration on him, but she didn’t.
“I know what you’re thinking, detective. But she wasn’t unhappy at home. Ruby hasn’t run off on her own accord. It’s not in her nature, and it doesn’t explain the text message, does it?”
Before either Tyler or Mackinnon could answer, Peter Watson entered the room with his son.
“This is Curtis,” he said and then sat back down on the sofa next to his wife.
Mackinnon turned to look at the surly youth who had just walked in behind his father.
He had a long thin face and didn’t look like either of his parents.
The first thing Mackinnon noticed was that he didn’t seem particularly distressed over his sister’s disappearance.
He wandered over to an armchair and slumped down into it. His arms dangled over the sides.
“Curtis,” Mackinnon said. “Thank you for agreeing to speak to us. You must be very worried about your sister.”
Curtis nodded, but he still didn’t look upset. In fact, Mackinnon was positive he could see a smirk on the teenage boy’s face.
“Yeah,” he said. “I reckon she’ll probably turn up.”
“Turn up?” Tyler prompted. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it was only one text message. It’s probably a prank.”
Mackinnon’s gaze drifted from Curtis to his parents. Curtis looked relaxed and confident as he sprawled in the chair while his parents looked uptight and scared. They didn’t contradict their son, though, which Mackinnon found very odd.
“Do you think this could be a prank, Mrs Watson?” Tyler asked.
“No, of course not. Ruby would never do such a thing. Curtis is just… Curtis,” she said, exasperated.
Curtis leant forward in his chair. “Well, I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?”
Those words wounded Claire Watson, and she flinched. She didn’t reprimand or argue with her son. Instead, she started to cry.
“That’s enough Curtis,” Peter Watson said and nodded, excusing his son. “You can go back to your room.”
But in Mackinnon’s opinion, it hadn’t been nearly enough. Curtis was definitely someone they would need to question further.
But Tyler was in charge of this one, and he wasn’t going to push it. “We’ll set up a small base on the seventh floor of the building as long as you have no objections.”
“That’s fine,” Peter Watson said, looking distracted as he gazed over Tyler’s shoulder, his eyes fixed on Curtis as he walked back to his bedroom.
“Is there anything else you think we should know, anything that could be helpful?” Mackinnon asked, sensing the interview was coming to a close.
Claire and Peter Watson exchanged a nervous glance. There was definitely something.
There was a long pause before Peter Watson finally sighed and said. “I don’t see how it can possibly be relevant, but Ruby and Curtis are adopted. We adopted Ruby when she was five years old and Curtis when he was seven.”
Mackinnon nodded. “Were there any problems with the adoption?”
“Not at all. Why would there be? Everything was perfectly aboveboard,” Claire Watson snapped.
“I meant were there any issues with Ruby’s biological family? Perhaps a relative who wasn’t happy with the adoption?”
Peter Watson shook his head. “No, Ruby’s biological mother was a heroin addict, estranged from her family, and nobody knew who her real father was. We haven’t heard a peep out of them since Ruby was five.”
As Tyler wrapped things up and thanked the Watsons for their time, Mackinnon noticed Claire Watson’s behaviour had changed. When they’d arrived, she had looked heartbroken and distraught. Now, as she glanced at her husband and then looked furtively down at the floor, the change in her demeanour was dramatic. She looked like a woman who had something to hide.
Chapter 5
Janice George rolled over in bed and groaned. She’d had a skinful at the pub last night, and her head was killing her.
She would have slept for longer, but the baby was in the next room, screaming her head off.
“Where the hell is Lila?” Janice moaned as she curled up and put the pillow over her head.
When she didn’t get a response, she felt the bed next to her and realised it was empty.
She sat up in bed quickly, and her head spun. She put a hand on her forehead and looked bleary-eyed at the empty space in the bed next to her.
Where the hell was her good-for-nothing husband? She’d had so much to drink last night she couldn’t even remember if he’d come home with her. She frowned, trying to piece together the events of the previous evening.
They’d left Lila, their eldest daughter, looking after the baby, she remembered that much. Janice thought the least Lila could have done was stick around to look after the baby this morning as well. She must have known her mother would have one hell of a hangover.
Janice yawned and rubbed her eyes, smearing last night’s mascara all over her hands.
One look at the clock on the nightstand told her that Lila had probably already gone to work.
Janice grunted. That was a waste of time. It wasn’t real work. It was voluntary. Janice told Lila they were taking advantage of her, but her daughter was too headstrong to listen.
She had no idea what Lila was playing at. She walked around with her head in the clouds most days.
Lately, she’d been talking about applying for a course at college next year. Ridiculous. The girl needed to get out into the real world and start earning some money.
Janice flung back the duvet and climbed out of bed, scratching her head.
She’d put her hair up last night and hadn’t bothered to take out the little hair grips before she went to bed. Now, they were digging into her scalp painfully.
She stumbled towards the baby’s room pulling out the hair grips as she went.
“All right, all right, I’m coming,” she said as she walked along the hallway.
God, she felt like death warmed up this morning. She needed to get some strong coffee into her, pronto.
Before she got to the baby’s room, she pushed open the door of Lila’s bedroom and stuck her head in just to check she wasn’t home. She wouldn’t put it past the cheeky cow to pretend she was out.
But her bedroom was neat and tidy, and her bed was made.
It didn’t look like Janice had any alternative. She would have to deal with the baby herself. She walked into the baby’s room and winced at the screams.
“Oi, keep it down. Your mother’s got a headache.”
Baby Ella had no intention of quieting down. Her little cheeks turned bright pink as she screamed even louder.
Janice leant down and scooped the baby up, and tried
to shush her as she walked to the kitchen. The baby’s nappy was dry, so at least Lila had changed her before she left. She jiggled her up and down with one arm as she tried to prepare a bottle.
She should have made the bottle before picking the baby up, but her head wasn’t with it this morning.
It seemed to take forever. There was no way she could make a cup of coffee with a baby in one arm, so she decided to feed Ella first. Her caffeine fix would have to wait.
She carried the baby into the front room, and that was when she saw her husband sprawled out on the sofa.
How on earth did he do it? He hadn’t even stirred. He’d slept through all of Ella’s screams. Lucky sod.
Janice collapsed back onto the sofa and held up the bottle so Ella could feed.
When she’d finally got the baby to take the bottle, she saw her mobile phone on the little coffee table. She reached for it.
Then she saw the text.
“We have your daughter. Await further instructions.”
* * *
Back at Wood Street Station, Mackinnon caught up with Collins and Charlotte. He’d left DI Tyler back at the Watsons’ building. He knew Tyler wanted to be on the scene in case the Watsons received a second text message.
They were still setting up the communication equipment needed for the apartment on the seventh floor. Usually, the equipment would be used for a mobile incident room, but in this case, the closer they were to the parents during the investigation, the easier things would be.
Charlotte had been hard at work investigating the background of Ruby’s biological parents.
They couldn’t ignore the real parent angle or the possibility that another relative had tried to get at Ruby. Sometimes resentment and family rifts lingered for a long time. The Watsons might consider Ruby’s adoption done and dusted and her real parents forgotten about, but that didn’t mean her biological family felt the same.
“Jack, how did you get on?” Charlotte asked as Mackinnon walked up to her desk.
“Okay. Her parents are very upset, which you’d expect, but the brother is a little strange. His reactions aren’t quite…normal.”
Charlotte frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a little odd. He told us he expected Ruby would turn up, and he doesn’t seem worried in the slightest.”
“Do you think he knows something we don’t? He could know who abducted Ruby, or maybe he thinks it was a staged abduction?”
Mackinnon shook his head. “I really don’t know. Curtis is only sixteen, so we have to tread carefully. We were only able to question him briefly before his parents sent him away again. They said he and Ruby aren’t close, but he’s definitely someone we need to look at. The family liaison officer, Kelly Johnson, is great. She’s experienced, and I hope she’s going to be able to talk to Curtis and get him to open up.”
Charlotte leant back in her chair and tapped her pen on the desk. “Let’s hope so. Collins has tracked Ruby from the Watsons’ apartment building to Rose Hill Lane. She was picked up on a CCTV camera very close to the community centre around the time she was expected to turn up for work. He is contacting the community centre, and as they’ve got their own CCTV, hopefully, we can get a better angle and see Ruby more clearly. She was literally yards away from the building, but for some reason, she didn’t turn up for work.”
Mackinnon frowned and before he could reply one of the phones rang. It was on an empty desk behind them.
“I’ll get it,” Mackinnon said and left Charlotte scrolling through a list of names on the computer.
Right now, they hadn’t heard anything more from the abductors, so they needed to use this downtime to collect as much information as possible. No matter how small or insignificant a piece of information might seem, it could be a clue that led them to Ruby.
He picked up the phone and thanked a member of the support team, who told him the communications team were heading out to take the equipment they’d requested to the make-shift incident room at the Watsons’ building.
As he hung up the phone, Mackinnon saw DCI Brookbank striding through the doorway. Everyone looked up.
Brookbank didn’t bother with any preamble. He took a quick look around the room and then announced, “We’ve got another one.”
Chapter 6
Mackinnon and Charlotte arrived outside Buddleia Court on the Towers Estate less than ten minutes after hearing the news another girl had been abducted. They stepped inside the dark entrance hall and paused by the lifts.
“It looks as though it is working. Do you want to chance it?” Charlotte said, looking at the dented metal door of the lift, which was still marked with traces of old graffiti.
The family they were visiting lived on the fifth floor. On most occasions when he had visited the Towers Estate, Mackinnon had avoided the lift. Today, thankfully, the only smell coming from the lift was bleach. Even so, he nodded towards the stairwell and they walked briskly up to the fifth floor.
As soon as they reached the landing, they saw a woman clutching a baby. She had panic written all over her face. It had to be Janice George.
“Are you the police?”
Mackinnon nodded and showed her his warrant card. “I’m Detective Sergeant Jack Mackinnon, and this is my colleague, Detective Constable Charlotte Brown. We’ve come to talk about Lila. Is it all right if we come in?”
“Yes, of course. Is there any news?” She asked and then shouted out to her husband, “Toby! The police are here.”
From the other end of the passage, Toby George appeared. He was a small, thin man with wispy, brown hair that was greying at the temples and standing on end. He looked as though he’d only just woken up.
“We have a team looking for Lila now. We’d like to ask you some questions so we can find her as soon as possible.”
“Questions?” Toby George looked at them blankly.
Janice shifted the baby to her hip and waved her hand, gesturing for everyone to move into the sitting room. “Of course they need to ask us questions. They need to know about Lila.”
The small sitting room smelled stale, and Mackinnon noticed a couple of empty beer cans sitting on the floor beside the sofa.
Janice George sat down in an armchair, balancing the baby on her knee. Her husband remained standing.
“Can we see the text message you received?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, go right ahead. My mobile is on the coffee table.” Janice jerked her head in the direction of the phone but then looked away quickly as though she couldn’t stand to look at it.
“It’s just someone having a laugh, isn’t it? There are some sick people about.”
She put all her hope into that question, but the frantic look in her eyes told Mackinnon she knew how serious this was.
“We have to treat this text message as genuine at the moment,” Mackinnon said. “Have you called any of Lila’s friends?”
Janice looked as though she might be sick. She closed her eyes and leant forward, resting her chin on the baby’s head.
“I’ve called a couple of them,” Toby said. “But none of them have seen her. She’s not hanging around with the same group of friends at the moment, so it’s hard to know who to call. To be honest, my head is all over the place.”
Charlotte nodded and smiled reassuringly at Toby. “That’s all right. I’m sure we can help you contact Lila’s friends. Now, can you tell me when you last saw Lila?”
Toby ran a hand over his unshaven chin. “Well, we saw her last night before we went out. She was looking after the baby for us so we could have a night out. I didn’t see her this morning. I slept in.”
“Mrs George?” Mackinnon prompted. “Was that the last time you saw Lila, too?”
Janice’s eyes were shining with unshed tears. Her body was trembling as reality started to set in. “Yes, I saw her last night before we went out. She’s a good kid. She loves her baby sister and doesn’t mind babysitting. When I saw her room was empty this morning, I just ass
umed she’d already left for work. It’s not a proper job. She volunteers at the community centre on Rose Hill Lane. It’s a travesty really. They don’t pay her a penny.” Janice turned her head to look at her husband. “If one of those weirdos she helps… If one of those bastards has done something to my Lila, I swear to God…”
Toby took a step forward and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “We don’t know that yet. It might have nothing to do with them.”
“How long has your daughter been volunteering at the Rose Hill community centre?” Charlotte asked.
“She’s been working there most of the summer. I told her she was wasting her time and would be better off getting a proper job, but she is mixing with a different type of person now. She’s got herself some new friends, and they’ve put ideas into her head.”
“What sort of ideas?” Mackinnon asked.
Toby shook his head. “It’s nothing really. She’s just made friends with a girl who is going to university next year. Lila’s decided she might like to go to college.”
Charlotte shot a glance at Mackinnon, and he nodded. He knew what question she wanted to ask next.
“Does your daughter know Ruby Watson?”
Janice blinked and looked up to her husband. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t recognise the name.”
Toby frowned. “Who is she?”
“We believe she was abducted, too, possibly by the same person who has taken Lila,” Mackinnon said.
Janice’s face paled. She muttered a curse, stood up, thrust the baby at her husband and rushed out of the room. Five seconds later, they could hear the sounds of vomiting.
Toby George sank into the seat his wife had vacated and hugged the baby to his chest. She began to squirm and grizzle, sensing his distress.
“What do we do now?” Toby asked. He looked lost.
“We’re tracing your daughter’s movements so we can find out where she was taken and when. If you have any ideas about why Lila would be targeted, you should tell us now.”
