A Velvet Scream (18 page)

Molly's mother began to sob silently, the tears spilling out. She hardly breathed or moved. Her only movement was in the tears coursing their way down her cheeks. Her husband watched helplessly; unable, it seemed, to do anything – except put his arm round her, kiss her and join in her hopelessness. He simply watched as though his own misery was already more than he could take. The pair were in a state of suspended animation. Joanna had the feeling that when she had gone they would continue to sit there, unable to move or function in any normal way until they had news of their daughter, their only child.

There was so little she could say. ‘We're doing all we can to find her.'

Beth Carraway turned tortured eyes towards her. She couldn't even voice her question. Her husband whispered it for her.

‘Six months ago,' Philip Carraway said slowly, ‘there was a report that a girl died outside a nightclub in Newcastle-under-Lyme.' He couldn't look at her to gauge her response. Joanna's heart sank. She had hoped this story would not become public knowledge quite so soon to join the frenzy of Molly's disappearance.

She did her best to console them. ‘We don't know it's the same man. Only that the girl vanished from inside a nightclub. We had no description of the man who was with Danielle Brixton that night and she died of natural causes. She was not murdered.' She let the words sink in before adding: ‘And Kayleigh Harrison is still alive  . . .' She let the words hang in the air but Molly's parents did not look comforted.

Philip Carraway's voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Surely
she
can give you a description of the man?'

The flicker of hope in their eyes was hardly there but it was there all the same.

‘She doesn't remember much.'

She left the Carraways on the sofa, clinging to one another. It was enough to break the hardest of hearts.

She and Hesketh-Brown returned to the station.

Joanna was at her desk, staring into the computer screen, when her mobile rang. ‘Home' flashed up. ‘Hi, Matt,' she said heavily.

‘Hi. Things all right?'

‘No, not really.'

‘Any idea what time you'll be home?'

‘I may as well come back now,' she said. ‘There isn't a lot I can be doing here. It's dark anyway. I'll just write up a few notes.'

‘You sound down.'

‘I am,' she admitted. ‘The girl is still missing.' She paused, running her fingers through her thick, unruly hair. ‘The longer she's gone the worse it is. I'm afraid  . . .' She glanced around the office. Danny HK could have finished the sentence for her, as could Matthew. ‘I'll be home in half an hour, darling.'

‘Great,' he said. ‘I thought I'd serve a roast.'

‘Lovely.' But she had little appetite. She had a few more chores to do: photographing the earring, sending it down to forensics, organizing flyers with pictures of the fresh-faced schoolgirl. For a while she stared at the girl.
She was a beauty
, she thought. If she was still alive her life would surely be a success. She was bright, by all accounts; could go to university, enter a profession. She was certainly beautiful enough to be a model. If she was still alive. The worst scenario would be not to know. Never to know what had happened. She stood up. Time to go home.

She was back at Waterfall Cottage at four and even when she smelt the lamb found she could not concentrate on anything but the missing girl. Matthew must have had a word with Eloise because she was on her very best behaviour. She gave Joanna an almost beatific smile. Joanna did her best to respond in kind.

‘How's your swotting gone?' She knew they did this; skirted around one another, never really finding a topic which was comfortable ground for them both.

Eloise grinned and flicked her blonde hair out of the way. ‘I felt guilty,' she said. ‘We did do some work but we went on a lovely long walk too.'

‘Wish I'd been there,' Joanna said.

Matthew handed her a glass of red wine. ‘You poor darling,' he said. ‘What a shame for this case to crop up – and so close to the wedding.'

The wedding. The wedding. To Joanna it felt unreal. ‘Yes,' she said quickly, and in as normal a voice as she could summon. ‘Thank goodness for Mum and Sarah,' she said, reflecting on how Sarah, her older sister, was proving to be massive help alongside her mother with the wedding planning. ‘Otherwise I'd be going stark raving mad.'

The phone rang. The three of them looked at one another. Joanna got up. As she had half anticipated it was her mother. They had a brief conversation; one sided, Joanna letting her mother talk about flowers and gifts and arrangements for guests. When she returned to the table she felt even worse. Matthew had put her dinner in the oven to keep warm but she hardly had the energy to eat it. She could not stop thinking about Molly Carraway.

Matthew and Eloise made desultory conversation but it was hard going and they finally gave up. Joanna wanted to ask when Eloise would be going back to her flat but she didn't. In the end Matthew came across to her and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘In less than four weeks,' he said, ‘you'll be in a bikini, with a cold drink in your hand and a ring on your finger, a husband sitting across the table and you'll say, “This is a wonderful place”. Jo,' he said, ‘I promise you.'

And at last she managed a smile.

THIRTEEN

Monday, 6 December. 8 a.m.

T
he trouble with the search for Molly Carraway was that they had so little to go on. Nothing, really. Where do you start when a girl is missing? Police protocol sounds simple and clear – at the place where she was last seen. You study any CCTV footage for clues and then spread out like a spider's web. They'd done all this and it had led nowhere. Sure, they watched Molly flirting, getting drunk, dancing showily – arms right up in there. Joanna made a face. Even the girl's armpits were beautiful. She made a mental note to book in for a leg, underarm and ‘honeymoon' wax before the great day. When was she going to have the time?

Telephone calls to all of Molly's friends whose numbers Clara had supplied proved equally futile. Most hadn't seen her since her last day at school, Friday the third. Patches yielded no further physical clue other than the gold earring. Initial forensic tests on the earring had confirmed what Joanna had suspected: the presence of blood and a tiny piece of human tissue, which had been sent for DNA analysis. She hardly needed the ‘analysis'. The blood and tissue would match up with Molly Carraway. The earring must have caught on something and had been torn out of her ear. Another person's tissue, blood, a piece of hair or a thread. That would have been something else. But DNA from Molly was not going to tell them anything they did not already know.

Joanna stared into her computer screen. In her heart of hearts she believed the girl was dead. All they needed to do was to find her body. And then  . . .

She studied the facts on file. Clara's last sighting of her friend was somewhere around midnight, heading towards the ladies' toilets and the cloakroom, though neither girl had worn a coat. Frustrated and cross, Clara had finally left the club at one, unable to find her friend, though she claimed to have searched everywhere: the ‘quiet' area, the dance floor, the bar, the toilets and the cloakroom area. Ergo Molly had disappeared from Patches some time between midnight and 1 a.m.

As she faced the investigating team, both plain clothes and uniform, Joanna persuaded them that their enquiries needed to fan out into the town. House-to-house, door-to-door, person-to-person. Even if they didn't know the significance of what they knew someone, somewhere, must know something.

Officers were checking Molly's mobile phone records and laptop but running through all the contacts would take some time yet.

More boards had been put up in the high street and outside the club. Thinking that as it wasn't so long ago that PC Phil Scott had been an eager young rookie himself, she thought he would be good for the eager young ‘special' and accordingly teamed him up with Jason to talk to the cab drivers. In her experience they were an observant lot. And, more importantly, some of them were always idling outside nightclubs, ready to pick up fares.

Leek did have a few CCTV cameras scattered up the high street and she parked Timmis and McBrine in front of the screen to study the images, but two hours later they told her not one of them showed Molly, either alone or accompanied. Joanna absorbed the information, or rather lack of it. So the missing girl had not emerged into the town. Phil and Jason also reported back at lunchtime that they too had drawn a blank.

Joanna penned it all up on the board.

No taxi

No sightings on the streets of Leek.

Neither had her body turned up in spite of an extensive search in any of the quieter areas in the town. So it was time to extend it into the surrounding countryside.

And this was where they hit another problem. To the north, south, east and west, Leek is surrounded by vast tracts of countryside: empty, featureless moorland towards the north-east; rural farms to the east and west. Even to the south and the city of Stoke on Trent, there was a strip of a few miles which contained the tiny, scattered villages of Longsden and Endon, Stockton Brook and Horton. Then there was the expanse of Rudyard Lake and acres of boggy farmland which at this time of the year did not even have the human attention of a farmer tending his animals. They were all safely in cowsheds and barns. Searches in such an underpopulated and largely rural area would be futile and ultimately a squandering of both manpower and resources: the proverbial hunting for a needle in a haystack. The empty expanse was too vast. Bodies are small and weren't always found.

It had all happened before. Years ago a farmer who had gone missing at lambing time had not been found until harvest time, his shotgun at his side, in spite of extensive searches around his farm and the surrounding area. If a body was not on a walkers' route, a farm trail, or near a road, there was every chance that it would not be found – ever. It would simply lie there, decomposing. And in the meantime Molly's parents suffered, wondered, hoped and feared. The lack of
habeas corpus
was a serious impediment. With a body came forensic evidence, unless they were very unlucky and the killer very, very careful. So the sooner they found Molly the better – for everyone. At the back of her mind Joanna was aware that Danielle had died in May and Kayleigh had been assaulted in November. Molly had disappeared only three days after Kayleigh. If the same man was involved in all three events it didn't take much to realize his appetite and audacity were on the increase.

If only they could narrow down the area, just a little, they could rope in the RAF helicopter with its heat-seeking equipment. Even in these sub-zero temperatures Molly's body would decompose – albeit slowly. Decomposition produces heat.

Bingo.

All they needed was one tiny hint of a lead. That was all. Joanna had already decided to involve the general public. In this moorland town there was a solid feeling of community. They were not short of volunteers, each supervised by a member of the force. The teams would keep in touch by mobile phone and the members of the public had strict instructions; if they found anything they were not to sully the crime scene but call for help.

Joanna briefed the officers so they all understood their role and the geographical area they were responsible for. In the meantime she and Mike were having a talk. ‘The only real, tangible lead we've got,' Joanna said, frowning thoughtfully in Korpanski's direction, ‘is Kayleigh. She's keeping something back. We have to try and get whatever it is out of her, Mike. She's our best chance.' She thought for a moment more before adding, with honesty, ‘Our only
real
hope. We have so little to go on.' Korpanski eyed her, waiting for one of her flashes of inspiration. She was silent for a moment before adding, hesitatingly: ‘I suppose
it might
be worth talking again to Steve Shand and his birthday mates. Perhaps one or two of them were at Patches on Friday night as well as the previous Tuesday.'

‘It's worth a shot,' Korpanski agreed. ‘As you say, as we haven't got any better ideas.'

‘Mike,' she wheedled slowly, ‘I wonder if you'd go back to Newcastle-under-Lyme and find out a little bit more about the Danielle Brixton case.'

He was puzzled. ‘Such as?'

‘I don't really know,' she confessed, ‘but – you do agree, don't you, that it appears that the three cases are connected?'

‘It's a big step, Jo, but yes, I suppose I do.'

‘Let me just run this past you.'

‘I'm listenin'.'

‘OK. Stop me if you disagree with anything I'm saying.'

‘OK.'

‘Danielle was raped and left to die right outside Lymeys.'

Korpanski nodded, his dark eyes fixed on Joanna Piercy's face.

‘The same with Kayleigh.' She paused. ‘So if our perp is the same person why didn't he leave Molly to be found? That's the way he works. What changed?'

‘Maybe he thought the heat was being turned up with Kayleigh being found less than a week before,' Korpanski suggested.

‘Maybe. Then there's the time lapse.'

‘Go on.'

‘Six months between Danielle and Kayleigh. Only three days between Kayleigh and Molly Carraway.'

‘What's your point?'

‘I may be wrong,' Joanna said slowly, ‘but I think he's an opportunist. A chancer.'

Korpanski frowned and she ploughed on. ‘I want to know if anything else connects the three assaults apart from opportunity.'

‘What sort of things, Jo?'

‘Anything. Time of year, weather, what Danielle was wearing, who found her, at what time, how long she'd been dead, just stuff like that – general. I'll wander across to Patches and chat to our American friends; see if they remember anything more. Maybe the doorman too.' She heaved a great sigh. ‘I shall have to pay Molly's parents a social call but I can leave that until later on this afternoon and I'll have another word with young Kayleigh.' She made an attempt at a smile. ‘Maybe she's got her memory back, eh, Mike?'