Case One (20 page)

He hung up.

“The Vic,” he said. “Ashleigh came round half an hour ago.”

14.

HUCKNALL WARD
QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL
13:26 HRS

“Hello, Ashleigh,” Danny Simmons said. “My name's Danny. This is Holly. We're from Morningstar Road station.”

Ashleigh Jarvis still looked pale. Her lips were dry and the side of her face was bruised ­– green and yellow.

“Holly's the one who came with you in the ambulance,” Dee Jarvis said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking her daughter's arm.

“Thank you,” Ashleigh said, managing a wan smile.

“It's just my job,” Holly said. “Would it be all right if we asked you some questions about the accident?”

Ashleigh nodded. “I don't remember very much though,” she said.

Danny Simmons moved a green plastic chair next to the bed and sat down.

“You might find it gets clearer as time goes on,” he said. “But for the moment we'd just like to find out what you remember from before the accident. Do you remember being at Lauren's house for example?”

Ashleigh nodded again. “Yeah,” she said. “We watched telly.”

“Do you remember leaving or calling your mum to say you were on your way home?”

“I think so.”

“Okay. Anything else? – Anything from just before the accident?”

Ashleigh frowned, concentrating, but Holly was looking at Dee Jarvis. When Danny had asked the question Dee had stopped stroking her daughter's arm and tensed, as if bracing herself for the reply.

“I don't know,” Ashleigh said then. “It's all sort of fuzzy. I can't describe it. It's like…It's like there should be something there but there isn't. It just sort of goes grey. Do you know what I mean?”

Danny nodded. “That's okay. Like I said, you might remember more later, or you might not. Don't worry about it.”

Dee Jarvis shifted. “Maybe we should all let you get some rest,” she said to Ashleigh.

“I've been in a coma, Mum. How much more rest can you get? I'm fine.”

Danny Simmons glanced at Holly – her cue.

“Ashleigh, you know you said you remembered ringing your mum to say you were coming home? Can you remember where you were when you called her?”

For the first time Ashleigh hesitated, but only for a second. “I dunno. Leaving Lauren's, I suppose.”

“Right. Only the thing is, Lauren told us you left hers at six and you didn't call your mum till twenty to seven. We know that from your phone.”

“I don't know,” Ashleigh repeated. “Lauren must've got it wrong.”

“You didn't go somewhere else after Lauren's?”

“No, I just walked home.”

“Did you meet anyone?”

“No. Why?”

“It's just to make sure we've covered all the details,” Danny Simmons said, playing it down.

“What about Bic?” Holly asked.

“What?” Ashleigh made a small start at the name. “Who?”

“Bic?” Holly asked again, leaving it open.

“No, I don't know— Oh, you mean Bec – Bex. No. I didn't see her.”

Holly frowned. “I thought it was Bic,” she said. “Never mind. What about Drew Alford? Did you see him?”

“No,” Ashleigh said. “I don't think so.” Then she raised a hand to her head and made a pained expression.

“Are you
sure
you're all right,” her mum asked, looking concerned.

“I think I'm getting a headache,” Ashleigh said. “Maybe I
should
have a rest.”

Dee Jarvis looked at Danny, who took the hint and stood up. “Don't worry,” he said. “I think we've got everything we need. Thanks for your help, Ashleigh. Just concentrate on getting better, okay?”

“I will. Thanks.”

They left the room and, after a moment with Ashleigh, Dee followed them into the corridor.

“I don't understand what's going on,” she said, keeping her voice down but clearly confused. “Yesterday your DS Woods said you didn't think it was a— That she hadn't been…”

“No, we don't now,” Danny said, coming in quickly enough to save her from saying the word she was trying to avoid. “Like I said, we just needed to make sure we'd covered everything.”

Dee Jarvis seemed relieved by that. “I know you've got to do your job,” she said. “It's just… You know.”

“I know,” Danny said. “Hopefully we won't have to bother her any more.”

“We will though, won't we?” Holly said, once they'd moved out of earshot along the corridor. “We know Ashleigh was lying – about Bic and about Alford.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “But I can't do any more, not without getting the DS to okay it.”

He looked at her. “You ready for that? Is that what you want to do?”

Holly took a beat, then nodded. “We've got to, haven't we?”

15

“He's just such a bastard,” Bex said, sniffling and dragging her sleeve across her face to wipe away her tears. “Going with her after we've been together for three months. And it wasn't like…it wasn't like I wouldn't – you know – wouldn't
let
him.”

“I know,” Taz said as sympathetically as she could. This was about the third time Bex had gone over it all in the last half-hour and Taz was starting to think she was just using the situation as an excuse to be dramatic.

“And everyone knows,” Bex went on. “Or they will by tomorrow at school. I can't stand it.”

“Just ignore them,” Taz said. “Anyway, if he's going to do stuff like that…” She let the sentence trail off in the hope that it wouldn't give Bex anything more to get upset about.

“I should've chucked him at Christmas. I knew I should,” Bex said. “Everyone said so.”

“I know,” Taz said again. “But you know what he's like now. No one's going to think it's your fault.”

“I should've known he fancied her. You could tell. I just— I just didn't want to believe it.”

She pulled a crumpled tissue from her jacket pocket and blotted her eyes. “Has my mascara run?”

“Only a bit. It's okay.”

Bex sniffed. “He's a bastard,” she said again.

“You want to go home?” Taz said. She was cold from sitting on the edge of the empty flower bed in the precinct and if Bex had had enough of crying for a while it was a good time to suggest moving.

Bex shook her head. “I want a drink,” she said, casting a look towards the precinct off-licence, its lights on and door open. “I want to get shit-faced.”

“They won't serve you,” Taz said.

“Yeah they will. It's Tariq on the till. He always serves me, long as there's no one else there. He doesn't want Drew coming in.”

Bex was searching her purse in a determined way now, coming up with a collection of loose change. “How much money you got?”

“I dunno. Not a lot,” Taz said. “Anyway, I don't want any.”

“Why not?” Bex gave her a pleading look. “Come on. I hate feeling like this. I hate being in love with him. I just want to feel better.”

Taz knew if she didn't go along with this Bex would take it as another personal injury, so – reluctantly – she took a two pound coin from her jeans and handed it over.

“That'll get us a bit,” Bex said, straightening up. “Cider, yeah?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Taz said.

16.

INCIDENT ROOM
MORNINGSTAR RD STATION
14:03 HRS

Holly was alone in the Incident Room with DS Ray Woods. He was sitting in a swivel chair, wearing a polo shirt and jeans under his open fleece. The clothes didn't give a clue as to what he'd been doing on his Sunday afternoon off before Danny Simmons had called him in.

Woods was looking at the prints from the CCTV camera footage.

“No index so we can't trace it – well, we might if we can pick it up on another camera either before or after this one, but that's a lot of hours to put in.” He lowered the photographs. “Why should we?”

“If he's driving a car—” Holly started.

“You don't know
who's
driving. You can't see. Could be anyone. What if Bic got his mum to drive him there to meet Ashleigh, then they all went to the pictures together?”

“Sarge—”

“Listen, even if you're right, even if this Bic is an adult and he knows Ashleigh's underage, even if he is having sex with her—”

“He is. He must be.”

For a moment Holly thought she'd gone too far. Woods was still, then he frowned.

“Okay, just for the moment let's assume Ashleigh
is
in a sexual relationship with an adult male, and let's assume they both know he'd be in trouble if anyone found out. Do you think Ashleigh's going to admit it and tell us who he is?”

Holly thought about it – about the way Ashleigh had dodged her questions earlier, and about the texts she'd read. “No. She thinks she's in love with him.”

“Right. So the only way to identify him is going to involve costs – either man-hours trawling through CCTV, or Technical trying to trace his phone – that's if Ashleigh doesn't warn him and he doesn't ditch it.”

“Sarge—”

“Wait – but let's say that we
do
find out who he is – we've still got to have sufficient grounds to arrest him, and there's nothing: nothing to show they've had a sexual relationship.”

“We've got his DNA – the semen. That would prove it, wouldn't it?”

“In theory, but first we'd need solid ground to arrest him. We haven't got that so we can't take his DNA to match against the semen sample.”

“What about the texts then?”

“Do any of them specifically say
when we had sex yesterday
? or,
I want to have sex with you again
?”

“Not exactly, but I haven't read them all. There might be something…”

Woods shook his head.

“But if we don't do anything… She's not going to stop seeing him. Nothing's going to change – she thinks it's okay. She thinks they're in love.”

“I know. So tomorrow I can put it to the DI ­– see if she's prepared to spend the department budget, whether she wants to put the manpower into it and what the CPS view is.”

He put the photographs aside and stood up. And then Holly knew that this was as far as she could go. There wasn't anything else.

“Okay. Thanks, Sarge,” she said. “Sorry you had to come in. I'll get back to Custody.”

She started towards the door and had covered most of the distance before Woods said: “You want to know why?”

Holly stopped and turned back. “Why what?”

“Why I came in on my precious Sunday off?”

Holly wasn't sure what this meant, or what the correct answer should be. “Er, yes,” she said.

“It's because you don't know the half of it,” Woods said.

“I don't understand.”

“I know. You don't know how bad it might be.”

He paused, shifted slightly, then shoved a hand into his pocket. Holly could tell he was thinking something through so she said nothing, hoping this meant he wasn't quite ready to walk away, despite what he'd just said.

“You asked Ashleigh about Bic, right?” Woods said in the end.

“Yeah. She pretended she thought I meant Bex.”

Again the DS gave it some thought.

“Do you know what grooming is?” he asked then.

Holly nodded. “When a man gradually builds up contact with an underage girl, getting her more and more involved so that in the end she'll have sex with him?”

“Not just girls, but yes – and it's not usually just one. A predatory paedophile can be in contact with several kids at the same time. So what worries me is what'll happen if Ashleigh makes contact with Bic in the next few hours and he finds out we're interested in him. If he does, the first thing he'll do is ditch his phone and try to cover any trace of his contact with her. He'll disappear, but we won't just lose him ­– we'll never know who else he's doing this to either.”

“Could he do that – just disappear, I mean?”

“Depends how sophisticated he is. But there's a good chance he's lied to Ashleigh about where he lives, his real name, his job, everything. He could live fifty miles away and only come to the city to meet her.”

Holly nodded, realising it was true. Then she thought of something. “I don't think he does though – I mean, I think he's local.”

Woods frowned. “Why?”

“Because he usually calls her or sends texts every day, but there's nothing on her phone from him since Friday. No missed calls, no new texts after she was knocked down. So I think he knows what happened,
and
that she's in hospital.”

Woods thought about it. “Maybe,” he said.

Then Danny Simmons came in. From his expression it was clear he wasn't sure what to expect and he looked at Woods – a question.

“Have you still got Ashleigh's phone?” Woods asked him.

Danny nodded. “It's upstairs in my desk.”

“You'd better get it then.”

“What about waiting till tomorrow?” Holly said, uncertain.

Woods shook his head. “I don't think we can now. The cat's half out of the bag and if you're right about him being local it means we might have even less time before he tumbles. So let's work out how we're going to find him without tipping him off.”

17.

STAINSBY WARD
QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL
16:17 HRS

There was nothing else to do, just wait and try not to keep looking at the mobile which lay on the bedside cabinet, resolutely silent since Bic's final text.

In the last hour Holly had become familiar with every inch of the hospital room: a single, bare bed, a couple of chairs, a few pieces of equipment. Nothing to hold your interest for more than a few seconds. And the view from the window where Holly stood now was little better. It was of a grey, rain-wet car park and landscaped banks of muddy grass. A few people came and went, but even though she watched every man she saw Holly knew there was no way to tell if one of them was the man they were waiting for. He'd probably look so ordinary that no one would look twice at him – no one except Ashleigh.