Lost Souls by Jenny O'Brien (android e book reader txt) 📕

time but, by the mulish pull of her bottom lip, nothing he could say would make her divulge anything she didn’t want him to know. Glancing down, he took in his younger brother’s jeans and old trainers, which at least added to the illusion of her being a boy, all trace of pink expunged from her wardrobe even down to her rucksack. It would be disastrous if someone recognised her before he’d managed to wriggle out of her why she’d run away. Only then would he decide what was best for her because wandering the streets with him certainly wasn’t it.

‘Come on,’ he said, dropping his voice, a smile edging his lips at the sight of her stubborn bottom lip starting to wobble. He was probably being too hard on her; she was only ten after all and she’d barely said a word since leaving his mother’s house. The reality was that she was a very scared little girl. For some reason she’d picked him for the role of her guardian angel, which was the biggest joke of all. He was barely able to mind himself let alone have responsibility for anyone else.

‘I thought we’d be going back to the Orme?’

‘Did you now? The Orme will be the first place they search so we need to go somewhere that they won’t think of.’ He stopped again, placing the plastic bag he’d been clutching between his feet while he rearranged the position of his rucksack on his shoulders, which had grown heavier from the tins he’d pilfered from his mother’s larder cupboard. He hadn’t been back to the house since he’d made the decision to run away and stealing from his family wasn’t something he’d ever wanted to do. But there wouldn’t be any friendly vicar to turn to where they were going and, without a source of income, his money supply wouldn’t last for ever.

‘So, where are you taking me?’ she said, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes.

Crouching down, he noted the threat of tears hovering on her lashes and tried to think of how Caleb, his eleven-year-old brother, would cope in a similar situation. He wouldn’t. He’d be terrified. But then he couldn’t think of a reason for him to desert the family home except possibly their perpetually poor internet speed, which had once been the main cause of the arguments between them. The truth was that Ellie was desperate and Ronan too much of a coward to ask her why she’d run; he wasn’t sure if he could cope with the answer. She appeared to be holding it together by a slender thread of bravado. At some point that would snap, leaving him to pick up the pieces. He’d rather that wasn’t until after they’d reached their final destination.

His free hand curled around the hard outline of the keys he’d taken from the top drawer of his mother’s filing cabinet.

‘We’re going somewhere they won’t find you unless you want them to. You do still want to run away, don’t you? Because now’s the time to say if not.’ He answered her slight nod with another brief smile. ‘Okay then. We need to get cracking or we’ll miss the train. Watch out for a bin, would you?’ He lifted up the carrier bag. ‘No point in taking this with us.’

Chapter 15

Gaby

Monday 3 August, 3.20 p.m. Welsh Hills Memorial Gardens

No cost had been spared to furnish the light, bright and airy chapel. The rectangular room was filled with pew-like wooden benches fitted with thick, soft, red velour cushions. The white walls were draped with a variety of tapestry scenes, which added a richness to what would have otherwise been a spartan room. There was a small plain lectern at the front in the same wood used on the benches and a plinth off to one side with a large copper basin arranged with an assortment of flowers, none of which Gaby could put a name to apart from the dahlias. The red curtains on the back wall hung from a thick brass pole and matched the fabric of the seat cushions. She didn’t want to think about what they were concealing.

Like many of the places that Gaby visited in her work as a police officer, the room at the back of the chapel, which housed the cremator, was very different to the showy front. Instead of the same grey flooring as in the reception and office areas there was bare concrete. Instead of plastered walls there was bare brick. The steel cremator was a large square box with a small door fitted into one side and a range of dials, which were all pointing at zero. Apart from the cremator, there was a long bench, which held a small steel unit along with a metal brush, a small rake and what looked like an oversized magnet. There was also a large apron, reminiscent of the one Rusty used during his autopsies, in addition to a pair of industrial gloves hanging from a hook in the corner.

They’d asked to meet with Martin Penrose, much to the displeasure of Trevor Beeton, but that couldn’t be helped. They weren’t in the business of pleasing members of the public, only in finding out the answers to the questions that were starting to build around the echo of a crime. An extra body. Whose? Why? And finally, to Gaby’s confused mind, how?

She turned her attention away from the room, focusing instead on the man propping up the wall nearest the door, his forearms folded across his chest. She’d barely noticed him back at the station. Now she took in his old jeans, baggy around the knees and frayed at the hem where they met his heavy-duty boots, an expression of distrust marking his weather-beaten face. The unexpected expression was one she’d have to think about later but, in the short term, it made her restructure the questions flitting around her mind.

There was no offering to shake hands, something she was