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

would be the first to speak his mind and, with her mother’s genes flooding her veins, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Finishing the call with instructions about where to find the spare key, she sent off a quick text to Owen to be back at the station for a catch-up and headed for the stairs.

Bill Davis was just how she remembered, his receding hairline combed over to make the most of the wispy strands on show. His expression was dour but then she couldn’t remember having ever seen him smile. Sitting behind her desk with his fat fingers laced around the handle of her favourite mug, he looked as if he was making himself comfortable.

Gaby didn’t do the usual things she was meant to. The ready smile and welcoming babble were missing, as was the extended hand. Instead she hung up her bag on the hook behind the door and tilted her head in the direction of the corridor.

‘The grand tour will have to wait, Bill. We have an ongoing situation here.’

‘That would be DS Davis to you, Gaby.’

‘Well in that case, DS Davis, as the senior ranking officer in the room, I’m acting DI Darin to you.’ She framed the door, her hand on her hip. ‘And, unlike you, I don’t have all day to sit around drinking coffee,’ she added, staring pointedly at her mug. ‘I need to catch up with the team and it’s the ideal opportunity for you to see them in action.’

On pushing open the door to the incident room the first thing that hit her was the smell. The office was hot with sun streaming in through the one window which, in line with station regulations, was only able to open a few inches in case someone tried to either enter or leave the building unexpectedly. It wasn’t an unpleasant odour, more a mingling of stale coffee with an undertone of hot bodies layered with an assortment of perfume and aftershave – after all her years on the force, she’d come up against a lot worse. But she decided to leave the door open in the unlikely event that she could conjure up a through-draught of air.

It didn’t take her long to place her phone on her desk, her gaze taking in Malachy and Marie, who barely lifted their heads to acknowledge her return. She shoved all thoughts of Bill aside. The focus of her attention was Ellie’s disappearance and where the hell she could have got to.

After walking over to the first whiteboard, she stopped in front of Ellie’s photo, concentrating on the heart-shaped face surrounded by a cloud of pale blonde hair. Gaby didn’t know what she hoped to find as she studied the girl’s translucent skin, stretched over finely etched cheekbones. There were no shadows under her eyes, nothing to indicate that she wasn’t exactly what she appeared. A perfectly happy and healthy ten-year-old. But clearly she wasn’t – something must have happened to make her world fall apart. The only problem was that Gaby and her team had no idea what. The school hadn’t been of any help but then she hadn’t really expected them to be. Young girls were very good at keeping secrets and if Ellie was being bullied … Gaby’s own personal experience was that her mother would have been the last person to know if she’d decided to keep it from her. It certainly wasn’t something that Anita had mentioned.

Gaby did her best thinking with a pen in her hand, in this case a black marker. Removing the lid, she started to add Ellie’s personal details under the photo. Her full name. Her age and other random information like a list of the clothes that she was thought to be wearing in addition to a description of the rucksack. She got as far as adding the colour and make of her trainers before the sound of Owen and Jax’s voices made her recap the pen and wait, her hip propped against the corner of the table as she stole a glance at her watch. Still a couple of minutes to go but with everybody in the room, she might as well get the meeting underway.

‘Okay, everyone. I’m going to start a little early. There’s a lot to get through and not all of it in relation to Ellie Fry but she’s obviously our biggest concern. But before we begin, I’d like to introduce you to DS Bill Davis who’s up from Swansea for a few days.’ She only continued after she’d spent a moment to introduce the team and give a brief precis of the disappearance. ‘Okay then. I presume I’m right in saying that there’ve been no further sightings?’

‘No, m-m-ma’am,’ Jax said, his phone on the desk in front of him, his stutter more pronounced now that there was a stranger in the room. ‘The trail is cold apart from a sighting by a dog walker on the Great Orme earlier on this morning. As you’ll remember, we did think that the Orme was the most likely place for her to head and that’s why we got Dafydd Griffiths on to it straight away.’

‘And what has he come up with?’

‘Not a huge amount apart from his obvious suggestion about the old mining tunnels and caves.’

‘But they’re locked up, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, but as we’re all aware, people have ways and means of getting into places they’re not meant to.’

‘Back up a step, Jax, and tell me again about the sighting?’

‘There’s not a lot to say – only that the man thought he saw someone matching her description but she was in the company of another teenager. He assumed that they were siblings out for an early morning hike.’

‘Because they were wearing rucksacks no doubt. Presumably it also didn’t strike him as odd that it was early on a Monday morning and there wasn’t a parent in sight,’ she added almost to herself. ‘When will I stop being amazed at the stupidity of others? I want