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

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And how have you been getting on at the housing estate? What’s the word on the street about Ellie and her mother?’

‘Again there’s not a lot to say. I spent a few hours going from door to door. Most of the residents recognise them on s-s-sight but, apart from the odd hello, only a few knew them to speak to. As a family the Frys stuck to themselves. Outside of work, school and the daughter’s ballet lessons they were rarely seen and certainly never in the evenings. We know that money’s tight so they wouldn’t have had the disposable income to go out eating and the like.’

‘No skeletons then? Not even a miserly bone or two in the back of the wardrobe?’

‘Not a thing. They were liked well enough but that doesn’t help us.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I much prefer that Ellie had a good home life than the alternative. It just makes our jobs ten times more difficult in trying to discover what’s going on.’

Gaby stood from her perch and walked across to the window, staring at the deep blue sky over the rooftops with not a hint of a cloud to mar the cerulean backdrop. She knew that she’d been hoping for some kind of a reason to present itself for Ellie running away, some secret that only the most diligent of nosy neighbours could have spotted. But they weren’t going to be lucky. It was back to the drawing board.

Instead of heading to the front of the room, she pulled out a chair and settled back, tapping the end of the marker pen between her teeth. ‘Remind me who was on CCTV duty?’

‘That would also be me, ma’am,’ Jax said, sending an anxious look in Bill’s direction. ‘B-b-but I didn’t think you’d mind if I got PC D-D-Diane Carbone on to it. You remember how helpful she was during the last case?’

‘Indeed. And has she found anything?’

‘Not yet but she’s far from f-f-finished.’

‘Well, tell her to shift herself from where she’s hiding. She needs to base herself here if she’s on the team. There’s a space free.’ She nodded her head at the spare desk next to Mal.

‘Y-y-yes, ma’am.’

Gaby hid a frown at Jax’s worsening speech, well aware that the cause was the man sitting on her left, the snide expression stamped across his features destroying all the good work she’d achieved over recent months. With careful nurturing on her part, in addition to a romantic entanglement with a local nurse that was starting to look serious, Jax was a new man. His stutter was greatly improved and only showed itself when his stress levels peaked, like now. But Bill had never been one for the soft side of management. As a DS it had taken a strong boss like Rhys Walker to direct him. As a DI, with no one to moderate his behaviour, he’d be a complete disaster. So far, Gaby had been in two minds whether to apply for the job, her skewed work-life balance the biggest deterrent. Now she knew she didn’t have an alternative.

Clamping down on the thought, she turned her head towards Marie. ‘What about you? Any joy?’

‘I don’t know whether you’ll think it’s good news or not that I haven’t really turned up anything that we can get our teeth into,’ she said, pushing her hair back from her face, the slight sheen on her forehead the only indication that she was suffering from the hot humidity as much as everyone else. Both Mal and Jax had discarded their ties and undone their top button while Owen appeared ready to drop on his feet. Gaby was avoiding mirrors – she didn’t need to be told she looked as limp as she felt.

‘So far there’s nothing in Ms Fry’s background to indicate that she’s anything other than a hard-working single mum,’ Marie continued, taking a swig from her water bottle. ‘I’ve also done checks on all the employees at the school but nothing strikes me as worrying. The same goes for the teacher of Ellie’s ballet class, which she takes three times a week at the centre in Eirias Park.’

‘What about Anita’s job then?’ Gaby said, her tone measured while she worked out what to do next. The problem was that police guidelines were only helpful up to a point. While criminal profilers led the way in identifying patterns and predicting how a criminal’s mind might work, none of it helped when a crime had yet to be committed. The yet was the thing that was worrying her the most.

‘There’s not a lot to go on. As we know, she’s a self-employed cleaner, working around Ellie’s school pick-ups mainly.’

‘We’ll need a list of her employers if only to cross them off our list.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘We also need to send someone over to Rhyl to interview Ellie’s best friend as a matter of urgency.’ Gaby pulled her cuff back, hiding a grimace when she saw the time. She still had to speak to Bill and at least make a passing attempt at maintaining a professional front while she tried to shift all the elements of the case into some sort of a pattern. What she’d really like was five minutes to herself with a cold drink and a blank sheet of paper to make sure she wasn’t missing anything vital but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. She’d sort Bill out before heading over to Rhyl – if she left the office by midnight she’d be lucky.

‘Thank you, everyone. Before you all disappear the bad news is that we also have the ongoing situation over at the Welsh Hills Memorial Gardens, where three prosthetic hips were found instead of the expected two.’ She added the last part for Bill’s benefit. ‘I’ll let Owen explain.’

Owen pushed up from his chair and wandered to the front of the room. ‘I’ve just come back from a meeting with Dr Mulholland. All being well, we should