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

station, but you know all about that and you were with me when I visited him again and met with the boss, Trevor Beeton. Now there’s a right sleazeball if you ask me. Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I’ll bet you a fiver that he gives Martin the boot for coming to see us.’

‘Not a bet I’m prepared to pick up. Sadly there’s no betting about it. Is that all?’ She stared down at the list, her brow furrowed as she read the amendment at the bottom, which included all of Anita’s cleaning jobs. ‘And interestingly, thanks to Mal, we now know that Fry worked for Beeton at the Memorial Gardens but how does that link in with Ellie running away?’

‘It doesn’t unless she used to take Ellie there. She’s on her school holidays so maybe she didn’t have anyone to leave her with and abandoning her on that housing estate probably wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t like to be left there and I’m thirty-six!’

‘But can you really see Beeton allowing a kid in while the mum’s cleaning?’ Gaby lifted her phone from her lap and within seconds was speaking to the man himself. It didn’t take her long to settle her mobile back on her lap, her hands wrapped loosely around the case. ‘It’s as we thought, she asked and he turned her down flat which, if I’m honest, was the right thing to do. The thought of a child sitting so near all those dead bodies gives me the creeps.’

‘But other employers might have been more amenable?’

‘Or might not have even known if they were out at work.’

‘So, are there any other interesting names on the list then?’

‘Hold on a mo,’ Gaby said, her attention on the sign up ahead for Colwyn Bay. ‘I need to let the team know where we are.’

Chapter 48

Ronan

Tuesday 4 August, 1.30 p.m. Colwyn Bay

Ellie didn’t have a key, which was hardly surprising. Ronan remembered his own rite of passage in that regard when he’d reached twelve and was allowed out on his own for the first time, not that he’d had anywhere to go. He still had the keyring it came with, the thought of the flashy Welsh dragon making him relax his facial muscles, but only briefly. For all Ellie’s grown-up mannerisms, she was very much a child.

What was surprising was that no one answered the door. He watched his mother from the safety of the back seat, Ellie’s hand clasped within his as they waited for what seemed like an indeterminate length of time, his worry levels skyrocketing. If his mother was to be believed, and he couldn’t for a minute think that she had anything to lie about, then the whole of Wales was on high alert. So where was Ms Fry and, more to the point, where were the police? Surely she should be pinned to the sofa with the weight of her worry, her mobile making huge inroads into the tender flesh of her palm. That’s what he’d be doing in her place.

‘Do you think she’s gone out, maybe to work or something?’ Janice said, sliding back behind the wheel, drumming her long slender fingers against the dash. After numerous attempts of ringing Anita’s mobile, her phone was now discarded on the passenger seat beside her.

‘I don’t know. Even if she’s out she always has her phone with her.’ Ellie’s bottom lip trembled, something Ronan was starting to recognise with all the finesse of a new dad with a baby in possession of a full nappy.

‘Okay, don’t cry. It will be all right,’ Ronan said when he was starting to suspect that it would be anything but. ‘She’s probably dropped off to sleep or something. What about a spare key?’ he continued, remembering back to the one that lived under the third plant pot to the left of their back door. Not the most original of places but then Llandudno wasn’t the crime capital of anywhere.

The key wasn’t under a plant pot because there weren’t any pots, or any plants, in Ellie’s tiny front garden. Surrounded on three sides by a rickety fence that had seen better days, the straggly patch of green had far too many weeds to accept the term grass lightly. But they didn’t have to waste time searching for the key because when Ronan tried the handle the door opened under his hand.

Chapter 49

Gaby

Tuesday 4 August, 1.30 p.m. Colwyn Bay

‘What are we doing here again?’ Owen said, staring out of the windscreen at Ellie Fry’s house, his expression inscrutable.

‘We’re waiting.’

‘But why?’

‘Look, Owen, we’ve only been stopped all of five seconds. They certainly can’t escape now you’ve blocked the entrance,’ she added, suppressing a laugh at the way he’d slewed the Honda across the narrow road. ‘It’s a good job Jax is already here or he’d have had no chance of joining us. And anyway, the only reason that this would be the wrong thing to do is if Janice Stevens was involved in Ellie’s original abduction. If that’s the case why wasn’t she on any of the CCTV footage? We’ll give them another minute before we go in.’

‘I still don’t like it.’

‘No. Well I didn’t think that you would but softly, softly is how I want it played. Remember there isn’t one but two traumatised children in there,’ she said, focusing on the two heads that were now visible in the back of the car. ‘Ronan might be eighteen and therefore legally an adult but a very immature one. Why don’t you use the time to check if you have any messages?’ she continued, flicking through her phone.

‘Good idea. There’s that list Marie was going to send me from St Gildas.’ He pulled his mobile from his pocket and started searching. ‘Ah, here it is. It doesn’t look as if Katherine Jane was into jewellery but there’s possibly some silver photo frames and a fine selection of crystal unaccounted for and all impossible to