remembered her body under him, her gasps, but had he ever known her name? They had taken a risk, but he’d heard nothing from her afterwards. He had forgotten about her, except when he was horny and alone, and he trawled through his memories for stimulation.
Then he remembered that Wilma hadn’t returned for her final year. People had talked about it, but it was soon forgotten in the whirl of exams and having a good time. And it turned out that all the time he was trying to be the hotshot lawyer, he had a daughter growing up in Leeds.
He put the phone back to his ear. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said, his voice quiet.
‘It doesn’t matter what you know,’ Wilma snapped. ‘This is about Donia. She is all I have, but Donia wanted to know about you, Charlie, naturally, and so I told her. That’s why she’s there, with you, to get to know you, and I didn’t want her to go, because I didn’t know how you’d react when you found out. I didn’t want Donia to be hurt emotionally, and now this?’
‘We’ll find her,’ Charlie said. ‘Just call the police. I’ll do the same,’ and then hung up.
He called Julie, his ex-girlfriend.
‘Charlie, are you going to come into the station?’ she said.
‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘I need your help though.’
‘What is it?’
‘Amelia Diaz was killed last night, as you know. There was a work experience student. Donia Graham. I’ve had a call. The people who killed Amelia say that they have Donia, and they’ll kill her if I don’t hand over what they want.’
‘How do you know it’s not a prank?’
‘Because it’s not funny,’ he said. ‘She was with me. We were at her flat,’ and he gave her the address. ‘Then she had intruders. It’s genuine.’
‘So why are you calling me?’
‘I don’t think I can come in to the police just yet.’
‘Why not?’
He thought about that, and realised that it was for one reason; he was scared. ‘I just can’t, but you can pass this on.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘Just a bunch of kids really, but there are a couple of older ones. Black hair, black clothes. They’ve been hanging around the town centre the last few days. I think they killed Billy Privett and Amelia.’
Julie gasped. ‘Are you sure?’ When Charlie didn’t answer, she said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it, don’t worry.’
‘Thank you,’ Charlie said, and he gave her Donia’s home address. ‘Her mother will be calling,’ and then he hung up.
He put hands to his face. This couldn’t be happening. His mind raced through the last nineteen years. The career, his firm, nineteen years of girlfriends and drink. Just years of being an arsehole, and all the time he’d had a daughter. He thought of Donia. Beautiful, intelligent. His life had drifted along for nineteen years, and there was something there all along, a person who would have given it meaning.
‘Charlie?’
He opened his eyes. Ted was looking at him.
‘We need to find this group,’ Charlie said, and he headed for the door.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sheldon peered out of his windscreen as he tried to make out the house numbers, looking for John Abbott’s house. He was on a street of seventies semis, with wood panelling under large windows and bright glass porches. He came to a stop at the right number, marine blue on a white tile, like something bought on holiday, but he was confused. There was a large To Let sign outside and the house looked vacant. Sheldon remembered the story. His mother had died and he had been left the house. Except that John Abbott was no longer living there.
Sheldon stepped out of his car and looked at the house, and then up and down the road. It was quiet but unremarkable, just low garden walls and saloon cars on the drives. The street was forty years old. People who bought the houses from new would have seen their children grow up and leave, and so now the street looked like pensioners filled it, with heavy floral curtains in the windows and china ornaments visible on the sills.
The wooden gate creaked open and then he went towards the living room window, stepping across the small square of lawn that was unkempt and long, seeded ends blowing in the light breeze. There was a gap in the curtains where they didn’t quite meet, and so he pressed his face against the glass, his hands cupped around his face to keep out the glow from the streetlights. The house was completely empty. There was no furniture, nothing. Just bare floorboards and the red glow of the burglar alarm sensor in the corner of the room, disturbed by his face pressed against the window.
Sheldon stepped back and pursed his lips. He had disturbed the alarm sensor but there was no noise coming from the metal box on the side. Why was that?
He looked around and saw that most houses were in darkness, and he didn’t want to raise suspicions by getting people out of their beds. Then he saw a light shining along a driveway three houses further down the street.
The light came from a pebble-dashed garage at the end of a concrete drive, a man visible through the gap where the battered green wooden doors wouldn’t close properly. As Sheldon got closer, he saw the man was wearing safety goggles and sending up sparks as he messed with something on a workbench.
Sheldon got his identification ready and coughed lightly so as not to alarm him. He stepped around an old bike leaning against the house and tapped on the garage door.
The man lifted up the goggles, surprised. He was in his sixties, with grease etched as black lines along his cheeks.
‘DI Brown from Oulton police,’ Sheldon said. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you.’
The man put down a soldering iron and nodded. ‘It’s late,’ he said, confused. ‘Am I making too much noise?’
‘No, it’s not that, and I apologise for the hour, but I want to ask you some questions about the occupant of number nineteen.’
The man frowned. ‘What about him?’
‘How well did you know him?’
‘Hardly knew him at all. No reason why I should, he wasn’t here long enough, despite what it said in the paper.’
‘What do you mean?’
The man put his goggles on an old red biscuit tin filled with tiny light bulbs and screws. The whole garage was like that, filled with drawers and boxes piled haphazardly on each other, filled with rusted old nuts and bolts and different coloured electrical wiring.
‘He was in court, I read about it, and it said that he had inherited number nineteen from his mother, but he hadn’t. He was lying.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Sheldon said.
‘There was no old woman in that house. He had only
