The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(24)
Phillips thought of the little girl who was, by now, in the safe-keeping of a nice foster family who would care for her until they found the answers she so desperately needed. He felt a pang of regret that she wouldn’t be staying with them for longer, making her way through his supply of smoked bacon and stottie cakes, no doubt.
“Are you going to be alright?” Ryan asked, reading his mind. “Once this is all over, it won’t be our decision whether Samantha goes back to her father. She might have to, and I need to know whether you’ll be able to cope with that.”
There were a hundred things Phillips might have said, denials he could have made, but he fell back on the truth.
“I see a bit of myself in her, at that age,” he said. “As for her father, I’ve got no respect for a man who’d let his own flesh and blood wander about the streets, where anything might happen to her. It’s a wonder she made it up to your house on Sunday, without getting lost or in some kind of trouble,” he said, his voice rising slightly in outrage.
But then, he relaxed again.
“Aye, I care what happens to the lass—we all do. But if you’re asking whether I can keep a cool head about it while we’re trying to find who killed her mother, you can trust that I will. Besides, she’s better off where she is, at least for now.”
It was all the reassurance Ryan needed.
“Yes, at least we know she’s somewhere safe.”
*
Ryan’s equilibrium didn’t last long.
Almost as soon as he turned into the car park at Police Headquarters, his mobile phone began to ring, filling the car with a tinny rendition of the soundtrack from Back to the Future.
“You changed your ring tone!” Phillips exclaimed.
“Only slightly,” Ryan muttered, and brought the car to a hasty stop. “They’re both Spielberg films, after all.”
He caught it on the last ring.
“Ryan.”
Phillips watched the expression on his friend’s face and grew worried as it changed from polite enquiry to the focused look of a man who had just been given bad news.
“When did this happen?” he demanded, while Phillips strained to hear the voice on the other end of the line. “Right. I’m at the office now, so I’ll call you back in five minutes. I want a full-scale search of the vicinity set up, immediately.”
As soon as he heard search, Phillips’ blood ran cold.
“What is it?” he asked, when Ryan hung up a few seconds later. “What’s happened?”
Ryan scrubbed a hand over his face, then let it fall away.
“It’s Samantha,” he said bluntly. “She’s absconded from the foster home. They have no idea where she is.”
Phillips felt his stomach flip.
“What? How—how could they let it happen?”
“She’s not under arrest,” Ryan said. “They’re only human. But I agree, I don’t know why they weren’t keeping a closer watch. MacKenzie told us the kid threatened to run, that she argued with Morrison but was overruled. They should have known it was a risk.”
Phillips was already imagining the worst.
“O’Neill knows there’s a murder investigation going on, and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that Samantha’s our star witness.”
“The only witness, aside from whoever killed Esme,” Ryan agreed. “And the whole circus has probably heard about the investigation by now, not just the O’Neill brothers.”
Phillips closed his eyes briefly, praying for calm.
“She’s out there, on her own, while somebody could be looking for her,” he whispered. “They’ll be worrying she’ll remember who it was, if she’s already remembered enough to come to the police. What can we do?”
Ryan slammed out of the car and Phillips scrambled to follow him.
“We get a search underway and hope we find her before anybody else does,” Ryan rapped out, striding towards the automatic doors at the front of the building. “There’s no time to lose.”
CHAPTER 14
The Shipbuilder was a former working men’s club that had been gentrified over the years so that it now boasted a gastro menu and muted décor, to meet the increased footfall its landlord was now enjoying since Northumbria Police had recently moved its headquarters to the area. As part of its refurbishment programme, the pub had appointed new staff with a careful eye, and MacKenzie and Yates could only applaud their efforts as they looked on from their position atop the faux-industrial stools set out along the polished bar.
“I didn’t know you could get forearms like that,” Yates remarked, over the rim of a very nice glass of Malbec.
MacKenzie made an appreciative noise.
“My Frank isn’t far off,” she said, her voice softening. “But it’s high time you went out and had a bit of fun, Mel. There’s no use hanging around for Jack; he’s liable to take twenty years before he gets his act together.”
Unconsciously, Yates’ shoulders slumped.
“I know you’re right,” she muttered, and took another slug of wine. “The worst thing is, I was the idiot who kept turning him down before…well, before he met Jennifer. You know the rest.”
She certainly did, MacKenzie thought. Their former Detective Chief Superintendent, Jennifer Lucas, had crashed into their lives like a wrecking ball the previous year, leaving hearts and minds torn apart in the process. Lowerson’s own mother had finally put an end to it—and her—but she couldn’t quite work up the sympathy to mourn the woman’s death or to empathise with his mother’s actions. The only person she felt sorry for in all of it was Jack, whose worst crime had been to try to find happiness.