The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(4)

Catching sight of his outraged expression, Sam shrugged.

“You snooze, you lose,” she told him, and smiled toothily before shovelling the meat into her mouth.

Phillips folded his arms across his paunch with grudging admiration.

“You’ve got some competition there, Frank,” MacKenzie chuckled. “You must be slipping.”

Phillips’ eyebrows flew into his receding hairline as he watched the girl snaffle the last of the cauliflower cheese, too.

“Don’t know where she’s putting it all,” he exclaimed. “Skinny as a rake, that one.”

“I’ve got a fast metabolism,” Sam told him, and glanced meaningfully towards his thicker waistline. “It slows down a lot, when you get old.”

Phillips’ jaw dropped.

“Why, you cheeky little—”

Ryan laughed, and judged it the appropriate moment to step in.

“Got a minute, Frank?” he asked, and bobbed his head towards the adjoining room.

*

“I’m tellin’ you, that one’s trouble,” Phillips said, as soon as the door to Ryan’s study was closed.

Ryan leaned back against the desk and crossed his legs.

“She’s hungry and, if I’m any judge, she’s scared.”

Phillips relented a bit, thinking of the shadows beneath the girl’s eyes.

“Aye, well,” he said, clearing his throat. “What’s she doing up here, anyhow? Why didn’t she call 999?”

“I don’t know. She turned up on my doorstep,” Ryan said, with a shrug. “Barged her way in and told me her mother had been murdered eight years ago and that she wants me to find her killer. Not only that, she claims to be a witness.”

Phillips sank into one of the easy chairs.

“If all this happened eight years ago, she can’t have been more than a bairn,” he said, with a troubled expression.

Ryan nodded.

“Well, that’s a turn up for the books,” Phillips said, after a moment. “I thought this place was supposed to be hard to find?”

Ryan let out a bark of laughter.

“Only for hardened criminals,” he said, dryly.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Ryan didn’t think he was referring to the security breach.

“Same thing I always do when a murder is reported. I’m going to look into it.”

Phillips scratched the weekend stubble on his chin.

“Thought you were having a few days off?”

Ryan smiled.

“No rest for the wicked, so they say.”

“That must make you Old Nick, himself,” Phillips quipped, but he knew better than to argue. “Howay then, I’ll fire up the coffee machine.”





CHAPTER 3


When Phillips stepped back into the room, he found Ryan hunched over a desktop computer, having already accessed the Missing Persons Database remotely using his police credentials. He looked up when a mug of steaming coffee was placed in front of him.

“Thanks. How are they getting on, back there?”

Phillips thought of how the girl had jumped up to help him clear the plates from the table before joining Anna and Denise in the living room, where he’d left them chatting like old friends.

“They’re thick as thieves,” he said.

Ryan nodded, turning his attention back to the screen.

“I’ve already searched existing records for an ‘Esmerelda O’Neill’ but there’s nothing on the system. I’m looking into Missing Persons, now.”

“Esmerelda?” Phillips asked. “Sounds like a Romany name but the lass looks Irish, if you ask me.”

In fact, with her red curls and cat-green eyes, it made him wonder whether that’s how Denise might have looked, at a similar age.

“There’s no record of homicide and no record of any missing person having been reported with that name,” Ryan said, interrupting his train of thought. “Samantha was told her mum had run away with another man, but she’s adamant that isn’t what happened.”

Phillips pulled a face.

“Aye, but you know what kids are like. Maybe she made up a tall tale, to take the edge off the truth. Nobody wants to think their mum upped and left them, do they?”

Ryan looked back at the empty screen, then brought up another database.

“I have to check,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.

But there was no record of an Esme—or an Esmerelda—O’Neill registered for tax, National Insurance or at any known address. She had no criminal record, either. He might have been forgiven for wondering whether the woman had ever existed, until another search finally flagged something.

“Here we are,” Ryan said, with a measure of relief. “Esmerelda Marie Cleary, born in Lincoln on 17th March 1987.”

“She was only young,” Phillips murmured, from his position behind Ryan’s left shoulder. “That would have made her twenty-four, back in 2011.”

Ryan nodded.

“There’s a record of marriage here, too,” he continued. “To Charles Michael O’Neill, at St Andrew’s Church in Newcastle on 14th June 2008.”

He spent another few minutes collecting any other information that was readily available, which did not prove to be much, until he swung around in his chair to face Phillips with serious eyes.