Ryan and Mason, her stalwarts. Her team. Silent. Sideswiped just as she was.
‘We now have seven missing persons. Five bodies.’
She pushed away from her desk to pace the small office. Think. Think.
‘What the hell happened in Kimble Hall on Saturday night?’ She turned, looked at the pair of them.
‘Could Poppy and Aiden be alive? Perhaps they were never at Kimble Hall that night?’
It was a possibility. Ryan could have hit the nail on the head.
‘Two teenagers slipping off for a dirty weekend?’ Mason stepped out of her way as she circled around. ‘Too scared to come home when they hear of the fire.’
She rubbed the back of her neck, did another short circuit of the room and then stopped to stare out of the window.
Gut feeling. She never ignored it. Always backed it up with evidence. Proof. Her gut told her it wasn’t right.
She swung around to face her two DCs. ‘You were both teenage boys once.’ She gave a little sneer in Ryan’s direction. He was barely beyond that now. ‘If your parents went away for a long weekend and you and your girlfriend wanted time alone, you wouldn’t disappear off, you’d stay and have rampant sex twenty-four hours a day in the comfort of your own home.’
And that was exactly the point that didn’t jibe.
Jenna strode over to her desk and thumped her forefinger on Ryan’s detailed notes. ‘Mr Abbott said Aiden hadn’t touched the food in the fridge and he normally wouldn’t leave a scrap by the time they got home from work, never mind after a whole long weekend.’ Hands on hips, Jenna turned to face them again. ‘Aiden and Poppy were never at Mr and Mrs Abbott’s house because according to Sophie, Olivia and Chanel, Poppy’s dad insisted they attend his party rather than go out with the girls. Otherwise, Poppy would have been with her girlfriends, probably with Aiden in tow, and then they would have sneaked off to his house. But they didn’t.’
‘So, what the bloody hell did happen?’
Jenna raised her eyebrow at Mason. ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to find out as soon as you fast-track another request to mobile SPOC and get these phones triangulated so we can find them. Either the phones, the kids, or both.’
39
Tuesday 21 April 1300 hours
Jenna finished off the last of her limp ham salad sandwich and brushed her fingers together to get rid of any crumbs from the white bread just as Mason opened the door.
The barely contained excitement on his face gave her a quick kick of adrenaline. ‘What you got?’
Mason towered over her desk, slapped down a sheet of paper and stabbed it with his forefinger. ‘SPOC. They’ve pinpointed Poppy’s phone.’
‘About time.’
Jenna hit the command to lock the screen on her computer, pushed back from her desk and leapt to her feet. She swiped the jacket off the back of her chair and swept from the room with Mason in hot pursuit.
Ever the observant, enthusiastic puppy, Ryan dashed over to join them as they sailed through the main office.
‘Where are we going?’
She hadn’t yet had the opportunity to ask the question herself, she’d been leaving it until they were in the car, on their way.
Tempted to tell Ryan to carry on with his paperwork, Jenna opened her mouth, but before she could reply Mason stopped her dead in her tracks. ‘The Crawfords’ farm.’
Jenna swung around to face him as confusion rocked her. It didn’t gel with either the theory that the phone had been stolen or that Poppy was alive. It was too close to home. Which meant they were looking for a phone. A phone Poppy had most likely lost before the fire was even set.
Disappointment gave her shoulders a weary slump. Dammit, she thought they were onto something. ‘Does it pinpoint where?’
Mason gave a swift nod and showed her the sheet of paper with a sketchy printed map of the area. ‘Somewhere in the vicinity of here.’
‘Jesus Christ, Mason.’ She studied the printout of the map. ‘Do you know how many outhouses that farm has?’
He snapped her a grin. ‘We’re about to find out.’
‘What about Aiden’s phone?’
With a shake of his head, Mason tucked the paperwork under his arm and swung open the door for her, while she fished the keys she’d already swiped out of her bag. ‘It’ll be a while longer. The request didn’t go in until a couple of hours after Poppy’s, but they have put a priority on it.’
‘Great.’
40
Tuesday 21 April 1335 hours
Poppy’s stomach cramped with hunger. The Crawfords hadn’t been out for two days and all she had was a bar of chocolate and the last of her painkillers.
Her side throbbed like a bitch.
She was all out of tears and a well of anger circled in her stomach. This was shit. Shit!
She couldn’t sit there any longer. She bloody well needed to move.
But where? What was she supposed to do? She’d not dared to contact the girls. She’d started to, but she’d deleted what she’d written in a blind panic. What would they think?
They’d all blame her.
Darker than anger, a resentment curdled, building to throb inside her chest.
It wasn’t her fault.
She’d not raised a gun. Fired it. Daddy had done that, all by himself, and the more she’d thought it through, the more she came to the conclusion that Daddy had been about to kill her anyhow. As the fog cleared to leave her mind bright, she visualised the moment he came into the room, gun in hand.
By that time, the twins were already dead. He’d not killed them after he killed Aiden and shot her, but before. She knew for a certainty that was the way it had happened.
She snatched up her phone and jabbed her thumb against the power button. It took for bloody ever to load.
41
Tuesday 21 April 1340 hours
Gordon Lawrence surged to his feet.
He knew it.
Knew if he watched long enough, she couldn’t resist using her phone again.
She was, after all, his daughter. He knew her. He’d studied her. Like a rat in a laboratory.
He poked his thick finger on the Find-a-Friend app and almost howled with frustration as the little cog whirled around while it narrowed in on Poppy’s location.
‘Come on. Come on.’
A soft cough had him raising his head. Phil Hutchinson stood in the doorway. ‘I thought—’
‘I don’t care what you thought,’ he interrupted. ‘Fuck off and do your job.’
‘But—’
‘Fuck. Off!’
The man disappeared down the rathole he’d come from. Gordon couldn’t be arsed with that. The vague trundle of machinery reassured Gordon that the factory was back and functioning the way it should. Not that he cared. He should be dead. He was only alive because of his daughter. Stupid little bitch. It had been his intention from the start to kill them all so they never suffered once he was gone, no longer there to protect them. But she’d made him change his mind in a blinding turnaround he regretted.