Page 23 of Stolen Ones
‘Take my advice: save yourself the time and work on something you’ve got a chance of solving.’
‘You don’t think we’ll ever find Melody Jones?’
‘Nope cos she’s my punishment and—’
‘Punishment for what?’ Kim asked, pulling her stool closer to the table.
‘Forget it. Those thoughts are best left in my head to fester. Ask your questions and then fuck off and leave me alone.’
He took a good long drink of his old pint, finishing off half the glass. He moved the new one to an easy reach spot in front of him.
Kim decided to take his advice before he had much more to drink.
‘Talk to me about Melody’s family.’
‘Jesus, there’s no foreplay with you, is there? You must be a right—’
‘Did you suspect any of them of being involved in her disappearance?’
‘Not at first, cos you don’t really, do you? The mother seemed concerned, a couple of the younger siblings were a bit tearful, and the older ones were rallying around, except one who kept his distance, almost like he didn’t want us getting too close and asking him questions.’
‘Did you try?’
‘No, we fucking didn’t, so let’s just leave it at that, eh?’ he spat.
‘Okay,’ she said, wondering why that had hit a sore nerve. She backed off, unwilling to piss him off to the stage of non-cooperation until she’d asked all her questions. ‘You said you didn’t suspect the family at first but what changed?’
‘Over time, and I’m talking just weeks, Lyla became very keen on doing TV, radio, magazine and newspaper interviews. It got so we could barely get near her for questioning cos someone or other was in the house or she was going to them. At first, we appreciated her efforts to keep Melody’s name out there as the few leads we had dried up, but there was something not right. It was like she was enjoying the attention. For years she’d been Lyla Jones, mother of seven off Hollytree, and then she was Lyla Jones, mother of missing girl, Melody. It’s like she was somebody finally. Robbie Jones still wouldn’t talk to us about anything, and then the parcels and envelopes began to arrive. Money, presents, all kinds of stuff turning up by the bag load. The more Lyla appeared, the more stuff turned up.’
Kim thought about the woman’s most recent appeals and the bin liners in the living room.
‘You think they were using Melody’s disappearance to make money?’
He shrugged. ‘One of my team caught Robbie flogging the stuff on a car boot. Nothing we could do cos the stuff wasn’t solicited. It was all gifts.’
There was no law against it, but Kim felt that familiar distaste rise in her mouth. Most families might have donated the gifts and money to charity.
‘You wanna just tell me what you think?’ Kim asked candidly.
He took another long swig. ‘Why not? It’s not like I think about anything else. This bloody case is stuck in my teeth like a piece of dry pork. Never stopped imagining the suffering that little girl went through just because I couldn’t bring her home. What she must have gone through.’
He took another drink, prompting Kim to wonder how long after the Jones case his drinking had intensified. Was this the case that had pushed him over the edge?
‘If I’d have only pushed the boss harder, we might have found her, brought her home, given the family members that cared closure and a body to bury.’
Kim pushed away thoughts of another little girl, taken that day, frightened and alone, or worse.
‘Pushed the boss harder on what?’
It was clear that it was self-blame that had haunted this guy for a quarter of a century. The case had become his personal failure and he beat himself with it every day.
‘I wanted him, begged him to let us go in harder on the family, make them sweat a bit, but the boss wouldn’t hear of it. Back then it was okay to suspect the family members quietly, but it wasn’t acceptable to go hard, cos if you were wrong and it got out… Well, let’s just say that careers never recovered from that kind of exposure if it was made public, and my DCI wasn’t going to allow that to happen to him. Ironically, he had no such compunction when it came to shagging the wife of a prime suspect in a double murder, which cost him his job, but no, we couldn’t put a family under pressure to find a missing kid.’
‘You really think they were involved?’
‘Look, it’s been so long now I’m not even sure what I think anymore, but I’ll tell you this. Melody Jones had a miserable life, but it was a life she knew. She was pretty much ignored as the youngest, didn’t have many friends and then she disappears and not one person saw a thing. Not one. How does that happen on an estate of four thousand people?’
Kim shook her head and waited for him to continue.
