Page 11 of Dying Breath
‘You can look after that for now. She was tall for her age and pretty. All the boys liked Jenny – she was the best thing that ever happened to me and I’ve had to live for twenty-five years not knowing what happened to her that day or why she never came home. It’s a hard thing to live with, not knowing where your child is. My wife died of a broken heart and my son died because I spent so much time looking for Jenny. I’m sorry, I just need to know.’
Lucy smiled at him. She couldn’t comprehend how she would feel if Ellie had mysteriously disappeared without a trace and she’d never seen her again.
‘You go home and we’ll be in touch. I promise I’ll do everything that I can.’
She watched him being led away by the two officers and felt her heart sink even lower than it already was. How had she not known there was still a missing kid out there? Walking back towards the tent she reached Chris, who shook his head.
‘Poor bloke, that’s awful. I can confirm that you have found a human skeleton. I can get a team here first thing in the morning to help me excavate the site. It’s a painstaking job.’
‘That would be great, thank you. Do you know if it’s a female?’
‘I can’t say at the moment; the pelvis is still underground. Once we have it uncovered the sex can be determined with ninety per cent accuracy. Male skeletons are generally larger than females’ and the surface of their bones tends to be rougher. I’ll be able to give you the sex, an approximate age, and possibly the cause of death.’
‘That’s pretty amazing.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll go back and ring around my people; it’s too late to start digging now. I’d hate to miss any evidence because of poor light. My guess is whoever that is, has been underground for at least twenty years, so I don’t think another few hours are going to make much difference.’
‘I suppose not.’ Lucy glanced down at the photograph in her hand. That girl would be a similar age to her now. All grown up, possibly with a family of her own. Suddenly she didn’t know whether she wanted the skeleton to be Jenny or not.
Chapter Eleven
The nightclub was bouncing. It was full of too-young girls and boys, fake IDs tucked safely into their pockets. IDs that they’d borrowed or stolen from older siblings and used to gain entry past the bouncers and inside the club. The music was rubbish – nineties songs that you couldn’t dance to unless you were drunk. Turning around from the bar, he surveyed the pulsating, throbbing crowd on the dance floor. Girls were writhing around in the skimpiest of hotpants and miniskirts. The boys and some of the older men were stalking the peripheral edges of the dance floor, like tigers tracking their prey. It was disgusting.
He turned back around and sipped his drink. There was no rush – he had all night and didn’t want to get drunk; he had a job to do. He was waiting for the right girl to come along and he had no doubt that she would. He’d left work after a busy day; so far so good. At midnight it would be precisely three days since the drunken woman from the pub. The police hadn’t come knocking and he’d spent all of today with the delicious tingling in his stomach that seemed to accompany him whenever he thought about his next kill.
He’d been good for so many years, a model citizen. It was time to scratch the itch that had started a couple of months ago. He’d been thinking long and hard about how this was going to work, the logistics of it, not to mention the in-depth research he’d undertaken. It seemed there were as many sick individuals in England as there were in any country. He wondered who was worse for serial killings, the Americans or the Russians. Even the Chinese had their fair share of killers.
A woman sat down next to him. She smiled at him and he smiled back. She was blonde, petite and pretty, definitely not his type. He preferred women who were more athletic, who had curves. She wouldn’t end up dead tonight. She began to chat to him and he talked back – it was important to blend in and not arouse suspicion.
‘So, are you on your own?’
He shook his head. ‘I suppose at the moment technically I am. I’m waiting for my girlfriend, who’s with her friends and said to meet her here. Are you on your own?’
‘No, my friends are all gyrating somewhere on the dance floor. I’ve got new shoes on and they’re killing me.’
Just then a group of six women all piled around her and she started to talk to them. He looked at them, then turned away. Behind him somewhere he could hear the strained voices of an argument beginning. In the corner near the exit for the toilets was a brunette with a physique much more to his taste. She was bickering with a tall, skinny man with a shaved head. The wordjunkiepopped into his mind. This was intriguing; what were they to each other? She didn’t seem like she’d be interested in someone so desperate looking and she didn’t appear to be into drugs herself.
The man was pleading with her. She moved to walk away and he grabbed her arm, tugging her backwards. He cringed –big mistake.He was right; the woman slapped him across the cheek. The man’s nostrils flared as his primal instinct took over; his anger at whoever she was stretched across his face, burning in his eyes. He shoved her and she dropped her clutch bag, the contents spilling all over the floor. Two bouncers grasped the man by the arms and escorted him to the nearest emergency exit.
He was off his stool and striding across to help her before he knew it. Bending down, he picked up a lipstick and some loose change that had rolled across the floor. She took them from him and thanked him as he bent back down and pocketed a pair of her tights, which had fallen to one side. Picking up the rest of the coins, he handed them to her along with a brightly wrapped sanitary towel. ‘Are you okay? Sorry, I wasn’t being nosy – I couldn’t help but overhear.’
She nodded. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Do you want me to walk you out and call you a taxi?’
She laughed. ‘No. I’m with my friends –’ she pointed to a couple of girls who were at the bar – ‘and I only live down the high street. Thanks again.’
‘No problem, enjoy your night.’
He watched her walk off in the direction of her friends, enjoying the view from behind. She would do nicely. All he had to do now was wait patiently for her to leave. He would follow her and find out where she lived, and then he would wait for the right moment to make his move.
Chapter Twelve
Lucy reached the open-plan CID office and did a double-take to see the outline of a man through the partially closed blinds, sitting behind her desk. She wondered who the hell was brazen enough to use her office – her team knew to keep out of it as she was very particular about her own space. She strode across the room and threw the door open, her heart skipping a beat when she realised who it was sitting there.
‘Long time no see. How are you, Lucy?’
It was a very long time since she had last seen him, but Patrick Baker didn’t look a day older. If anything, he looked better; his sideburns were gone. His face showed a few more laughter lines, but it had the sun-kissed look of a man who liked to spend all his free time outdoors.
