Neil White 3 Book Bundle. Neil White

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter Thirty-Six

      Ted was silent until they were back in the car, ignoring the shouts of the kids on the steps, Marian watching them go.

      As Ted looked at his lap, his jaw set, Sheldon asked, ‘Who is she?’ his key poised in the ignition, not willing to go until he had an answer.

      Ted turned to him, and there was still confusion in his eyes. ‘She was the girl in the car, the one who leaped on me when the camera was there. That was her, Lucy Crane.’

      Sheldon was surprised. ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘Of course I am,’ Ted said, exasperated. ‘I was talking with her in the car for five minutes, before she jumped on me. And now I found out that she is connected to Billy Privett, and so maybe she did know something.’

      ‘She was always connected to Billy Privett, because she told you she had information,’ Sheldon said. ‘Perhaps she did at first, but then decided that she could just sell you out instead. Or maybe she got scared. She must have had the photographer waiting, and was hoping she could trap you in a blackmail plot, or just sell you out to the papers. But you weren’t interested, and so she had to jump on you and hope the pictures told a different story.’

      ‘I wouldn’t have been interested,’ Ted said. ‘I just wanted to know about Alice, and I still love my wife. We are more distant now, I know that, but I wouldn’t do that to her. She has suffered enough.’

      ‘Lucy is still a link to the case though, but how? She was Billy’s housekeeper. Why didn’t you see her when you went up there?’

      ‘She would keep out of my way, wouldn’t she, if she knew I was on the way,’ Ted said. ‘Do you think she was really his housekeeper? She might have been Billy’s girlfriend, trying to protect him?’

      Sheldon shook his head. ‘No, she was more than that. She’d have no reason to lie to us if she was his girlfriend, and she wouldn’t have disappeared.’

      ‘You’ve still got your identification,’ Ted said. ‘There is a police station just up the road. Can’t you find out something about her?’

      Sheldon thought about that, and then remembered his moment on the church tower earlier that day, and the promise he had made to himself that he would find out the truth.

      He started the engine and drove the short distance to the police station, a one-storey L-shaped block on the verge of being closed down as it waited for a buyer. There was no public reception and so no frosty civilian officer to get past.

      ‘Wait in the car,’ Sheldon said, and then swiped his pass card along the reader. It worked for all the Lancashire stations, and so he found himself at the meeting point of two corridors, the floors tiled, the walls painted in cold light blue. Fire doors intersected the corridors at intervals. It was Sheldon’s first time in the Penwortham station, and so all he could was walk and look for a computer terminal.

      He turned left and when he got to the room at the end, there were three rows of desks filled with computer screens. There were no cells at Penwortham, and so Sheldon realised that it was a hideaway, somewhere for the officers to get their files together without getting landed with an urgent custody investigation, the only risk being a call-out to chase some kids on the Kingsfold estate, the main source of aggravation for the Penwortham force.

      There was only one other person in the room, a young female officer in uniform. She looked up once, curious at first, but didn’t investigate further, satisfied by the identification swinging from Sheldon’s neck.

      Sheldon jiggled the mouse to clear the screensaver and sat down. Once he had logged in, he brought up the intelligence system and typed in Lucy’s name. The pale screen of grids and boxes threw up three people, but the dates of birth narrowed it down pretty quickly. When he clicked on her details, he leaned forward to get a better view.

      Christina was really Lucy Crane, he saw that straight away, except that some of her flirt was missing. It was a picture taken after she was arrested, with rings under her eyes and her hair dishevelled. There was no smile, just a tired and sullen glare at the camera, another kid caught doing something bad.

      When Sheldon clicked on her personal details, her address was still listed as the children’s home they had just visited. It looked like she had kept out of trouble since she left.

      He scrolled down to the intelligence file, and saw that it ended a couple of years earlier, when she turned seventeen. The entries before then were just as Marian described. Calls to the police from the home to report her missing, and then an entry to report that she had been found. A few men had been issued with Child Abduction Notices, where it was noted officially that the care home did not approve of her being with them, and one more time would mean a court appearance and a reputation as a paedophile. Apart from that, it was quiet.

      Sheldon frowned and clicked on her antecedents, the list of her convictions and cautions. Lucy was only nineteen, and it was as Sheldon expected, filled with her route to a court appearance. A youth reprimand for theft, and then a final warning for criminal damage, followed by her climb up the ladder of youth sentences. A referral order for an assault, then an action plan order, followed by a supervision order. It was the usual trail of one more last chance, another failed attempt to СКАЧАТЬ