“I’ll look into it, don’t worry.”
He took her contact details.
“I’ll speak to you soon, Margaret.”
He disconnected the phone and looked over his notes. They were barely coherent scribbles. He was losing his touch — getting complacent with the detective game. Perhaps this missing persons case was what he needed to get back into it and get his brain ticking again. He stood up, put his jacket on and left the office.
“I’ll be out for most of the day,” he said.
“But what if your wife calls?” Kathleen said, knowing that at 2pm every day his wife called him and they spoke for twenty minutes about nothing much at all.
“Tell her I’m busy.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 2
He arrived at Vanessa’s house a little past midday. The sky was overcast and the ground still muddy from overnight rain. The house was beige brick, coated in moss, paint flaked off the windowsills and the front lawn was littered with disused baby toys faded from sunshine. The neighborhood barked with distant dogs, engines started and stopped, screen doors banged shut and mothers called out to misbehaving children. It wasn’t a particularly good area and Gill had already begun to paint a picture of where Vanessa Moore may or may not be.
He knocked on the door and there was no answer. He strolled down the driveway to the back gate. He peeked through a hole and saw nothing but overgrown grass and a soggy wooden decking. He let himself in and walked up to the back door. He knocked again, and wandered to the side of the house peering through windows at dusty rooms full of unpacked clothes and more baby toys. He decided not to go in, as he hadn’t yet developed enough of a case. A visit to her work would hopefully answer some questions. He left the house as it stood and felt relief that this mystery was not so easily solved.
Chapter 3
He pulled up in the car park outside The Greenhole Tavern, a gunmetal grey building with a faux balcony draped in fluorescent banners advertising bands he’d never heard of. He walked across the gravel lot to the side entrance and disappeared inside.
His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark. The place housed few patrons: men in their work clothes with mud up to their shins, glancing around disinterestedly. A large man with a ginger beard and long, filthy hair stood behind the bar drying glasses and placing them on an overhead rack. Gill approached the man.
“I’m Detective Gill from the local police. I’m looking for a young woman named Vanessa Moore.”
“Vanessa hasn’t shown up for work for a couple of weeks now. As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t work here anymore.”
“What was the first day of her no-show?”
The man turned around and walked over to a piece of paper with the staff roster on it. He ran a dirty finger over a column and came back.
“Last Saturday. That was a week and a half ago. It’s stupid because she was begging me for more hours, said she needed the money, so I put her on four nights this week and she ain’t shown for one.”
“Her mother suspects she’s gone missing.”
“Doesn’t surprise me, a girl like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a looker. Got a huge set of tits on her.”
“So you’re saying it’s no surprise that somebody would kidnap her?”
“She’s not the kind of girl to stay away from bad news. Which is a shame, with her kid and all.”
“Do you know of anybody she was involved with?”
“Not by name. The dish hand, Adam, he’s friends with her, but he hasn’t seen her just the same.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“You can do whatever you like, Detective. He’s out back” The man pointed to a doorway at the back of the bar.
Gill walked into the kitchen and followed the sound of banging dishes. At the end of a narrow hall a young man was hunched over a sink, elbow deep in brown water. He looked up at Gill and then at the wall in front of him.
“I’m with the local police. I’m looking for Vanessa Moore. Your boss tells me you knew her. What’s your full name, kid?”
“Adam Hellier. I did know her.”
“Have you spoken to her recently?”
“Only at work, haven’t seen her otherwise.”
“What do you mean by you ‘did’ know her?”
Adam stopped what he was doing and looked at the wall in front of him again.
“I don’t know. Did I say that?”
“Yes, you did.”
“What I meant was, we hung out a bit when she first started here, but then she got pregnant and always worried about money. She kinda withdrew.”
“How old is her kid?”
“I dunno. She’s a baby. A year?”
“Has the father been around?”
“I don’t think so. I remember her telling me he lives a few towns over. Doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“To be honest, I really didn’t have a lot to do with her.”
“Well, if you hear anything let me know.”
Gill took his card from his jacket and Adam grabbed it with wet rubber gloves and stuffed it in his pocket and then got busy washing again. Gill went back to the bar and got the barman’s attention.
“I’m off. If you hear anything, call the station and ask for Detective Gill.”
“Sure thing.”
EIGHTEEN DAYS EARLIER
Chapter 4
Vanessa was hungry and her baby, Heather, was famished. When Vanessa became a mother it was the one thing she swore to never let happen, but it did — her baby went unfed. She opened the pantry door and looked at the gutted selection of food on offer. Everything left in there was the same stuff her mother had bought her when she moved out of home a couple of years earlier. Stuff she was told she could use to make meals, but had never, to that day, bothered to cook. Chicken stock, canned tomatoes, pasta, an assortment of herbs and spices.
