whispering, pointing and appalled fascination. And Donna had been feeling an obscure kind of shame, these past few days. Nothing would have happened to Katie if she hadn’t hired that photographer, or if she’d been a better mother instead of giving all of her attention to Justin and not enough to Katie. Then again, Katie could be a real little brat sometimes.
But not just at the moment.
They were a block from the school, Donna unfurling her umbrella against a spring shower, when Sasha bounded up to them, eyes bright, hindquarters in a frenzy. ‘Sasha!’ cried Katie, kneeling to hug the dog.
‘You’ll get wet,’ said Donna automatically. Dogs dismayed her. She was a cat person. Cats minded the rain.
‘This is Sasha!’ said Katie, still joyful.
Donna frowned. It was great to see Katie so animated, but what was the story with this dog? ‘Sasha?’
‘She was in the van with me, and at the house,’ Katie said. Days had gone by and this was her first unconscious reference to that terrible time.
Donna’s wits were about her. She went cold and still. ‘Are you sure?’
Katie flipped around the registration and ID tags on Sasha’s collar. ‘See? Sasha Lowan, 57 Warrawee Drive, Waterloo. I remember now. And she knows me, don’t you, Sash? Oh, you’re a good girl, you’re such a good girl.’
Dimly Donna remembered the police asking about a dog, dog hairs discovered on Katie’s clothing and in that horrible house. So horrible in Donna’s imagination that she’d vowed never again to drive anywhere near the place.
She stood there in the gathering rain and got out her mobile phone. She had Sergeant Destry on speed dial.
Ellen was in mid-briefing when the call came. She listened intently, then directed a slow-burning smile around the room. ‘We’ve found the dog.’
She sent John Tankard to bring in the dog, and Scobie to contact the owner, then packed up and returned to her office.
She was immersed in paperwork when Scobie reported back. ‘Spoke to the owner,’ he said, standing in her doorway.
‘Is he known to us?’
‘No. And he has an alibi. He’s one of the opticians in High Street. Bemused to think his dog might help us.’
Then there was a commotion downstairs and Ellen found John Tankard there, surrounded by uniforms and civilian clerks oohing and aahing over the dog. Kellock was in the middle of it, clearly irritable. ‘This is a police station, not a bloody lost dogs’ home.’
‘Do you bite?’ said Ellen to the dog.
Tankard, a little smitten, said, ‘Not a harmful bone in her, Sarge.’
Ellen drove Sasha up to the ForenZics lab herself, a slow journey, owing to scudding rain. To her irritation, Riggs was on duty. She was beginning to think of him as her bete noire. He was a spike-haired young guy, with pierced eyebrows, earrings and a studded belt looped through black jeans. Lab-cool, as though he’d modelled himself on a character in a US forensic policing show. He looked askance at Sasha. ‘This is still a grey area. We might not be able to get DNA from the hairs found at the house. We can maybe testify that the hairs are similar, but a good lawyer will laugh that out of court.’
Ellen shrugged. She was tired of Riggs. Meanwhile, police work often boiled down to ‘maybe’ and ‘might’. She watched him examine Sasha, who stood trembling, eyes rolled mournfully at Ellen, as though terrified that a vet with a big needle or greased finger was examining her. ‘Shhh,’ she whispered, fondling Sasha’s silky ears.
‘You’re in my way,’ said Riggs crossly. He elbowed Ellen aside and bent his head to Sasha’s neck. ‘Well, hello.’
‘What?’
‘Looks like dry blood on the collar.’
Ellen peered. ‘Sasha’s?’
‘There’s no injury here.’ He glanced quickly over the dog. ‘Nor elsewhere. She might have been in a fight. Or it’s her owner’s blood.’
‘Or a stranger’s.’
‘We’ll test it,’ said Riggs. ‘Test to see if it’s animal blood, then extract DNA and compare it to database samples.’
‘And that will take how long?’
Riggs sniffed. ‘As long as it takes.’
‘However,’ said Ellen, wanting to put the guy in his place, ‘the sample might prove to come from a ninety- year-old grandmother who died in a house fire three years ago.’
Riggs went tight and red. ‘We’ve put new procedures in place,’ he said.
Ellen returned to the Peninsula, Sasha asleep on the back seat, snoring a little. She went straight to van Alphen’s office, but the sergeant was out of the station, so she sought Kellock, who refused to let her have a couple of uniforms.
‘But I need to know if anyone witnessed the dog’s movements.’
‘The dogs movements? For God’s sake, Ells.’
‘It’s crucial,’ Ellen said stubbornly. ‘There was blood on the collar.’
Kellock gazed at her for a long moment. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, or if indeed he was thinking. Eventually the words rumbled from his broad chest: ‘Sorry, can’t spare the troops.’
Ellen scowled. ‘It’s as if all the urgency’s gone now that Katie’s been found.’
Kellock shrugged massively. He was busy with files and barely glanced at her. ‘Have you seen the roads? They’re wet and slippery. We’ve had a spate of accidents-one of them caused by a Jarrett kid, incidentally, all of twelve years old, driving a stolen car.’
Ellen didn’t doubt him, but she sensed that he’d lost interest in the Katie Blasko case. Meanwhile, where was van Alphen?
And so she took Scobie Sutton with her. Scobie got behind the wheel before she could. His usual bad driving was exacerbated by the heavy rain, which Ellen knew was stirring the patina of grease and oil into a dangerous slick on the road surfaces. She grabbed the dashboard as he rounded a corner and braked mid-way down Warrawee Drive, his hands clutching the wheel inexpertly as he checked house numbers.
‘Two blocks from Katie Blasko’s,’ he said. ‘What do you think happened? Sasha wanders off, finds herself on Trevally Street, sees Duyker’s van with the door open, and somehow or other climbs aboard without being noticed.’
‘Makes sense,’ Ellen said, gingerly letting go the dashboard.
‘But how did Sasha find her way home again? How long was she missing?’
Ellen’s head snapped forward as Scobie reversed. ‘Obviously Duyker brought her back here,’ she gasped.
Scobie braked again. ‘He’d rape and maybe kill a child, but be kind to a dog?’
‘Yes.’
Scobie considered that, full of doubt. ‘But why not let the dog out somewhere else? Why risk bringing it back?’
‘People would wonder. They’d take her to the pound, the RSPCA, a vet, the police. That would generate a record. But if Sasha is found or released a block or two from home, no one’s going to wonder about it.’
‘You could be right.’
And so they began doorknocking. At 5.15 they got lucky.
‘Sasha? I know Sasha. She was with the little Blasko girl, the one who was abducted.’
Ellen went cold. She regarded the speaker, an elderly woman, intently. ‘How do you know that, Mrs Cooper?
