A Monster Among Us by Alex Scarrow

Author:Alex Scarrow [Scarrow, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GrrrBooks
Published: 2024-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

27

‘Shit! We’re not going to catch up with her!’ Marcus exclaimed, then he cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘LUCY!’ he yelled.

Lucy kept running.

Mrs Coleman finally caught up with them at the car park’s entrance, wheezing from the effort. ‘Oh my God, where is she? Where’s Lucy?!’

Okeke pointed down Bohemia Road at the receding flash of Lucy’s pink trainers, all but lost amid the pulsing veil of rain.

‘I’ll get some of our people out after her,’ said Okeke. She fished for her phone in her pocket, pulled it out and called the station.

‘Hastings Pol–’

She cut across the operator. ‘Duty officer, please.’

She waited for the call to be transferred, then: ‘This is DS Okeke, Hastings CID. We’ve got an extremely vulnerable juvenile female just escaped from our station.’

‘On Bohemia Road?’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed.

‘What’s her description?’

‘She’s thirteen years old, IC-one, long blonde hair. She’s wearing a pink hoodie, dark blue bottoms and pink trainers. Can you get a local BOLO out to any units in the –’

‘I’m just entering that now. Is she a danger to herself or anyone else?’

‘Herself. She’s a self-harm risk. She’s extremely volatile.’

Okeke heard a keyboard clattering. ‘I’ve added that. What’s her name?’

‘Lucy. Lucy Coleman,’ Okeke said.

‘All right, that’s on the system and I’m sending it out now,’ the operator confirmed.

Okeke thanked him and ended the call. ‘Come on. We should go down to the front,’ she said to Marcus and Mrs Coleman.

Ten minutes later, they reached the White Rock theatre on the main seafront road .

‘Does she know Hastings at all?’ Okeke asked Mrs Coleman.

Mrs Coleman shook her head. ‘Not really.’

Okeke gestured left. There were shops along the front. ‘She might have ducked into one of those,’ she said.

Mrs Coleman immediately turned and jogged along the pavement, calling out her daughter’s name as she poked her head through the door of each shop in turn, her voice quickly lost amid the hiss of the rain and the rumbling of heavy waves riding the beach just over the road.

‘I’ll check the beach,’ said Okeke.

‘I’ll try the pier,’ Dr Pienaar said.

Okeke waved a hand in the air to stop approaching cars on both sides of the road and they jogged across to the rust-coloured asphalt promenade. She bore left, running along the promenade until she reached a flight of steps that took her down to the shingle beach.

It was deserted, unsurprisingly. The gusting wind was kicking up spectres of foam from the tops of the waves rolling in, soaking her face with mean-spirited stings of salt spray. The tide appeared to be midway up the beach; she was unsure as to whether it was on the rise or fall. Either way, the waves were energetically washing over the shingle.

She turned to her right to look beneath the pier, expecting that to be equally deserted with nothing but a lattice of glistening wooden stilts taking their relentless battering from the sea. However, among the wet woodwork she spotted a figure tucked into a ball, in the dark and narrow space where the shingle rose sharply to meet the pier’s decking.

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