Lost and Never Found by Simon Mason

Author:Simon Mason [Mason, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Next morning, Ray was absent from the briefing. Ryan went through developments for Barko, who sat at his desk, staring at him unpleasantly.

Incidental stuff, he said impatiently, minor things, suggestive, circumstantial hints and nudges, nothing solid, nothing to pull on. ‘What do you even think happened?’ he asked.

Ryan didn’t know. But something had happened to Zara the previous November. As a result, she’d had a breakdown and taken an overdose, then made a slow recovery. She’d become, it seemed, a changed person, with a plan, who came to Oxford looking for someone. With five grand in her pocket.

‘But also hiding from someone.’

She’d hidden her car in the municipal car park. Clever move: who would look for a Roller there? She’d hidden herself in the empty house in Polstead Road. That had taken careful planning too: none of the neighbours had even suspected she’d been there.

‘But someone found out,’ Wallace said.

‘Yeah. Maybe the someone she’d been scared of.’

‘But who?’

Ryan shrugged, prompting the expected response from Barko.

‘Well, find out! Double-check the cameras, review her records, go through her contacts, ask better questions. Put the hard hours in, Wilkins.’

He bent forward, his voice a hiss.

‘Have you seen the papers? Have you?’ Apparently they were saying Zara had been part of a death cult that sacrificed dogs. Naturally, the police hadn’t the wit to uncover such evil.

Afterwards, Livvy sat with Ryan for an hour. She reported in passing that they had reviewed the Westgate and Cornmarket CCTV footage to see if they could spot Zara picking up one of Carol’s flower-shop cards, but had found nothing. Ryan said he’d ask Carol if there was anywhere else her girls had been.

‘Where’s Ray, by the way? Why isn’t he here?’

Livvy thought perhaps he was at an off-site meeting. There was something in the matter-of-fact evenness of her tone that made him feel petulant, and he wondered if she was judging him. She’d worked closely with Ray on a previous case. She called Ray Boss. She’d never called Ryan Boss. As usual, these thoughts made him defensive, and he swung his feet on to the desk and gazed fiercely at the crazy wall. Earlier, he had taken down a photograph of Lawrence Hobhouse, added a picture of St Anne’s Addiction Rehab Clinic and drawn a moustache on Justin Darling. There was another photo too, of little Ryan sitting solemnly on a playground roundabout, which he stared at in a sort of anguish.

‘Remind me to go home at five tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s important.’

Livvy looked up, nodded, carried on working.

Ten glassy-eyed minutes passed, then he spoke again.

‘Postmen,’ he said.

Livvy looked up again, waiting. But he said nothing else. He got up and went out of the office and down the corridor.

In his newly serviced but still barely functioning Peugeot, he went east out of St Aldates Police Station, towards the new ‘trade city’ off Sandy Lane, in Blackbird Leys, where Oxford’s sorting office is situated, a low-slung industrial unit in brown brick and tinted glass. In reception, he made enquiries and waited by a darkened window.

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