Shannon by Rose Martin

Author:Rose Martin [Rose Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843582151
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2011-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

13

DISCOVERY

Disco music was pumping from the DJ stand at Staincliffe Cricket Club just up the road from Dewsbury Moor. Karen and Craig were stood in a corner quietly chatting. Around the room were all the other locals who had played such a huge part in the search for Shannon over the past three weeks.

The 13 March disco had been arranged by community stalwart Julie Bushby to give everyone the chance to let off a bit of steam – and to raise money for the severely depleted ‘Search for Shannon’ fund. It was roundly agreed to have been a good night and, as locals went home, some a little worse for wear, they couldn’t have dared hope that the end of Shannon’s captivity was now just hours away. Except, that this time, it was.

Unbeknown to the party-goers at the cricket club – including Karen herself – earlier in the day Michael Donovan had been talking to another relative about the search for Shannon. The relative told Michael that the police were compiling a family tree for Craig and Karen and would want his details included in it so he could be eliminated from the inquiry.

But Michael – neither intelligent nor cunning – flatly told the relative he didn’t want his details passed on. Naturally, it rang alarm bells and within hours his reaction had been reported to the police. So that evening, as the people of Dewsbury Moor danced to Abba and Take That, Michael was being catapulted into the position of the police’s 18th most ‘significant individual’ suspect.

What made him particularly of interest was that Alice Meehan, Amanda Hyett, Craig and Karen had never even mentioned his name. More than 350 names had been entered on a family tree branching out from Karen, Craig and the fathers of her children. But his wasn’t one of them. That became all the more surprising when a quick criminal-records check on his name threw up the case against him for abducting his daughter which had then been dropped at court.

Next morning, rumours were circulating around the estate that Craig had taken an overdose following the disco. It was never established whether it had been a serious attempt, a cry for help or indeed a total fiction which had been passed around from neighbour to neighbour. But interest in the story was soon overwhelmed by the extraordinary events about to unfold.

It was mid-morning when Detective Constables Nick Townsend and Paul Kettlewell were dispatched to Michael’s flat in Lidgate Gardens, Batley Carr, to interview him. Batley Carr is just a mile northeast of Dewsbury Moor, but, separated by the A638 Halifax Road, it felt like a distant place to many of the locals of Dewsbury Moor who rarely ventured far from home.

But from the windy top of Dewsbury Moor, Karen Matthews would have been almost able to look down dimly into the distance towards the flat where her daughter was being imprisoned. Batley Carr is essentially one large council estate built originally as a home for mill workers.

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