Cath Staincliffe - Ruthless

She selected a photo of Elise on her phone, ignored the lump in her throat, and asked in each place, a hairdresser’s, hardware store, bakery, newsagent’s and Indian takeaway, if anyone had seen her daughter. All she got were negative replies and pitying looks.

Janet went back to her car. Half an hour had passed with no word. An hour and a half since Elise had left her grandma’s. Maybe Janet should report her missing. Fifteen, vulnerable given recent events, a witness to a sudden death. She felt a spike of fear. Might Elise have attracted the wrong sort of attention, could someone have seen them going to the police station yesterday? That’s stupid, she told herself, you’re being paranoid. But what if she ignored these fears and in doing so exposed Elise to danger?

She drove back towards home, unsure what to do next, sick with worry. A band of pain tight around her head. When her mobile rang she braked quickly and pulled in, earning a blast of the horn and a raised middle finger from the driver following.

‘Ade?’

‘You found her?’

‘How did you know?’ Janet said.

‘I’ve had Taisie on. Well?’

‘No sign, I’ve been up and down the road. I’ve tried the shops.’

‘Well, where the fuck is she?’

‘Don’t shout at me, Ade, that isn’t helping.’

‘Have you tried the common?’ he said.

The common, some reclaimed land that had once been a tip, ran south of the main road about a block away. Janet hadn’t been there for years and she’d no idea if Elise had. The rough ground had been landscaped and grassed over, saplings planted. She remembered a pool in the centre.

‘I’ll go there now.’

Janet parked at the end of the cul-de-sac. Carved tree trunks, an owl and a fox, guarded the entrance. Signs warned about dog fouling, fire lighting and camping.

The saplings were more mature now, in leaf too, and there was little sign of the area’s previous use save for occasional bits of rubble, concrete blocks, half-bricks, lumps of cinder which must’ve worked their way to the surface in among the grass hillocks.

The light was dappled on the path and Janet walked quickly. She remembered rightly that the main route followed close to the outskirts of the grounds with several smaller paths leading from it to the centre, like the spokes of a wheel. Occasionally there were benches made of fake wood which were flame and vandal resistant. She met a man with a spaniel and showed him Elise’s photo. He shook his head, ‘Sorry.’

Once she had made a full circle she took the next path into the middle. As she drew closer she could see the tall rushes that edged the pond, obscuring a clear view across. The water was an opaque grey-green, sickly looking, grease on the surface. Ducks and ducklings paddled in the shallows.

Janet went left, her eyes burning, fists and jaw clenched. Would she be here now, her daughter lost, if Vivien hadn’t been so cruel?

She rounded the curve of the shore and her legs went weak. Elise was there, on a bench, perfectly still, her face in profile, gazing at the water.

Janet fought the temptation to cry out, to run, and made her way to the bench.

Elise glanced up at her. She looked exhausted, pale, her eyes rimmed with shadows. She scowled at the light.

‘We were worried about you.’ Janet sat down.

‘Sorry,’ Elise said.

There was silence, broken only by the occasional squabbling of the ducks and the alarm call of a blackbird somewhere in the trees.

Janet’s head was full of recriminations: why weren’t you answering your phone, Elise, how could you just disappear, have you any idea what that might do to us? But she kept her counsel. Elise had already had one deranged mother badmouthing her.

Janet steadied her breathing, waiting for her body to recognize that the immediate trauma was over, to shift into a lower gear. She texted Ade. All OK back soon. Tell T and D .

‘We used to come here last summer,’ Elise said, ‘after school sometimes.’

I didn’t know. Did Ade? Was that how he knew to look here? Something else I missed because of work?

Janet watched the water, the dimples made by insects, the patterns cast by the bulrushes. Her daughter was here, safe. She could hear her, each breath, see the way she absentmindedly threaded her fingers together. But Vivien… who would never again share a moment sitting side by side with Olivia, whose life would never be complete… Janet looked up. The sky was blank, a suffocating white.

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Elise, still staring out across the water.

‘I know,’ Janet said, ‘I know.’

Rachel had the police scanner on, force of habit as she was driving back to Manorclough. The boss wanted more on Greg Tandy. The fact that his house was close to the warehouse, just over the canal, meant sightings of him in the vicinity could be completely innocent. Rachel would talk to his neighbours, see if she could plot his comings and goings.

When a burst of static came over the airwaves followed by a call-out to patrols in Manorclough with reports of shots fired in Manton Road, she felt the shock jolt through her. Tandy’s street!

Rachel took the next left, flooring the accelerator as soon as she was round the corner. This road had ramps but she didn’t slow down as the car bucked and banged over them. Protocol for incidents involving firearms was to isolate the area and wait for the armed response unit. But she was so close. There might be something she could do to help.

She flew along Shuttling Way and then turned on to Derby Fold Lane, past the ruined warehouse and over the bridge then sharp left into Manton Road.

As she jumped out she could hear sirens not far away and she saw several people gathered outside the house, among them Connor Tandy and his mother Gloria. The air smelled of cordite. The front downstairs window was smashed, glass glittered on the pavement, the front door was wrecked with bullet holes. The lights were on in the house, the curtains, closed but shredded, billowing out of the broken window, the TV still burbling away.

Rachel pushed through the crowd to reach Gloria and Connor. They looked terrified, standing shivering. Gloria had a cigarette in one hand; when she raised it, her hand shook uncontrollably.

‘What happened?’ Rachel asked.

‘They shot at us!’ Connor’s words were jerky.

‘Who, did you see anyone?’

He shook his head, his mother copying him. ‘I was upstairs,’ Gloria said, ‘getting changed. Connor was-’ she choked, ‘he was in there.’ Tears glinted in her eyes as she nodded to the front room.

‘You’re not hurt?’ Rachel looked at the boy’s face, his hands. The cut on his cheek from when he’d fallen off his bike was almost healed.

‘No.’ He shook his head, frowning, and pressed his hands to his ears. That many shots a few feet away from him, he’d be half deafened. It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit. Had the gunman aimed to kill or just frighten and silence those inside?

‘You can’t go back in,’ said Rachel.

‘But our stuff?’ Gloria said.

‘We need to recover the bullets, they might help us work out who did this. Can you think of anyone who would?’

Surely, if the woman knew, she’d tell Rachel now, having come so close to losing her boy.

‘I don’t know,’ she said and seemed genuinely bewildered. ‘Who the fuck would do this? What’s he ever done,’ she pointed her fag at Connor, ‘or me?’

Or did the culprits think Greg Tandy was still in residence?

‘We’re going to get you moved,’ Rachel said.

‘What?’ Gloria scowled.

‘You can’t stay here.’

The squad cars arrived and Rachel had a word with the officers and agreed on where to erect the cordon. ‘Take statements from all the onlookers,’ she told them. ‘Did anyone hear or see anything? Was there a car, or motorbike, any words shouted, anyone behaving oddly. Yes?’