Part 27 (1/2)

Stop it! she told herself. How many bad b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were there really? Surely there was a much better chance of him being picked up by somebody decent? And what choice was there? If he stayed with her, she was sure he was going to die.

'I want to stay with you, Mum,' he said, turning his scared little face towards her.

'I know you do, sweetheart. But this is for the best. Somebody will find you and take you home. You know what to do. I need you to be brave one more time.'

The tears were running down Josh's face as he slowly opened the door and lowered himself out of the van onto the pavement. He looked back at Maggie, and she could see confusion and doubt written all over his face. His world had been torn apart over the last week, and he must have felt totally lost.

'I love you, Joshy with every inch of my soul.' He stared at her as if he didn't believe a word of it.

'Face the wall, Josh, or I'm coming back for you.' That he did believe.

It was almost unbearable when Samil leaned across and pulled the door shut. Maggie couldn't see Josh any more, but as the van pulled away, she looked out of the back window at the tiny figure of her son, still in his muddy football kit, one sock up, one around his ankles, standing facing the side wall of a carpet warehouse, his shoulders slumped, his head hanging.

58.

Tom and Becky were both resigned to another late night. Tom had spent the afternoon on the telephone and now felt depressed because none of the ideas that were whizzing around inside his head seemed to help in any way in the hunt for Leo.

He glanced out of the window. It was dark now, and wherever Leo was it would probably be cold. He was now as certain as he could be that she had been abducted. Everything pointed to it the flower delivery but no flowers left in the apartment, the car in the garage, no clothes or jewellery missing, failing to turn up to her niece's christening. Ellie had asked her to be the baby's G.o.dmother, Tom had discovered, and she would never have missed that. Right now Leo would no doubt be dreading the cold night ahead and he wasn't able to find her.

He shook his head. That was his job, for G.o.d's sake. He should be able to do this. His frustration wasn't helping but she was his priority now, not crimes from the past. He had to prevent anything from happening to Leo, if he wasn't already too late.

He turned his attention to the list of properties still owned by the Mellor family business, including those that had been sold off and were either already converted or due to be.

'Great work, Becky, and tell Mark thanks.'

Becky nodded without taking her eyes off the list she was holding.

'If those murders twelve years ago had anything to do with Adam Mellor, there's a perfect building just here.' Becky lifted her eyes from the list and pointed to a spot on the map they had pinned up in the incident room. 'The first girl had her throat slit, right? And she was found on Pomona Island, but she had been killed somewhere else. This building is a short walk, under the arches below the tram line, to where you found her.'

'But any trace of anything at all will by now have been obliterated. That mill was renovated eight years ago.'

'I know.' Tom could see Becky was avoiding his eyes. He had told her how much he had wanted to have the buildings searched. 'What about the more recent girls?' she asked.

Tom thought about it. The trouble was, the location of the bodies gave no clue at all. They had been found at different ends of the city. He was working on the a.s.sumption that the van had been used to move the bodies, and possibly the shopping trolley to get them to their final locations, but that meant the killing site could be any one of the derelict buildings still owned by the company.

'Let's consider access,' Tom said. He called over his shoulder to one of the team, 'Can we get Google Maps up on this screen, please?' He pointed to the whiteboard next to the map they were studying. 'If we can get street views and have a look around, we might be able to see which of these buildings has the best access. Mills with nowhere to park a van opposite newly renovated places are unlikely they would have to cart a body across a pavement in full view of the neighbours. Let's see if we can narrow it down.'

'Do you want to leave it with me, boss?' Becky asked. 'I can give you a shout when we have it down to a couple of hot favourites.'

Tom nodded his thanks and made his way back to his office. He couldn't get rid of the knot of anxiety in his gut, and everything was telling him that tonight was critical.

Hayley Walker's mobile records had told them nothing, and Tom was increasingly convinced that Ben Coleman had lured her out of her house and into Adam Mellor's clutches, but he couldn't prove it. Maybe Coleman had fixed up a date with her before he had supposedly gone on holiday. Tom had asked for alerts to be put on the credit and debit cards of both Coleman and Mellor, and their phones were being monitored, but nothing had come up.

A couple of the reports Tom had asked for were on his desk. Neither of them filled him with joy, but he picked up the first one and scanned it again. He had just reached an interesting point when his telephone rang.

'Mr Douglas, we've had a call from a member of the public. A gentleman and his wife discovered a little boy standing crying by the side of the road Bury New Road, heading into town. He says his name is Josh Taylor and a man has taken his mother.' Tom felt a familiar leap in his chest. This had to be Maggie Taylor's son. 'It's a convoluted story, sir, but it appears when he was trying to escape he keeps talking about crawling through a pipe his mum told him to find a policeman and ask for Tom Douglas.'

'Where is he? Where's the boy now?'

'I asked the gentleman and his wife if they would bring him here, sir. They were happy to help and should be here in about ten minutes. Will you be available to talk to them?'

'I'm on my way down right now. I'll be waiting for them. Thank you.' Tom left the office and went via Becky's desk. 'I need you with me, but can you get one of your team to find out what Sonia Beecham's mother was called, please.'

Becky looked slightly startled, but did as he asked and followed him towards the lift.

Tom bought a couple of soft drinks from the vending machine and asked if somebody would make tea or coffee for the couple who had found Josh and show them into the most comfortable of the interview rooms.

They had made excellent time, and as Tom watched the middle-aged couple enter the reception area he was pleased to see the care with which they were treating the child. An ordinary, homely-looking couple, the woman had her arm around the shoulders of a small boy with a grey, tear-streaked face dressed in muddy football kit; the man was holding his hand.

Tom walked towards them and introduced himself.

'Thank you so much for picking Josh up and bringing him here. I appreciate it. I need to talk to him as quickly as possible if, as he says, somebody has taken his mother. I hope you understand. My colleague will be along to chat to you in a couple of minutes, and will ask you for details of where you found Josh, anything that he might have said to you, and so on. I hope you don't mind helping us; it's quite a serious case.'

'No, no. Not a problem at all,' the man said, looking slightly excited by the idea of being involved in a major investigation.

Tom crouched down in front of Josh so his face was level with the boy's.

'You've been very brave, Josh, and I know you must be frightened, but can you come with me and this lady here she's called Becky. We're going to find your mum, but we need your help. Is that okay?'

Josh looked up at the man who had brought him in, clearly feeling safer with the devil he knew than a completely new face.

The man crouched down too. 'Go with this policeman, Josh. He's going to look after you. You take care now. You're a brave little boy.'

The boy looked bewildered and glanced from one adult to the other.

Josh's rescuer stood up and smiled at Tom, holding out his hand. 'He's a good kid, Chief Inspector.'

Tom nodded and shook the outstretched hand as Becky gently ushered Josh into one of the interview rooms.

After they had offered Josh a drink, Tom nodded to Becky. Josh might find the questioning easier from a woman.

'We going to call your dad, Josh, to let him know that you're okay. Is he back home now? Your mum said he'd gone down south for something.'

An expression flitted over Josh's face that Tom couldn't read. The kid was wary of saying something out of turn, and it occurred to Tom that maybe his dad had left and Josh didn't want anybody to know.

'He's not back yet. He's probably mending someone's boiler or something. That's his job, you see. My auntie's at our house, though.'

Tom asked a PC to call the house to let Josh's aunt know he was safe, and gradually over the course of the next fifteen minutes they learned what had happened from the end of the football match to the minute the van drove off.

'He made me turn away so I couldn't read the number plate. He said if I turned round he'd come back for me. So I didn't. But I still remember it from last time.'

'That was really useful too. We know who the van belongs to, and now we're using something called automatic number plate recognition to see if we can spot it on the roads. Then we can work out where your mummy is. Don't worry we'll find the van.'

Josh was shaking his head.