Jumbo had been standing quietly by, listening to the conversation.
‘We’ve found no personal effects, but until we move the body we can’t search the area immediately around her. There’s no ID in her anorak pockets. But I’m with Tom. She’s not a street kid.’
‘Was the anorak on the ground, away from the body?’ Tom asked.
‘Just where you saw it,’ Jumbo answered. ‘It was all photographed, of course, but I put it back when I’d checked the pockets so you could see it in situ.’
Becky’s radio beeped and she moved to one side to leave Tom and Jumbo to talk as she pulled out her notebook and answered the call.
‘If she’s left home in the last week or so, obviously nobody’s bothered to let us know. It makes me sick to think of all the runaways that aren’t even reported,’ Tom said. ‘The parents or carers are probably expecting her to come back after a few nights of sleeping rough.’
‘Yeah, and most of these kids have no idea how many predators are out there, waiting for the opportunity their isolation presents.’
The two men stopped talking as they heard a rise in Becky’s tone. She turned round and came towards them.
‘Has her ethnicity been established? They did a trawl of all girls, and we have a few that have gone missing that might fit the bill. It’s all down to the ethnicity.’
Tom looked at Jumbo.
‘James was certain she was white – although quite how he could tell, I don’t know. Is there somebody in mind?’
Becky spoke into her radio again and all three listened to the response.
‘We’ve been looking through old cases – kids who have been missing for months or even years. We’ve come up with three possibles: Amy Davidson, Hailey Wilson and Natasha Joseph.’
3
Tom’s post-holiday good spirits had totally evaporated by the time he and Becky returned to headquarters. The sight of the body bag being transported from the tent had hit him harder than he had expected. It was always traumatic when children were hurt, but the image of the child dressed in a white nightie propped up against a tree with her thin legs stretched out in front of her was particularly disturbing. Tom thought of his daughter Lucy and wondered what she was doing at that moment.
The pathologist, James Adams, had called with his initial report.
‘She was a white girl aged around twelve I would say. No identification on her, and no clear distinguishing features that I could see. Naturally blonde hair, very slightly built but not malnourished. We bagged her hands at the scene but I think it will be difficult to get fingerprints. We’ll get what fragments we can when I’ve done the post-mortem. My initial estimate is that she had been there for about a week, but we’ve had some very cold weather – particularly at night – so I may want to reassess that. At the moment, I’m not able to give you cause of death, but you’ll be the first to know. I presume you’ll be attending the PM?’
Tom agreed that he would be there and was ending the call as Becky nudged his door open with her hip, juggling two cups of much-needed coffee while trying not to drop a stack of files held tightly under one arm.
‘Here you go, boss. I think we both need this,’ she said, putting the cups down and pulling up a chair. ‘The incident room is being set up as we speak, but I brought through some notes on the three missing girls.’
Tom reached for his coffee and took a sip, not caring that the scalding liquid was burning his tongue.
‘OK, let’s take a look at them, but any number of kids could have done a runner in the last couple of weeks and not been reported,’ Tom said, ‘so let’s not limit ourselves to considering these three. I still can’t quite work out what’s bothering me about the nightie. It’s as if she was plucked from her bed. But how many girls of that age wear white nighties, buttoned to the neck? I don’t like the fact that the neck had been ripped either. The buttons were fastened, so a hand must have been placed inside the neck and the fabric torn with some force. It will be interesting to see if James can find any evidence of sexual trauma, but I’m not liking how this feels.’
Becky nodded and referred to her notes.
‘James also said there were no obvious signs of malnutrition. So she’s either a recent runaway who has somehow got caught up in something – been picked up by one of the bastards who prey on unprotected kids – or she’s one of the long-term missing who may have been through God knows what. We can rule one of them out, though. Hailey Wilson has dark hair. So that leaves Amy Davidson and Natasha Joseph. Amy Davidson was a child in care. She started going AWOL when she was about eight, just for a night at a time, but her nights away became more frequent and then she stopped coming back altogether when she was eleven, eighteen months ago. We don’t have any DNA to compare, and I’m not sure what the parental history is – we’ll have to look into that.’