Silas Nash book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 16

‘Didn’t somebody come to our borough asking about a missing sister in Morecambe?’ Nash asked. He’d come out of the interview two days earlier and heard a girl at the front desk. He’d meant to follow it up then, but Sandy had called to say he couldn’t make their date that night, and Nash had to cancel the table he’d booked. He was tired, and it slipped his mind.

‘I don’t know, boss. I haven’t heard anything,’ Renshaw said.

Nash did a search for the recent reports using the term Missing and Morecambe with the relevant date.

‘Here it is. Jessica Hunter. Paige Hunter’s sister. Why the hell wasn’t this cross-referenced to the Morecambe unit? Jessica lives in Barrow, and the rest of the family in Morecambe and Heysham. This wasn’t just reported once. It was done twice. Tracey Davis was on the desk the first time and bloody Jenkins the second. This should have been done and tracked. Who knows? That young girl might still be alive now if we’d been on it.’

‘That’s not fair, sir. She’d been dead for days when she was found.’

‘Even so, it’s sloppy work. Cutting cross-referencing corners could have cost us vital evidence.’ He went to a different screen. ‘The family have already been informed about the death and have been interviewed. I’m sending Brown over there today to see if there’s anything they can add. There may have been somebody hanging around, and Ms Hunter might even have mentioned dodgy customers in the café where she worked. I want you on it with Brown.’

‘What? You’re sending me to Morecambe again? Can’t Bowes or Lawson go? It’s only going over old ground. They already told the Morecambe lot everything they know.’

Nash gave him a withering look, and Renshaw went to find Molly Brown.

Jessica Hunter was fuming when she left Barrow police station for the second time three days before. She hadn’t spoken to Paige for five days, and there was no answer at her flat. That knocked-over cup on the coffee table bothered her. Paige should have picked it up by now.

The policeman had been nice enough, but he spouted one platitude after another. No, she wasn’t with her boyfriend. No, she hadn’t been to an all-night party that turned into three days. They didn’t understand Paige. Jess knew something was wrong.

Paige would never have missed their parent’s anniversary last night. Not for anything. She was scatty sometimes, but she wasn’t that kind of girl. She loved their parents and would never do anything to hurt them.

Jess had covered for her and said that Paige had the flu, and because of their parents’ ages, she didn’t want to risk them catching it. Mum called Paige, and when she didn’t answer, Jess suggested she might be asleep. One lie led to another, and her mum flapped about going to the doctor so they could all get their flu jabs before the meal that night. She wanted Jess to drive her to Paige’s with homemade chicken soup, and Jess had to lie again by saying that Paige wasn’t that ill. It was just a flu-like sniffle. But it was a necessary precaution to keep them safe.

When Paige didn’t turn up for the meal, and seven thirty turned into eight o’clock, Jess was frantic—but kept chewing and smiling. Aunty Maureen and Uncle Fred were there, and she laughed at Fred’s jokes and made small talk from sitting down for prawn cocktails through to Raspberry Pavlova at the end. At every opportunity, she excused herself and rang Paige’s phone again. It went direct to voicemail. Wherever her sister was, her phone was dead, or she was on the longest phone call in the world. The word dead struck a chord in her, and she pushed it aside like a drooping cobweb on her face.

She got away as soon as she could and was at the police station by midnight to report Paige missing. She was glad they were quiet, even though it was Friday night. Maybe they’d get people straight out and find Paige by morning.

The desk sergeant made a basic report, and the only thing she seemed to be interested in was her sister’s age. When Jess told her Paige was eighteen and, therefore, legally old enough to look after herself, the lady said she’d put a call out for all the drivers to look out for her.

‘Is that it?’

‘For now, yes. You’ve only just discovered her missing. We usually find that young girls turn up eventually. If she hasn’t come back after the weekend, give us a call, and we’ll see what we can do.’

And that was it. She was tossed into the night.

The next morning she was at Paige’s flat by seven o’clock. She hadn’t been back. The mug was still overturned, and the flat screamed unoccupied. Paige’s phone was still dead. Jess listened to her instincts and knew that her sister couldn’t come home. She was held, hurt or dead, and Jess was terrified. The Lancaster Royal Infirmary was the most likely choice for her to be taken to if she’d been in an accident, so she rang them first.

Nothing.

‘Please check again.’

‘I don’t need to, miss. I have a log of every patient that has come into this hospital, and I’m very sorry. I know you must be worried sick, but unless she’s here as a Jane Doe, she isn’t listed on my database.’

That wasn’t good enough, and she wasn’t going to be fobbed off by some receptionist with a bad attitude. She drove to Lancaster with a recent photograph and arrived an hour later.

‘I’d have been here sooner, but I’ve driven from Barrow. This is my sister. Have you seen her come in? Maybe she’s unconscious, and somebody’s stolen her ID. Or, maybe she’s using a false name, though I couldn’t imagine that.’

‘I’m sorry, but you’ve had a wasted journey. She isn’t here.’

She drove to Westmorland Hospital and went through the same scenario there. And even though it was the most unlikely of the three, when she got back to Barrow, she went to Furness General and asked about Paige there. Maybe she’d overturned her car on her way to see Jess for some reason and had amnesia. She was thinking of every possibility before she went back to the police station and said she thought her sister was dead.

Furness General drew a blank. And it was with new resolve that she went back to the police station armed with Paige’s photograph, and this time she wasn’t going anywhere until they did something. It was five days since she’d spoken to her sister. People should understand the seriousness of that. They spoke every day. She was being treated like an idiot with an overactive imagination. The desk sergeant took her details again and said he’d highlight that this was her second visit and that she still hadn’t made contact with Paige. He said he’d issue an APB to all cars to keep an eye out for her.

‘What if she’s dead?’

He laughed. ‘It’s only been a few days. We have no reason to imagine anything like that at this stage. You say you’ve checked all the local hospitals?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, if she isn’t there and nobody’s reported an accident between Morecambe and here, there’s nothing to worry about, is there?’

‘But you don’t know my sister.’

She left the station feeling unheard.

This morning, after Paige’s body had been found, Nash was there to ask more questions. They must be sick of the same things asked by a stream of officers. Paige Hunter. Another daughter. Somebody else’s child. Nash rang the doorbell and saw a figure coming towards him through the opaque glass. It was fragmented in the light and put him in mind of somebody stepping out of deep water.

A young woman opened the door. She was in loungewear with a logo on the breast and had grey slippers on her feet. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she had no makeup. Her eyes were red with crying. She slammed the door behind him.

‘More police,’ she said as he showed his badge. ‘I suppose you’d better come in. I dare say Mother will make more tea and ply you with digestives.’

She led him into the lounge, where a grey lady sat with a grey man. He’d never seen this couple before, apart from a photograph on Paige’s dresser, but he could see at a glance that grief had torn them apart. He motioned for them to stay seated as he shook hands and introduced himself.

‘Before you ask your pointless questions, Inspector, and we answer them for the hundredth time, I have some for you,’ Jessica said.

Nash nodded. He’d seen this anger before. It came from feelings of uselessness and hopelessness. The slim young woman seemed heavier with grief and rage as she slammed her body into a chair and faced him.

‘Where were all these police who are so interested in my dead sister’s killer? Where were they when she was missing? And they don’t care about her now. They still don’t bother to ask about my sister, not really—only about finding who killed her.’

She reached for a framed photograph that was next to her on the end table and held it out to him. He suspected it had been held a lot during the last hours. ‘Look at this. Look at it properly, damn you.’ Nash went to take it from her, and she snatched it away from him as though to have somebody else’s hands on it would obliterate more of Paige.

‘This is Paige Hunter, my beautiful sister, Inspector. She was eighteen. She isn’t anymore. She loved animals and worked in a café. She was always kind, and I won every argument we ever had.’

‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’ Nash had said it, and he so didn’t intend to offer meaningless platitudes. She snorted at him and knew his words couldn’t change a damn thing.

‘She supported Morecambe FC and went to some of their games, but only if it wasn’t too cold. And she made the most perfect scrambled eggs for me when I was sick last year. Small stuff, inspector, nothing ground-breaking about her—but she was nice, you know? She wanted to be sassy, and she was but couldn’t see it. She’ll never be sassy, clever, or beautiful again.’

Nash let her speak, and when she finished, she was crying. She’d done a lot of that. He could tell. The grey couple didn’t move after the lady had asked if he’d like tea, and Nash had declined. They had nothing to say, but he saw Colin stroking the back of Hilary’s hand as though he was trying to absorb her pain. Nash looked towards them, and Jess carried on.

‘Look at my parents. They are too distraught to even speak to you. They’re so confused by what’s happened that they are working on lifelong routines like automatons. They waited so long to have us, and there’s no way they should have lost a daughter at this time in their lives. They were dancing on Friday night. It was their forty-sixth wedding anniversary. Dad had a bit too much to drink and literally danced on a table.’

‘Shush your mouth. This gentleman doesn’t need to know all that,’ Dad said.

‘When they danced together, they spun, Inspector, round and round like nothing could hurt them. But it did. You should have heard my mum laugh on Friday night. She runs every day and does yoga. Dad plays tennis in the summer. They’re still in love, you know. And Paige worked in a café, and she’d perfected scrambled eggs. They were amazing. Tiny things, Inspector.’

The lady moved her hand in a dismissive gesture but couldn’t manage any words.

‘I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry for your loss. I’m going to tell you that I do care about Paige. I’m sorry I never met her or sampled her scrambled eggs. I’d have liked that. I care so much about Paige that I will remember her face until the day I die. I understand how angry you are.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. And I’m angry too. We failed you. We need to see that this never happens again. Would that twenty-four hours have made any difference? We’ll never know. But, I’m telling you now, on the record with no hidden agenda or platitudes, we should have listened to you sooner.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like tea? It’s no trouble.’ Mrs Hunter stood up and hovered.

‘Actually, yes, a cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.’

‘I’ve got some Digestive biscuits, Inspector.’

Jessica smiled at him, and Nash saw how lovely she was when grief wasn’t pulling her into a dark place that she couldn’t escape.

‘I had to identify her. It was too much for Mum and Dad. I’ll never forget that final image of my sister. It’s in my head every minute of every bloody day.’

‘Jessica.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘I can’t be here. I’m going to go and water the plants.’

‘Okay, Dad.’ Mr Hunter got up, and where Nash had seen an old man, now he had a glimpse of him as he’d been twenty-four hours earlier. They were a similar age—but Nash hadn’t just lost a daughter.

‘How can thirty years catch up with you overnight? They were like a pair of forty-year-olds,’ Jess said.

‘I hope their youth will come back to them. With time.’

‘They don’t have time. But Paige did.’

‘We’re going to find him.’

‘You say that as if it matters. What good will that do me? Or my parents?’

‘It will stop him from doing this to anybody else.’

‘He probably already has. He might be doing it now. This minute. He’s not going to stop.’

Nash took her through the last time she saw Paige. Was there anything, anything at all, the smallest irrelevant detail that could give them any clues?

‘Nothing, Inspector.’ She looked at the open door. ‘Not a bloody thing. Sorry, Dad.’