what had happened, but Maurice was aware of time passing, the clock ticking. The longer these questions took, the less time there’d be to find Lucy before it got dark.
He tried to focus on the question, to be honest. ‘I saw Pam across the road and I hurried over to catch her before she moved on. She hadn’t noticed me, you see, until I went over to her. I didn’t want to miss her.’ He didn’t say that he’d always had a bit of a crush on Pam, even when he was married. Nothing said between them, and certainly nothing done, but it had been there all the same. A connection. ‘Perhaps I left Lucy behind then. I thought she’d followed me, but she might have been looking at the shops and not seen me go.’
‘What would she have done, do you think? If she’d turned around and seen you weren’t there?’
‘I don’t know.’ Now Maurice was nearly in tears and struggling to hold himself together. ‘I always have been there for her.’
‘Does she have a mobile phone?’
‘Yes, I got her one a while ago. She’d been mithering for one. She loves it, texts me when she gets on the bus on her way home and uses it to keep in touch with some of her pals. But she didn’t have it with her today. I told her not to bring it. I told her she could give her full attention to her old dad for a change.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘Of course. It’ll be in her room. I’ll fetch it.’
Maurice stood at the bedroom door for a moment before going in. He remembered Lucy chatting away to herself before they’d set out and thought he might lose his mind completely if he didn’t get her back soon. He took the phone back to the policeman and handed it over.
‘You find her,’ he said. ‘Just you find her.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
JEN RAFFERTY HAD BEEN ENJOYING HER time at home with the kids. When they’d been younger she’d found it hard to deal with them after she’d been away at work for a while. She’d thought she should be delighted to see them again, but it had never been like that. She knew a good mother would miss her children and love their company, but each time she returned to the house, the noise and the chaos had come as a shock. It had taken her a while to get used to the fights, the rolling around on the floor, the hyper behaviour and disobedience. She’d known they were playing up, punishing her perhaps for her absence, for taking them away from their father. In the end, the children would calm down, become easier to manage again, but those first few hours of renewed contact had been a nightmare. At work she was in control. At home, it had seemed, she had no control at all.
Now, it was easier. If she was honest, it was easier because she didn’t see so much of the children. They were more independent. They spent a lot of time in their rooms, sleeping until midday if left to themselves. She wasn’t so overwhelmed by their demands. They were better company too. She could share jokes with them; they found the same things funny. She liked them as people as well as loving them because they were her children.
Today she prised them out of bed by ten and drove them to Instow for brunch. A treat. The tiny cafe did the best sausage sandwiches in the world, and the very best coffee. Instow was where the two rivers met and across the wide stretch of water she could see Crow Point, where the dead man had been found. The view gave her a new perspective, not just on the landscape but the case. Although she’d determined to give Ella and Ben her full attention, she found her mind wandering back to that first afternoon of the investigation, to the assumptions they’d made about Walden, the complexities that had since emerged.
It was midday and she’d just arrived home when her phone rang. Matthew.
‘You’re not going to tell me you want me there yet, boss.’ She was still relaxed after the meal, after larking around with her kids. ‘I was thinking I’d spend an hour taming my garden before coming in to the station.’
‘We’ve got another missing person. Lucy Braddick. She seems to have disappeared into thin air. Barnstaple high street full of shoppers on a Saturday morning.’ There was something