words faded, and this time she declined to elaborate further, not mentioning how when it was her own turn to be encouraged to attend school on time, to look smart in her uniform and deliver her homework promptly, Angel Wraxford had aged prematurely, stress and chain-smoking turning her into a pathetic shadow of the creature she’d once been; and how, as such, there hadn’t been quite as much support for the younger sister as there had for the older.
‘Anyway,’ Lauren said decidedly. ‘Enough of this boring crap about me. It’s Genene I’m interested in. You’re saying there’s absolutely nothing about this you can tell me?’
Heck shrugged. ‘Only that the disappearance is being investigated.’
‘Just by you, or by others as well?’
‘Every case has an adequate number of investigators attached.’
‘So where are the rest of them?’
‘We all have different duties …’
‘Can’t you give me a straight answer?’ She was visibly struggling to stop herself getting irate again. ‘All you’re doing is taking me round the houses.’
‘Look … I wish I could tell you there was a whole team of us.’
She nodded, having suspected this all along. ‘And why isn’t there?’
‘Finance, politics.’ He sipped tiredly at his coffee. ‘All the usual reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with fighting crime.’
‘And what’s your gut feeling? I mean, you’re at the heart of this. Do you know what happened to Genene?’
‘No.’
‘She can’t have just vanished.’
‘People vanish all the time, Lauren. Police stations up and down the country are crammed with “missing persons” reports.’
‘How many of them do you recover?’
‘Some.’
‘Some?’
‘A few.’
‘A minority?’
‘Okay, a minority. But there are others who come back of their own accord.’
‘And how many of those who never come back are the victims of foul play?’
He shrugged again.
‘All of them, maybe?’ she wondered.
‘Possibly.’
‘And what are we talking here? Per annum, I mean. Hundreds? Thousands?’
Heck shook his head. It was probably closer to the latter, not that he wanted to tell her that. He drained his beaker, and tossed it into a nearby waste bin.
‘Why do I get the feeling there’s something else you’re not telling me?’ Lauren asked.
‘What do you mean?’
She eyed him carefully. ‘Is there something about Genene’s case that makes it different from all these others?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that.’ He fished the car keys from his pocket.
‘If Genene’s case doesn’t bother you more than any of the others, it should,’ Lauren said. ‘She’s not the sort who’d just disappear. She wasn’t in debt or on drugs or being abused. She’d just got a degree, for God’s sake. She’d started a job with one of the top legal firms in West Yorkshire. She had everything to live for. She didn’t even take a change of clothes with her the day she disappeared, or her credit cards or driving licence. All she had was what she was wearing that morning on her way to work, and a briefcase with a few papers in it.’
This reminded Heck why he’d first requested to see the case file on Genene Wraxford. ‘It’s time for you to go home,’ he said abruptly.
‘What?’
‘I’ve told you it’s being investigated, and that’s it.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Finish your coffee.’ He opened the car door. ‘I’ll give you a ride to Salford station. From there, you can get a train to Piccadilly, where you can pick up a connection to Yorkshire.’
Lauren shook her head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I came here because I want to help you.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘You’ve already admitted you haven’t got a team with you. That means you need help. If nothing else, I can do all the legwork.’
‘Lauren … this is a police enquiry and you’re a civilian.’
‘You saying you don’t use civilians? I know that’s bullshit.’
‘You’re not qualified in any shape or form.’
‘I’m an ex-combat soldier.’
‘That isn’t qualified and, to be frank, that would worry me more than reassure me.’ He indicated the car. ‘Hop in.’
‘Look … just let me tag along.’
‘No. Now get in the car.’
She folded her arms defiantly. He shrugged, jumped into the driving seat and switched the engine on. As he nosed the vehicle forwards, she rounded the bonnet and clambered in alongside him. He had to suppress a grin as he pulled back out onto the A580, but Lauren sat in sullen silence – all the way to Salford railway station, where rush-hour commuters were bustling back and forth. Heck pulled up on the cobbled taxi rank beneath the station’s heavy concrete canopy.
‘You must know that I can’t have you with me?’ he said, turning to face her. ‘I mean, you’re an adult, a grown-up … you must realise that?’
Lauren stared directly ahead. ‘What am I going to tell my mum when I get home?’
‘Tell her we know what we’re doing. We’re professionals … we’re pretty good at this sort of thing.’
‘Why should we trust you now? After three years of hearing nothing.’
‘Because we’re all you’ve got.’
She gave a scornful smile. ‘That’s what I thought.’ She climbed from the car, humping her pack onto her shoulder. ‘Why should the law-abiding community tremble, eh?’
‘Don’t forget to report that hire van stolen,’ Heck called after her.
She gave him the finger, before limping off towards the station steps.
Heck drove away. It was quite an irony, of course. Given the job that lay ahead of him, if there was one thing he really could have made use of right now, it was a wingman.
In police terms, Salford was a legendary district.
Existing as a city in its own right, but enclosed by the larger Greater Manchester conurbation, it was regarded as one of the toughest beats in Britain outside London. It fell within the Greater Manchester Police’s F-Division, described to Heck on his last day of basic training, when he’d learned that he was being posted there, as: ‘A big, dark, noisy, chaotic, rain-soaked, urban hell!’
Heck had done two years as a cop in Manchester before transferring down to London. It wasn’t a long time in reality, but it was long enough if you were working on as busy a division as ‘the F’ to get to know every one of its nooks and crannies. Once a manufacturing hotbed and busy dockland on the Manchester Ship Canal, Salford had endured severe unemployment since the mid-twentieth century and, as a result, had come to suffer some of the worst social and housing problems