Page 10

CHAPTER 10

MELANIE – D AY T WO

When her phone rings, she awakes to complete disorientation.

Melanie instinctively reaches left but there’s no bedside table. She opens her eyes to unfamiliar shadows and it finally dawns where she is. She’s put the seat cushions from two chairs on the floor to make a rough bed in the side office of CID. She reaches down to the floor for her phone and sits up, her back protesting. It’s cold. The heating’s off.

‘We’ve found something, Mel.’ It’s Ed’s voice, the dive team supervisor.

Melanie feels a wave of shock. The phone says 4.10 a.m. She’d expected the dive to rule out the water.

‘A body?’ The words make her stomach flip.

‘I’m afraid so,’ says Ed. ‘It’s in what seems to be a shopping trolley in a deeper part of the canal. But we don’t have any details yet. I’m sorting the recovery right now. I thought you’d want to know straight away.’

‘Thank you. I’ll come straight down.’

‘Be warned, these things are tricky and we need to proceed carefully. I’m putting a second diver in right now to do an extra assessment before we move forward on the recovery.’

‘In a shopping trolley, you say?’

‘The diver says it seems that way but the visibility’s terrible down there. This is all from fingertip searching. He was right at the end of his permitted dive time so I had to pull him out. The only thing he can say for sure is it’s a body. Long hair. Ponytail. He had to come back up before he could do a proper assessment.’

‘OK. I’m heading down to you. Update me when I arrive.’

Melanie ends the call and pulls up straighter to try to ease the pain in her back. A shopping trolley?

For a terrible moment she envisages Amelie larking about. Riding in the trolley? Maybe playing with some other kids. A prank going wrong? The scene plays out in her head. The horror of the trolley rolling into the canal. But it somehow seems so unlikely. Not like Amelie at all. She’s a sensible girl. Mature for her age.

She looks at her phone and thinks of Matthew. She wants to know if Amelie was wearing her hair in a ponytail when she disappeared but she daren’t ask. Daren’t ring. Matthew will want to know why she’s asking.

Will guess.