Page 51 of Killing Mind

But he was a good teenager, Penn marvelled, putting away his phone.

He took some scrap paper from his drawer and wrote down the only information he had.

The shoe found at the side of the lake was a women’s leather shoe made by Bergen.

Woody had said to the boss that they had no idea or suspicion of who that shoe belonged to.

Well, he’d had an idea that might just help them narrow that down a bit.

He logged into Amazon and typed in the manufacturer’s name. A shoe matching the description and the photo was called a ‘ballet flat’, and judging by the number of reviews it was a popular choice. He had a quick look at the reviews but that wasn’t the information he was after. He didn’t care if the heel was slightly smaller than it appeared on the photo. He didn’t care that the stitching rubbed an area of one woman’s little toe.

He scrolled down to the ‘also bought’ section which detailed other purchases made by people who had bought this item.

He started to make a list of similar items that appeared more than once.

Five minutes later he surveyed his list.

High-waisted pants

Night cream

Spanx

Shape wear

Socks

Concealer

Body tape

Okay, he thought, if he was building a profile of this particular shoe buyer he’d guess the woman was beyond her prime years but was sensible and still liked to look good. He’d wager between the ages of forty-five and sixty.

And that right there gave him somewhere to start.

He logged into COMPACT, the missing persons’ database.

He entered the sparse information he had but hesitated over the date and age parameters.

He settled on females who had been reported missing over the last three years aged between forty and sixty-five. He waited for just a couple of seconds before the search engine returned fourteen results. Of these fourteen he could see that seven had been closed within forty-eight hours, four more had been closed up to one month following the official report.

That left three open cases of his target profile female missing in the last three years.

He clicked into the first. It was a homeless woman from Dudley reported missing by a concerned shelter worker who hadn’t seen her for a while. Penn disregarded this. There was every chance that Lola Bedola, clearly her stage name, had moved on to pastures new.

The second he read with more interest until he reached the narrative at the bottom stating that Jeanie Riches had done this a dozen times before and would come back when she was good and ready.

The third report seeped under his skin immediately.

Fifty-five-year-old Sheila Thorpe had disappeared from her home eighteen months earlier, as reported by her married twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Josie Finch, who claimed her mother had never done anything like this before and was still grieving the sudden and unexpected death of her husband.

The narrative further explained that officers had been made aware that Sheila’s bank account had been emptied. Enquires had revealed that Sheila herself had withdrawn the money proving she was alive and well and that she was a grown adult able to make her own decisions. Little else could be done, but that had been twelve months earlier and she hadn’t been seen since.

He opened a tab for social media, and spoke to an empty room.

‘Okay, Josie Finch, let’s see what we can learn from you.’

Forty-One