Page 4 of Stolen Ones

‘But why would someone confess to something they didn’t do?’

‘Yes quite, Mr Harte, why would they?’

‘I’m not here with any kind of false confession, DI Stone. I have information that will lead you straight to her.’

His voice was calm and measured if a little surprised that he was being doubted.

Kim liked to understand the motivation of people’s actions. Common sense told her the man before her was a liar, just like the four previous confessors, although he wasn’t claiming to have actually abducted her.

So far, they’d had a sixty-five-year-old male who came in and confessed to every major crime. The next one had been a confirmed delusional; the third one, a female, had been a reporter from Berkshire trying to learn more about the case for a feature she was writing; and the fourth had been Penn’s maths genius who had pissed off someone from a rival gang and thought the police station was the safest place for him until it died down.

Their confessions had all been debunked, and they’d been asked to leave once she’d understood their motives for lying.

And that was all she wanted from this guy before she showed him the door.

‘So, what date was Melody Jones taken?’

‘Sixteenth of August in 1996.’

‘What time?’

‘Threeo’clock.’

‘From where?’ Kim asked.

She didn’t need any paperwork to check his answers. She now knew them by heart.

‘The playground at the edge of Hollytree Estate.’

‘And what was she wearing?’

The man closed his eyes. A little smile tugged at his lips as though recalling a fond memory. Kim felt nausea swirl in her stomach.

‘Little pink leggings. I think they were called pedal pushers. They had blue spots on. Her vest top was rainbow stripes. It was a hot day.’ He frowned. ‘She didn’t have any lotion on.’

Kim ignored the disapproval in his voice and focused on his answers. Everything he’d answered so far was correct. It was also public record. There was no mention of the silver chain with a heart that had been on her wrist. A present from her grandmother with her initials engraved on the heart. That detail had never been released.

‘Tell me something that you couldn’t have found out by reading the thousands of news reports available.’

He smiled and traced imaginary circles on the table.

‘And where would be the fun in that?’

Evasion.

Kim’s heart rate began to slow as his motivations became clear. For a minute, he’d had her going with his easy and accurate recall of the details, but his failure to offer anything extra demonstrated he was just another crackpot. A well-dressed, presentable crackpot but not all crackpots came from Hollytree. She had spent the first six years of her life in that place.

‘You will find out everything eventually, Inspector, but it’ll be on my terms.’

‘There are no terms, Mr Harte, unless you want to take me to the body. You drive, I’ll dig.’

He smiled. ‘All in good time, but you’re about to be faced with a more urgent problem and—’

‘I think you’ve taken enough of my time already, Mr Harte,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘I now understand your motivation for this confession. You want to play games with the police. You want some kind of fame off the back of a family’s misery, and you expect us to play along with the false hope that we’ll recover Melody’s body.’

Again, that tolerant smile but no words.

‘I don’t know why you need this kind of attention, Mr Harte, but you’re not going to get it here.’