Page 57 of Stolen Ones

‘Why?’

‘Because some children go missing multiple times per year.’

‘But your guy sometimes brings them back.’

‘Eat your cake, Alison, or tell me something I don’t know.’

‘Generally, most missing-children incidents are resolved quickly without harm. The majority of resolved incidents end within eight hours, with eighty per cent being resolved in twenty-four hours.’

‘Concentrate on the fifteen hundred,’ Alison said, looking away.

‘Why?’

‘Because the kidnapping of Melody Jones changed something in him. If she was the first murder, you can venture to say that any girls taken afterwards met the same fate. Something happened with Melody. Maybe it was his fear of being identified, but he crossed some kind of line. It’s unlikely he would have gone backwards and started returning them.’

Stacey didn’t disagree. The most prominent thought as she returned to her computer was: what did that mean for the fate of Grace Lennard?

Thirty-Three

Alex reached beneath her mattress and checked for her most prized possession – valued highly because it was a tool that was going to help her get what she wanted, and because it had cost her three weeks of her cigarette allowance. Not that she smoked, never had, but in prison it was currency, so you took it anyway.

She put the item back. She would need it soon but not today. It had to be presented at the right moment to have the effect she wanted. It needed to be the catalyst for everything to fall into place. She had to be sure that the recipient would appreciate it and know exactly how to use it.

Prisoners were pretty inventive when it came to fashioning weapons on the inside. One of the most common was a toothbrush shaped into a shiv. A more creative one was an eye gouger made of two plastic forks fastened together with the middle tines taken out. During her time she’d seen a razor blade comb. She’d seen a spiked glove made from gardening gloves and upholstery tacks. She’d even seen a paper shiv. A prisoner had ripped pages out of a book, wetted them down, rolled them super tight then dried them with salt. The result: a knife made of paper.

But Alex didn’t need any such weapon for the next part of her plan. She had her mouth and that was enough for now.

She had waited until visiting hours were over for the day to make her next move.

She knocked and entered the cell four along from her own.

‘Hey, Lisa,’ she said, fixing the fake smile to her face.

Appearing friendly and interested was exhausting for her. Because she was neither, it took great care and energy to fake it. It was like acting in a demanding role twenty-four hours a day. Oh, the relief when the lights went out and the mask came off and she could allow her facial expressions to match the ruminations of her mind.

‘Oh, you know, same shit different day.’

Alex noted immediately that her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

Good.

‘How’d the visit with Rod go?’

Jesus, casual small talk was an effort.

‘He didn’t come,’ Lisa said, picking at the bobbles on the coarse grey blanket.

Of course he hadn’t. The visits from her boyfriend were getting scarcer.

She’d identified Lisa as the perfect candidate for her plan about a month ago.

It wasn’t the first time the twenty-four-year-old had graced the cells of Drake Hall. Two years ago, she’d been inside for fencing stolen goods. During her nine-month stretch she’d got herself together and had left as a poster child for the rehabilitation process.

All had been rosy until she’d bumped into one of her old cronies, who had persuaded her to store some stolen jewellery. She’d only agreed because she and her boyfriend were broke, and she’d just found out she was pregnant and knew she could do with the extra money.

Someone tipped off the police, her house was raided and she was back in the slammer for a five-year stretch. Because of previous convictions, the judge had disregarded the heavily pregnant woman’s pleas and had handed her the maximum sentence.

Up until the birth, Lisa had tried everything to get transferred to one of the six prisons in the country with mother and baby units, but there had been no spaces available. The boy had been removed from her care within hours of being born.