The Doll's House - страница 7

‘There have been a lot of… issues over the last couple of years, but she wouldn’t take off like this,’ Alison was saying. ‘She was due to move back into the family home next week, we’d been talking about it for months, we’d made arrangements…’

‘Could she have got cold feet?’

‘No’ was the swift response, although Sanderson detected a hint of doubt. She was also intrigued by the fact that the stony-faced husband had not said a word.

‘You said that she had been in contact with her birth mother recently?’ Sanderson continued.

‘Not recently, but on and off during the last two years.’ Ruby’s father was keen to talk about this topic. ‘She was a terrible influence,’ he said further, ‘got her into drugs, skipping school, there was trouble with the police. Ruby completely ballsed up her A-Levels because of that bloody woman.’

A sharp look from Alison made him rein in his anger. He ceased his rant but was unrepentant. He knew what he thought of Shanelle Harvey and wasn’t minded to change his opinion. His promising daughter had gone completely off the rails in the last year, prompting furious bust-ups and recriminations within the family – all because of an innocent and well-intentioned desire to create a bond with her biological mother.

As he filled her in on the details, Sanderson couldn’t help feeling that Ruby would have been better off sticking with what she had. Shanelle Harvey had turned out to be a small-time fence, thief and dealer with questionable hobbies and even more questionable boyfriends. Not the plucky but poor earth mother that Ruby had perhaps been hoping to find.

‘You said you weren’t too worried at first, but now…’ Sanderson got the conversation back on track.

‘I wasn’t,’ Alison agreed. ‘Ruby can be unreliable and impulsive – it’s not impossible that she would wind herself up and take off for a bit. But she’s posted one tweet since last night and, believe me, that is seriously out of character. Her phone’s turned off – I’ve tried her a dozen times…’

‘What about keys? Purse?’

‘It looks like she’s got those with her,’ Alison conceded.

‘So she packed a bag…?’

‘Her rucksack’s not here. And it’s true she’s taken most of her clothes.’

‘Was there any sign of forced entry?’

‘No, the lock’s new and pretty decent and the windows seem ok, but even so…’

Sanderson felt herself mentally switching off, dismissing Alison as a mother in denial, then mentally slapped herself back into concentrating. Helen Grace was very hot on missing persons cases – she always said that they were just the stepping stones to murder cases, rape cases – and Sanderson knew Helen would expect her to leave no stone unturned.

‘Her inhaler.’

Now Alison had Sanderson’s attention.

‘She’s asthmatic?’

‘Since birth. She had several bad attacks when she was a kid. Ended up in hospital twice. Now she always has her inhaler with her. It’s her little mantra going out the door: “Keys, purse, inhaler…” She would never take off without it.’

‘And?’

‘And I found it by the side of her bed. It must have fallen off her bedside table on to the floor. Even if she was in a rush, even if she did want to get away, she would be too scared to leave without her inhaler.’

‘And if she’d forgotten it?’

‘Then she’d come back, regardless,’ Jonathan said firmly, equally concerned it appeared, despite his chequered history with his stepdaughter.

Sanderson asked some more questions, then wrapped things up. This missing persons case had just taken on a more sinister hue. As scrupulous as she was to reassure Alison and Jonathan, the detail of the forgotten inhaler alarmed Sanderson. It’s the kind of thing someone else might miss, but not Ruby, who’d been scarred by asthma since birth. Which raised the question: had Ruby really taken off? Or was a third party involved?

Sometimes it was tough being a parent. Scratch that, it was always tough being a parent. Detective Superintendent Ceri Harwood mounted the stairs to the third floor of her fashionable townhouse in a dark mood. She had been nagging her kids to go to bed for nearly an hour now, but still they defied her, finding endless excuses to avoid doing what they were asked. It had been a long day – she didn’t need to be marching up and down the stairs all night, when she could be snuggled up on the sofa with a glass of wine.