After Anna by Alex Lake Read Free Book Online Page B

people in the vicinity.’
    Julia knew that the police officer was correct, but she didn’t care. She was beyond reason, in the grip of something animal and irresistible. It was the same thing that drove a mother to protect her young in the wild; that drove an eland to defend her calf from a lion, or an elk to fight a wolf to save hers, even when this came at the cost of the mothers’ own lives.
    When she was a few feet from the front door, it swung open. Brian stepped inside. He was pale and his eyes were red. It was clear that he had not found Anna. He looked at Julia, and then transferred his gaze to the police officer.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, and looked back at his wife. ‘Why’s she shouting at you?’
    ‘She’s trying to stop me looking for Anna,’ Julia said. ‘I want to go and look for Anna. I want to knock on people’s doors and ask them if they’ve seen her. Look them in the face. She could be in one of these houses.’

    ‘Then go,’ Brian said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
    ‘Mr and Mrs Crowne,’ DI Wynne said. ‘Could we talk for a minute, before you go?’
    Julia turned round. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘A minute.’
    ‘In the office?’
    Julia shook her head. ‘Here.’
    ‘We have police officers going door to door,’ Wynne said. ‘They have experience in the right questions to ask, and if anyone has seen anything concerning your daughter then they will find it out and follow that lead wherever it takes them. At this stage we need to be systematic in our search for Anna.’
    ‘What if one of them has her?’ Julia said. ‘How will they know that?’
    ‘It’s unlikely.’ Wynne shifted uncomfortably. ‘I have to be honest with you. At this stage there are two main possibilities for your daughter’s whereabouts. Either she wandered off on her own – in which case she can’t have gone far and someone will almost certainly have seen her – and is now hiding in some place we haven’t found or … ’, she paused and looked away for a second, before looking back at Julia and Brian, ‘or someone took her.’
    ‘Took her where?’ Brian asked, his voice hoarse.
    ‘We don’t know yet, Mr Crowne,’ Wynne said. ‘But for now, we have to focus our efforts on the immediate vicinity, in case Anna is out there, cold and frightened and hurt, and that means that we have to be as methodical as possible to ensure that we miss nothing.’
    ‘She’s out there,’ Brian said. ‘I know she is. I can’t believe anything else.’
    ‘And we will have officers searching all night for any sign of her. Clothing, footprints, her belongings.’
    ‘I want to be part of it,’ Brian said. ‘I’ll help. We have friends who’ll help as well.’

    ‘Excellent,’ Wynne said. ‘We’ll set up a base in the community centre. Call around and get as many people as you can.’
    Brian’s hands were clenching and unclenching on his thighs, bunching his chinos up and exposing his paisley patterned socks. Anna had bought them – or chosen them, at any rate – for him last Christmas, Julia recalled, along with a pair of Homer Simpson socks. Brian had worn one of each all day, Homer on the left foot, paisley on the right. He had told Anna he loved them both so much he couldn’t choose between them. Anna had made sure that he kept them on all day.
    The memory of her daughter checking that her dad was wearing the mismatched socks she’d bought him overwhelmed Julia. Her hands started to shake and then she started to cry. She had not cried like that – uncontrollably, her chest heaving – since she was seventeen and she had been dumped by Vincent, the first love of her life. She had believed, as teenagers, will, that he was the one, the only one, and when he had told her it was over – it’s not you , he’d meant to say, it’s me, except the prepared lines had come out wrong and he’d actually said, in a moment of unwitting honesty, it’s not me, it’s you – she had cried for days. It had