First One Missing by Tammy Cohen Read Free Book Online Page B

the back of the photo, while Bethany was sitting on her lap, but over to one side, leaning in towards the camera. He cringed when his gaze passed over Suzy’s feet, which were crammed into a pair of those awful sheepskin boots. What would possess a woman of that age to go around in things that looked like elephant’s feet? He put his hand over the boots, and then moved it so that it covered Suzy up altogether.
    On impulse he went back to the kitchen and brought out the printer he kept in the cupboard in its original box. Once he held the printout in his hand, he gazed at it critically. The skin tones were a bit orange on account of the inks being low, but no way was he shelling out for another cartridge. It would have to do. Suzy smiled out at him with her florid face until he had a stroke of genius and folded the paper down the middle of the picture. He ran his thumb and fingernail down the crease until it was razor sharp. When he’d finished Suzy was safely on the reverse and only Bethany was visible. That was better. Now he was getting somewhere.
    Everything was taking shape.

6
    The women reporters were definitely worse, Leanne decided. At least the blokes didn’t bother to try to put on an act, but the women? They had these fake sad eyes and these fake shocked expressions and then they put up a hand and asked a question so brutal it took your breath away.
    ‘Was she raped?’
    ‘Was she naked?’
    Leanne wasn’t one of those police officers who nursed a blanket hatred of all reporters, it would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it, seeing as she was going out with one. They had a job to do, just like she did, and like her they were the lucky ones, hanging on to their careers when there were so many out of work. Doing liaison work meant she occasionally formed quite close relationships with journalists, and one or two had even become friends. She remembered working on the case of a missing teenager. She’d been in Wetherspoon’s with a woman writer from one of the nationals when the news came through that a body had been found, and the two of them had both ended up in tears. But sometimes at these press conferences she found herself thinking, as she knew some of her colleagues did, Scavengers.
    ‘What was the mother’s reaction, DCI Desmond?’
    The mother, mind, not even her mother. What did she think the mother’s reaction was going to be on hearing that her seven-year-old daughter had been found strangled? Did she think she maybe shrugged and said ‘never mind’ and invited the officers in for tea? The truth was that reporter knew exactly what the reaction would have been but she wanted to see the spilled guts for herself, like a rubbernecker at a motorway pile-up. She wanted the mother delivered up with her heart ripped out and smeared all over the plate like so much ketchup.
    ‘We’d ask that the Glovers’ privacy is respected at this most difficult time.’
    Desmond was in his element of course. Sitting there with three huge microphones on the table in front of him and sporting his Solemn and Dignified Look. Desmond had a limited repertoire of looks, which he selected like jackets from a rail, and over the years Leanne had seen them all. He had this way of picking out individual reporters who were waving their hands around in the air and fixing them with his eyes and waiting for a fraction of a second before nodding at them to ask their question. It was a one-man show.
    ‘Is it definitely linked to the others, Detective Chief Inspector Desmond?’
    Again, Desmond did his deliberate hesitation thing, so it looked as though he was weighing something up in his head before he answered. As if he hadn’t been waiting for this question since the moment he got the news.
    ‘It’s too early to say at this stage whether this tragic murder is in any way connected to the deaths of Megan Purvis, Tilly Reid and Leila Botsford. However, naturally, that’s one of the theories we will be investigating.’
    When he said