Chapter 20
TWENTY
ERICA
Fifteen minutes later, heart thudding, Erica arrived at the police station. A bleak, grey square building with no personality. The car park was almost full but she managed to find a space in the far corner.
Andrew had been fresh from the police academy when they first met. Idealistic and enthusiastic, he’d felt passionately about the positive effect that the police force could have on a community. She’d felt the same way about teaching. They’d both worked long hours back then, but had carved out time together whenever they could, often sharing the highs – and lows – of their working day.
After they’d had the twins, Andrew’s career had continued to climb and now he was a Detective Inspector. She’d only been to this particular station a couple of times to drop things off that he had forgotten. After what’d happened at their last house, he liked to keep his work very separate from his family.
The heavy metal door opened onto a small reception area. Grey carpet was scuffed from the boots of officers and the variety of people they brought here. Behind a thick glass window, the officer on duty at the front desk smiled up at her. ‘Can I help?’
Why did she always feel nervous in places like this? As if she was guilty of something she knew nothing about. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes. Hi. I’m Erica Mason. I’m here to meet with Andrew Mason.’
For some reason, the officer blushed. Now she looked at her properly, beneath the stiff police uniform, Erica noticed that she was young and pretty.
Her eyes took Erica in with a sweeping glance. ‘You’re Andrew’s ex-wife?’
It was the first time anyone had ever referred to her in those terms. She and Andrew had been living separately for the last three months, but there’d never been any mention – from either of them – about making that a formal thing. Anyone they spoke to these days, outside of their friends, would refer to the other as ‘Ben’s dad’ or ‘Mollie’s mum’ so it had never been said that she was his ex anything. But they weren’t living together as husband and wife. ‘I suppose I am, yes.’
For some reason, the girl’s blush deepened. ‘I’ll just call through for you.’
Within moments, the door to her left buzzed and clicked and Andrew was in the doorway holding it open for her. He looked very different from the last time she’d seen him. In his uniform, he usually looked smart and in control. Right now – face pale, hair dishevelled – he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. ‘Come straight through, Erica.’ Over her head, she noticed him nod and smile his thanks at the girl on the desk before leading her through a narrow corridor towards a dark-blue door on the left.
The last thing she cared about right now was whether there was something happening between him and the young woman on reception. ‘What’s going on, Andrew? Why did you want me to come here? Why aren’t you out looking for Mollie?’
‘Give me a chance and we’ll explain.’
Before she could ask what he meant by ‘we’, Andrew opened the door and ushered her through to a room containing four desks with a computer on each. Three plain clothes officers – two male, one female – hovered behind a fourth who was staring at the screen. The fierce air conditioning in the room made her shiver. Something felt really, really wrong. Digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands, Erica turned to Andrew. ‘Tell me now. What’s going on?’
Andrew pulled out a chair for her that she didn’t take. Then he took a deep breath. ‘When I sent out the picture of Mollie to the local forces to ask them to look out for her, I was contacted by someone from a task force set up to…’ He paused, as if he was composing himself. ‘A task force set up to look at the sexploitation of minors.’
As if the floor had moved beneath her, Erica’s stomach lurched and she gripped onto the back of the chair, afraid her legs might give way. Nausea lapped at her throat. Sexploitation? Mollie? It couldn’t be… please don’t let it be…
Still holding the back of the same chair, Andrew was fighting to get his voice under control, so his colleague continued, the kindness of her voice a direct contrast to the brutality of her words. ‘Criminal gangs target young people, solicit explicit photographs and then use them to blackmail the teenagers. They threaten to release the photograph or video to the victim’s parents or friends.’
It wasn’t that Erica was unfamiliar with the term, it was that she was terrified why they were using it in the same sentence as Mollie’s name. Sliding down onto the chair, grasping with her fingernails the vain hope that she’d misunderstood, she searched Andrew’s haunted face for reassurance, her tone begging him to tell her that she’d got it wrong. ‘What does this have to do with Mollie?’
Andrew placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Either she or he was trembling. His colleague continued her explanation. ‘The missing persons photo of Mollie was recognised by someone who’d just intercepted a lot of images. It looks as if Mollie sent a nude to someone pretending to be a teenage boy. He was actually a man who was part of a criminal sexploitation gang targeting teenagers.’
Erica couldn’t breathe. Blood rushed to her cheeks. She felt hot, then cold, then hot again. This couldn’t be true. Not her baby girl. Her voice scratched at her throat, not much more than a whisper. ‘Are you sure it’s Mollie?’
They must be wrong. Mollie wouldn’t do that. Yes, she enjoyed playing around with make-up and dressing up in nice clothes, but she never wore anything revealing or showed any interest in doing so. Plus, Mollie knew all about things like online grooming – you didn’t grow up with a police officer and a teacher as parents without being told about the dangers of sharing information online. She wouldn’t have done this, Erica was sure of it. They must have made a mistake.
But Andrew’s face darkened, his shaking voice heavy with grief. ‘I’m a hundred per cent sure. I had to identify a censored version of the photograph. You can clearly see Mollie’s scars.’
The flash of pain across his face wrenched a guttural sob from Erica’s chest. This couldn’t be happening. Not to them. Not to Mollie. Her precious girl. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t…I just can’t believe it.’
Andrew’s eyes were as full of tears as her own. ‘I know. I’m in shock, too. I’m sorry, Erica.’
Tactfully, the other officers slipped out of the room to give them some space. She placed her own hand on Andrew’s. Of all the things she could throw at him, he was always a solid constant. When she’d had nights of not sleeping over the accident on the school trip, it’d been Andrew who always calmed her down, told her that she wasn’t to blame, made her repeat it back to him until she almost believed it. Despite the fear coursing through her, she had to get a hold of herself. They needed to figure this out, they needed to find Mollie. Cogs were turning in her brain as she tried to process it all. ‘This must be why she doesn’t want to speak to us.’
He nodded. ‘And also explains why she stole the money from her teacher. The team believe that she would’ve been asked for money quite soon after sending the photograph. As soon as they have something they know the victim won’t want shared publicly, they ask for the money. Usually around five hundred pounds.’
She held fast to Andrew’s hand as if it were the only thing keeping her from drowning. Five hundred pounds? Mollie was only thirteen. The only money she’d have access to would be her savings account into which they gave her ten pounds pocket money each week and she would also squirrel away her birthday money. ‘She wouldn’t have anywhere near that much money.’
‘I know. I’ve checked her bank records and she had just shy of three hundred pounds in there until five days ago when it was transferred to an account which we’re in the process of tracing. She would’ve been two hundred pounds short.’
All this time they had been trying to understand why she’d stolen that money, she’d never have imagined it would be for something like this. No wonder she’d looked mortified when Erica had pushed for more information. When her teachers had. Erica closed her eyes. All she could see was her precious girl’s beautiful face. ‘Poor Mollie. My poor sweet girl. She must’ve been so scared.’
A hard edge returned to Andrew’s voice. ‘These people are very clever at what they do. I’ve heard parents say that they would never have expected their child to be sucked into this but I never really believed it. I think I always assumed that they hadn’t kept a close enough eye on them. That they didn’t really know them.’
His face folded into a deep frown. Erica felt the cold shame of knowing she’d thought the same. Maybe it was true. Maybe they hadn’t kept a close enough eye on their daughter. Especially her. She wasn’t even living in the same house. What kind of mother was she? ‘Do you think she’s actually run away?’ Another thought occurred to her. If Mollie thought that a naked picture of her was going to be shared with people that she knew, she’d be inconsolable. ‘What if she does something to hurt herself?’
How could there be people in the world evil enough to think that they could do this? Now the transformation from a bright sparky teenager to a miserable, emotional, angry young woman made sense. What a weight she’d been carrying on her tiny fragile shoulders. ‘We need to find her, Andrew. We need to find her quickly. She might be in danger.’
He nodded. ‘Agreed.’ He straightened up as he spoke, back to police mode. ‘We’ve circulated her picture to all the police stations in the area and they’ll post it on social media as a missing person. We need to list all the friends she might be with so that they can be contacted. Also, any places we think she may have gone to.’
Wanting him to stay with her in the pain she was feeling, she reached out and grasped his hand again. ‘Do you think she’d do anything to harm herself? Tell me the truth. What do you think has happened to her?’
She studied his face to see if he understood what she was asking. This time he gave her no false hope. ‘We just need to find her, Erica. As soon as we possibly can.’
When he opened the door, his colleagues filed back in. Given a pen and paper by one of them, Erica started to make a list of all of Mollie’s friends, both those at her current school and the couple from the old school that she still spoke to occasionally. Where possible, she wrote down the numbers of her friends’ parents that she had stored on her phone. The ink in the pen could barely keep up with her scrawl, her wrist ached with the pressure she was putting on the page. Another idea occurred to her. ‘Shall I call Celeste? She might be able to get the school to call all the students in Mollie’s class?’
Andrew nodded, his lips a tight line. ‘Good idea.’
Celeste’s phone went to voicemail so Erica left her a brief message with what she needed. As she recounted to Celeste what had happened, the dark implications made her shudder. Her baby girl, barely thirteen and not the most streetwise of kids, was out there alone and scared, thinking that she was about to be made a laughing stock among everyone she knew. Where could she be?
Now the list was complete, she needed to do something else. ‘It’s going to start getting dark. We need to find her soon. I’m going to drive around.’
Andrew glanced at his watch and frowned. ‘It’s only just gone six. We have a while before it gets dark. And there’s trained officers out looking. Why don’t you go back to the house and wait there in case she comes back. She could arrive home at any time. And while you’re there, you can have a look around her room. See if she’s taken anything, packed a bag. Or if there’s anything else that’d give us a clue. Her computer maybe? I’ll get back out there. She’s got to appear eventually.’
He was at the door and holding it open before she was out of her seat. She wanted to look for Mollie, too, but this was Andrew’s area of expertise. Maybe he was right that she would come home and, if she did, Erica also couldn’t bear the idea that she’d find the house empty. She reached out and clasped Andrew’s arm. ‘Please find her soon.’
His smile was grim. ‘I’ll do my very best.’