‘It isn’t anger, Connor. It’s greed. She’s bitter about the way her life has turned out and wanted to know if we could claim compensation. Place the blame on somebody. Me. The school. She didn’t care if I lost my job, if I couldn’t support Hailey. Still, for all her talk she hasn’t started proceedings. She’ll never pull herself together enough to convince a solicitor to take the case. There isn’t even a case. Every now and then I see her car parked in front of the house and I think she wants to see Hailey but then she drives away and I get another message about money.’

‘But…’ Connor can’t process this. She doesn’t want to see her own daughter.

‘Hailey’s mum didn’t once go to the hospital or even telephoned to ask how she is,’ PC Leighton says gently. ‘It might be hard for you to understand but sometimes there are things we are better off not knowing. Telling Hailey her mum was alive, living close by but choosing not to be part of her daughter’s life. How do you think she’d have felt?’

Rejected.

Angry.

Sad.

‘Suppose.’ Connor says. ‘Could she have had something to do with… you know, Tyler and Ryan?’

PC Leighton shakes her head. ‘No, Connor. We have spoken to Julie. She has an alibi and we checked on CCTV that her car is where she said it would be. We really don’t think she’s capable.’

‘Her car…’ A thought occurs to Connor. ‘What colour is it?’

‘White. Why?’

Connor’s stomach sinks. ‘Do you have a picture of Julie?’

PC Leighton fiddles with her phone before she produces a photo.

It’s the woman from the graveyard.

The woman who had approached him after finding his scarf. Connor remembers the flicker of recognition when he had met her. He’d thought he must have seen her there before but it wasn’t there, he recognized her from the grainy, tattered photo that Hailey kept in the bottom of her drawer. She was older, of course, ravaged by time and drugs but her eyes… Hailey’s eyes. The same green.

‘Connor?’ Mr Marshall clicks his fingers and Connor drifts back to the now where Hailey’s mum is still alive and she had befriended him and Tyler and Ryan. He can hear his own heartbeat, the ringing in his ears as though he’s back in the lake, back underwater.

She must have taken them.

She must be planning on taking him next.

‘Have you met Julie?’ he is asked.

‘Yes.’ He feels a stab of hot fear. ‘Yes. We all have.’

Chapter Sixty-Six

Ryan

Three Days Ago