[2022 Wattys shortlisted story]
A missing family. A twenty year old murder. An old ghost story. And a private detective from London. But what do they all have in common? It's the job of DCI Neo Denzel to figure it all out.
In the quiet town of Mart...
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Charlie rubbed her eyes, her vision swimming with how tired she felt. But still, the problem remained.
She pushed away from the table, turning her back on maps she'd found at the local library. Felton Manor and its surrounding grounds were vast, but there were very few places an entire family could be holed up. The weather, though not cold for May, was unusually wet. If the kids were out somewhere on the grounds, then they could become hypothermic.
And therein lay the problem that she just couldn't solve. The search team hadn't found a trace of them, except for a cardigan and an old stuffed toy.
If they were out there, then they should have been found by now.
She wondered whether she should start widening her search. And yet something told her they were still there.
She knew better than most that Felton Pond didn't give up its secrets easily. Perhaps she would take a drive tomorrow and search for herself. At least then, she would feel as though she were doing something. It was harder and harder to report back to Jerry on how little information she'd been able to gather.
And then there was DS Gwilt and his so kind suggestion to leave the police to their job.
She bristled at just the memory of him. She'd never been one who liked being told what to do. Even during her time at MI6, her superiors knew to leave her be. They got better results that way.
But the good DS had not understood. He assumed, like most, that money was one reason she couldn't walk away. After all, she'd been there when Jerry had mentioned hiring her. But she'd never take a penny from the Phillips. This was a way for her to pay back the years of friendship between her and Lucy. A small way to say how sorry she was that she never saw the monster that lurked in Jack.
No, money wasn't what kept her at Marton. It was guilt. A guilt that she'd been trying to bury for years.
Only there was no way the good and honourable DS would ever understand that. He was far too squeaky clean to be able to look at her past objectively.
So that left her with DCI Neo Denzel. A man just as squeaky clean as Gwilt, and yet he was different. She could feel that. He may not have wanted her there, he'd made that clear, but he didn't look down on her. In fact, there were almost times she could have sworn there was admiration swimming in his eyes.
Her speculation into the neat and proper Chief would do her no good, so she shut down her line of thinking and grabbed her coat. The lure of a cold night and a moment's peace beckoned her as she switched off the lights and closed the front door behind her.
It wouldn't be the first time she'd wandered around Marton in the early hours of the morning, and with the way this case was going, it would certainly not be the last. But all those times she'd done it as a teenager, she'd always failed to appreciate the serenity of the village.
