Hold My Hand: The addictive new crime thriller that you won’t be able to put down in 2018. M.J. Ford
on my way,’ she said.
‘So what’s wrong with your mum?’ No pleasantries.
‘Y’know,’ Jo replied airily. ‘What’s right with her? She’s old. I took her to the doctor’s.’
‘Really? When you didn’t answer, I rang the home looking for you. She’s there. You’re not. They couldn’t remember the last time you’d visited.’
Dammit.
‘You should have called me on the station line.’
He didn’t answer for a few seconds, then said, more softly, ‘Can we talk later?’
Jo’s hands tightened on the wheel. ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘It’s been months, Jo. We can’t just avoid the subject forever.’
‘There is no subject,’ she said. ‘That’s how breaking up works. Put Rob on.’
‘He’s already on his way as well.’
‘Well, you fill me in then.’
Ben gathered himself and gave her the details. A skeleton had been unearthed in the grounds of a derelict house off the Frome Road. They’d found a body by the pumping house of the drained pool. From the size, it could only be a child.
‘Any idea when the pool was put in?’ asked Jo. The satnav said she’d be there in twenty-one minutes.
‘We’re looking into it – still trying to track the owners of the house. It’s been a wreck for eighteen months. Electrical fault caused a fire, apparently.’
‘So what makes them think it’s an Oxford misper?’
‘There’s clothing that matches an old file,’ said Ben. ‘A Liverpool football club shirt.’
Jo’s foot touched the brake involuntarily, and the BMW behind beeped as it drove up into her rear-view mirror.
‘You okay?’ asked Ben.
‘I’ll be there in fifteen,’ said Jo. She stepped on the accelerator, feeling the engine surge along with her racing heart.
The sign for the Hanover Homes development loomed large over the hedgerows at the side of the B3109. The space promised 240 units, ‘built to house the local community’, whatever that was supposed to mean, here in the middle of nowhere. The road was spattered with mud from the procession of vehicles using the site, and when Jo turned into the entrance, her small car rocked and bounced over the hard ruts in the ground. It hadn’t rained for weeks, and the weather forecasters were saying it was already the driest summer on record.
She passed a couple of temporary cabins, several stacks of scaffold and a concrete truck. A squad car was parked up alongside her boss Rob Bridges’ scarlet Volvo, along with a battered Discovery, a Toyota and a police-issue Vauxhall. DCI Bridges, in plain clothes, was talking to a woman in a hard hat, making notes in his book.
Jo killed the engine and climbed out.
‘Can I see?’ she said straight away.
‘Who’s this?’ said an older, silver-haired man whose grey pallor suggested he was at least one heart attack down. His suit looked thick, maybe woollen, and completely wrong for July. Jo frowned; there was something familiar about him.
‘Detective Jo Masters, meet Harry Ferman,’ said Bridges. ‘There’s a DS from Thames Valley round the back already.’
The older man held out a massive, paw-like hand, and Jo shook it.
‘Follow me,’ he said. His teeth seemed a little too big for his mouth, and she guessed they were dentures.
As he led her under the secondary perimeter police tape and around a bend between overgrown hedges, Jo wondered who he was. He had police written all over him, but he had to be at least sixty.
A substantial Georgian house came into view at the end of the drive. Though the stone was still pale in places, a lot of it was stained by sooty streaks, darker above the paneless window arches. The roof was a mess of exposed joists, many collapsed already. A uniformed officer took their details at a second line of tape by the side of the house and gestured them through.
‘Who found the remains?’ said Jo.
Ferman was wheezing a little. ‘Skull came up in the claw of the digger when they were excavating round the pool. Must have been a hell of shock.’
It is a shame it’s been disturbed, thought Jo.
At the side of the house, what had been a set of French doors opened onto a wide terrace with stone balustrades and steps leading down to the old pool. On the left-hand side, a two-person forensics team was already at work, erecting a white awning over the site. Jo greeted them, and they nodded back from behind their masks. A slight man, just a few years older than her, with dark, sharp features, was crouching nearby.
‘You must be Masters,’ he said, standing up.
‘Call me Jo,’ she replied.
The man straightened. ‘Detective Sergeant Andy Carrick, Thames Valley. Pleased to meet you.’
Jo looked behind him. The bones were dark, clotted with mud, but still recognisably in the shape of a body. She could see a small skull. They lay there, half-wrapped in a piece of semi-transparent plastic, which, she thought, was probably what had preserved the clothing too – a scrap of dirty red material. The forensics team had an open case and Jo fished for a glove and booties from the dispensers. She donned the gear, then edged closer to the body to check the yellow lettering on the front of the shirt: ‘Crown Paints’ – and a Liverpool FC crest.
‘You really think it’s Dylan Jones?’ she asked, peering at the bones. It was impossible to say much at all, but pathology wasn’t her field. When it was all cleaned up, they’d get more answers.
‘Looks about right,’ said Ferman. ‘You’re familiar with the case then?’
Jo glanced at him, wondering what he was doing here. He didn’t look at all well, and she’d guess he was way past retirement. But she was sure their paths had crossed before.
‘Sort of,’ she said.
‘You look too young,’ said Ferman. ‘It was over thirty years ago.’
‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ said Jo. ‘I was a witness to the kidnapping. I was eight.’
‘You serious?’ said Carrick. Jo nodded, and he whistled. ‘I’m not normally suspicious, but that’s a coincidence and a half.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Ferman. ‘I remember you!’
His face had lifted, and the years fell off. And then Jo realised where she’d seen him.
‘You were there, that day,’ she said.
Ferman nodded. ‘I was still training for CID. Came with my gaffer.’
Jo edged back as one of the forensics team approached with a camera. ‘My brother made the call,’ she said. ‘Someone had cut the temporary line from the circus. He had to run to the nearest farmhouse. You came to my house and took a statement.’
‘You couldn’t stop crying.’
‘I thought it was my fault.’
It was my fault.
Ferman came closer, moving with difficulty down the steps, until he was standing beside Jo and Carrick, looking at the remains.
‘You were the only witness,’ he said. ‘And pretty reliable for a young girl. Still, it wasn’t much to go on.’ Though