The Girl Who Wasn't There

Her immediate aim was simple: establish whether Lily had vanished from this house or whether the report itself had been manufactured. Find signs of a teenager. Find the mother. Preserve anything that might explain the absence.

The sitting room stood open on her left. It contained a folding chair, a cracked electric fire and a cardboard box flattened beneath the window. No sofa. No television. No family photographs. The kitchen beyond was worse. A kettle rested on the counter beside a mug filmed with dust. The cupboards gaped empty.

“Mara?” Rachel called. “It’s Detective Inspector Morgan. We need to speak with you.”

Something moved upstairs.

Rachel raised a hand. Hargreaves drew his baton, though his face remained composed.

They climbed carefully. The stairs complained beneath their weight. At the top, three doors stood open. Two rooms were stripped to their boards. The third contained a mattress without sheets and a child’s pink hairbrush lying beside it.

Rachel crouched. The brush held several long, dark strands.

“Bag that,” she said.

Hargreaves stared at the mattress. “Could be anyone’s.”

“Exactly.”

A woman’s voice came from the far end of the landing.

“Don’t touch anything.”

Rachel turned.

Mara Vale stood beneath the loft hatch, one hand pressed flat against the wall. She was perhaps forty, perhaps younger; fear had drawn the skin tight around her eyes. Her hair was wet, and water darkened the shoulders of her grey coat. She held no bag, no umbrella, nothing that suggested she had just travelled through the rain.

“Where’s Lily?” Rachel asked.

Mara looked past her towards the empty bedroom.

“I don’t know.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Yesterday. After supper.”

“What time?”

“Half eight. Maybe later.”

Rachel took out her notebook. “And what happened then?”

“She went upstairs. I heard her moving about. This morning she was gone.”

“You searched the house?”

“I called her name.”

“Did you check the loft?”

Mara’s gaze flicked upwards.

“It’s locked.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have the key.”

Rachel examined the hatch. A small brass padlock secured the cord to a metal loop. Dust lay across the folded ladder, undisturbed except for a dark smear near the edge.

“Who else has a key?”

“No one.”

“Where is Lily likely to go?”

Mara’s mouth opened, then closed. “She wouldn’t leave.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“She was frightened.”

“Of what?”

Mara lowered her voice. “People.”

Hargreaves shifted behind Rachel. Somewhere in the house a pipe knocked once, then again.

Rachel studied Mara’s hands. The nails were bitten down. There was a faint red mark around her left wrist, as if something tight had recently been removed.

“Is this your home?” Rachel asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve just moved in?”

“No.”

“Where are Lily’s clothes?”

Mara stared at her.

“Her school uniform. Shoes. Phone. Anything personal.”

“She took some things.”

“Which things?”

“I don’t know.”

Rachel looked into the bedroom again. The mattress was bare, the wardrobe empty, and a single curtain hung from one hook. It did not look as though a fifteen-year-old had left in a hurry. It looked as though no one had lived there at all.

“Which school does Lily attend?”

“Bellwether Comprehensive.”

“Year?”

“Ten.”

“Form tutor?”

Mara hesitated.

“Mrs Ellis,” she said. “No. Mrs Elson.”

Rachel wrote both names down.

Hargreaves appeared at the landing window. “There’s a rear door. Unlocked.”

“Check the garden,” Rachel said. “Don’t disturb the ground unless you have to.”

Mara took one step towards the stairs.

Rachel moved between her and the exit. “We need a formal statement.”

“I’ve given you the information.”

“You’ve given me fragments. I need dates, descriptions, a photograph, Lily’s medical details, friends, routines. We’ll also need proof she lives here.”

Mara’s face changed. Not surprise. Calculation.

“I can bring those.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“No. Now.”

The woman’s eyes hardened. “I’m not staying in this house.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t safe.”

“From whom?”

Mara looked towards the padlocked hatch.

For a moment Rachel thought she might answer. Instead, Mara pushed past her.

Hargreaves caught her at the bottom of the stairs. “You can’t leave until we’ve taken your details.”

“Move.”

“Mara,” Rachel said, following them. “If Lily is missing, leaving the scene makes this harder.”

“I’m going to find her.”

“You reported her missing. That makes this our investigation.”

Mara’s expression tightened at the word. She reached into her coat and produced a mobile phone. The screen was dark.

“What’s Lily’s number?” Rachel asked.

Mara did not reply.

Rachel held out her hand. “Give me the phone.”

“No.”

“Then tell me the number.”

“I don’t remember it.”

A silence settled between them, broken only by rainwater running through the guttering.

Rachel had attended enough missing-person calls to recognise panic. Panic scattered a person’s thoughts, made them repeat themselves, forget obvious details. Mara’s fear was different. It had edges. It was guarding something.

Hargreaves glanced towards the open front door. “Ma’am, she’s gone.”

Rachel turned in time to see Mara crossing the pavement. She did not run, but she moved with purpose, head lowered against the rain. At the corner she looked back once, not at Rachel, but at the house.

Then she disappeared between the parked cars.

Rachel swore under her breath.

“Should I follow?”

“No. Get a description to control and have patrols check the station, bus stops and the main road. She may be distressed, but we need her located.”

Hargreaves reached for his radio.

Rachel returned upstairs alone.

The house had become quieter without Mara in it. Or perhaps the woman’s presence had been the noise all along - the strained breathing, the shifting weight, the lies assembling themselves.

She stood beneath the loft hatch and lifted her torch.

The smear on the dust was not a handprint. It was the edge of a shoe, narrow and sharply defined. Beneath it, the wood retained a faint dark crescent.

Rachel touched the surface with a gloved finger.

Damp.

She looked down.

A footprint marked the landing boards directly below the hatch. It was small, no more than a woman’s size five, and fresh enough that the tread remained clear. Water had gathered in the grooves. The heel pointed towards the bedroom; the toe faced the locked loft.

Hargreaves came up behind her. “What is it?”

Rachel did not answer immediately. She crouched beside the print, careful not to lean over it.

“Photographs first,” she said. “Then cast if the scene examiner thinks it will hold.”

“Could Lily have made it?”

“Possibly.”

“But the hatch is locked.”

Rachel looked at the brass padlock. Its surface was clean. The cord beneath it was frayed, as if recently pulled.

“Then someone else opened it,” she said.

Hargreaves raised his radio. “Do we treat this as suspicious?”

Rachel looked towards the empty bedroom, the pink hairbrush, the bare mattress. She thought of Mara’s precise uncertainty - half eight, maybe later - and the way she had watched the loft hatch as if expecting it to move.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Upgrade it. Preserve the house as a potential crime scene.”

“And the missing girl?”

Rachel rose, keeping her eyes on the footprint.

“Still missing.”

Below them, the front door clicked in the wind. For one second Rachel imagined she heard footsteps outside, retreating along the terrace.

Then her phone vibrated.

An unknown number had sent a message.

LOOK ABOVE YOU.

End of chapter one. 19 more chapters and about 40,349 words in the full book.