Discarded M. Hunter (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📖

that could occur in certain areas of social care. For Freddie’s and the other boys’ claims not to be pursued would have taken a lot of effort. I suppose I figured at some point we would stumble across some relatively senior figure manipulating things behind the scenes. I hoped we wouldn’t, and that I’d be mistaken, but it seems not. You want to know whether I think Tomlinson is guilty. My answer is that I can’t say without evidence. If you’re asking if I think he could be involved somehow, then absolutely.’

I try not to show my relief that Jack’s thoughts mirror my own. I still remember some of the negative attention I received after Monsters was first published. Even now, the likes of Zoe Cavendish see me as someone trying to muddy the good name of law enforcement when it simply isn’t the case. If there are a few bad apples, then I’m duty-bound to find and remove them wherever they are.

The offices of the National Crime Agency in Vauxhall are fancier than I was anticipating, with tall glass windows marking the public entrance and a taller red-brick building sprouting from the back, plus a secured gated entrance. Jack drops me by the entrance and tells me he’ll come through and sign me in once he’s parked his car. He appears at the door a few minutes later and after explaining who I am to the officer on the front desk, I’m given a visitor’s lanyard and allowed through.

The freshly painted walls and open-plan office space make it feel more like a contact centre than a centre investigating some of the most serious and violent crimes in the country.

‘The team dealing with missing persons overall is based in Hook in Hampshire,’ Jack explains as we take the lift up to the fourth floor. ‘I have a video call with them most mornings to review progress in the investigation. The videos retrieved from Turgood’s hard drive are here, but as I explained, they have been carefully reviewed and individual faces of the victims have been captured to allow for facial recognition. It’s been painstakingly slow but the database is virtually complete, and once it is we should be able to run the faces of any missing children against the database and find matches.’

My phone vibrates as I receive a text message from Rick asking if I’ve decided where we should go for dinner tonight. It had totally slipped my mind and I don’t now know whether I’ll be back in Weymouth by seven. I don’t want to mess him about, but I know he’ll see me cancelling the date as exactly that.

‘Trouble?’ Jack asks, clearly noticing my furrowed brow.

‘No, nothing to worry about,’ I reply, quickly typing a response that I’ll let him know later.

The lift doors part and we exit into another open-plan office, but this time with dividers separating some of the desks. There are only a handful of people on the floor and Jack nods at one or two as we arrive at his desk on the far side of the room. A photograph of Mila has been stuck to the bottom of his monitor with Sellotape.

‘Emma Hunter, this is Jasminda Kaur, one of the smartest women I’ve ever met, and this is Geoff Macaulay who is the man who helped…’ He pauses, choosing his words carefully. ‘Geoff was the one who found your sister’s face on the video.’

I shake both their hands in acknowledgement, but neither stand, quickly returning their attention to their monitors. If they’ve recognised me neither lets on, and it’s a relief.

‘Actually, Geoff,’ Jack continues, ‘Emma has a couple of faces she’d like running against the database you developed. We believe the pictures were taken a couple of years after the two went missing so facially there would be a better chance of finding a match. I’ve emailed them to the team account, if you could check for us?’

Geoff nods without speaking.

‘The reason we’ve not yet had much success with matching faces with missing children so far is either the angle of the captured frame won’t allow for comparison, or the face is older than what we hold on file for the missing child,’ Jack explains. ‘We’re experimenting with manually aging the photos we do have to see if better comparisons can be made.’

‘Found them,’ Geoff says, eyes still fixed to his screen.

‘What? Already?’ I ask, surprised at the speed with which the match was made.

‘The girl is an 86.5 per cent match to one of the extracted frames, and there is a 64.9 per cent match to the lad. Not perfect, but see for yourself.’

Jack and I move round behind him and stare at the screen. Sure enough, the still frame shows a girl pressed up against a wall who does resemble the headshot I was sent. The frame of Cormack is less obvious, though the dark ginger hair in the frame looks to be the same tone as that of the missing child poster I found online.

I move away from the screen as the enormity of the discovery sinks in. Faye and Cormack were at Pendark. It isn’t a huge surprise about Faye, given her remains were discovered in the suitcase there, but it ties Cormack to her, and that in turn potentially ties Saltzing to Pendark. And it possibly ties them both to my sister and Freddie.

‘Great, thanks, Geoff,’ I hear Jack say, before joining me back at his desk. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you okay?’

I’m far from okay, but I can’t bring myself to answer that question, as I’m hit with a wave of emotion. I’m grateful when Jack catches me and I bury my head in his shoulder.

DCS Rawani is waiting in his office when we return and I’m surprised to find he has printed off images of Arthur Turgood and Peter Saltzing and stuck them to the notice board out of sight of the door. He is standing beside the notice