Read Online The Reckoning on Cane Hill: A Novel by Steve Mosby - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Mosby
Ads: Link
keeping a sporadic eye on her young daughter.
Laila was a happy child, but shy, with few friends, and content to play alone. She bad such a good imagination , her mother would tell the police later. She was happy with her own company . The back garden was fenced off, but not high, and it edged a road, although not a busy one. By all accounts Laila was a clever girl, and could be trusted to be careful. She often played outside. And yet that day there had come a point when Amanda Buckingham had craned her neck to check on her, and Laila was not there any more.
The search for the girl began within ten minutes of her going missing. It was extensive. As time went on, it was also increasingly fraught, because it was obvious to officers within minutes that she had been taken. Every lead was followed and exhausted, while the local community rallied around the family, with hundreds of volunteers searching recreation grounds, parks, riverbanks and outhouses. Trained rescue teams went methodically through the edges of the woods. Laila seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Groves had been a junior officer back then, and his role in the search was door-to-door interviews. It was painful work, in that it was monotonous and achieved nothing, but he wanted to do it anyway. If he was a tiny cog in a huge machine, he was still determined to play his part in its turning. His son, Jamie, was not quite one year old, and he could barely imagine thepain the Buckinghams must be going through. So he tried not to let the consistently empty and useless witness statements dissuade him. He prayed that Laila would be found, and tried to keep hope.
On the fourth day, he was working the Thornton estate, a few miles from where Laila had disappeared. He had a list of names to get through, and just after eleven o’clock that morning, he knocked on the door of a man called Simon Chadwick.
Chadwick was in his late twenties, and known to the police. He had problems with drugs and antisocial behaviour, and something close to a child’s IQ, and he hated the police intensely. It was a combination that made it fairly easy for the wrong elements to take advantage of him. A number of his convictions stemmed from allowing another person to sell drugs from his premises.
Groves wasn’t looking forward to the encounter, knowing that the minimum he could expect was some verbal abuse, and when Chadwick answered, the door on a chain, peering out through the gap, he seemed twitchy. Groves’ initial suspicion was that there were drugs on the premises, and he wasn’t sure what to do about that. Under normal circumstances he would have wanted to take him in. Right then, though, they were at full stretch, and he cared more about finding Laila Buckingham than wasting time and resources on a man like Chadwick.
And then he heard the noise.
It was a sound he would never forget. Muffled but distinct, and immediately obvious what it was: a little girl crying. She was somewhere behind Chadwick, deeper in the house.
They stared at each other for a second. Groves knew that Chadwick lived alone, and Chadwick knew that Groves knew it.
As the man tried to close the door on him, Groves kicked it as hard as he could. It was pure instinct. He wasn’t thinking about what would be lawful; he was just suddenly sure that Laila Buckingham was inside that property, and all that mattered to him was getting to her as quickly as possible. Andperhaps because he didn’t think about it, the kick was a good one. It took the door off one of its hinges, and sent Chadwick sprawling back into the hallway.
And then ...
Perhaps it was strange, but Groves could never remember much about what happened next. The details remained in his head long enough for him to make a statement from his hospital bed, but afterwards it all faded. He knew the fight with Chadwick had been ferocious, but that he’d managed to subdue him and click the emergency button for backup, and then hang on until it
Laila was a happy child, but shy, with few friends, and content to play alone. She bad such a good imagination , her mother would tell the police later. She was happy with her own company . The back garden was fenced off, but not high, and it edged a road, although not a busy one. By all accounts Laila was a clever girl, and could be trusted to be careful. She often played outside. And yet that day there had come a point when Amanda Buckingham had craned her neck to check on her, and Laila was not there any more.
The search for the girl began within ten minutes of her going missing. It was extensive. As time went on, it was also increasingly fraught, because it was obvious to officers within minutes that she had been taken. Every lead was followed and exhausted, while the local community rallied around the family, with hundreds of volunteers searching recreation grounds, parks, riverbanks and outhouses. Trained rescue teams went methodically through the edges of the woods. Laila seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
Groves had been a junior officer back then, and his role in the search was door-to-door interviews. It was painful work, in that it was monotonous and achieved nothing, but he wanted to do it anyway. If he was a tiny cog in a huge machine, he was still determined to play his part in its turning. His son, Jamie, was not quite one year old, and he could barely imagine thepain the Buckinghams must be going through. So he tried not to let the consistently empty and useless witness statements dissuade him. He prayed that Laila would be found, and tried to keep hope.
On the fourth day, he was working the Thornton estate, a few miles from where Laila had disappeared. He had a list of names to get through, and just after eleven o’clock that morning, he knocked on the door of a man called Simon Chadwick.
Chadwick was in his late twenties, and known to the police. He had problems with drugs and antisocial behaviour, and something close to a child’s IQ, and he hated the police intensely. It was a combination that made it fairly easy for the wrong elements to take advantage of him. A number of his convictions stemmed from allowing another person to sell drugs from his premises.
Groves wasn’t looking forward to the encounter, knowing that the minimum he could expect was some verbal abuse, and when Chadwick answered, the door on a chain, peering out through the gap, he seemed twitchy. Groves’ initial suspicion was that there were drugs on the premises, and he wasn’t sure what to do about that. Under normal circumstances he would have wanted to take him in. Right then, though, they were at full stretch, and he cared more about finding Laila Buckingham than wasting time and resources on a man like Chadwick.
And then he heard the noise.
It was a sound he would never forget. Muffled but distinct, and immediately obvious what it was: a little girl crying. She was somewhere behind Chadwick, deeper in the house.
They stared at each other for a second. Groves knew that Chadwick lived alone, and Chadwick knew that Groves knew it.
As the man tried to close the door on him, Groves kicked it as hard as he could. It was pure instinct. He wasn’t thinking about what would be lawful; he was just suddenly sure that Laila Buckingham was inside that property, and all that mattered to him was getting to her as quickly as possible. Andperhaps because he didn’t think about it, the kick was a good one. It took the door off one of its hinges, and sent Chadwick sprawling back into the hallway.
And then ...
Perhaps it was strange, but Groves could never remember much about what happened next. The details remained in his head long enough for him to make a statement from his hospital bed, but afterwards it all faded. He knew the fight with Chadwick had been ferocious, but that he’d managed to subdue him and click the emergency button for backup, and then hang on until it
Similar Books
