Nowhere to Run - Jack Slater

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as Underhill raised his hands for quiet.

      Silverstone stepped up beside the older man. In his immaculate uniform, he looked exactly what he was – a career desk-jockey who’d barely know one end of a baton from the other and had certainly never felt the greasy collar of a drug-pusher or a burglar. The contrast between the two men was almost laughable. Colin was the bigger man in every sense apart from rank. An inch taller, a good four stones heavier, fifteen years older and hugely more experienced, he was a man-manager, not a pen-pusher. He’d walked the beat, come up through the ranks and he looked every inch of it in his slightly rumpled tweed jacket and cord trousers.

      ‘Right,’ said Silverstone. ‘What’s everyone doing at the moment? I need to know what cases each DS has on their desk, as of now, excluding this morning’s haul. Mark?’

      Bridgman looked up and set his pen down. ‘We’ve got the city centre muggings and the break-ins down on the Marsh Barton industrial estate, sir. We’re at a crucial stage with the muggings.’

      The DCI nodded. ‘Simon?’

      Phillips glanced at Pete. ‘Tommy and the Jane Doe, sir. And the airport job.’

      ‘Jim?’

      ‘We’re leading on the drugs, sir. All this morning’s stuff, plus trying to track down where it’s coming from.’

      ‘Right. OK. I think, Simon, you ought to have this new one. A missing girl. Thirteen years old. Rosie Whitlock. Dropped off at school this morning and never went in. Parents are Alistair and Jessica. Live in the St Leonard’s area of the city. Mark’s got the details.’

      Pete spun around to face his team. ‘What are we? Invisible?’ He pushed himself up out of his chair as Dave shrugged.

      ‘Maybe he thinks it’s too soon for you, boss,’ Jane suggested.

      ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

      *

      Lauren peered with a sinking heart through the gap she’d created at the blackened forest of stinging nettle stems beyond. But, she only had two choices – stay or go. And if she stayed . . . She didn’t even want to think about what would happen to her. She grabbed a couple of big handfuls of loose straw, pushed it out through the gap in front of her, then started to wriggle through, arms in front of her face, hoping that the sleeves of her cardigan might offer some protection from the burning stings.

      Metal scraped the back of her head and she ducked lower. She felt the dull edge dig into her shoulders. There was no going backward now, even if she wanted to. It was forward or nothing. As long as she didn’t get stuck . . .

      ‘Oh, God.’ A vision filled her mind of her stuck half in and half out of the barn, wedged under this bloody door when the man came back and found her. Caught hold of her legs and . . . Throat clogged with terror, she scrambled forward. The old stems crackled like fire as they snapped and broke, adding to the noise of the hail. Then, between her panting breaths, she thought she heard something else.

      She stopped moving. Held her breath, straining to hear.

      ‘No, no, no.’

       An engine.

      He was coming.

      She pulled herself forward. The corrugated iron pressed down on her backside. Her thighs. Then she was rolling out and free, curling into a ball to protect herself from the nettles, barely registering the miracle that she had yet to be stung. Her bare legs felt suddenly chilled. Goosebumps rose on her skin. She got up, pressing herself against the stone wall and looking around for the first time.

      The hail was still coming down hard, thick enough that she could not see clearly through it. The nettles were bending and swaying beneath it – nettles that stretched away, dense black and brown, in front and to the right, all the way to a dense thorn hedge, beyond which lay open fields. To her left, there was a gap at the side of the barn, a barbed-wire fence and woodland, dark and inviting.

      The van sounded terrifyingly close. She began to edge along the side of the old stone wall, reaching out with her left foot to press down the nettles, breaking the stems before moving over them. The engine stopped.

      Oh, God. Her breathing got shallow and fast as terror gripped her.

      He was here. She moved faster. At least the noise of the storm would mean he couldn’t hear her.

      The side door of the van slid open and she stepped forward, pushing through the wet stems rather than pressing them down. She would just have to suffer the consequences for the next couple of days.

      But she was amazed to find that she wasn’t stung.

      She heard the door roll shut.

      Nearly there. Just another metre to the end of the barn and about three more across the gap beyond. She ran and leapt for the fence and the sweet freedom of the dark and sheltering woods.

      Pete stalked up the length of the room as the two senior officers turned back into Colin’s office.

      The door had not quite closed behind them when his open hand hit it hard. Silverstone was halfway through the interconnecting door to his own office when the loud slap behind him made him stop and turn.

      ‘A word. Sir,’ Pete said stiffly.

      The DCI’s eyebrow rose. ‘DS Gayle?’

      Pete ignored Colin for now. He was standing behind his desk, out of the direct line between him and Silverstone. ‘That case should have come to me and my team. You know it and I know it.’

      ‘This is your first day back, Peter. And it’s a missing girl.’

      ‘So? I haven’t got anything else on the board and if it’s a missing girl, it’s not likely to be related to Tom, is it? Paedos’ 101. Basic training. Ninety-eight per cent of the time, they go for boys or girls. Not both.’

      Silverstone stepped forward and let the door close behind him. ‘That may be, but I still feel it’s too close and too soon, Peter. I want the parents to know that the person handling this is on it one hundred per cent. No distractions.’

      ‘Right. So you give it to a guy who’s already got a full caseload. That makes sense. Sir. And what progress has DS Phillips made on the Jane Doe or my son?’

      Silverstone sighed heavily. ‘This is not about DS Phillips, Peter. Can you honestly tell me that you’re ready to cope with something like this? Whether it’s a boy or a girl. Because I don’t know that you are, and I’m not going to risk the safety of a thirteen-year-old girl to prove a point.’

      Not going to risk the safety of your promotion, more like, Pete thought. ‘If I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t be standing here. And I’ve got a damn good team behind me so, even if you doubt me, there’s no reason to doubt them.’

      ‘It’s not that I doubt you, Peter. Your abilities as a detective are well established. I simply don’t want to put you in a position where you might become overwhelmed, for personal reasons – the similarities between this case and your own, albeit this one’s a girl.’

      DI Underhill sat down at last and Silverstone turned to him. ‘Help me out here, Colin. What do you think? Honestly?’

      ‘Honestly?’

      Pete looked at him. Honesty was the last thing the DCI wanted from his deputy right now. What he wanted was support.

      ‘I can see both sides here, sir,’ the older man said. ‘I mean, I can understand why you’d show Pete some consideration, in the circumstances, but I can also understand how it might leave him feeling frustrated. Not trusted. And how it will look to the rest of the guys out there.’ He nodded towards the squad room.

      Silverstone’s eyebrows pinched closer together. ‘And

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