Free Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham

shop and bar had been checked,
     every inch of beach and, as soon as the Marine Patrol had been brought in, as much of the water as could be usefully searched
     before the light had gone.
    Siesta Village was hardly a hot spot as far as crime was concerned and apart from a couple that had been put up privately
     by security-conscious bar owners, there were precisely two CCTV cameras on the main stretch of the Beach Road. Amber-Marie
     could be seen walking out of the Pelican Palms on the single camera at the resort’s main entrance/exit, but there was no sign
     of her on any other camera anywhere in the village.
    In whichever direction she had walked, Amber-Marie had simply wandered on to the street and disappeared within a few minutes
     of leaving the side of the pool at the Pelican Palms. Nobody questioned in those first few days had any useful information.
     Nobody remembered seeing her and, despite repeated appeals, not a single witness came forward to say that they had seen anything
     suspicious.
    ‘She’d trust anyone.’ Patti said that to Jeff Gardner the first time she saw him, and she kept right on saying it.
    She was not going to argue with the smart money.
    Gardner understood that those first, ‘golden’ twenty-four hours probably seemed an eternity to Patti, but for him and the
     other detectives brought in from the Crimes Against Persons Unit, they went by in a flash. They became forty-eight hours quickly
     enough too, and long before that first week was out, the case had slipped off the front page of the
Herald-Tribune
, and was no longer a lead item on the local TV news.
    Careful to make sure that the girl’s mother was nowhere within earshot, most detectives began to talk about Amber-Marie Wilson
     in the past tense.
    A homicide case, in everything but name.
    Not for Gardner though, not completely. How could he not have at least a shred of hope? How could he see the unconditional
     love on the face of his own little girl and write off Patti Lee Wilson’s daughter? He could not bring himself to give up on
     her, whatever common sense told him. He had to keep faith, especially with a girl who was … damaged.
    ‘Makes her special though,’ Patti had told him that one night. Beer on her breath in a parking lot near the beach, shivering
     a little as the temperature fell. ‘Amber-Marie doesn’t see the same things other kids see, you understand? She doesn’t see
     the bad things.’
    Gardner had wrapped her jacket around her and put her into the back of a cab. He had thought, not until now.
    He slowed and turned into the front lot of the Brigadoon Suites, parked up next to a faded orange Subaru with a battered front
     wing. Climbing out of the car, he glanced across at some of the brightly lit signs in the strip mall next door. Not for the
     first time, he thought how handy it was for any guests at the Brigadoon Suites who needed twenty-four-hour dog grooming or
     refurbished computer components.
    He walked towards a two-storey block of rooms, a wooden stairway at each end.
    Almost every inch of the place was the colour of an old ballet shoe, dusty pink or rose or whatever they called it on the
     side of the tin.Gardner had seen plenty of similar colour schemes at places like this. Wall-to-wall purples, greens and gunmetal greys. The
     owners had clearly seen little need to splash out and had opted to save money on paint by bulk-buying colours that were –
     quite rightly – unpopular elsewhere.
    He saw the door of the manager’s office open and watched an old woman walk out. She looked at him, but he just raised a hand.
     He did not need telling the way.
    Climbing the pink stairs, his hand on the flaking pink banister rail, he tried to get at least a few words clear in his mind.
     He did not want this to take all day. It was after lunch, and he wondered if she would have started drinking yet.
    He walked to the door of Room 1224 and knocked. Stepped back and waited. Knocked again.
    ‘You looking for