Free Child's Play by Maureen Carter Page B

could but she just didn’t have anything concrete to offer. One more question then they’d hit the road.
    â€˜It’s a big ask, I know, Miss Fox, but can you think of anyone who’d want to harm Caitlin?’
    â€˜Look, I probably shouldn’t say this, but …’ Twice, she opened her mouth to speak before finally putting Harries out of his misery. ‘I think she may have been harming herself.’

THIRTEEN
    â€˜S he saw Caitlin pissed?’ Sarah cast an incredulous glance at her passenger. ‘Is that it?’ The Audi was parked a few doors up from the girl’s granny’s house. After wrapping up at the school, Harries had cadged a lift from No-Shit, caught Sarah grabbing a bite of late lunch in the car. Amazing what doe eyes and a rumbling stomach will do. She’d taken pity, offered him shares in her sausage roll and salt and vinegar crisps. His contribution had been filling her in on events at Queen’s Ridge.
    â€˜Stoned. Pissed. Hammered. Plastered. Take your pick.’ He swallowed, wolfed another bite. ‘That’s what Jude reckons. Not in school obviously or she’d have reported it.’
    Sarah nodded, chewing slowly. That would certainly have blotted Caitlin’s apparently pristine copybook. ‘When you said “self-harming”, I thought—’
    â€˜Yeah.’ A magnanimous wave of the hand with the pastry sent flakes flying. ‘Me too.’
    She ducked. ‘Flipping heck, Dave. Watch what you’re doing with that.’
    â€˜Sorry, boss. I know what you mean though. I thought she’d spotted cuts, scars, knife marks, something like that. But Jude’s really into the health thing, reckons booze, fags, drugs are noxious substances. She’s got a real downer on anything of that sort.’
    Jude again? How very jolly. ‘Don’t tell me … she thinks the body’s a temple.’
    Eyebrows knotted, mouth open, hand stilled: the double-take was almost comical. ‘Do you know her, boss?’
    Way Dave had been waxing on, Sarah felt she’d known the bloody woman for years. ‘Let’s just say I’ve come across people like her.’ Up their own arse arty-farts. As a cop she’d witnessed real self harm: kids who’d slashed their wrists, walked in front of trains, dived off motorway bridges and had to be mopped off the tarmac. Caitlin, off her face, staggering down a back road in Moseley one night really wasn’t up there. ‘So what did Caitlin have to say for herself?’ Jude had been driving past when she saw her, Harries said. By the time she’d parked, the girl was nowhere in sight. She broached it with her the next day at school, but Caitlin laughed it off, said she must have a double; she’d been home all night.
    Sarah sighed. Fox hadn’t exactly clocked the girl shooting up. Even if Caitlin was on drugs it didn’t necessarily figure in her disappearance. But if Caitlin
was
using, it gave them good cause to fine-tooth comb the Reynolds’ place. She reached for her phone on the dash. ‘I’ll get on to Woodie.’
    â€˜If it’s about a search team, it’s in hand, boss.’ He’d already asked Twig to set the FSI wheels in motion.
    Nice one. ‘Ten out of ten.’ Much as it irked, Baker was right: Dave had no need to wait a year or two, he was sergeant material already. ‘Give the man a gold star.’
    â€˜Initiative or lateral thinking?’ His hand was on the door.
    â€˜Lip more like.’ Her smile faded as she reached for her attaché case, spotted a load of crumbs on her left sleeve. ‘Certainly not table manners.’
    â€˜What was that, boss?’
    â€˜Nothing.’ She buttoned her coat as they walked in step. ‘Y’know, Dave, the teacher could’ve got it all wrong about Caitlin. Mistaken identity and all that.’
    â€˜Jude was pretty adamant. Her eye-sight’s