Free The Ice House by John Connor Page B

of the police cars she couldn’t see the body on the ground or the group of people around it until the woman moved her forward. It was lying in the road almost exactly in the middle of the turn-off down to the house. There were two police officers in uniform crouched beside it, someone in ordinary clothes standing a little further away. She couldn’t see it properly, only that it was an adult, too large for Rebecca. It looked like a policeman – she could see the uniform. But if it was the man Rebecca had texted about then she assumed it wasn’t a policeman. Because why would a policeman try to shoot her daughter?
    When the guy in charge appeared she started shouting at him, angrily, repeating over and over again that she was the girl’s mother so she had to be allowed to be with her and to use her mobile phone. ‘It’s my ten-year-old daughter Rebecca. She’s down there somewhere. I know she’s here.’
    ‘There is no little girl here,’ he said. He looked tired and irri­tated. ‘Your daughter is not here.’
    She forced herself to stand still in front of him, to look at him, to deal with him. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Do you have ID?’
    ‘Diego Molina,’ he said, but he didn’t offer any ID as he turned hers over in his hand, scrutinising it as if it might be fake. He had her mobile in his other hand. ‘I’m an inspector.’ His face came into focus. He pocketed the phone and ID, held out his hand for her to shake. She ignored it, but he barely ­noticed. ‘I’m in charge here,’ he said. ‘You are Julia Martin? This is your house?’ He looked too young to be in charge of anything – thirty at most, clean-shaven, pretty features, unusually blond, wearing a pastel-blue open-necked shirt and off-white slacks, as if about to enjoy an evening in town, before this had struck. A beautiful lock of hair dangled over his forehead. He smelled strongly of aftershave.
    ‘This is my house, yes. Are you saying my daughter isn’t in the house, or anywhere here?’
    ‘No. There is no little girl here. Or anywhere near. Why do you think she would be here?’
    ‘She texted me. She told me she was here, only twenty ­minutes ago. She said she was on the hill, waiting.’ She was on the verge of reporting other things Rebecca had texted, but simple ­caution stopped her. What if the dead man, lying there, really was a policeman? She had a sudden thought that she should have erased Rebecca’s last text, then immediately thought the idea foolish, because surely Rebecca had made a mistake. In any case this man would need her access code before he could read the text. He hadn’t asked for that. Not yet.
    ‘OK. Then we will search again,’ he said. He motioned back to a man she saw was standing just behind him, also in ordinary civilian clothes, who nodded and started speaking softly into a handheld radio. ‘But not in this immediate area,’ Molina added. ‘We’ve already searched the house and grounds for survivors. We’re waiting for the helicopter now. It’s on its way from Malaga. It has specialist search capabilities. It will quickly cover these hills – better than we can on foot alone. Is there anywhere nearby that she would run to, if she was startled?’
    ‘She could be hiding in the garden, or down the slopes there. I think she probably meant the slopes below the house when she said she was on the hill. She knows them, she plays there. You need to let me through, I can look and I can shout for her …’
    ‘You already have shouted. I’m sure she would have heard. I did, very clearly. And we’ve already been through the property. She’s not there. If she’s further out we will find her soon enough. She will not come to harm.’
    He didn’t have a clue. He didn’t know what he was up against, what had happened. But she couldn’t put him right. She had to keep her mouth shut or she would end up in some cell answering questions about the past instead of free to look for Rebecca. He