All the Rage

Adam Fawley
4 April 2018
14.09

`˜He found her on Facebook,' says Patsie. `˜They messaged for a bit and then she bunked off school and met up with him about a month ago. But don't tell her mum `“ she'd go mental.'

`˜How did the meeting go?'

Patsie shrugs. `˜OK. Dunno really. She said he was all right. They went to Nando's.'

As if that's important. As if it makes any difference at all.

`˜He told her he's living in Leeds now,' she says suddenly. `˜That she could go up there to see him.'

`˜And is she going to do that?'

Patsie shakes her head. `˜She said her mum would never let her.'

I hold my breath, try not to look too eager. `˜But if he'd turned up `“ last night, say, as a surprise `“ would she have gone with him?'

Patsie stares at me, as if this has only just occurred to her. `˜I guess,' she says eventually. `˜I mean, she'd never get into a car with a weirdo or anything. But if it was her dad, that'd be different.'

* * *

`˜Could I see her room?' asks Somer. `˜Would that be OK?'

Fiona flashes her a look. `˜Shouldn't you be out there looking for her? If some paedophile has abducted her what difference will looking at her room make? It's a complete waste of time `“'

`˜We don't know it's a paedophile,' says Somer gently. `˜She may be with someone she knows. That's why we need to find out as much about her as we can.'

Fiona looks at her and then away; the flash of temper evaporates as quickly as it came. She starts to cry again.

Somer puts her hand on the woman's shoulder. `˜And please believe me that we're doing everything possible to find her. We already have a team out searching the entire surrounding area.'

Fiona nods, and Somer tightens her grip a little. And when the woman looks up, she asks the question again, silently this time.

`˜OK,' Fiona says at last. `˜It's upstairs. On the left.'

It's like staring at her teenage self. The boy bands may have changed but pretty much everything else about Sasha Blake's room is uncannily like the one Somer left behind in Guildford more than a decade ago. When she helped her parents move house last year, it was all still there, like a time capsule, clean and tidy and dusted just as she left it. And now it's as if she's back there all over again. The mirror draped with pink fairy lights, the dreamcatcher over the bed, the box poking out underneath stuffed with shoes and scarves and bits of cheap jewellery, and the row of paperbacks on the shelf by the window. Pride and Prejudice, The Wings of the Dove, Look Back in Anger, Poems by John Keats. There's a laptop on the desk, with a pile of National Geographic beside it and a book called 1,000 Things to Do Before You Die. There are yellow Post-its purfling the pages.

She wants to seize the book and bury it somewhere. She doesn't want that book staring at Fiona Blake every time she comes in here `“ because `“ because `“

Five minutes later there's a noise behind her and she turns to see Fawley at the door. He's staring round at the room, just like she did.

`˜Looks like she's a bright kid,' he says eventually. `˜Henry James isn't your usual fifteen-year-old reading, is it?'

Somer shakes her head and holds up a sheet of paper. `˜I just found this letter on the desk. It's from Vogue `“ they've offered her work experience for this summer. I can't even imagine how much competition there must have been for something like that.'

The flutter of unease Somer's had all morning has sharpened into foreboding. It shouldn't make a difference, that Sasha is clever and likes poetry and is interested in the world, but it does. It does.

`˜Are those hers too?' Fawley says now, walking over to a cork board hanging by the window. It's thick with photos, but they're very different to the ones her mother has downstairs: Sasha and her friends, grinning, sticking their tongues out, making rabbit ears behind each other's heads. And beside the snaps and selfies, a scattering of sketches: what looks like the view across Port Meadow, a bowl of oranges and pears, a pair of pink stilettos, one lying on its side.

And suddenly Somer sees what Fawley's getting at. `˜Oh, you mean the shoes?'

He shrugs. `˜And the Vogue thing. And the fact that Faith lives barely a mile from here.'

She joins him, and they stare in silence at the drawing.

`˜An interest in fashion isn't much, by way of a link,' she says eventually. `˜Not when you're talking teenage girls. And Faith is three years older, at college `“'

`˜Just look at her,' he says. `˜Sasha, I mean.'

And she knows what he's getting at. It's not just the hair or the facial resemblance. It's only a hunch `“ an intuition `“ but something tells her Sasha is the girl Faith has always wanted to be. Pretty in a happy, effortless, unforced way. Confident about who she is, content in her own skin, and barely able to imagine what it might feel like not to be. Even as her anxiety sharpens for Sasha, Somer still finds her heart aching for Faith.

`˜I'll give Faith a call and ask her if they've ever met,' she says at last. `˜Being so nearby, I suppose it's possible.'

`˜And get me a list of all male employees under thirty at those building firms we've been looking at. It's possible one of them is this older boyfriend Sasha's mother is apparently unaware of.'

Somer didn't know about him either, not till this moment. But this is the Fawley she knows `“ the Fawley they all know. The one who finds unseen connections, the one who gets there first.

She glances at him. `˜You think there really could be a connection with what happened to Faith?'

`˜Yes,' he says heavily. `˜I'm afraid I do.'

But she can't read his expression. Resignation? Apprehension?

`˜Update DS Gislingham, please,' he says. `˜And then go through this room with a fine-tooth comb. Look for anything from her father, and any sort of diary. Basically anything that might give us some names `“ male names. And take that laptop in for Baxter to look at, but make sure you get Mrs Blake's written permission first.'

`˜Where are you going, sir?'

`˜To Headington, to see Isabel Parker. The school have sent her home. Let's just hope she remembers something Patsie doesn't.'

He stops at the door. `˜And tell Gislingham I want everyone back at base at 6.00. If there've been no other developments.'

He doesn't need to spell it out.

* * *

* * *

Back at the incident room, the atmosphere is dense with anxiety. They know the stats `“ how quickly the clock runs down on abduction victims, how low the chances are of finding them alive once twenty-four hours are passed.

Gislingham is at the front, collating the Sasha material on a whiteboard. A new one, set up next to Faith's. Close enough that they can start drawing lines between them if they need to, but not touching, not yet, because Gislingham is superstitious, and he's not alone. No one wants these two cases to be connected. No one.

`˜There's no sign of Sasha on the speed camera on Cherwell Drive last night,' says Quinn, looking up and catching his eye. `˜I'm going to call the bus company `“ see if they have CCTV in that vehicle.'

Baxter glances up. `˜Good luck with that,' he says heavily.

Gis turns and looks for Everett. `˜Anything on her mobile yet?'

`˜I've asked for the call log,' she says. `˜But the phone is definitely off.'

`˜When was the last signal?'

`˜Last night, at 9.35 in Summertown. Must have been just before they got on the bus.'

`˜Isn't that rather an odd time for her to turn it off?' says Gis.

Ev shrugs. `˜Perhaps her battery was low.'

`˜I've trawled her social media,' says Baxter, `˜and Patsie's right `“ looks like Sasha's father did find her through Facebook. There's a Jonathan Blake living in Leeds listed among her Friends, but he must have contacted her privately after that because he hasn't posted anything on her page.'

`˜What about boyfriends `“ blokes her own age `“ anything standing out?'

Baxter shakes his head. `˜Most of Sasha's feed is about the four of them `“ the girls, I mean. They call themselves the `њLIPS`ќ. Lots of kiss emojis and stuff. As far as I can see those four are all but joined at the hip. Can't see blokes getting much of a look-in.'

Ev looks across at him. `˜Just because it's not there doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Kids know their parents stalk them online. They'd put stuff like that on WhatsApp or Snapchat `“ somewhere like that. Somewhere private.'

Gis sighs. `˜I've got that coming too, have I?'

`˜Oh, I don't know,' says Ev with a smile. `˜Your Billy's only two `“ I reckon you've got a good ten years yet.'

Gis walks round and stands behind Baxter's chair, looking at his screen. Then he bends down, as if to take a closer look. `˜What about the Parrie stuff?' he asks in an undertone.

Baxter glances up. `˜There's Wikipedia for starters, but that doesn't have much on the MO. But you can find that too if you're prepared to dig a bit `“ the usual true crime sites and bloggers who think they know better than we do. And a whole bunch of conspiracy theorist tossers, of course `“ Parrie's very popular with them.'

Gislingham makes a face. `˜Now there's a surprise. What about the trial transcripts?'

`˜Just come through. Though I've not found much yet. I've had to drop it pro tem, with all this about Sasha Blake.'

`˜Fair enough, but keep on it, yeah? I've got a bad feeling about this, and the last thing we need right now is Gavin Parrie coming back to bite us on the arse.'

* * *

At Windermere Avenue, Somer is still working her way through Sasha's bedroom. She's trying to leave everything as she found it, so that if Sasha comes home she won't feel her space has been violated. And all the more `“ and it's a thought that ices her spine `“ if she's already been violated in a far worse way. But however carefully she searches, she's still prying, still an intruder, still betraying this girl she's started to like. The clothes in the wardrobe are the same things she wore once `“ things she could easily see Faith Appleford wearing or talking about on one of her vlogs: the clean lines, the preference for plains over patterns, the one or two retro pieces that must have been shrewd selections from charity shops, the more expensive things carefully chosen to have as many different uses as possible. Every object in the room says something about this girl `“ a postcard from her grandparents in the Algarve, a picture of a little boy with a bucket and spade tucked into one of the paperbacks, a handwritten note on the back, faded to sepia, Weston-Super-Mare 1976. There are annotations in the books, too `“ Keats' `˜To Autumn' is `˜unbelievable', `˜glorious', but Endymion only gets `˜flabby', underlined twice. And there are six gleeful exclamation marks alongside a passage describing how a phrenologist who examined Thomas Hardy's head declared he would come `˜to no good'. All this brings a smile, but it's not what Somer is looking for. There's no notebook, no diary, no secret stash of sexy underwear, no pictures on the board of anyone who might be her boyfriend, and after an hour of searching, Somer is tempted to wonder if such a boyfriend even exists. But as she knows full well, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They haven't got Sasha's phone, and they haven't even started on her laptop. And those are fine and private places to hide a love that dare not tweet its name.

She takes one more look under the bed, then goes to stand up but her bracelet snags on the carpet and she has to kneel down again to untangle it. And it's only then that she realizes there's something under the bed after all `“ what looks like a lipstick, rolled over to the far corner. There's no reason to retrieve it `“ it can't possibly be relevant to anything at all `“ but something makes her lie down on her back and reach out an arm.

And that's when she sees it.

* * *