Hurt (DS Lucy Black) by Brian McGilloway

collections – the objects – to be equally disturbing, reflecting as these did the innocence of the ones Kay had clearly been grooming. In the bottom corner, beneath the glove, she found a bar of hotel soap and pointed it out to Fleming, who groaned.
    ‘Some of these stubs are years old,’ Lucy commented.
    Fleming shook his head. ‘Anything you see there connect him to Karen Hughes?’
    ‘No,’ Lucy said. ‘If anything, if all this stuff is connected to his victims, they’re a little young in comparison with Karen. She was mid-teens, this stuff suggests that might have been too old for Kay.’ She gestured towards the black bag. ‘What was he dumping?’
    Fleming lifted the black bag and emptied it. Pictures cut from newspapers and magazines spilled out onto the floor. One by one, they picked through them, examining each. While each image was of a child, none were of a sexual nature. The children pictured were predominantly pre-teen.
    They worked through each image, but again, none related to Karen Hughes.
    ‘He must have other stuff somewhere,’ Fleming said. ‘Presumably on his computer. He’s stashed it somewhere after we called for the dog hairs.’
    ‘Would he have destroyed it?’ Lucy asked. ‘Or hidden it in the garden?’
    Fleming shook his head, his breath sweet as he exhaled. ‘If Kay’s been building these collections for years, his real one will be massive. He’ll not just get rid of it. Someone’s keeping it for him or he’s hidden it somewhere. It’s not out back. I searched the shed, checked the lawn for signs of recent disturbance. Nothing.’
    They had just finished bagging the collections to be transferred back to the Strand Road when Fleming took a call from one of the district teams to say that another fifteen-year-old girl, called Sarah Finn, had been reported missing.

Chapter Nineteen
    Sarah Finn’s mother, Sinead, sat on the sofa in the living room of their family home in Fallowfield Gardens, in Gobnascale. She was in her mid-thirties, at most, dressed in a heavy white dressing gown over her pyjamas. She wore thick grey bed socks into which she had tucked the legs of her pink pyjama bottoms. Her legs were crossed, the foot of the upper leg jittering as she spoke.
    ‘The school phoned just after lunch to say she’s been off all day. I thought maybe she’d bunked off with friends.’
    ‘Had she bunked off before?’ Lucy asked.
    Finn shrugged lightly. ‘A few times, maybe.’
    ‘And she’s not been in touch since?’
    The woman shook her head. ‘I checked when I got in from the shops but she weren’t in her room. She normally gets herself back in from school and that.’
    ‘So when was the last time you saw her?’
    The woman reached across to the pack of cigarettes on the table next to the sofa and withdrew one, shaking it free of the pack. She lit it, dragged deeply, then held it between the fingers of the hand resting on her knee. Lucy couldn’t help but notice that her nails looked freshly painted. She glanced across to where the cigarette box sat and, sure enough, a bottle of nail polish stood behind them. If she’d been concerned by the news of her daughter’s absence from school, it hadn’t affected her cosmetics routine.
    ‘Last night some time.’
    ‘Last night?’ Fleming asked, glancing at his watch. It was almost three. ‘What time?’
    ‘Before seven, maybe. She were going out with her friends.’
    ‘You didn’t see her come home last night?’
    ‘I went to bed early.’
    ‘And this morning? Was she home this morning?’
    The woman shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She normally sorts herself out in the morning.’
    ‘Was her bed made or unmade?’ Lucy asked. ‘Had she slept in it?’
    Again a shrug. ‘I don’t know. It was made, I think. But she always makes it.’
    ‘Has she ever run away before?’ Lucy asked.
    ‘Never.’
    ‘So you last saw her before seven last night. Almost twenty hours ago,’ Fleming said.
    The woman laughed