Stranger Child by Rachel Abbott

anybody’s radar. They still needed to know what had happened to her, and where she had been. For once, it seemed there was some news.
    ‘I think we’ve got a real lead this time.’ Nic Havers was waving a piece of paper at Becky, looking pleased with himself. ‘Have you got a moment?
    ‘Course I have.’ Since joining CID, Nic had a perpetual smile on his face, and to Becky he looked like an overgrown puppy with the most enormous feet and the eager face of a child at Christmas.
    ‘I’ve been speaking to British Transport Police,’ Nic said. ‘They think they have Natasha on camera. In fact, they’ve been looking for her, waiting until the next time she steps on one of their trains to keep an eye on her – possibly arrest her.’
    Becky looked surprised.
    ‘What do they think she’s done?’
    ‘They want to come in and talk to us about it.’
    ‘Well done, Nic. I’ll give DCI Douglas a call to see if he wants to join us. When are they coming?’
    ‘Now, apparently.’
    Becky raised her eyebrows in surprise and reached for the phone.
    *
    As she waited for Tom and British Transport Police to arrive, Becky walked across the incident room to have a word with Charley.
    ‘Now you’ve had a bit of time to think about it, what’s your take on Natasha, Charley?’
    The young detective chewed her bottom lip and gave a small shake of the head.
    ‘I think she’s confused. She probably felt secure with the people she’s been living with. However they treated her, that’s what she now considers to be the norm. My guess is that she would prefer right now to be back where she understands the rules.’
    ‘You mean she could be suffering from a kind of Stockholm syndrome – you know, a younger version of Patty Hearst?’ Becky asked. ‘I’m not old enough to have been around at the time, but Hearst was kidnapped in her late teens. Within a few weeks of her abduction she joined her kidnappers and even took part in a bank raid with them. So if just weeks of mind control, imprisonment and abuse made a nineteen-year-old feel she belonged with her captors, what impact could six
years
of that life have on a child as young as Tasha?’
    Charley’s look of revulsion at the idea didn’t escape Becky. She clearly had a lot to learn. Expect the worst and be surprised if it’s not as bad as you think was Becky’s motto. That way people ceased to have the ability to shock and appal you.
    Becky’s thoughts were interrupted as the door to the incident room opened and two men in British Transport Police uniform entered. Both well over six feet tall; one of them had shoulders like an American footballer and a face to match, with a squashed nose and a wide forehead. Becky didn’t think she would like to argue with him about non-payment of her train fare.
    Tom Douglas was right behind them, and she walked across to meet her visitors.
    Once the formalities had been completed, the big burly policeman, who had introduced himself as PC Mark Heywood, asked if he could use Becky’s computer to access the CCTVfootage he had uploaded. It took no more than a few seconds for Heywood to pull up a grainy picture. He clicked the play icon.
    The sequence lasted a few seconds.
    Tasha
, Becky thought. A young girl with fair hair wearing a dark duffle coat was walking through the train. A dark-haired lad who looked to be in his mid-teens was walking towards her and stood to one side to let her pass. She glanced at him with a half smile, but didn’t speak and walked on, out of shot.
    ‘Is that your girl?’ Heywood asked Becky.
    ‘Yes. I’m as certain as I can be from this video that the girl is Natasha Joseph. But why have you got this footage?’
    ‘We’d been alerted to something going on on routes to the north of the city, so we pulled in the CCTV from the trains for the relevant period. That’s where we found your girl.’
    ‘When was this, and what’s she done?’ Tom asked.
    ‘She boarded a train to Leeds at Manchester Victoria