Lost Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

without having to spend it dodging bruised egos.
    ‘But what if he’s right about Luke King?’ she said. ‘Maybe Eric Randle should come first.’
    ‘Yeah, if he’s right he’ll take his applause. But if he’s wrong he’ll make sure we cop the flack. Just me and the new girl.’
    They were turning to walk out of the room together when someone shouted from the back of the room, ‘What’s the old boy’s name again? The one who called it in?’
    Laura turned around. Yusuf, a young Asian officer with a soul patch on his chin and thin-rimmed glasses, was sitting in front of a computer screen. ‘Eric Randle,’ she shouted back.
    ‘In his sixties? Scruffy? Lives on the Ashcroft estate?’
    Laura nodded.
    ‘I might be wrong,’ he continued, looking up now, ‘but I think his name came up in the abduction cases, when the children first started disappearing.’
    Laura snapped a look back at Pete. They raised their eyebrows at the same time. This was about to get very interesting.

Chapter Seven
    Eric Randle lived in a pebble-dashed semi on the Ashcroft estate, a collection of local-authority cul-de-sacs and high privet hedges. It wasn’t Laura’s first visit—she had been given a tour of the Blackley trouble spots on her first day—but this was her first incursion as part of a case.
    Pete seemed like he knew it well, and as they did the circuit of the estate Laura started to understand why. The neighbourhood grocer had a red neon sign, but it was cracked and dirty, the windows protected by metal grilles during the day and shutters after it closed. Young girls walked the streets, but they weren’t the carefree teenagers they should have been, with college books tucked under their arms or heading into town to work in chain-stores on a Saturday. These girls pushed prams, their hair pulled back tightly as their fingers glittered with cheap gold, a ring for each finger, the gleam broken only by the orange glow of a cigarette as the smoke swirled around the next generation in the pushchair beneath. Laura didn’t see many smiles, and as Pete drove on she sensed the hostile recognition in their look. They were the police. They were trouble.
    ‘Seems a strange range of suspects,’ she said.
    Pete looked over from his driving. ‘Huh?’
    Laura pointed outside the car. ‘The son of a local hotshot or this. I’m getting a feeling already which way it’s going to go.’
    ‘The kids are ruining this place,’ he said. ‘It used to be okay, twenty years ago.’ He looked over at her. ‘But do you know what? There are some good people here. The older ones, the ones who didn’t have the savings to get out when it turned to shit, scared to go out, scared to stay in.’
    Laura had seen these waste estates in London, but they seemed different there. In London they were more like spots of squalor in a vibrant whole, just part of the London jumble. She had been in the north long enough to know that the affluent areas were usually out of sight, often over a hill or two.
    But it wasn’t just the housing that gave the estate away for what it was. It was the desolate looks in people’s eyes, the hopelessness, the cold northern winds etched into their pale complexions, the hunched shoulders, their hands pink and raw.
    ‘Do you know what the worst thing is?’ Pete said. ‘There are some decent kids too, whose parents do their best, but they just get swept up by the rest of the shit and end up with needles in their arms or a pocket full of rocks. By then it’s too late. Just debris, that’s all they are round here.’
    Laura looked back out of the window and realised that Pete had described the real poverty she could see. It wasn’t about money or housing. It was about hope. Every face she looked into seemed to hold an acceptance that thiswas it, this was as good as it was ever going to get. It was no wonder they took shortcuts.
    ‘Here we go,’ said Pete, and he swung the car into a street of semi-detached houses.
    Laura