No Going Back by Casey Kelleher (black male authors TXT) 📗

Now though, now that Lucy had said it out loud, the fact that the police even considered it a possibility made it painfully real.

Forty-eight hours they had said. And Ashley’s time was up. ‘Christ,’ he said again, almost crying now as he cupped his hands around his head. Frantic that once again this was all on him. This was all his fault. ‘They wouldn’t do that. Surely?’

‘I think that it’s a line of enquiry that we’re going to need to follow up,’ Lucy said, giving Ashley fair warning that this was all going to come out, and seeing the look of dread spread across his face as he nodded in understanding.

‘Look, get yourself a cup of coffee and maybe bring something back for Shelby. She looks like she could do with something sweet to take the edge off. It will be good for the shock. I’m going to go and speak with my sergeant and then I’m going to pop downstairs and see how my colleagues are getting on with the security footage that covers the main entrance.’

Ashley nodded, about to walk away, when Lucy stopped him, placing her hand on his arm.

‘And maybe you should talk to Shelby? Tell her the truth, Ashley,’ Lucy said, full of seriousness now. ‘She’s not going to like what she hears, but it’s probably going to be better if she hears it from you. Don’t you think? Because she will find out eventually. And probably very soon. It’s just a matter of time now.’

‘You don’t really think it’s possible, do you? That they’re the ones that have taken Riley?’ Ashley said then, praying that Lucy would tell him that she highly doubted it. That he was just being paranoid. That there was no way that the Boland brothers could be involved. Only Lucy didn’t answer. Instead she squeezed Ashley’s arm, her silence and the grave look on her face, speaking louder than her words ever would.

32

‘We’ve gone through the tapes with your colleagues here and unfortunately the camera covering the main door of the ward wasn’t in operation. It hasn’t been working all week.’ The security guard couldn’t hide his embarrassment as DC Holder stared at him incredulously, in complete disbelief at what he was hearing. ‘Maintenance were sorting it, but they were waiting for a new part to come in.’ He shrugged apologetically, knowing there was still worse to come.

‘And there’s nothing covering Shelby Cooke’s door either. It’s just out of shot. The suites are right by the nurses’ station, so it would have been covered by the same camera.’

‘The main camera for the ward is out? You have got to be kidding me!’ Holder said, though in all honesty, he wasn’t entirely surprised. In his bitter experience on the job, things like this happened way too often, making their job so much harder than it needed to be.

‘All we’ve got on here is a pretty standard night shift. Everything checks out. I’ve had the senior members of staff vouch for everyone on here. A couple of cleaners on the ward. All the midwives on shift last night. It all looks pretty much routine,’ the security guard said, letting the tape run to the end, to the time when Shelby must have noticed that the baby was gone. Because the screen showed the nurses frantically running up and down the corridor then, setting off the alarms, before checking every room in a bid to find baby Riley.

‘Where else isn’t covered up here?’ Holder said, closing his eyes in despair, wanting to make sure that he got as much information as possible, so he knew what they were up against. ‘Is there any other way that a person could get in or out of the ward without being seen? Apart from, of course, the main door,’ Holder said sarcastically.

‘The fire exit stairwell. It’s at the end of the corridor. Near Shelby Cooke’s room.’

‘Where does it lead to?’

‘Down the side of the hospital, straight out to the car park.’

‘Fucking marvellous!’ Holder said, closing his eyes briefly in utter despair. ‘So we’ve got fuck all then? Nothing on camera and two exits that are completely uncovered. And nobody saw anything dodgy?’

‘Your lot are still questioning all the staff,’ the guard said, defensive now. ‘A couple of midwives went home after finishing their shifts. Think your boss mentioned that he was sending officers out to their homes to interview them too. I don’t know, maybe we’ve picked up on something on the cameras that cover the hospital’s main entrance?’

He was relieved when the detective constable got up to go and find out.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Holder said, heading out the door after Lucy before he said something he regretted. He was willing to bet his monthly salary that the security guard and the rest of their team were nigh on useless when it came to keeping things in order around here on the night shift. Guessing that they were just as lapsed and lazy, that they wouldn’t be very much help to him.

The security tapes were all they had to go on so far. They held the key to finding who had taken Riley. Because so far, they had no other clues. No sightings of anyone taking the child. It was as if the kid had just vanished into thin air.

Making his way to the security room by the main entrance, Holder hoped Lucy was having better luck.

‘Have you got something?’ He guessed, by the animated look on her face, as she stood with the phone to her ear, that she’d had more success than he’d had.

‘Er, you could say that,’ Lucy said, placing her hand over the receiver to fill him in as she waited for the person at the other end to pick up.

‘Take a look at that. See anyone familiar?’ Lucy nodded towards the screen that had been paused, the image zoomed in. ‘We managed to get this from the camera covering the back of the car park. It’s a bit blurry, but