“What a sleaze! He gave the creeps. When he looked at Teigan’s picture and said she was ‘pretty young.’ Ugh.” Rebecca physically shuddered.
They were back in the Wymondham office, having taken the seized laptops in to be searched. To Clarke’s dismay, most of IT had gone home by the time they got back, so they’d been warned that the laptops most likely wouldn’t be accessed until the following morning. He glanced at his watch and sighed. It was half seven already.
Rebecca sat down on the swivel chair and put her feet up on the one opposite as she pulled out her phone. “IT better find some dodgy images on his laptop, as we need to nail him ASAP. Or, even better, pictures of Teigan.” She frowned as she thought twice about what she said. “Not that I want to see pictures of her being harmed …” She waved the statement away. “You know what I mean.”
Clarke ignored her as he paced around the room. His mind was filled with Monty’s haunting words. If you just focus on me, you’ll have no chance of finding the poor girl. It was a trick, he knew it. Monty was trying to throw them off, thinking that he actually cared about the welfare of this girl. He was intelligent — that much was clear. Monty would have covered his tracks well if he’d had a liaison with Teigan. But the laptop was key. Any dodgy searches on the dark web, any downloads of inappropriate pictures would be found. And through those, they would expose Monty’s darker side.
Clarke glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. “Reynolds, no offence, but I’ve seen enough of your face today. Let’s call it a day, eh?”
Clarke winced as his daughter squealed gleefully into his ear. She was climbing all over him, her little arms around his neck and her bottom resting on his arm, tucked safely around her. It was past eight o’clock, and she should be going to bed, but his mother-in-law had decided to make a point. Naturally.
“She was desperate to spend time with you, so I’ve let her stay up. You did say you’d be back at seven, after all,” she said as she scooped up her handbag to leave. “Oh, and we’ve been making cakes this afternoon. She’s had rather a lot of icing, so she may be on a bit of a sugar high.” She smirked and waved as she shut the front door behind her. “Good luck!”
Twenty minutes later, Kacey was still enjoying her sugar rush, and he was sure his mother-in-law was still enjoying the despairing look on his face as she’d left.
The oven timer pinged. He untangled Kacey’s arms and legs from him and settled her down in her seat.
“Where’s Ted?” She looked up at him with her big brown eyes, her mother’s eyes, and started banging her little fists on the table. “I want Ted. He’s hungry, too.”
“Ted doesn’t eat fish fingers,” Clarke said as he was scrambling around for her special Peppa Pig plate and cutlery. He knew she wouldn’t eat without them. “He’s a vegetarian.”
“I’m a vege-warian, too.”
He rolled his eyes — he should have seen that one coming. “No, no, you’re not. Ted is one because Teddies have different sorts of tummies. You need meat and fish to stay strong.” The majority of his staples for Kacey were chicken nuggets, fish fingers, and the occasional turkey dinosaur-shaped escalope, so he couldn’t indulge a vegetarian whim by his daughter.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out and scrolled through almost automatically. His phone had reconnected to his WiFi, and his personal emails were flooding through.
Reminder: RAC membership expires IN TWO DAYS. Renew now.
BBC news highlights: Teigan Walker, 14, still missing …
He was pulled back to the present by Kacey’s chatter. “Daddy, Daddy, Ted wants fishy fingers. Fishy fingers, fishy fingers, for me and Ted!”
Crap, the dinner. He spun around and took the slightly overcooked fish fingers out of the oven. He popped them on a plain blue plate — he couldn’t find the Peppa Pig — and opened a pot of mixed sweet corn and peas, which he bunged into the microwave.
“No, I want Peppa.” Kacey shook her head from left to right as soon as she saw the blue plate.
Clarke exhaled heavily through his mouth. “I don’t know where Peppa is, sweetie, so it’s got to be the blue one today, okay?”
“No! Want Peppa!” Kacey banged her fists on the table as she continued to chant. “Peppa, Peppa, Peppa!”
“We don’t have Peppa–”
“Granny always gives me Peppa Pig.”
“Well, Granny’s not here,” Clarke snapped.
“I want Granny!” Kacey started to cry the painful howl that she burst into when she was exhausted and over-stimulated.
He couldn’t help but feel the burn of jealousy at his daughter’s words. She had Granny all the time. He glanced at the “Number One Dad” mug on the side and let his head fall into his hands. It was going to be a long night.