The Girls Left Behind

by Emily Gunnis

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

The gripping new audiobook from the global bestselling author of THE GIRL IN THE LETTER Emily Gunnis is a heartwrenching story of a girl disappeared, a terrible wrong and powerful people with something to hide...

NO ONE BELIEVED THE GIRLS.
BUT BONES DON'T LIE...

The clock is ticking for Superintendent Jo Hamilton, who is just days from retirement from Sussex Police when the discovery of the bones of a young woman takes her back to a tragic unsolved case she worked on as WPC in the 1970s: the disappearance of a teenage girl from a notorious local children's home, not long after another young resident died in suspicious circumstances.

Jo is determined track down the victim's sister, convinced that re-opening the hushed-up wrongs of the past will uncover the truth of the girls' deaths. But will the trail lead her disturbingly close to home?

Your favourite authors adore Emily Gunnis's powerful, emotional and gripping bestsellers:

'Compelling, twisty, heart-wrenching... A novel that stays with you. I was gripped' Sophie Kinsella
'Utterly gripping, taut and powerful. An emotionally charged, compulsive, moving novel Adele Parks
'Fast paced, brilliantly plotted and desperately sad at times - all hallmarks of a bestseller' Lesley Pearse
'I really loved it! Tense, emotionally charged' Jenny Ashcroft
'Captivating and suspenseful' Jessica Fellowes

(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: October 12, 2023

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

‘Have you seen the remains?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And they’re definitely human?’

‘Yes, there’s a skull, and it looks like there’s head trauma.’

‘But it’s otherwise intact?’ DS Stanley James nodded at Superintendent Jo Hamilton.

‘Forensics are on their way, so we’ll know more once they’ve taken a look,’ Stanley added. ‘But, buried in a remote spot like this, I’d say we’re almost certainly looking at murder.’

Jo looked over her shoulder to the area of woodland cordoned off by the first responders since the grim discovery that morning, then out at the vast expanse of English Channel which met the Telscombe Cliffs where they stood.

‘Okay, let’s take a look.’ Jo had been sitting in her office alone, tying up the last of her caseloads for a final handover at the end of the week, when the buzz had started in the corridor. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it always felt like electricity when something big was kicking off; people huddled around desks, whispering, the word spreading like smoke. She would wait, impatiently, for the knock on her door to tell her what it was. Finally, today, it came in the form of a phone call, from DI Fred Jones. ‘Ma’am, a couple of developers have dug up some human remains. At the woods near Saltdean, on the Telscombe Cliffs. Stan thinks there’s an obvious skull injury.’

The relentless March rain of the last few days meant that their BMW had barely made it up the muddy track to the small area of woodland where they were now parked, next to a cluster of pickup trucks with ‘ARC development’ emblazoned on their flanks.

‘Who found the remains?’ Jo asked, her eyes fixed on the muddy tracks and the dozen trees in the clearing ahead of her. She looked over at the DS, who had only been on her team for a year but had already proved to be a valuable asset; hard-working, quick-thinking and respectful. In many ways, he reminded her of her brother, Charlie.

‘Two guys digging foundations for a Grand Designs type project, they’re turning the water tower into a residential property. They’ve been waiting months to get the go-ahead to start work, apparently. Good luck with that now,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Kate was the first responder. She’s interviewing the guys now.’

‘Water tower?’ Jo frowned, as Stan headed off up the track, wet mud splattering over the blue plastic coverings on his feet.

Jo glanced into the boot of Stan’s car, looking for more shoe protectors, to save her new boots from getting covered in mud – or worse, confiscated as evidence. She found some and pulled them on.

‘Not many people know the tower is here. It’s hidden in the trees,’ Stan added, as Jo caught up with him and the salty wind whipped at her skin. It was hard-going, a sea of mud, until they reached the woods, where the tangled tree roots had absorbed some of the sludge. Looking up, Jo saw it: the square concrete tower on stilts, hidden in the trees surrounding it. ‘Oh, that. I haven’t been up here for years,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise it was a water tower. I remember when it was a grain store in the eighties, some kids got trapped in it once, I was called up here to get them out.’

‘The remains are just over here, ma’am,’ said Stan, pointing down at a mound of earth next to a yellow JCB, cordoned off with police tape. Jo walked over slowly, not wanting to unsettle any of the waterlogged turf around Stan’s feet. She stopped and looked down to see a shallow grave and the partly exposed remains in the earth by her feet. Slowly, she squatted down, squinting in the spring sunlight as she trained her eyes on the scene in front of her. A skull, a collarbone and a femur emerging from the thawing mud. A body turned on its side and curled into the foetal position.

Despite the scores of dead bodies she had seen over the course of her thirty years in Sussex Police, it was always very sad to see the evidence of a life taken away, often in its prime. Jo stood for a moment, taking in the sorry scene; human remains were something she never got used to. But a long and illustrious career meant that her mind immediately began to race with the questions the forensic pathologist would now spend the next few days trying to figure out. Whose remains were they? How did they get here? How long had they been here? How did this person die?

From experience, she knew they would be able to get DNA from the bones, but that wasn’t much use if they had no idea whose skeleton it was, and therefore no clue who to match the DNA with. Once they suspected it was somebody’s relative, they could test the family. But now, at this point, it fell to other ways for Jo to try and work out who it was. Namely, the fractured clues at her feet; the scraps of clothing, what looked like a bit of a woman’s floral blouse – perhaps only an old sheet used to wrap the body in – and what seemed to be a piece of jewellery on a chain. Both things she would explore along with anything else forensics might find. When the pathologist gave her a likely time frame she could rake through the photographs of missing persons around that time. After that, even the tiniest detail, which she might easily miss, could be the key to working out who this was. All that information-gathering would usually take weeks – which she didn’t have. Indeed, there were only five days until her retirement, when she would have to relinquish her office, status, control, and have to hand this case over to someone who probably wouldn’t care as much as she did.

Somebody who wouldn’t work as hard as she would. Do whatever it took to get to the truth.

And her gut was telling her these remains belonged to a girl whose disappearance had haunted her for decades. She had absolutely no proof yet, but she knew she was going to have to find a way to hang on to the case for as long as she could.

As if reading her mind, Stan turned back to her. ‘If the pathologist confirms it’s murder, we’ll need to set up a major incident room. You’re finishing soon, aren’t you? Did you want me to handle it? You don’t want to be taking this on in your last week.’ Stan squinted in the spring sunshine and reached for the sunglasses in his coat pocket.

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right, I’ll give it some thought,’ she replied as he frowned and slid the glasses over his Roman nose. ‘There’s not going to be a huge amount of leg work,’ Jo reflected. ‘It’s going to be mostly historic, sitting at my desk, going through all the old missing persons files. I’ll probably make a start, check it’s all set up properly, then hand it over,’ she said.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well, let me know if you need any help.’

Jo smiled at Stan as he lingered next to her. He was tall and fair, with a kind face, and smiling blue eyes which reminded her of her father’s. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t her son-in-law yet, but with his and Megan’s wedding looming later in the year, it wouldn’t be long before he was family. She felt his eyes on her, and the heat of self-consciousness flushed her face. He was an easy-going chap, ambitious and focused, but essentially able to switch off at the end of his shift and go home to his fiancée and eighteen-month-old daughter, Phoebe: Jo’s granddaughter. She was fond of Stan, he loved Megan, and he helped to bridge the gap between them. But the fact remained that everything Jo said or did would go straight back to Megan, who would be horrified to find out that her mother might be about to embroil herself in a cold case just five days before she was due to retire. Her daughter was counting down the days until Jo finished work and could finally concentrate on her wedding; on invitations and dress fittings and table plans and wine tasting. Conversations which, Jo knew, would no doubt end in them falling out, because Megan would be able to sense her mother’s grief, rather than pleasure, over the gaping hole which her retirement would undoubtedly bring.

Conscious she was being observed by her future son-in-law, Jo leaned in and gave the shallow grave her attention. It was hard to make out what was leaves and debris, and what was clothing, but it looked like there were definitely strands of material wrapped around the collarbone.

‘Nobody else has been here except you and Kate?’ she asked, looking up at him.

‘No,’ Stan said, shaking his head.

‘Forensics might be able to get some clothing fragments, it looks like there’s something around there,’ she said, pointing below the skull. ‘But I doubt there will be any fluid or blood traces on them after all this time. Hopefully, they’ll be able to work out what item of clothing they might have once been.’ She pointed out the scraps of muddied fabric stuck to the blackened skeleton.

‘I’ll come and speak to the builders with you,’ Jo said, standing up. ‘Obviously, no further digging here, and no one encroaching on the scene. Kate needs to stay here and arrange cover when her shift finishes, make sure there’s someone on duty, day and night. And keep a log of everyone who comes and goes, I don’t want anyone contaminating the scene. Have you called CID?’

‘Yes, they’re on their way,’ said Stan, frowning over at Kate, who had yet to find out she would be babysitting the shallow grave in the freezing cold.

‘It’s so exposed up here. ‘This used to be my patch, but I haven’t been up to the Tye for years,’ said Jo wistfully. ‘Let’s go and chat to the guys who found it.’

They looked towards a police car parked next to a four-by-four, its boot open, with a man in a thick bomber jacket sitting on the bumper, drinking a cup of steaming liquid.

Jo squatted down again and leaned in. ‘You’re right, there’s a skull injury. Are we sure the guys didn’t hit it with the digger?’ She looked up at the teeth of the JCB towering impatiently over the area now marked off with police tape.

‘Apparently not. They didn’t find it when they were digging. They were clearing a large area near it yesterday and must have dislodged the earth propping up the shallow grave, then the heavy rain caused it to give way. They saw the remains when they turned up this morning.’

‘Make sure you take their shoe prints and DNA, they could have contaminated the scene already,’ she said, the icy wind from the sea stinging her cheeks. She had forgotten how cold it was up here; all those nights as a young WPC in the seventies, she used to pound the pavements of Rottingdean and Saltdean on her own, until she could no longer feel her feet. She knew she wouldn’t be popular with Kate for requesting she stay up here, but she didn’t care. She would never ask a PC to do anything she hadn’t done herself in the past, and Kate knew that.

Stan looked up at the water tower. ‘My guess is whoever brought the body up here was someone who knows, or knew, the area, and maybe used to hang out here. This water tower hasn’t been used for fifty years. I think I came up here one summer night as a teenager, to a party. No one can hear you, the nearest house is over a mile away in Telscombe.’

‘Apart from Morgate House.’ Jo nodded in the direction of the children’s home, the vast symmetrical Victorian red-brick building which had, for a century, towered over the Saltdean Cliffs and looked to passing ships like a doll’s house. ‘It’s abandoned now, because it’s so close to the cliff edge, but it was up and running until the nineties. Forensics will have to tell us if these remains could date that far back.’

Jo half turned and looked out towards the sea, scanning the outline of Morgate House which was due for demolition any time soon. Chunks of chalky rock were known to occasionally fall onto the undercliff walk, and the front of the house was now teetering perilously close to the edge. The council lived in fear of the cliff falling away and sections of the house crashing onto the beach below, but before they could demolish it they had faced issues raising enough money. Now, they had finally done it.

As Jo turned back to the uncovered remains, the chain next to the skull caught her eye in the winter sunlight. She leaned in closer and realised it was a necklace. ‘There’s something that looks like jewellery just there, look, make a note of it in your book for forensics.’ Jo pulled her mobile phone from her pocket and took a photograph of the mud-covered necklace. She looked over at Stan, who was frowning at her, as she returned her mobile to her pocket. ‘Write down the names of anyone coming and going. We will need to widen the crime scene; they’ll want to excavate for any other evidence, like shoes, or maybe a bag belonging to the victim. I’ll check if there have been any desktop surveys of the area, if anything’s been found which could have belonged to them,’ said Jo, referring to the historical, geological and archeological records of the site where they stood, in case anything had been found over the past thirty years which could help the investigation.

‘Do you have any idea who the victim might be?’ said Stan, frowning.

Jo held his gaze, then looked back down at the bones ingrained with decades of mud and dirt. A small clump of grit had fallen away from the necklace, revealing a St Christopher medallion, making her heart lurch.

‘No,’ Jo lied, not wanting to give away the fact that her brain was whirring with possibilities. ‘I’m going to go back to the office and start looking through the missing persons files.’

She walked away, towards Constable Kate Harris, who was interviewing the man sitting on the tailgate of the four-by-four. He was wearing a mud-covered jacket with ‘ARC Development’ on the shoulder. ‘I’m Superintendent Jo Hamilton, you called this in?’ Jo said to the man. ‘Thank you for letting us know. The remains are definitely human, so unfortunately you can’t carry on digging on the site. I suggest everyone goes home for the day.’

The man frowned, before standing up, pulling a packet of tobacco from his pocket and rolling himself a cigarette. ‘Fine with me,’ he said, taking a gulp of coffee, ‘but the boss won’t be happy. How long’s this going to take? We’re months behind schedule already.’

Jo nodded. ‘Could be anything from a few days to three or four weeks. We’ll need to check a ten-square-metre radius, to look for other bones, or evidence nearby, shoes, anything physical that could be related to the scene,’ she said, pulling the hood of her coat over her head. ‘If you could keep this to yourselves we’d be grateful. As soon as the forensic tents go up, the press will get wind. But we need time to excavate the site before we release a statement.’

‘Sure. So do you reckon someone was murdered and buried here?’ said the man, taking a drag on his roll-up.

‘We have no idea at this point. As I said, your discretion is appreciated.’ Jo looked out towards the sea, and watched as two Ford Fiestas skidded their way up the tracks towards the woodland where they stood.

‘Here come forensics,’ said Kate as Stan appeared next to her.

‘Make sure you tell them about the jewellery, and one of you should be up there now, I don’t want the site left unattended at any point. Got your notebook?’

Kate nodded.

‘Good, write down the names of everyone here, and everyone from forensics, anyone who shows up. Got it?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Kate without complaint, before turning to walk back up and pulling her hood over her head to shield herself from the wind.

Jo watched Kate go. She had come a long way since she’d started straight out of sixth form five years before. Jo had tried not to be too obvious about taking Kate under her wing, but she had seen a lot of potential in her and offered her advice when she could. Kate was always the first to volunteer and had an energy about her which reminded Jo of herself when she’d started. As a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, Kate hadn’t responded too well at first to Jo’s advice that, however approachable and welcoming her male colleagues appeared to be, she couldn’t show her emotions to any of them or she would never be taken seriously. If she wanted their respect, she needed to be tough, get stuck in, never complain, and always fess up if she ever made a mistake. But she had taken Jo’s advice on board and, as a result, Kate was popular with colleagues and had a reputation for being someone to rely on in a storm. Jo was keen to see Kate fulfil her potential and hand over the baton, and had recently recommended her for promotion to sergeant; she had been hoping to see her get it before she left.

Jo turned to Stan, who was watching the forensics team struggling to park in the mud. ‘I’ll head back and make a start setting this up. Call me as soon as pathology are done. Can you tell them I’ll need to speak to them today about decomposition and a guesstimate for the timeline? Are you okay to brief them and keep me updated on their progress, if I take the squad car? I’ll send someone to relieve Kate when I get back, and you can get a lift with her. Okay?’

Jo turned away, desperate to get down to storage at the station, find the archived missing persons files and start doing some digging. Her notebooks – which she had kept religiously from her first day on the force, in 1973 – would also be in storage and could have some memory triggers to help her.

As she walked off in the rain, away from Stan and Kate, the familiar feeling crept up her neck that she was about to be talked about. With only five days until her retirement, Stan was probably wishing, for Megan’s sake, that the remains had been found just a few days later. She could imagine him pulling a beer out of the fridge after walking through the door of their terraced house in Hove, while Megan tended to their dinner, content to be a stay-at-home mum in a way that she never had been. ‘How long have those remains been there?’ Stan would say, as Megan raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Twenty or maybe thirty years? And they turn up one week before your mum finishes. She’s gonna find it hard to hand over this one.’

Jo climbed into the driver’s seat and started up the engine; it was a bright day, but the force of the wind from the coast made the landscape feel hostile. She pulled out onto the coast road, and soon found herself passing the large shadow of Morgate House. Drawn in, she indicated and turned onto Morgate Lane on a whim, bumping along the broken track which led to the padlocked gates of the now derelict children’s home.

Jo pulled up, turned off the engine and slowly opened her car door. The wind was whistling in her ears as the waves broke on the pebbled beach below. As it picked up pace, it rushed through the broken windows, making a screaming sound. Jo closed her eyes, and pulled her coat around her, running her hands over the gate and the chain which rattled in the wind.

‘Will they let us stay together, in the same room?’ In her mind’s eye, Jo looked down to see Daisy Moore crying as she clutched her sister’s hand, tears leaving tracks in the dirt on her face.

The girls were a beautiful pair, both with wispy blonde hair, and grey-blue eyes. At only six years old Daisy’s locks reached her shoulders, where they fell in baby curls, whereas Holly, at eight years old, had hers cut into a short bob. She was mature beyond her years, acting almost as a mother would towards her child. ‘I won’t let them separate us, Daisy, I promise,’ she had said, pulling her sister into her.

It was forty years since the night of the fire, but leaving the girls here at Morgate House still haunted her dreams. She had watched that night when Morgate House came to life, the dull porch light flicking on, as the front door opened and a grey-haired woman appeared at the entrance. Jo had found herself moving in front of the girls instinctively, as if to stop Mrs Price taking them away, knowing that once she handed them over, their childhoods would be lost forever.

And she had been right. She hadn’t seen Mrs Price again for ten years, not until one month after Jo’s return from her career break, in the spring of 1985, when the station had received the call to say Holly Moore was missing. She had driven up to Morgate House, her heart filled with dread, to take a statement from Lorna Price. Holly was always running away, she’d said, sipping at her china teacup in their annex at the side of the main house, while her husband read his newspaper by the fire. She didn’t want to cause the police any trouble, she’d said, but thought she’d better call to let them know Holly hadn’t returned. She’d seemed irritated by Jo’s concern over the fact they’d taken two days to call it in. Valuable time during which they could have been looking for the missing girl, Jo had pointed out.

Lorna Price had glared at her. ‘If I called you every time one of these girls didn’t come back, you’d be up here every day.’

Jo had returned to the station, full of outrage, and flagged it up with her supervisor, DI Carl Webber, who hadn’t seemed a great deal more concerned than Mrs Price. Only when she had begged and pleaded, and threatened to go over his head, had he eventually agreed to put up some Missing Person posters, and sent two guys to do some door-to-door enquiries round Saltdean. But nothing had come of it, and Mr and Mrs Price were never held to account for their delay in reporting the girl missing. Gemma Smith had been right, nobody cared about the Morgate girls. Least of all Carl Webber.

Jo turned away at the painful memory and walked to the edge of the cliff. She stared down at the beach below, her head throbbing as she watched her younger self cordon off the body of Gemma Smith in 1975. The rush of ice-cold wind in her face felt exactly as it had done that day, as she tried to hammer stakes into the pebbled beach, watched by members of the public, drawn like magnets to the bloated body of the girl with the long black hair, her dead eyes fixed on Jo.

As the memory made her dizzy, Jo stepped back, her feet unsettling a stone. It rolled over the edge of the two-hundred-foot drop and, after a long silence, cracked like a bullet onto the rocks below. Jo felt her stomach tie in knots. Finally, she had been given a chance to prove what she had always suspected about Morgate House: that the children in its care were neglected and that if the proprietors, Lorna and Geoff Price, were still alive, they needed to be questioned in more depth about the disappearances of Gemma Smith and Holly Moore.

Jo had always known in her gut that Gemma hadn’t killed herself; the girl had said very little to Jo in the police car on the way back to the children’s home, but she could tell she had spirit. She was angry about Morgate House but she didn’t seem depressed, more indignant and ready to get away and fight her way in life. However, as a twenty-year-old female police constable, Jo’s suspicions had been ignored. But if it was the body of Holly Moore on the Tye, and the dent in her skull was trauma, Jo would have the proof she needed that there had been foul play involved in Holly’s disappearance, which could pave the way to open up an investigation into the death of both girls.

But time was against her, Jo would have to achieve the impossible; move a mountain to get enough evidence to have their cases reopened, potentially as a double murder inquiry, and there was no way she could do that in a week. For forty years the death of Gemma and the disappearance of Holly had troubled her, more than anything else in her illustrious career, but she feared that they had discovered Holly’s body too late. Still, she had to try.

Jo returned to her car, glancing back at the cliff edge as she started her engine. The apparently solid rock face was falling away, out of her control, soon to be lost forever – like her chance to put right some of the terrible wrongs that had consumed her all these years.

Gemma Smith sat on the cold leather seat of the police car, watching in the rear-view mirror as the woman who’d caught her stealing food glared at her as they pulled away from Rottingdean High Street. Gemma hung her head; she could still feel the woman’s long fingers digging into her shoulder like an eagle’s claw, pulling her back across the shop threshold as she tried to hurry away. In a panic, she had tried to make a run for it, but the woman had clung on harder, shouting at her husband to help her, pulling at Gemma’s jacket and releasing its concealed contents.

Gemma had looked up, her face burning despite the cold weather, to see a smattering of faces around her, all staring intently as her jacket gave way and four packets of biscuits fell onto the floor of the shop. She had watched them tumble in slow motion, their wrappers splitting and their contents breaking and scattering all over the ground.

Instinctively, she had bent down and started desperately picking them up. Her heart hammering hard, burying her head, knowing all the eyes were on her, and wishing the ground would swallow her up. A hand had pulled her back up, and dragged her along towards the back of the shop.

‘Come with me, I’m calling the police, I’m sick of you kids raiding my shop,’ the man had shouted in her face, his breath smelling of his morning coffee, as he dragged her to his smoky, dark office at the back of the grocery store.

She had sat on a wooden chair, staring at her hands, as the shopkeeper dialled the operator and asked for the local police station. Shame flooded her body as the slim man, with spectacles on a string around his neck, glared at her as he waited for the call to be put through. She couldn’t look at him, she stared at his desk, covered in invoices from suppliers and a printout from the cash and carry. His calculator acted as a paperweight, and there was a petty cash tin to one side. He was a hard-working man, she thought, who got up early in the bitter cold to take deliveries and stock the shelves of a shop he had probably run all his life. She hated having to steal from him but she had no choice.

Finally, the policewoman had arrived, and taken a statement from the man, as Gemma sat listening, watching her pen scratching across her notebook at a painfully slow pace. He had known Gemma was up to something, he said, she had lingered in the shop, he knew she was one of the Morgate kids. They were always coming in and thieving stuff and he’d had enough.

‘I’m giving you a warning, this time,’ the policewoman – who had introduced herself as Jo – said from the front of the blue police car as she turned onto the seafront. ‘The shop owner didn’t want to press charges. But you might not be so lucky next time. Maybe, if you tell me a little bit about Morgate House, I can help you. Are they not feeding you?’

‘Lucky?’ Gemma echoed, with a scoff. She had looked out of the window at the thrashing sea. Lucky was not a word Gemma had felt applied to her very often during her young life. When she was seven years old, the police had arrived at her house after a concerned neighbour had called them. They escorted her to a children’s hospital, where every bruise, burn and cut on her body was counted, measured and photographed. Various adults had asked how she had got the injuries. With her mother standing right there, she was too scared to say. But the evidence was obvious. She was taken into emergency foster care stra. . .