After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  “That’s weird. Who bought the warehouse?” I asked despite myself.

  “I don’t know.” Henry was tapping his phone again. Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. “I can’t find out that easily. But the timing is dodgy, Cass. It looks like it was probably sold six months or so before your sister was abducted. The dad died not long after – heart attack, so if he was involved with anything weird then he isn’t now.”

  “Shit.” I let out a long breath. Could this have anything to do with what Walker wanted to tell me? Could whoever bought the warehouse from his father be the person who took Olive – who took Bella? It seemed like a stretch, but it would explain Walker’s nervousness, his fear. “Henry, can you find out who he sold it to?”

  “It was cash, darling. Hard to trace.”

  “I know, but can you try?” My voice cracked and I swallowed hard. “Sorry. I mean, it might be nothing, or it might be everything. But Walker wanted to talk to me before he died. I need to find out why.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going back to where it all started.”

  43

  THERE WERE CHILDREN PLAYING together by the fountain in Chestnut Circle as I came into the centre of town, a couple of mums watching them carefully. I’d left my car at home and was walking briskly, my eyes drawn into the window of every shop selling crystals or magical jewellery. The sun had come out again and was warming the cool afternoon so that I was sweaty as I powered on up the slight hill into the Circle. It was a good feeling, distracting from the horror of the day.

  I looked at the face of every child I came across. Most of them were skittish, holding the arms of their parents or friends as though the woman in the black hoodie was dangerous. But then, I supposed, they didn’t know that I wasn’t. At this point, even I didn’t know that for sure. Everybody I’d come into contact with in the last week and a half seemed to have got into some sort of trouble. I saw Darren Walker’s distorted features behind my eyelids, the panic and fear, and forced the image away.

  I paused for a second at the entrance to the Circle. I’d traced our steps, as best I could remember, from that day in August sixteen years ago. I tried to recall the image Marion had helped me to generate the previous evening during our meditation. The eclipse as it cooled the air, the darkness that was so mysterious, cloaking everything in a fine mesh of magic. Olive, antsy and frustrated – me, distant and distracted. I examined the Circle from the far side, where I could see Ady’s shop and the fountain, along with the spot where the awning had been on Ady’s corner.

  The awning wasn’t there any more, but the street corner still looked the same. Where the striped overhang had curled around the corner into the alley down the side, there was still a pole jutting out of the wall. Now it looked lonely.

  There was a small table out there in the alley along with a couple of plastic chairs where people could sit while they ate ice cream looking at the fountain. These hadn’t been there back then, and I tried not to think what things might have been like if Olive could have just climbed on top of one of them to fulfil her desire to see better. Maybe she wouldn’t have wandered away.

  “Why didn’t I just listen to you?” I asked as I walked, my voice bringing my thoughts back to the present. I shook my head.

  As I approached the shop, I saw a figure standing just outside. A young blonde girl with her legs akimbo as she lifted something from the floor – a pair of paper glasses. As I got closer I recognised her as Ady’s daughter.

  “Hi,” I said, a little breathless.

  “Hello.” She stepped back cautiously, scuffing her leather school shoes against the tarmac. Her skirt was too long, made for somebody two or three years older, and she plucked at it awkwardly, as though she’d been caught in a lie. “My dad’s inside, if you want him. He’s working all the time at the moment. I was just trying to see if these make things go 3D. I’m not allowed away from the shop but it’s only round the corner—”

  “Oh,” I said. “No, that’s okay. I was just—”

  Just what? Just walking the route I’d walked with my sister sixteen years ago on the day she was kidnapped? I was just… what?

  “I have to go,” Tilly said. “I’ll be in trouble. Dad hates when he can’t see me. Especially now. He’ll freak out.”

  “No, wait.” I held both hands up to show her that I meant no harm. I was surprised when she stopped in her tracks. That didn’t usually work. “Listen, you go to the same school as Bella Kaluza, right?” I gestured at her uniform, which was the same as those worn by Bella and Grace and their friends. It hadn’t occurred to me before that the girls were probably the same age.

  Tilly tilted her head suspiciously, her big circular glasses slipping down her nose. “Why?”

  “I just wondered if you know Bella. The girl who’s missing.”

  “Yeah, my dad – he won’t talk about her. Like, at all. It’s really upsetting him. But I watched some stuff on the news last night and this morning. You know, when he wasn’t there. Mette – my babysitter – didn’t stop me. Anyway, I’m not a baby.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, although I thought she was very much a baby. She smiled. “Do you know Bella then?” I asked.

  “Not very well. We don’t have any classes together. Our forms are like, opposite. But she seems nice.”

  “Nice, like friendly?”

  “More like… cool. You know? Like, she doesn’t take orders from anybody. Even though we’re the bottom of the school and the big kids tease us, Bella doesn’t care. I always see her talking to the teachers, but she doesn’t do it like a teacher’s pet. She’s not doing it for marks or grades. She’s… just grown up. That’s all. I think she hangs out with her mum a lot and has lunch with Mr Howden sometimes.

  “I met her in the doctor’s office once. We have the same doctor. She was even cool then and she had the reddest nose you’ve ever seen. Dad said it’s bad breeding to let your kids get that poorly.”

  Tilly wrinkled her nose and examined the eclipse glasses. She stopped talking but her expression was expectant, as though she had more to say.

  “What do you think?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know.” Tilly shrugged. “She comes into the shop most mornings by herself. Her friends all live in those big houses up near the school but she lives down here like us. She always buys the same thing – in the shop, I mean. So she’s not that grown-up, I guess. And I know she doesn’t drink coffee. She wears her hair in pigtails sometimes, too.”

  “What does she buy?” I asked.

  “Orange juice – the kind that comes in a box with a straw. Same thing every day.” Tilly sniffed, as though this might have been funny if Bella wasn’t missing. “Dad won’t let me drink those ones because he says they’re all sugar. He hardly lets me have anything fun. He says bad food made my mum sick…

  “But Bella drinks them every day and she’s fine. Sometimes I see her walking with her friends when Mette drives me up to school. Sometimes I see her in here, if Dad drops me off instead.”

  “You sometimes come in here in the morning before school then?” I asked. I wondered if she had seen Bella the morning of the eclipse. Perhaps she had seen which direction Bella had gone when she left the Circle.

  Tilly shrugged. “I used to all the time. Lately Dad won’t let me. Says I need to stay home where it’s safer. He leaves home pretty early so I’m glad. It means I can spend longer in bed before Mette makes me get up.” She smiled, a cheeky smile that made dimples in her cheeks.

  “Did you see Bella the morning she went missing?” I asked.

  “Nope.” Tilly shook her head. “Dad dropped me off at school early because there were gonna be teachers around. He didn’t want me to miss any of the eclipse and he won’t let me walk to school even though it’s not far. Everybody was watching the eclipse, though. It was a big deal.

  “Dad says in other places they don’t care as much as we do. But Bishop’s Green is cool like that, isn’t it? Everything’s sort of m
agic if you think about it. My history teacher was telling us all about the history of eclipses, about how they’re even in the Bible. He said they’re like ancient magic. We talked about it a lot. He knows a lot about that stuff.

  “Anyway, you know the whole thing took like two hours. Dad says it’s bad luck to miss the beginning. Did you know that during the last eclipse there was this big party? But that was during the school holidays and it was years and years ago.”

  Now she was talking the kid wouldn’t shut up.

  “What about Bella?” I pressed. “Did your dad say if he saw her? If she was acting weirdly or anybody was with her?”

  “He didn’t say, but I think he feels bad that he doesn’t know what happened.”

  * * *

  Inside, Ady was unpacking a crate of juice. He stopped when he saw my face.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Bella,” I said, the word coming out like a squeak. “She comes in here every day. Did you tell the police?”

  “I – no. I didn’t think it was – I didn’t…” He faltered, a look of sadness passing over his face. “They didn’t ask me.”

  “Did she come in on Friday morning?” I pressed.

  Ady dropped the crate and headed towards the till, where there was a little screen for the CCTV.

  “Maybe?” he said. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think anything of it – she always…” His face was ashen. He fiddled with a box and the screen flickered. I didn’t wait for him to ask, I simply stepped around the back of the till and stood next to him.

  “Can’t you remember?” I asked.

  Ady shook his head, mute.

  “Ady—”

  “All the days are the same,” he muttered. He wiped at the stubble on his chin. “I feel awful. I don’t know…”

  He was moving through footage on a tape or a recording, now. I watched as the time stamp morphed, precious minutes passing in fuzzy monochrome.

  “There,” I said.

  Ady hit play. Bella had walked into the shop. She headed for the drinks cabinet to the side of the till, rooting for one at the back.

  “She always does that,” Ady said, and his voice was full of emotion. As though he was thinking the same thing I was. How easy it would be for somebody to learn her routine and follow her. For somebody to lure her.

  Ady wasn’t at the counter in the recording. Bella glanced around. Waited a second. And then left a pile of change on the till.

  Ady, beside me now, let out a breath of what might have been relief.

  “I didn’t think,” he said softly. “I couldn’t remember. I didn’t think I had. I had a delivery I was unpacking. That might have been the day I spilled the rice…”

  In the recording, Bella glanced up suddenly. Looked towards the door, where the CCTV cut off. Somebody had distracted her. Her lips moved in recognition. She grabbed her juice box and hurried to the door. And then she was gone.

  “The police need a copy of that recording,” I said. My voice shook so badly I wasn’t sure Ady heard me. But he nodded.

  44

  “WE’LL GET SOMEBODY ON the CCTV immediately,” Marion said. She leaned against the wall outside the police station, her arms folded across her chest and her buttons straining as she stretched. “It sounds like Bella knew the person who approached – maybe it was the person who took her.”

  I stood with my back to the car park, shivering a little in the cold wind. It was getting dark now. Cars were parked in all the spaces, but most of them weren’t cops. Marion had told me about all of the people who’d been camping out at the station since Bella disappeared. The thought that I’d been one of them not long ago filled me with a strange mixture of longing and disgust.

  I lit my cigarette. So much for quitting, but smoking did have some benefits; Marion was very close to me, her head bent low, and when she moved closer I felt safer.

  “I wish we knew who it was,” I murmured. “I wish we could find her.”

  “I know.” Marion sighed. “Anyway, we’ve confirmed that Walker’s body was moved post-mortem. He died in the early hours of the morning.” She met my gaze.

  “He was dead – all that time?” I asked. “And hanged after he was dead?” I didn’t like to admit the relief that tinged the sickness in my stomach; I couldn’t have helped him. I didn’t even know he wanted to talk to me until after he was dead.

  “Looks like it.” Marion pulled back and I shivered again. I still felt awful. look what you’ve done. I’d shown Marion the latest texts but they still got under my skin. They were apparently having no luck tracing the number, which didn’t make me feel any better. “Ligature marks around his neck were consistent with the width of the rope, but Fox said that the position was all wrong. He was strangled before he was strung up.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  A shadow crossed Marion’s face, and she turned away, gazing out into the car park. “Whoever did it knew enough to try to hide what had happened, although they were too late. And there’s little trace, no DNA.”

  “Why didn’t they just leave him where he died?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t killed in the house. There was some dust on Walker’s jeans, but his house was spotless. No signs of a struggle either. It seems likely that he was killed elsewhere and then taken home. And there were no defence wounds.”

  “No defence wounds,” I said hollowly. “So he probably knew the killer?”

  Marion chewed on her lip. “That seems likely.”

  “Just like Bella probably knew who took her.” We smoked for a minute in silence. Then I said, “It’s got to be somebody who she wouldn’t have been afraid of seeing out there on a school day. Somebody she was expecting, maybe? Or somebody who had reason to be nearby?”

  My thoughts went back to Howden outside the shop. I only live over there.

  “Perhaps an authority figure for her,” Marion said thoughtfully. “Children – they trust certain groups more than others. Doctors, teachers, parents. People they see a lot.”

  I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms. It could be that easy. Somebody she knew, a face she recognised. An offer of a lift to school. I’d thought this before but now I was more convinced this was something like what had happened.

  “I’m going to go through that footage again,” Marion said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Then she leaned in to kiss my cheek. Right here, right outside work, careless of who might see her. Her breath was warm. I allowed myself a small smile.

  * * *

  At home I made sure that Gran ate dinner – and managed to force some food into my own stomach, too. Then I headed to the bar at Henry’s hotel. Bella had been gone almost five days. Over a hundred hours since the eclipse. A hundred and eight hours, but who’s counting?

  I sat down with a thump, all my energy draining out of me.

  “You look knackered,” Henry said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Thanks. So what did you find out about the warehouse situation?”

  “It’s all a bit of guesswork, but it looks like it was sold to a—” Henry shifted his glass of whiskey to the side and my mouth watered. “Neil White. Fifty-two years—”

  “Not Doctor White?” The room seemed to shrink. Suddenly the dark walls felt close and claustrophobic instead of cosy. I unzipped my hoodie. “My Doctor White?”

  “Unless there’s more than one at the practice near the Circle.”

  My ears were ringing. I felt like I might pass out. I reached blindly for Henry’s glass and took a swig. He watched with an inscrutable look.

  “What on earth does a doctor need with a warehouse, Heno?”

  “I’m sure there are lots of legitimate reasons,” Henry said, but he didn’t look convinced. I wasn’t thinking of the legitimate reasons; I was thinking of the smell of oranges from that summer, how it had lingered in his office. I thought about his bowl of trinkets. I pictured the mermaid ring. The sleeping pills that made Gran pliant; that could make a child pliant too. />
  “Cassie, are you okay? You look unwell.”

  I sucked in a breath. Thought of the way he’d spoken to me after Gran’s accident. As though it had been my fault. And of his concern for Bella, how she wouldn’t have had any reason to be afraid of him.

  “Cassie.”

  “I’m okay,” I said faintly. My heart hammered. I thought I might be sick. “Talk to me.”

  Henry watched me with hawk eyes but obliged. “Uh, it looks like he’s been paying electricity on it but not loads. I spoke to Walker’s mother. A close friend of the family convinced Walker Senior to sell because he desperately needed money and they arranged it sort of like an off-the-record loan. Apparently Mrs Walker didn’t like the idea of selling it in the first place, especially not to a doctor because what on earth could he want it for?”

  “Could that be what Darren wanted to tell me?” I said, more to myself than to Henry. “That he thought his dad sold the warehouse to – the man who…”

  I was shaking. “I need to go,” I said. “I need… I need to make sure – Gran...”

  Doctor White. Doctor White.

  45

  15 March 2003

  THE BRUISES WERE COMING out, now. Their purpleness was livid almost. As though her skin couldn’t believe what she’d let him do. Olive inspected the injuries in the wan light of the afternoon. A wet day, rain pattered against the glass where it dripped from the roof. She wished, not for the first time, that she could smell the air.

  The bruises were about two inches across. One on each thigh, on the inside so she had to sit with them slightly apart today. It was her own fault, really. She should have known better than to protest after he’d fought with his wife. That was when he was most volatile, and Olive knew that better than anybody.

  Absently she wondered what his wife thought of him. Whether that woman knew where he was going when he left to see the girl he held captive. One evening a week for nearly four years and she hadn’t become suspicious? Maybe that’s why they were fighting more recently. Maybe she suspected something was up but couldn’t quite put her meek little finger on it. Sandman said his wife knew about Olive, but she didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that somebody would let her suffer like this.