Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both!

by Jeremy Costello

  ‘Mayfield,’ the woman replied holding out her hand.

  ‘Mayfield?’ It took a moment to recall where he’d heard the name. ‘As in Margaret Mayfield?’

  ‘Or Maggie May,’ she confirmed.

  York stood his ground and looked bemusedly into the eyes of the former Faulkner nanny.

  ‘You look surprised,’ she smiled.

  ‘Well, Maggie, it’s not every day I encounter a ghost. And today I have managed to unearth a handful. You’re supposed to be dead.’

  ‘Nothing but the inventive imaginations of small-town people, I’m afraid,’ said Maggie. ‘No body was ever recovered and so people just assumed the worst. Arthur Faulkner had nothing to do with my disappearance. Well, not directly at least.’

  York leaned back in his chair and breathed in heavily. ‘What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘Oh, I’m quite resourceful. Just because I no longer live in Market Rasen, I still hear everything that goes on there. When I heard a police officer from the capital was in town digging up Faulkner tales, I made some enquiries. Didn’t take long to find out your name and where you were based.’

  ‘Well I’m glad you found me, Maggie. But I need to ask, where have you been all these years? Everybody thought Arthur Faulkner had murdered and buried you somewhere out in the woods. Why didn’t you come forward and let people know you were still alive?’

  Maggie’s smile faltered slightly. ‘You think it was easy, what I did? I abandoned those kids, Inspector…’

  Kids…

  Plural.

  ‘…and I’m ashamed to say my plan failed. Before Arthur was called up to fight for his country he was such a sweet man, gentle. Mary, his wife, meant the world to him. But when he returned he was no longer that man. The war had twisted his mind. He was evil, and the fact that he’s still alive is an insult to me. He deserves to burn in Hell.’

  ‘You say your plan failed,’ York stated. ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘I couldn’t take the way he treated the children. I stayed for as long as I could for the sake of those two boys, but the madness of it all eventually got to me. His favourite was Robert. He considered Julian an embarrassment because of his disfigurement.’

  York recalled Arthur Faulkner rambling on about Robert in nonsensical gibberish. McCullick had insisted it was the name of one of the carers at Rampton, but he was wrong. Arthur Faulkner’s second son was named Robert, the boy with no disfigurement. Jonathan Wheeler was Robert Faulkner, not Julian.

  'But that doesn't make sense,' York mused, recalling his conversation with Frank Blithe. 'Nobody in Market Rasen mentioned anyone called Robert. All the old myths and wives tales up there all talk about Julian. How can that be if Julian was the one under lock and key, why is he the brother everybody remembers?'

  Maggie smiled a joyless smile. ‘Because Arthur called them both Julian to avoid anybody discovering he had two sons. He used to keep poor disfigured Julian locked up in the basement, no light, no food. He wanted no one to know of him because of his defect, and from what you're telling me, he pulled it off.’

  ‘You still haven’t explained how your plan failed,’ York questioned patiently.

  Maggie shifted uncomfortably in the plastic seat. ‘Those boys were raised in Hell, Nicolas. Mary, Arthur's wife, was so incredibly ill she was completely out of the picture. But she was so scared of Arthur, of what he’d become, she wanted her boys taken away from him. And in her frail state she asked me to run away, take the boys and disappear. I didn’t want to leave Mary with him but I knew she was right. And so that same night I packed up some of the boys’ things and snuck them out of the house. We didn’t get far. Arthur was waiting for us at the top of the track. I tried to protest, told him the entire thing had been my idea, but he beat the boys anyway, right before he put me in hospital.’

  ‘Jesus,’ York muttered.

  ‘When I returned, it was as if nothing had happened. I don’t even think he remembered what he did. That was when I came up with my plan to save those boys. After he put me in hospital, questions were raised about what had happened. But I kept quiet. He threatened to kill Mary if I said anything. I just couldn’t risk it because I knew he was true to his word. And so I disappeared alone, leaving the boys with their deranged father.

  ‘Questions were already hanging in the air about the sanity of Arthur, and I knew my disappearance would stir all kinds of rumours. He would be investigated and the brutality of the Faulkner house would be blown wide open. I waited for news. Every day I checked the local paper expecting to read that Arthur had been taken into custody. But it never came. Lack of evidence meant the man walked free. That’s why I never came forward. Those kids deserved so much more, and I failed them.’

  A tense silence hung between them for a few seconds, the room bathed in syrupy quiet. Eventually York broke the spell. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie.’

  ‘I know those boys are responsible for the recent murders,' said Maggie. 'They will have to stand trial for atrocities I can’t even imagine, and then they’ll spend the rest of their lives in a cell. They’ve been prisoners since birth to a father who never understood them, only how to raise them with brutality and violence…’

  ‘Maggie…’ York interrupted gently.

  ‘It’s okay, Nicolas, really. I just wanted you to know, that from the moment those boys were born, they never stood a chance.’

  *

  ‘So, would either of you like to tell me what I should do with you?’

  Standing in front of Mason’s desk, York and Graham remained silent. After revealing to Mason their unauthorised operation into the Lincolnshire house, she went ballistic.

  ‘I’m open to suggestions,’ she urged.

  ‘Don’t suppose it matters that our investigations led to the arrest of Robert Faulkner?’ said Graham.

  Mason’s ice chips locked onto Graham’s eyes. ‘Is that sarcasm I’m detecting, Will? Because if it is I would suggest you curb it, right now.’

  ‘I wasn’t being sarcastic, guv, I was just trying to point out a fact.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Come on, boss,’ Graham implored. ‘Braddock was not the right man for this assignment and you know it. Taking Nick off the case at a pivotal point in the investigation was a bad decision. I knew it, which is why I fed him the information. Braddock had no interest in following up on the Faulkner house lead and you backed him up, which was your second mistake.’

  Mason shot to her feet. ‘Will, the ice you’re on is wafer-thin. I’d think about getting out of my office before I break pieces of it off and jam them up your arse!’

  York expected Graham to scamper out the door, tail between his legs. Instead he strode confidently from the room and clicked the door gently closed.

  ‘Developed some balls recently, hasn’t he?’ York muttered.

  ‘What the bloody hell is going on around here, Nick? Maybe I have made some decisions lately that you don't agree with, but that does not give you or that pinhead the right to go behind my back and act as you see fit!’

  ‘I know that, guv. And I can only apologise for the deception. But what Graham said was right. Without our unauthorised investigation Robert Faulkner would still be out there, would still be using this very station and watching our every move. Now Julian Faulkner is out there alone and is probably very confused. Without his brother, it won’t be long before we find him.’

  Mason sat back down and sighed heavily. ‘Three weeks unpaid suspension for the pair of you. That’s final. By all accounts, Nick, you’ve both got off lightly.’

  He turned to leave.

  ‘Oh and Nick,’ she added. ‘If I find out that you or Will Graham have been involved in any police work within the next twenty-one days, you’ll spend the rest of your careers ticketing vehicles in Peckham, am I understood?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ he said.

  60

  For the hundredth time, York stared down at the scrap of paper in his hand an
d read the house number aloud. The terrace directly across the street matched the address. He was in the right place, the poor neighbourhood brickwork of a working-class community. The peculiar thing was he’d been parked opposite for almost three hours and there hadn’t been a scrap of activity, zip.

  Technically staking out a house full of supposed criminals would constitute police work. Still, as much as he had no desire to be demoted to traffic copper, there was nothing on earth could’ve dragged him away from this place. If his son was inside, he was going in there to get him.

  He climbed from the car and crossed the road, a handful of people milling around on the pavements. No one looked in his direction. As he reached the house he snuck a peek into the downstairs window. Nothing, only a beat-up old sofa sitting atop a scabby carpet.

  Three doors down, he found the alley leading to the rear of the houses. With no gates to hinder his access he strolled straight through. At the back of the house he found a door built into a tatty kitchen extension. The tiny garden was a mess, overgrown, countless cigarette butts littering the floor around the doormat – a doormat which carried the instruction, Wipe Your Feet. He supposed it was referring to the way out.

  He checked all the back windows finding nothing still, a slow sinking feeling rising in his gut. ‘Oh no,’ he said aloud. ‘Oh no, oh no…’

  No longer caring about the neighbours, he picked up a rock from the garden and smashed one of the glass door panels. As he predicted, no alarm sounded and no one came running.

  He reached in and unlatched the door, pushing it cautiously inwards. Matching the garden the kitchen was a state, the worktops a chaos of unclean mugs, overflowing ashtrays, takeaway cartons, and a sink full of plates festering in stagnant water. The room looked lived in, but the rest of the house couldn’t offer the same. As he moved from room to room, much like he had at the Faulkner home, he found only disappointment, signs of life having recently moved on. The topmost floor was one large attic space with creaking floorboards and peeling wallpaper, but as he looked closer he found something that made his stomach turn. In a corner of the room was a red and blue painted toy train. He wondered if Frasier had played with it, filling his innocent time, his little mind trying to understand why he was there, what he was going to be made to do.

  What he had already been made to do.

  What remained of York’s fragile walls came tumbling down around him, brick by lonely brick. He slid down the wall in a flurry of wretched sobs, clutching the toy train to his chest. He turned it over and over in his hands, examining every inch of its significance. How late was he – days, hours?

  Through the blur of tears he scrutinized every surface, every fleck of peeling wallpaper, every dust-laden crevice. If Frasier had ever been here, he was gone now.

  *

  Leaving the house by the front door he caught sight of the woman perched on the bonnet of his car. Blonde hair bobbed neatly, cute and demure; finally the woman from the alley was making an appearance.

  She greeted him as he reached her, her serious face scrutinising his movement. He took a seat on the bonnet next to her, stared straight ahead, the feeling of disappointment dripping steadily into his self-made pool of deprivation.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he muttered pinching the bridge of his nose. His head was beginning to ache.

  ‘Kellie,’ she replied. ‘Kellie Carter.’

  ‘Why are you here, Kellie Carter?’

  She glanced sideways at him. ‘I told you I’d approach you when the time was right.’

  ‘I take it you’re no longer being followed?’

  ‘You’ve been in the house, you tell me.’

  ‘There’s nothing in there, Kellie,’ he revealed quietly. ‘Not a fucking bean.’

  At the end of the street, three girls played with a skipping rope, their carefree faces beaming. He watched them for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nicolas. I didn’t mean to give you false hope. But you need to stay strong for the sake of your son.’

  ‘For the sake of my sanity.’

  ‘Frasier is out there,’ she assured him. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that? You don’t know me, my past, and you certainly don’t know my son.’

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ she revealed. ‘I’ve been watching these guys for a long time trying to split open a big story. They’re from Latvia, a group of ex-militia who came fresh out of service and into the trafficking business. They were working out of Belgium in '86 but were kicked out after several children disappeared. The Latvians were in the country illegally so the authorities didn’t have any legal trouble getting rid of them. After that they set up in Hanover, Germany. They’re still operating there now as far as I know, but a group of them broke away and came here.

  ‘One night I got friendly with one of them and he invited me back to his house. He brought me here. Others were here too, and that’s when I heard one of them talking on the phone to The Face. I got the feeling none of the men knew who The Face was, but it was obvious he was running the operation. The way they talked to him, there was respect, even fear in their voices. The second and final time I came back here, four boys were being brought in from the backyard. One of them was Frasier. I recognised him from the photographs.’

  ‘Did he look okay? I mean, did he look hurt?’

  ‘He looked confused, frightened. But I think he was uninjured.’

  York let the information sink in. ‘Wait a minute, what photographs?’

  ‘The ones Holly showed me. She looked up to you, Nicolas, wanted to make you proud.’

  ‘Wait, you’re Kellie? Holly’s Kellie?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’ Kellie’s eyes began to well. ‘I loved her, Nicolas. As immoral as it was with her being married, we spent a lot of time together, and she talked a lot about you and about what happened to your family.’

  York’s eyes strayed back to the skipping girls.

  ‘Holly had her own problems,’ Kellie persisted. ‘She didn’t want to be with David anymore, but she didn’t know how to leave him. I told her I was on the verge of ending our relationship if she didn’t make a choice soon, told her I’d met someone else. It wasn’t true. I just wanted to hurt her. You have no idea how much I regret those words. The last time I saw her, all I did was ramble on about this scoop, about nailing these bastards down in print. She refused to help me, told me to report it through the proper channels.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got angry, stormed out. That was the last time I saw her, and I haven’t slept since knowing that that’s how I treated her at the end.’

  York shifted uneasily on the bonnet.

  ‘I want you to know,’ she added, ‘that you meant a great deal to her. She loved working with you…’ She took his hand in hers and squeezed. ‘…That’s got to count for something, hasn’t it?’ She jumped from the bonnet. ‘Nicolas, listen to me, okay. Frasier is out there, I promise you. You cannot give up hope. One day you’ll have him back and all this will seem like a bad dream.’

  ‘Uh-huh, and what about the meantime?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you're right, then Frasier is still living this nightmare,’ he said softly. ‘Do you think it will ever seem like a bad dream to him?’

  *

  The flat was cold. York hadn’t bothered to put the heating on. In the sparse kitchen he sat alone at the bare table staring resolutely at the single item in the centre of the wooden surface.

  His arm tingled.

  He didn’t move.

  His hands shook.

  He didn’t move.

  Tick tock.

  The tiny brown stone in the table’s centre stared back at him. He tried to concentrate and images of the quarry began to solidify in his head. For the first time since he was a child, he started to remember.

  ‘You’re finally beginning to see.’

  York nodded.

  ‘I knew it would come back. With enough patien
ce, anything can be retrieved.’

  York’s eyes never wavered from the brown stone. ‘It was you, Daniel,’ York whispered. ‘I told you not to go into that mineshaft. I pleaded with you. But I was just your geeky little brother. You wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Did you forget, Nicky? I never listened to anyone.’

  ‘Everything was so perfect before you died,’ he said quietly. ‘And then it was just me. Mum became good friends with Johnnie Walker, and dad…’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘You know what happened, Daniel. You were his rising star, his favourite. When you never came back out of that mineshaft he died inside. Six weeks after that, well…’

  ‘He took the easy way out is what he did, Nicky. He left his distraught wife and one remaining son to fend for themselves. He was a coward.’

  ‘He worshipped you.’

  ‘He worshipped us both. You just chose not to see it.’

  York reached into his jacket and brought out the syringe kit, laid it gently on the table next to the rock of heroin.

  ‘So you’re still going down this route.’

  York didn’t answer.

  ‘Robert Faulkner was right, wasn’t he? You need him. Without him you have no purpose. Without him, you need drugs to get you by.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ York said firmly. ‘I don’t need him.’

  ‘You still haven’t figured it out, have you? The demon inside you is crumbling. You know the truth now. You tried to stop me going into that mineshaft and I didn’t listen. I was to blame for my demise, no one else, and especially not you. You don’t need me anymore, Nicky. I am to become obsolete, nothing but a memory.’

  York reached forwards and plucked the brown stone from the table, held it close to his face. Daniel said nothing more.

  This was the moment.

  This was the milestone.

  Slowly, he climbed to his feet and stepped away from the table. He stood calmly at the sink and turned on the tap. His mind was a race of colours, memories, each one better, worse than the last. Robert Faulkner had been right, he had needed him, needed purpose. And now that purpose had transformed into something else, something purer.