“Cr—?” But as he began to form the name the boy moved his head, a quick sharp shake that not only stopped Victor saying anything but almost physically shifted him, set him rocking a tiny bit back on the walking frame and steadying himself. Come to tell me something. Come to warn me. Moving on and away back to his private room and leaving them behind him. He didn’t turn around until he got to the door, and when he did he saw that Lisa had come around the desk and was standing there physically blocking the boy’s path. Shaking her head.
A metallic ringing was coming from somewhere. As he pushed the door inward Victor realized that it was coming from inside his room, from the contraption suspended over the bed to which he had paid no attention because it alarmed him, with its schedule of prices for streaming films or watching satellite television. How many shuffled steps to get there? Three, four, five, there. Victor slid sideways onto the bed and reached for the receiver that hung alongside the screen.
The voice: familiar but not familiar, again it set his heart pounding. And talking without giving his name nor waiting for him to recognize …
“Owen,” he said, faintly. Wilkins.
There was a pause. “Right, sorry,” said the campsite manager stiffly.
“I didn’t quite catch that,” said Victor. He felt slightly faint. Breathe. “Would you mind…”
“Your daughter’s husband is here.” Wilkins’s voice was full of dislike. “Reading the riot act, asking where she is, where she’s taken his son.”
“His son.” The boy Richard never wanted in the first place if Victor’s interpretation of Sophie’s painful skirting of the topic had been correct. Rufus, for whom she had had to fight.
“I told him,” Owen enunciated carefully, “that I didn’t divulge information on my residents’ whereabouts.” Inside Victor something recalibrated, reset. His heart slowed, grateful.
“She’s on her way back,” Victor said. “Richard … well. He doesn’t necessarily need to know that. Please—you haven’t told him where Rufus—”
“None of my business,” said Owen. “I don’t know where the boy is.”
Victor looked around at his things, stacked ready, a plastic carrier brought by Sophie for them. Toothbrush.
“Owen,” he said, “distract him, will you? Until I get there.” How, though? How on earth? “Keep him there, stop him. Don’t … don’t—”
“It’s all right, Mr. Powell,” said Wilkins gruffly, and Victor thought of the shelf in the man’s mobile home with books on birdwatching, his irritable, awkward manner, his exile, with Victor, to a caravan site on the gray edge of the country.
“Don’t let him take her,” he said.
“Leave it with me, Victor,” said Wilkins. And he was gone.
And Victor sat, the receiver still in his trembling hand, on the edge of the bed in the windowless room. Now is the time. Now.
* * *
Stroke of luck, that.
Stroke of luck, and no need to find an excuse, no need to wheedle her, no need to work around to it, direct access. Of course, what’s the phrase, there is one, fortune favors the brave. You make your own luck. Not luck but skill, right place at the right time. That and the nerve to just walk straight in and take what you want.
So few of them even know what they want. Out there, walking the pavements, choosing what to put on, calling to their children, cruising the supermarket aisles. They’re just going through the motions, might as well be dead as alive and barely worth the living.
A tiny thing snagged at him then, a tiny sense. Her, though. Her. She had been alive. The boy? Too young to tell with him. Her. With her clothes he’d looked through, the smell of her on them, her place full of her, hairs in her hairbrush, makeup bag, she got in everywhere, under his skin. Was she gone, even now? She was gone, all right, and he knew where. He had her where he wanted her.
The old man, on his last legs, but refusing to die. It was going to be so easy to kill him now.
He leaned back, closed his eyes, roaming. Her. That I can do again. Another one like that and she was on his radar, alive and pulsing, better than that. He could reach out his hand and take her.
Natalie.
He knew where she would go. Out on the water, where she thought she was safe. Sooner or later, that was where she would go.
Chapter Thirty
It was getting late: four, five o’clock. The tide was coming up under low cloud as the pickup came out of the trees and turned down along the road that ran parallel to the estuary. It was going to be a very high one: the gray-brown water lapped on the mudbanks, the channels were already disappearing. The heat lay on everything like a blanket, and the land was very still, birds had gone quiet in the hedges as they passed as if they knew a storm was coming.
Dowd drove in silence. Nat held herself very still, as if any quick movement, any word, would spark something in the small space they shared.
Nat’s phone rang and Dowd’s head turned at the sound. She answered it in a hurry, feeling her body stiff with tension.
“Steve?” The last person she had been expecting, probably. She bent her head over the receiver, not wanting him to hear, and then Dowd was looking back at the road; she could see his jaw set and working. Steve’s voice came to her as though from far away: it seemed suddenly a long time since she had heard it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dowd’s knuckles on the wheel.
Laid-back Steve: she realized she had expected him to be gone, over the horizon and away from all this shit. Police, Janine, Beth—the lot. He was still slow, measured, but there was something else in his voice. Concern, or unease.
“She’s told me,” he said, clearing his throat, “what she said to you. About Beth and Jim.”
“Janine.”
“Listen,” he said, and there it was, the strain, “don’t be too hard on the girl.”
Janine: his girl. That softened Nat, just a bit. Was he relying on that?
“It’s the whatsit,” said Steve heavily. “Menopause. She can’t really hack it, and having coppers tell her I fancied Beth sent her off on one.”
“Did you?” asked Nat. “Fancy her?” Dowd was watching her. He was listening.
Steve sighed. She wondered where he was. He’d spoken to Janine, but that didn’t mean he was back. For some reason she saw him leaning against his rig in a lay-by. She thought of some case there’d been in the news: a truck driver who picked women up and murdered them, or had that been kids? No, that had been another one: a delivery bloke in a white van, abducting ten-year-old girls.
“It was a bit more complicated than that,” he said.
“Complicated?” said Nat, and the word hardly got out, her throat was constricted. She saw Dowd flick a sideways glance at her.
“She were mine,” he said, and his voice fell away.
“Yours? Was?” Past tense, past tense, past tense, she were mine. “Do you know what’s happened to her, Steve?” Without realizing it she was bent forward, almost in a fetal crouch, and she detected Dowd slowing the car, what was he doing? She caught a look from him, a frown, and made an effort to straighten up.
“What do you mean, she’s yours?” she said, leveling her voice.
Steve’s voice was patient, careful, but still the words didn’t make sense. “She didn’t know … Well, I didn’t know myself till, what, six, nine month ago, when her mother told me, just like that,” he said. “It were Facebook, my picture must’ve come up somewhere and she wanted money off me, after all this time. She was mine. Beth was. Beth. I was sixteen or summat. I came to look for her, and I fell for Janine.”
“She … you’re her father? Her father?” What had Beth’s mother said? Something about her dad. No: she’d just laughed. As if Beth’s dad was nothing, of no use, no interest.
“I was sixteen,” he said, sounding as if he was in pain. “I give her money. I give her a grand and asked where I could find her. How were I to know?”
“Your daughter,” said Nat wonderingly. “She was yours. D
id Janine know?” Something had changed. Looking up, she realized Dowd had stopped the car. They were under some trees. Steve was still talking, his voice low.
“I told the coppers,” he said. “I never told her, but I told them, can you believe it? I hardly knew her, did I?” Beside her Dowd was sitting quite still in the driver’s seat, staring ahead. “I just wanted…,” and she heard his voice break. Tough Steve, kind Steve, Nat leaned in his favor, she couldn’t help herself, big silent Steve. “I didn’t want to bother her. I just wanted to keep an eye.”
Beth never knew he was her dad. For a second protest rose inside her: this was all wrong. Beth never knowing she had a dad, a decent bloke looking out for her?
So wrong that for that moment, it was like a tidal wave, washing everything she knew away. Couldn’t Beth just be alive, please, please, please? Lost somewhere for a month, with the love of her life, just walk back in with your wide smile and your PVC backpack and meet your dad, Beth?
And then it all crashed back down.
“Didn’t do much of a job, did I?” he said quietly.
She thought of how Steve had been around Beth, keeping all this quiet. And very successfully: none of them had guessed. Not her, not Craig, not Jim, not Ollie, who had watched her like a hawk.
“Does Janine know?” Because he hadn’t answered that question.
“She does now,” said Steve and his voice was low.
“What about her brother?” she said, glancing at Dowd. He was pale and she felt a sudden access of pity. “Is he yours too?”
“I was long gone by the time he came along,” said Steve, his voice flat now, drained. “She told me she had him when she told me about Beth, saying she was strapped for cash, weren’t cheap having a disabled kid, she said.”
“She doesn’t pay anything for him,” said Nat. “Didn’t even visit him. Beth did that.”
She heard him sigh.
“Where are you now?” she asked. “You’re not in Ipswich, are you?”
“I’m on my way back,” said Steve. Then, “Don’t worry. You be careful.” Dowd was frowning, hands on the wheel. She said goodbye to Steve and put the phone carefully in her lap and turned to Dowd.
“That was—” but Dowd shook his head, not looking at her.
“I don’t want to know,” he said and his voice was low and level, correcting himself. “I don’t need to know.” He leaned to turn the key in the ignition again, his profile gave nothing away. He seemed to have become calmer, as if something had been taken out of his hands.
He didn’t open his mouth again until they pulled in at the boatyard, the pickup crunching on the wet gravel where the tide lapped: it would be coming up another hour and it was already high. The Chickadee had been pulled right up on the beach and she was lying carelessly, tilted. There was something unusual about her, she looked unkempt. An oar lay across the thwart, the sail unstowed. Perhaps Paddy had taken Sophie and Rufus out in her and just got back. There was no sign of them, though: no sign of anyone. The big flaking double doors to the boat shed were closed.
“I’ve got to get back,” he said, gesturing toward her door without looking at her. “I’ve got to get on with the sampling. The tide.”
She could tell that he would have liked just to lean across her and open the door. To get rid of her. The thought of his body moving across hers, getting inside her space, had a curious effect. It frightened her. Nat went for the handle, but it was stiff. She hefted the door open with her shoulder and all of a sudden she was out, standing on the wet stones and her bag swinging against her.
“You don’t have to wait,” she said stiffly.
He didn’t answer, but in a smooth movement he leaned across for the door and tugged it to behind her.
Nat stood there, surprised by how much the sound of the door closing shocked her. The sound of him shutting her out. He was inside, a dark shape unmoving, and she turned away. There was the beach, the boat shed with its concrete dry dock, Paddy’s shack on stilts across the way. A spade leaning against the wall, a bucket, a small faded life jacket. This place at the end of the road, nowhere beyond it and the water still creeping up.
Behind her Dowd still hadn’t turned his engine on, but she didn’t look around.
The big wooden double doors to the boatbuilding shed were nibbled and slimy with algae at the bottom where the water got them. They were padlocked. Jim should be at work, even if it was a Friday afternoon. The hasty drumbeat of panic set up, it was her fault, Jim was her fault. Jim drinking too much … if that was all it was. Jim hanging around the cottage at night.
She heard voices.
They weren’t coming from inside the boat shed, but from farther off. Around behind the cottage. Carefully she walked away from the lapping water. With the estuary behind her she could see how dark the cloud was inland, and how high it went, a tower block of storm cloud. The weather always seemed to come from there, blown across from Wales, from Ireland. From the big Atlantic, morphing as it moved, depressions coiling up ready for the thin gray strip of the North Sea.
The wind was moderate still, though: she calculated that it would be a while coming.
Now Nat recognized the voice as Paddy’s. She slowed, coming around the side of Paddy’s shed, not wanting to startle anyone, and there he was at the shed’s little worn-down steps with his head down and attentive to Rufus, whose hand he was holding. Paddy must have heard her because he looked up, and his expression turned sheepish. Then she saw that both he and Rufus had bare feet, and mud slicked up to their knees. Rufus gazed at Paddy with adoration.
Paddy stopped, tilted his head, inquiring.
Rufus distracted her. There was something in him that made her eyes burn, made her want to crouch and take his hand so that his head would turn to her. His smallness, his hand in Paddy’s. She cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Jim,” she said. Rufus was swinging the hand he held, tugging.
Paddy sighed. From the other side of the shed she heard the sound of Dowd’s engine turning on, the slow crunch of his tires on the gravel, the noise receding.
“Jim was here an hour ago,” Paddy said, clearing his throat, and the frown deepened. “I’m not sure he was … himself, if you know what I mean.”
“Had he been drinking?”
Paddy shrugged, uneasy. “Maybe.” He nodded toward the sound of Dowd’s engine. “That the bloke camping upriver? You seeing him?”
“No! He’s just … he was just giving me a lift. Jim doesn’t think…” She stopped.
“I dunno what Jim thinks.” Paddy hesitated. “I just saw him walking down the lane and he was weaving all over the place, side to side. Pale, like he’s not well. He’s been like it a while, though, hasn’t he?” Nat felt her mouth turn down, stubborn.
“At least he didn’t drive,” said Paddy. Rufus had gone quiet, as if he heard something in their lowered voices that he recognized.
The tinny sound of music came from somewhere: Paddy’s pocket. He fished out a mobile. Nat hadn’t even known he had one. His face screwed up in concentration as he answered: she heard a breathless stream of words on the other end.
“No,” he said, interrupting the stream, “no, don’t— Please don’t, S-Sophie. Please don’t worry.” At her name Rufus’s head jerked up to listen. “He’s safe, Sophie, no— I won’t let— No.”
He turned a little bit, still talking softly into the receiver, calming her, and there was something in the way he stood, or talked, that was different. He seemed taller, the quiet nervous movements had gone, and instead there was an energy she didn’t think of as Paddy’s. He hung up and turned back.
“That was Sophie,” he said. It was, it seemed to Nat, just that he wanted to say her name again. “She’s just left her dad, she’s on her way to Sunny Slopes.” He released Rufus’s hand and said, “Get yourself a drink, Rufus, your mum said, didn’t she? Make sure you drink plenty?” After a second’s pause Rufus nodded and dashed for the shed door. They heard the tap splash on inside, she cou
ld picture him stretching for it.
“His dad’s turned up,” said Paddy quickly. “He’s come to get the kid.” He stepped to one side to look past her out to the water: scanning the horizon, he had something fierce and bright in his expression. “I’ll keep him with me,” he said, talking to himself. “We’ll go and get something to eat.” The tap turned off inside and Rufus was coming out of the shed with a full pint glass held out in front of him with both hands. They both turned to look at him, and in that moment a sound came, distinct and clear, from inside the boat shed behind them.
“What the—” he said, but then Rufus let out a little sound as the glass tipped and trembled in his hands and Paddy was down on his knees taking it from him.
“It’s … I think Jim’s in there,” said Nat, and Paddy just looked up at her from where he knelt, one hand shading his eyes from the sky’s white cloud-glare.
“You want me to stay?” he said, looking defeated. “You want me to come in with you?” She looked from him to Rufus and slowly she shook her head. She had a feeling. A bad feeling: she wanted them gone, out of this.
Paddy stood back up. “Come on then, sailor,” he said to Rufus, taking the half-drunk glass, holding out a hand. “Let’s get your shoes on.”
She took a step: the distance between her and the big double doors seemed to extend. She willed Paddy and Rufus to go before she reached them, and when she did get there and turned, they were fifty yards away, up the lane. Up close she saw the doors weren’t padlocked at all, the chain was hanging loose. Gingerly she pushed.
It was dark inside, the long space filled with the hull of an old oyster smack that loomed over her on its props and trestles, the smooth-bellied sides half sanded, gleaming with a dull sheen in the near-dark. There was light coming in from some chink in the shed’s neglected weatherboards: if you looked you could see cracks everywhere in the old wood. She couldn’t hear anything: she couldn’t see Jim. She stopped, put up a hand to the curve of the boat, and listened.
The Day She Disappeared Page 30