‘I mean . . . not playing, exactly. But trying to play. When you brought the food, it was quite hot, so I said we should leave it for a few minutes, and while we were waiting we played pretend. We said Ellie should be the baby, and Poppy and me would put her to bed. So we put her in the bed and sang nursery rhymes to her. But then she fell asleep. So me and Poppy had our meal.’
Daisy doesn’t think she has ever spouted such utter rubbish in all her life. She has told small white lies before – what kid hasn’t? – but nothing like this.
They know, she thinks. They’re looking at me like I’m mad. They know I’m making it up.
But then Harriet finds a hesitant smile again, reflected instantly by Malcolm.
‘I was like that when I was your age,’ says Harriet. ‘Never could sit still long enough to eat. Always wanting to play outside on the swing while—’
She seems suddenly to realise what she is saying: that she is taunting them with childhood experiences they will forever be denied.
‘Anyway,’ says Harriet, backing out of the room, ‘I’ll sort out those sheets.’ She wags a finger at Ellie. ‘You eat up now.’
Malcolm follows her out, but before he leaves, Daisy catches a look on his face that says, Don’t make me have to punish anyone.
As soon as the door is locked, Poppy bounces across to the bottom of the bed.
‘You lied,’ she says. ‘Why did you tell all those lies? We didn’t play with her.’ She emphasises the final word, as though the very idea of taking part in any activity with Ellie is unthinkable.
‘I had to. If they think Ellie is just being naughty, they’ll get mad, and then they’ll punish us.’
‘They’ll punish her.’
‘No, Poppy, it doesn’t work like that. Malcolm doesn’t always think like we do. He’ll say we’re not trying hard enough, or we’ve done something to upset Ellie, and then we’ll all be in trouble.’
She turns to Ellie again. ‘Please, Ellie. Eat something before they come back. Just a couple of mouthfuls.’
‘I know,’ says Poppy. ‘Throw it down the toilet.’
‘It’s not a proper toilet, Poppy. They’ll see it. I can’t put it down the sink either, because it will clog it up.’
And then she hears footsteps again. They’re coming. They will walk in and see the disobedience, and Harriet will demand that Malcolm deal with it, and then Malcolm will unleash a whirlwind of devastation that will snap the children like brittle twigs.
Daisy has no choice. She grabs Ellie’s fork, scoops up some mash and beans, stuffs it into her own mouth. Although her stomach is already full, she forces herself to swallow the unchewed mass. She chops up a fish finger, piles on some more beans, throws it down her gullet.
Footsteps on the landing now, just outside the door.
Another attack on the food. Daisy retching as she takes another couple of gulps, even though there seems no room for it and it is just sitting solidly in her throat, queuing for space.
The bolts being drawn back.
Daisy frantically pushing the food around the plate, spreading it out to give the impression that inroads have been made. Then one final touch as the door swings open: Daisy dipping two fingers into the bean sauce and wiping it across Ellie’s mouth.
‘How are we doing?’ says Harriet, beaming while her husband stands behind her, awaiting her command like an attack dog. She has sheets and blankets draped over one arm. Malcolm clutches a pillow far too tightly, reminding Daisy of the way he held on to Poppy when she was naughty.
Daisy tries to summon a smile of her own, but finds it difficult to manipulate facial muscles that are focused on holding back a volcano. She nods emphatically, hoping that will make up for it.
Harriet cranes to look past Daisy at the food on the table. Daisy’s own eyes slide sideways, to where Ellie is sitting. Doubts rush into her brain. She worries that her attempt at deceit is plain to see. It’s too rushed, too obvious.
A ball of food threatens to spring back up Daisy’s oesophagus. Her hand automatically jumps towards her mouth to prevent an eruption, but at the last moment she manages to divert it to her cheek, which she casually scratches.
Harriet’s eyes switch back to Daisy. They appear laden with suspicion.
But then Harriet smiles once more. ‘You managed to get her to eat something.’
Daisy nods again, fighting against the internal pressure.
‘Fantastic,’ says Harriet. ‘Nothing like a good meal to make people feel better.’ She points to the plates. ‘All finished?’
More nods from Daisy. She looks to Poppy for support, but gets no response.
‘Good girl,’ says Harriet, patting Ellie on the head. Ellie doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Now, let’s sort this bed out.’
Harriet collects the plates and passes them across to Malcolm, who carries them out of the room. Daisy and Ellie move over to the bed while Harriet wipes down the table, then folds it away and stacks the chairs. When Malcolm returns, they busy themselves preparing the mattress.
Daisy feels relieved as the attention shifts away from her. She uses the opportunity to take a few hard swallows, desperately trying to compact food into her overstretched stomach, which grumbles in complaint. She glances at Poppy, who appears to be filled with a mixture of delight at the con trick being perpetrated, and trepidation that it will all be uncovered. Poppy fidgets as her wide eyes flit between Daisy and the Bensons, waiting to see who will win this battle.
‘There,’ says Harriet. ‘All done. Doesn’t that look cosy?’
It doesn’t look cosy at all to Daisy. She would hate to be that close to the floor, where unseen things might crawl across you at night.
‘Great,’ she croaks, the first word she has managed to let loose since the adults walked in.
When the Bensons have left, Poppy bounces on the bed with excitement. ‘We did it! We fooled them.’
Daisy clutches her stomach and groans. ‘Move over, Poppy. I need to lie down.’
She gets on the bed. Spends several minutes massaging her abdomen in an effort to coax the food through her system. Stops when she feels an urgent tapping on her shin.
She sits up. Follows Poppy’s gaze.
Ellie is moving soundlessly across the carpet. She doesn’t look at the other two girls, doesn’t seem aware of their existence. Daisy watches her, wondering whether to intervene.
When Ellie arrives at the far side of the room, she turns one hundred and eighty degrees, then slides her back down the wall until she is sitting on the floor. Finally, she draws up her legs, crosses her arms over them, and buries her face. There is no further movement.
Poppy twists her head to look at Daisy, but Daisy has no answers. She has no idea what is going through Ellie’s head. She knows only that her behaviour could mean the end for all of them.
28
It’s bedtime.
Daisy left Ellie where she was for at least an hour. She doesn’t know whether the child slept or simply cut herself off from the world, but she couldn’t leave her like that any longer.
By the time Harriet returned to announce that they needed to get ready for ‘sleepy-byes’, Daisy had Ellie sitting on the bed, a book in her hand. She wasn’t reading it, of course. Wasn’t even seeing it, probably. But it at least gave the impression she had some interest in being alive.
Now Daisy takes the book from Ellie and eases her off the bed. She undresses her, leads her to the sink and washes her down. Then she helps her into a pair of warm pyjamas. Throughout the whole process Ellie doesn’t murmur once.
Daisy turns to Poppy. ‘Poppy, I don’t think Ellie should sleep alone tonight.’
Poppy looks horrified. ‘I don’t want her in our bed. She’s creepy. Anyway, there’s no room.’
‘I thought . . . I thought maybe you could sleep on the mattress, and Poppy could get in with me.’
‘On the floor? I’m not sleeping there. There might be spiders down there or . . . or mice or
something.’
‘You’ll be fine. There’s nothing down there. Please, Poppy. Look at her. She needs hugs, like the ones I gave you, remember?’
‘No. It’s horrible down there.’
‘It’s not horrible. It’s . . . Look, if you sleep there tonight, I’ll give you my dessert tomorrow. How does that sound?’
Poppy stares at the bed while she mulls it over. ‘What about your biscuits?’
‘All right, yes. You can have my biscuits too. Do we have a deal?’
‘Okay. But if anything crawls on me in the night, I’m going to scream the house down.’
Daisy gets herself washed and changed, then helps Ellie into bed. She climbs in next to her and pulls the covers over them. Ellie stays flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Put the light out,’ she tells Poppy.
‘Why can’t you put it out? If I do it, I’ll have to find my bed in the dark.’
‘It’s easier for you, Poppy. If I do it, I’ll have to climb over Ellie or stand on you.’
Poppy huffs and puffs as she gets up from the mattress and stamps over to the light switch. When they are in blackness, Daisy hears Poppy quickly retracing the steps back to her bed.
Daisy remains still for a minute, listening. She thinks she can just about hear Ellie breathing, but it’s ever so faint. She stretches her hand out beneath the covers. When her fingers touch Ellie’s flesh, it still feels like ice.
Daisy slides herself across until she is pressing against Ellie. She wraps her arm across the child’s body.
‘It’s okay,’ she breathes. ‘I’ll look after you. I promise.’
‘Stop whispering,’ says Poppy from below. ‘It’s creepy.’
*
Daisy has no idea what time it is, or why she has woken up. She reaches out a hand.
Ellie isn’t there.
Daisy dives off the bed. She heads for the light switch, stumbling as she tries to get across Poppy’s mattress. Poppy comes awake with a yelp.
‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’
Daisy finds the switch. Turns it on. And then she sees.
Ellie is standing in the middle of the room, screaming.
Or rather, she looks like she’s screaming. No sounds leave her mouth. She keeps bending at the waist and opening her mouth as wide as she can, letting out what ought to be an almighty roar. All the emotion contained in that tiny frame spewing out of her in eerie silence, again and again, while tears stream down her face.
‘What’s she doing?’ Poppy yells. ‘Make her stop. Make her—’
Daisy drops to the mattress and clamps a hand over Poppy’s mouth. The adults mustn’t hear this. They mustn’t come in and see what Ellie is doing. They won’t like what they see, and they will hurt her.
‘Hush,’ says Daisy. ‘Hush.’
She doesn’t know what she’s watching. Doesn’t understand what is happening to Ellie – what has happened to Ellie. She knows only that Ellie must be allowed to do this. She needs to get it out.
Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be inside this poor little girl.
29
‘The Pied Piper! The Pied bloody Piper!’
Blunt slams the newspaper down on the desk at the front of the incident room. It’s a depressing start to another day. The tabloid sensationalists have had plenty of time in which to concoct slogans and catchphrases that will stick in Joe Public’s memory. And they’ve gone to town.
‘It’s sick, and I hate it,’ says Blunt. ‘And before you give me any accusing looks, DS Cody, yes, I know I said yesterday that this is starting to resemble the work of the Childcatcher, but that was for internal consumption only. We’re allowed to think such things. What I don’t want is for the people of this city to start believing that some mysterious maniac is rounding up their children and leading them away, never to be seen again.’
‘No, ma’am,’ says Cody. ‘But we shouldn’t be surprised they’re borrowing from fantasy. I mean, this is pretty damn weird.’
‘Weird doesn’t begin to cover it. This is unprecedented. But what that tells us is that there has to be a rational explanation. These attacks weren’t random or impromptu. They were carefully planned. In each case, the perpetrator needed to take a specific child. No other child would do. And once he’d decided to take them, nothing was going to get in his way. Including the parents. So, ladies and gents, my question is why? Why did he abduct these particular girls, and why was he willing to go to such lengths to get them?’
‘Maybe he has a type,’ Cody ventures.
Blunt gestures to the back of the incident room. ‘Grace, put some pictures up for us, will you?’
She doesn’t have to wait long before photographs of the two girls appear side by side on the central monitor.
‘All right, Cody. Let’s explore that. Similarities?’
Cody stares at the images. The girls look nothing like each other. If the abductor covets a certain type, it goes beyond mere appearance.
‘All right. Both are female. Both are six years old. Neither of them has any siblings. All the parents are employed – I mean, the McVities were employed . . .’ He continues to wrack his brain, but manages to shake out nothing of significance.
‘What else?’ Blunt pushes. ‘Grace, anything on the intelligence front that might link the two?’
Grace stands up. ‘Nothing yet. It’ll be a while before I can get full data on the McVities, but so far I’ve found nothing. I’m analysing phone dumps right now. If the Devlins ever called the McVities or vice versa, or if either of them had a conversation with the same intermediary, I’ll know about it. But nothing has been flagged yet. Same goes for their computers. HCU are cross-checking the sites they visited, the emails they sent, and so on, but it could take a while.’
‘There has to be a link of some kind,’ says Blunt. ‘Maybe Devlin and McVitie both did some work for the same guy at some point. Maybe they once drank in the same pub. Maybe the children were in the same Brownies pack.’
‘Rainbows,’ says Webley.
‘What?’
‘Brownies comes later. At six you’d be in Rainbows.’
‘Whatever. Our perp targeted these kids because he knew something that connects them. If we can work out what it is, we’ve cracked this case.’ She pauses. ‘Forensics given us anything?’
‘The killer stepped in blood,’ says Cody, ‘so we’ve got shoe prints. Apparently they were size twelve CATs. We’ve also got several fibre samples. The problem is finding something to match against. We’re working our way through potential suspects again, looking for items of footwear or clothing that might have been used.’
‘What about the methods of entry? This guy knew what he was doing.’
‘He did. At the McVities’ house it looks as though he used some kind of tool to open the window from the inside. That suggests he knew exactly where to go to get hold of such a thing, or he was skilled enough to construct it himself.’
Blunt nods. ‘That’s useful information. Okay, what about this white van that was seen?’
‘We brought Mrs Morley in, showed her some pictures. She’s very vague about it. She thinks it was about the size of the smallest Ford Transit, but she couldn’t say anything about make or model. Anyway, we went back to the neighbours of the Devlins, and asked them specifically about a white van. Lo and behold, a couple of them now think they remember seeing a white van parked on the street on a couple of occasions. Could be just coincidence, but on the other hand . . .’
Blunt’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You’re not suggesting one of the Devlins could have been driving it, are you?’
‘There’s no indication of that. More likely that someone was using it for surveillance on the Devlin property. That’s assuming it wasn’t just a builder working at one of the houses nearby. We’re still checking that.’
‘But I don’t suppose anyone got a registration number there either?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Grace, anything to add?’
Grace gets to her feet again. ‘Only that I’m scouring CCTV for recordings of white vans on nearby roads at that time of the morning. I’m also analysing local ANPR data for plates belonging to white vans. It’s a long shot, but worth a try.’
Blunt nods slowly. ‘We’re missing something,’ she mutters. ‘Nobody does this kind of thing without a reason. What’s his reason?’
She starts to pace the room.
‘Why?’ she says. ‘Why?’
The explosion is as shocking as it is sudden. Blunt lets out a shout of frustration, then sweeps her arm across a desk, sending papers, pens and trays sailing across the room.
She whirls round to stare at her stunned team then stabs a finger at them. ‘This man is a stone cold killer. He has two children in his clutches. They are not dead. I refuse to believe they are dead. We have to find them.’
And then she turns and marches away.
*
‘Ma’am?’
Cody keeps his voice quiet, hoping its calmness will carry to his superior.
He’s not sure he should be here at all, but he knows that nobody else will take the risk. Perhaps they know better than he does. Perhaps he should leave well alone.
But then again, maybe she needs someone right now. Blunt always seems such a rock, an island. But she’s also a human being.
‘Ma’am?’ he says again.
Blunt turns from her office window to face him. ‘Nathan,’ she says. ‘What brings you here? A major break in the case since I left you five minutes ago?’
‘No, ma’am. I just wanted to . . . I just thought I should check if you were . . . if you are . . .’
‘That’s what I like about you, Nathan. Your directness.’
She smiles. Relieved, he smiles back.
‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Made a bit of an arse of myself out there, didn’t I?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. It’s just that I’ve never seen you act that way. You took me by surprise.’
‘Well, I don’t like to be too predictable.’ She pauses. ‘Scratch that. I do like to be predictable. I want you and the rest of the team to believe that I will always be someone who can be relied upon to stay in control and to get the job done. I don’t think I did that out there today. That’s why I’m seriously considering handing this case over to someone else.’
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