On her chair in front of the television, Daisy thinks back to her conversation with Poppy. It was a gamble telling her about how long she’s been trapped here, but she’s glad she did. The honesty was a release. And she believed her own note of optimism when she voiced it. Together, the three of them are surviving. Perhaps they will do so long enough for someone out there to discover their whereabouts and rescue them. They will beat the odds, just as Woody and Buzz and their pals are doing.
Daisy turns to her right. Sees that Poppy is engrossed in the film, her eyes wide. There is no smile on her lips, but neither does she appear troubled.
Ellie silently joined them earlier, sitting some distance behind, but still wanting to take part. It showed Daisy that Ellie was becoming more aware of her surroundings. She’s reluctant to swivel round and check on her now, for fear of breaking the spell. So she waits for the closing credits, the final sing-song. And then she turns.
To find that Ellie isn’t there.
Ellie isn’t in her chair because she is over at the chimney breast. She has a red crayon in her hand. She has drawn a massive picture across the wallpaper.
‘Oh no!’ says Daisy. ‘No, no, no.’
She leaps out of her own chair. Races across to where Ellie is standing.
‘No, Ellie!’
Ellie draws back, crayon still tightly clutched. Daisy stares at the girl’s handiwork, expressed in a sea of red. She does not attempt to understand what she sees. Right now the message is less important than the medium. This is vandalism. This is devastation. All this redness is a beacon of alarm, of peril, of danger.
Just when things seemed to be going so well.
Daisy snatches the crayon from Ellie’s hand and flings it across the room. She grabs Ellie tightly by her arms.
‘Why, Ellie? Why did you do this? Why?’
It’s a pointless question. She knows there will be no answer. Knows, too, that she has to find a way to fix this.
She pushes Ellie away, then dashes over to the sink. She doesn’t know how much time she’s got. The movie has finished, and Harriet and Malcolm could return at any minute.
She turns on the tap, soaks a flannel, runs back to the wall. She starts rubbing, and while she rubs she prays. Prays that this will work. Prays that someone up there will be on her side for once.
Some of the crayon comes off, but not all of it. Not enough. Daisy feels the panic setting in. Tears sting her eyes.
She goes back to the sink. Sees the water turn pink as she squeezes out the flannel.
She soaks it again and returns to the wall. More frantic rubbing, but now the wallpaper is beginning to come away. The top layer turns to mush and forms clumps beneath the facecloth.
‘No!’ she sobs. ‘No.’
She continues rubbing, not knowing what else she can do. She rubs until her arm aches and she can no longer see through her tear-blurred eyes.
She steps away, sobbing.
She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, forcing out the tears. Please, she thinks, please let the wall look okay now. Please make it into something nobody would notice.
But then she opens her eyes and sees the mess. It couldn’t be any more obvious. Her prayers have gone unanswered.
The other girls are staring at her now, waiting to see what she will do next, how she will fix this. They will be thinking that she always has a solution, that she will know exactly what to do.
But she doesn’t. She has no next move.
And here come the footsteps.
Up the stairs . . .
Onto the landing . . .
Outside the door . . .
35
The bolts are drawn back. Poppy and Ellie continue to stare, as if willing Daisy to get a move on and sort out this mess before it’s too late.
Daisy doesn’t move. She watches the door swing open. Unaccompanied, Malcolm steps into the room, dartboard in hand. Initially he wears a smile, apparently excited to announce a new game.
His eyes are drawn immediately to the wall’s angry red stain. His smile wilts and his shoulders sag. He puts down the darts and board, closes the door, then moves across the room. He seems oblivious to the children as he wanders past them and up to the chimney breast.
Daisy stares at the back of the man’s misshapen head, wondering what thoughts are going through it, and how he will react. She cannot see his eyes at the moment, cannot tell if they have already misted over to signal a violent outburst.
‘Who did this?’ he demands.
Nobody answers. Nobody dares speak.
Malcolm turns his head to his left, drops his chin to focus his gaze on Ellie. It is clear he has his suspicions.
‘Who did this?’ he asks Ellie.
To her credit, or perhaps simply because she has lost the ability to care about her fate, Ellie locks eyes with him. She seems curiously unafraid.
Malcolm bunches his fists. He squares up to Ellie. He is Goliath to her David, but she has no catapult, no weapon of any kind. He could crush her tiny frame in an instant.
His voice booms. ‘I want you to tell me who did this.’
Ellie stands her ground. It is almost as though she has already resigned herself to her fate.
Malcolm stretches out his arms. Rests his powerful hands on her shoulders. His fingers are so close to her slim white neck.
He takes a deep breath. ‘I said—’
‘Me! It was me.’
The words tumble out of Daisy’s mouth. She sees how Poppy looks at her and opens her mouth to object, but Daisy shakes her head violently to cut her off.
Malcolm freezes, his damaged brain slow to deal with this unexpected input. Gradually he straightens up and takes his hands from Ellie. Then he turns to face Daisy.
‘You, Daisy?’ He points to the chimney breast behind him. ‘You did this?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Why would you do such a thing?’
‘I . . . I got upset. We finished watching the film, and then I wanted to draw. But Poppy and Ellie took all the paper, so I didn’t have anything. I got in a temper.’
Her eyes flicker towards Ellie. She’s not sure, but she thinks she detects a slight movement in her, as though she wants to intervene. Daisy wills her not to.
‘You know what this means, don’t you, Daisy?’ says Malcolm. ‘You know I have to punish you?’
Daisy nods. She expected nothing less.
Malcolm turns his gaze on each of the other girls in turn. ‘You two. Get behind the curtain. Close it tight.’
Poppy starts across the room, but then halts between Daisy and Malcolm.
‘You can’t punish Daisy. She didn’t do anything wrong. She—’
Daisy sees how Poppy’s words are hitting Malcolm and stoking a dreadful fire within him. She leaps forward and wraps her arms around her.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers in Poppy’s ear. ‘It’s better this way. I’ll be all right, I promise.’
Poppy looks at her with wet eyes, but Daisy pushes her in the small of her back, urging her to do as she has been told.
Poppy moves towards the commode. She collects Ellie on her way, then draws the curtain on its rail, cutting off their view of what is to come.
Daisy awaits her fate. She watches Malcolm approach with his belt in his hand, and doesn’t try to run away. He will do what he must, and any attempt to prevent it will only make things worse for all of them. Better to take her medicine and be done with it.
As he lashes her with his belt, he tells her things. He tells her he does this because she is loved so much, and that real love sometimes necessitates deep pain. He tells her that he hopes she understands. He tells her that it will bring the family closer. He tells her that it is for the best.
And while he says all these things, Daisy thinks about the picture that Ellie drew on the wall. A confusing blaze of red, like something burning fiercely inside Ellie’s head. As with the silent screams, it had to be let out before she exploded.
And what gets Daisy through her ordeal is knowing that the pain she is feeling now is nothing compared to that which Ellie must be experiencing.
*
They come to her later.
When Malcolm has long gone, and the room is filled only with the sound of Daisy’s soft cries, the youngsters hesitantly draw back the curtain and creep up behind Daisy.
She feels Poppy’s touch first. A gentle stroking of the back of her hand. She blinks away her tears and forces out a smile of reassurance.
‘What did he do?’ Poppy asks.
‘It’s better not to know,’ says Daisy.
‘He hurt you. A lot.’
‘Yes.’
Poppy whirls on Ellie standing behind her. ‘This is your fault. You did this. Daisy keeps trying to help you, and you just keep making things worse. I hate you. You’re a . . . You’re a bitch!’
‘Poppy, no,’ says Daisy. ‘She doesn’t understand. She’s been through so much.’
She stands with difficulty, wincing with the pain. She puts her arms out. ‘Come here, you two. Give me a hug.’
They come to her, and she wraps an arm around each of them. They have changed things so much, these two. The way Malcolm and Harriet described Poppy’s promised arrival almost made it sound exciting. At times she believed the presence of sisters would make life here much more bearable.
Now she believes the opposite. This isn’t working. It was better when she was the only child. Poppy and Ellie’s presence here has introduced only pain and turmoil.
More than ever, Daisy wants to go home.
She pulls the girls in tighter and starts to sing softly to them.
The song from Toy Story.
You’ve Got a Friend in Me.
36
Sometimes he finds it difficult to tear himself away from the job.
Like now, for instance. He could have gone home hours ago. Back to his little house and his pregnant, not-so-little wife.
But at this moment the Devlins need him more than she does. They need someone to talk to, to pour out their feelings to.
He can do that. He’s a good listener.
The Devlins have had a lot to drink. Maria downed most of a bottle of red wine. She seemed to lose the equivalent amount of fluid through her tear ducts. When she could endure it no longer, she took herself off to bed, bouncing off the walls like a pinball as she went.
Craig has stuck to beer. Some cheap Spanish brain-pounder, straight from the bottle. He keeps repeating himself, including his offers of alcohol. Oxo is thinking of writing a note to say he doesn’t want beer, and taping it to his forehead.
They are facing each other across the kitchen table. Over Craig’s shoulder, Oxo can see the kitchen clock ticking away his life.
‘I’ve never really liked coppers,’ says Craig.
Oxo thinks about responding that he doesn’t like insult-throwing drunkards, but restrains himself. What is it that makes some people think it’s okay to slag off a police officer to their face?
‘But,’ Craig continues, ‘you’ve changed my mind. All coppers should be like you.’ He takes another gulp of beer. ‘We can talk to you,’ he says. ‘Maria and I can talk to you. And that’s important. It’s important to talk.’
‘Yes,’ says Oxo. ‘Yes, it is.’
‘Do you think she’s dead?’
It comes out of the blue. Direct and to the point.
Which leaves Oxo in a quandary. Because such an unambiguous question deserves an equally unambiguous reply.
It also demands honesty, and this is the problem. Because yes, on the balance of probabilities, Poppy Devlin is almost certainly dead. That’s the truth of it.
But Oxo cannot deliver that message. Cannot give weight to what the man in front of him already knows. It is enough that he is already dissolving in his own tears.
He becomes suddenly agnostic. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I hope not. I like to think there’s still hope.’
Craig raises his beer in the air. ‘Bottle half full kind of guy, eh?’ He takes a long swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he gets up from the table, looks out into the hallway, and closes the kitchen door.
He flops back into his chair. ‘Man to man,’ he says. ‘Okay?’
‘Okay,’ says Oxo, unsure as to where this is leading.
‘A man takes a kid, right? He breaks into her house and he takes her out of her own fucking bed. Right?’
Oxo says nothing.
‘There’s a reason for that. Has to be. And I’ve been wracking my brain for it. I have considered every possible reason. And I can only think of one.’
And now Oxo realises where this is going, and he wishes it would stop.
Craig says, ‘Men do things like that, don’t they? They do horrible, disgusting things. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be a man. Do you know what I’m saying? Sometimes I’m ashamed of what we’re capable of doing. To women. To kids.’
‘Craig, we don’t know—’
‘But you do! You know. More than most. You know what men do to the young girls they snatch. And you know what? It’s tearing me apart. God help me for saying this, but . . . I can tell you this, can’t I? I can say this without you judging me?’
‘You can say it.’
‘It’s just that sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder if it might be better if Poppy is dead.’
The words are out, because Craig needs them to be out. The relief opens the floodgate to a further cascade of tears down his cheeks.
‘I mean, if the alternative is that she has to suffer, that she goes through pain, that she wishes she were dead, then . . . Do you understand? Do you get what I’m saying to you?’
Craig takes hold of Oxo’s forearm and grips it hard.
‘I can’t say this to Maria. I can’t say that it might be better if our only daughter never comes back to us. How can I say that? But it’s what I feel.’ He puts the bottle down, and then he starts banging his fists against his temples. His voice becomes shrill. ‘I can’t get the images out of my head. I can’t stop seeing what this guy is doing to my daughter. And it’s killing me. It’s killing me.’
And then Oxo is out of his chair. He comes around the table. He puts his arms around this man and he holds him tightly while he sobs his heart out.
37
‘It’s all your fault.’
This from Webley, sitting next to Cody in an unmarked car on the way to Childwall.
‘What is?’
‘This! Van-checking duty. White van man isn’t my favourite species in the first place, and for the last two days we’ve done nothing but look at vans and talk to their owners. I’m sick of it.’
‘So how’s that my fault?’
‘Have you forgotten your little joke with Blunt? “We’ve got a lead,” you said. “A dog lead.”’
A smile breaks out on Cody’s face. ‘Oh, yeah. I did say that, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did. And I don’t think Blunt saw the funny side. And now we’re stuck with this rotten job.’
‘Could be worse. If it hadn’t been for my idea to talk to Quigley, we could be checking every white van out there.’
Webley lapses into silence. It’s true that the scale of the task has been reduced, but Cody can’t take all the credit. Grace Meade, for one, deserves some recognition. From the vehicle registration database she extracted entries for all medium-sized white vans registered in the Merseyside area. Next, she wrote some code to pick out all those cars with registrations that might have some connection with the word DOGGY, which naturally involved a lot of guesswork and creativity. The search terms she used included DOGGY itself, of course, but also DOG, DGY and anything else she could think of, such as WOOF, BARK, WAG, K9 and even GRR.
‘It’s still a bloody long list of vans we’ve got to check,’ says Webley, ‘and that’s just in Merseyside. What if the guy doesn’t live in this neck of the woods? He could live in Harlech, or somewhere between Harlech an
d here, or anywhere else in the frigging country for that matter. We don’t even know for definite that the guy who took Daisy is the same guy who took Poppy and Ellie.’
‘So,’ says Cody, ‘by following this dog lead, you’re saying we could be chasing our tails?’
Webley gives him a look that lets him know she’s not impressed by his crap joke.
‘Or, to put it another way,’ Cody continues unabashed, ‘we could really be barking up the wrong tree here.’
Webley shakes her head slowly in dismay. ‘Have you finished?’
Cody takes a second to consider this. ‘I haven’t said anything about dogging yet. I wasn’t quite sure how to work that in.’
‘Well, don’t even try. If you can be serious for one minute, have you given any thought to how many possible ways a car number plate could have some connection with dogs?’
‘Actually, no, it’s not something that keeps me occupied at nights.’
‘And that’s assuming Quigley’s brain works like ours. Hell, the guy can’t even spell. For all we know, the number plate he saw might have contained K-A-T. And then there are all the idiots who use black screw covers on their number plates to make one letter look like another. We’ve no hope of finding it if it’s one of those.’
Cody glances across at her. ‘You okay? Only you sound a bit . . .’
‘A bit what?’ she snaps.
‘A bit out of sorts.’
‘That’s because I am.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
‘Okay.’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, I do want to talk about it. I’ve done something, and now I’m not sure I should have done it.’
‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve agreed to something.’
‘Right. Care to elaborate?’
Webley hesitates. ‘It’s Parker. He phoned me again. He still wants to talk things over in person. So I’ve agreed.’
‘Well . . . good. That’s a great start.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. You know it is. Otherwise you wouldn’t have agreed.’
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