‘You see, girls? See how easy it is? So who’s next?’
He steps up to the three girls, studies each of them in turn. Then his gaze settles on Daisy.
‘Daisy, I think you should set an example, don’t you? I think you should show your sisters here what to do.’
Cody sees her wide-eyed terror. Senses that she is aware of some dreadful fate that awaits her if she disobeys.
But still she doesn’t budge from her position.
Malcolm drops the tone of his voice a notch. ‘Daisy, I don’t intend to have a discussion with you about this. We are playing a game, and it is your turn. I’m sure you don’t want to ruin this for everyone. You know how angry that will make me.’
Daisy turns her head slightly then, looks directly at Cody.
And he nods. A slight tip of his head and a blink of his eyes. Giving her his blessing. Saving her.
Her own eyes begin to water. The decision is tearing her up inside.
‘Daisy,’ says Cody. ‘It’s okay.’
He knows she won’t hear the words clearly, but hopes the message will reach her. She needs to know he won’t blame her.
And yet she still doesn’t step forward.
‘Daisy,’ says Malcolm, ‘I’m not going to ask you again. I am your father. You do as I say. You need to show this terrible man that he can’t destroy us. We stick together, through thick and thin. Last chance, Daisy. What’s it going to be?’
She opens her mouth. Her lip trembles. She’s going to defy him, thinks Cody. She is seriously going to tell him to take a hike.
No, Daisy. Don’t do that. Not for me.
And then something curious happens. Something nobody else in the room expects.
The small, quiet one. Ellie. She moves away from the others. Takes a step towards Cody. And then she pulls back her arm and lets fly with a dart.
He is almost too surprised to react. He just manages to turn his head slightly, and the dart hits him in the side of the face. It penetrates his cheek, and he hears the grating of the metal point as it forces its way between his teeth.
He emits a stifled shriek. Then, gathering himself, he looks back at Ellie. There is no malice on her young features. Her expression is impassive, and Cody wonders what is going through her mind.
Almost robotically, she flings the next dart. Cody thanks his lucky stars as it hits the board and bounces out onto the floor.
The stars forsake him when it comes to the third dart. It’s too low this time. Cody wants to shriek as the missile heads for his groin. It misses by inches, burrowing instead into his fleshy inner thigh.
And then Ellie just stands there, hands by her sides, her duty as a daughter fulfilled.
‘Jesus,’ says Malcolm when he gets over the shock. ‘Will you look at that? Look at that!’
Malcolm strides across to Cody. He pulls the dart from his leg. Yanks the other one from out of his cheek. Cody feels the warmth of the blood as it trickles down his face and onto his neck. Tastes it as it soaks through the cotton wool in his mouth.
Malcolm jabs towards his eyes with the darts. ‘See! See what they’ll do? That’s for me, that is. That’s because they’re family.’
He’s actually proud, thinks Cody. He actually interprets this act of pure torture as some kind of validation of love for him.
What a warped bastard.
Malcolm takes back his dartboard. He doesn’t seem interested in tending to Cody’s wounds. Too preoccupied with his own smugness, he simply draws the curtain back around his prisoner.
‘Well done, girls,’ says Malcolm. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down. We stick together. That’s what families do.’
It occurs to Cody that Malcolm appears to have forgotten that only one of the girls did his bidding. It’s another sign of his instability.
And then Cody hears the door being closed, the bolts being slid home.
He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. Allows the pain to flow through his body as it must.
And he wonders what lies in store for him next.
64
Daisy keeps herself away from the other girls for the rest of the evening. She doesn’t want to talk about what has happened, what she has witnessed. It’s too much for her.
She can’t even be bothered to explain things to Poppy, who is obviously confused by the whole episode. Every time Poppy approaches her with a question, Daisy shoos her away.
She’s not sure she understands it all herself.
That Mr Cody. He’s supposed to be a really bad man. Someone who has come to hurt them.
And yet . . .
It was the look on his face. Not when he was pleading with her for help. Anyone in his position would do that, good or bad.
No, it was later. When he was granting her permission to throw the darts at him.
She knows she’s not mistaken. It was clear. He nodded and he blinked, and he . . .
He was forgiving me, she thinks.
He was telling me it was okay, he wouldn’t hold it against me, and that I should go ahead and do it because then Malcolm wouldn’t punish me.
Why would Mr Cody do that? If he really is such a terrible man, why wouldn’t he hate me for doing something that might hurt him? Why wouldn’t he be angry with me?
But he wasn’t angry. He was trying to help me, even though horrible things were being done to him.
So what does that say about him?
Daisy carries these questions with her throughout the evening. She is thankful that Malcolm doesn’t put in another appearance. Harriet shows her face once or twice, though, just to make sure they are getting ready for bed. She doesn’t even mention Mr Cody. It’s as if she wants nothing more to do with him.
Once in bed, and she is certain that Ellie is asleep, Daisy lets her tears flow. She does it as silently as she can, but behind her, Poppy becomes aware of the sobs wracking her body.
‘Are you crying?’ she whispers.
‘Just a bit,’ Daisy replies.
‘Why? Why are you crying?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Please, Daisy. Please talk about it. I want to know. Is it because of Mr Cody?’
Daisy accepts it’s unfair to leave Poppy wrestling with the matter. She turns in the bed to face her.
‘Yes, it’s because of Mr Cody.’
‘Because he got hurt? In the game?’
‘Yes.’
‘But . . . But he’s a bad man. He came to take us away. He’s worse than Malcolm and Harriet.’
‘We don’t know that, do we? And even if he is bad, that doesn’t mean we should hurt him, does it?’
‘Bad people are supposed to get punished. Everyone knows that.’
‘If you’re bad, you go to jail. That’s the law. If Mr Cody is bad, then Malcolm should call the police.’
‘But if he calls the police, they’ll find us here.’
‘Yes, they will.’
Poppy goes quiet. Then she says, ‘What do you think about Mr Cody?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think he’s a bad man, like Malcolm says?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will they do to him? Will they kill him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They don’t feed him, you know. He must be starving.’
Daisy starts to cry again. She hates knowing that just feet away from her, a man is possibly dying. Good or bad, he is being slowly killed. And that doesn’t seem right.
Poppy brings a hand to Daisy’s cheek and wipes away the tears. ‘Don’t cry. It’s not your fault. You didn’t hurt him. I thought you were very brave.’
‘Thank you, Poppy.’
‘It was Ellie. She did it. I hate her, don’t you? She’s always getting us into trouble.’
Daisy sniffs. ‘No, Poppy. You don’t understand. Ellie saved us. She threw the darts because someone had to. If she hadn’t, Malcolm would have punished all of us. Please don’t be
angry with her.’
Poppy goes quiet again. Daisy can picture her wrestling with these complex, thorny issues.
Eventually, Poppy’s breaths become longer and slower as she falls into a deep sleep.
The night hasn’t finished with Daisy, though. It taunts her with the sounds from beyond that curtain: the tiny rustles and pitiful groans of a dying man.
And she wonders if they will cease altogether before morning.
65
Sleep evades Webley, too.
She tosses and turns in her bed, but the more she fights to get away from her consciousness, the firmer it clings to her. Worse, it insists on bombarding her with imagined scenarios that only exacerbate her unrest. She keeps seeing images of Cody’s corpse: hanging by a rope or dragged from a river, and then lying on a slab in the mortuary.
She gets out of bed at six, not knowing if she ever managed to drift off, but with a feeling of exhaustion that suggests she didn’t.
She tries to prop her eyelids open with strong coffee, followed by a long shower.
He’ll be found today, she tells herself. Alive. He’ll have a story to tell – something suitably astounding to account for his dropping off the edge of the world – but at least he’ll be back with us. He’ll be safe.
No, he won’t, she thinks. He’s dead. If he’s not in work this morning, then he’s dead.
She cries.
Please let there be more news today. Good news, preferably, but anything will do. I can’t stand not knowing.
She gets into work before anyone else. Sits there staring at Cody’s empty chair, the papers on his desk still undisturbed.
Her colleagues drift in one by one. As they enter, each of them looks towards Cody’s desk, then makes a mournful face at Webley. Even DCI Blunt can’t stop her eyes straying towards where Cody should be as she makes her way to her office.
Webley tries to put him out of her mind and concentrate on her work. She doesn’t want today to be like yesterday – not giving the missing girls the attention they deserve – but it’s so difficult.
Halfway through the morning, Blunt shows her face in the incident room. She looks grave, as though she is the bearer of bad news. Webley feels sick.
‘I’ll keep this brief,’ says Blunt. ‘You are all aware by now that Detective Sergeant Cody is missing. He hasn’t been seen since the day before yesterday. Nobody knows where he is. I don’t want to start speculating as to what that might mean. It’s too early for that. What I do want to say is that we can’t allow Cody’s disappearance to distract us from the vital work we do here.’
She points to the photographs of the three girls on one of the boards. ‘If those girls are alive – and I would love to believe they are – then they are counting on us to save them. If we don’t do it, nobody else will. And if they’re dead, then we owe it to them and their families to find the man who took them. Missing Persons are dealing with Cody, and that’s how it should be. If I had unlimited resources, or if things were quiet around here, then I’d put each and every one of you onto the search team. But that’s not how things are. Life is never perfect. That’s all I want to say.’
When Blunt returns to her office, she leaves behind a pall of silence. Detectives look at each other soulfully. From the back of the room comes a sniffle. Webley turns to see Grace Meade burying her face in a tissue.
Gradually, people return to their work. Keyboards clatter. Phone calls are made and received. Filing cabinets are opened and closed. Life goes on.
The double ping from Webley’s mobile almost stops her heart. It’s a text. And as she starts scrabbling in her bag for her phone, she can’t stop herself thinking that this is from him – from Cody. He’s finally responding to her long series of text messages. He’s saying he’s okay, he’s saying he’s—
It’s from Parker.
Happy Valentine’s Day. Looking forward to tonight xxx
The disappointment almost pulls her down to the ground, but she knows she shouldn’t feel that way. This is from the man who, until recently, was her fiancé, and wants to be called that again. The man she thought she loved deeply is making an effort to fix things. Isn’t that worth something?
And now she feels guilty. It’s as though she has caught herself out comparing boyfriends, even though it has been a long, long time since she was with Cody.
Looking again at her phone, she considers calling Parker back. Telling him she can’t possibly make it tonight because she has too much on her plate.
But that would be unfair. This is none of his doing. It wouldn’t be right to take it out on him.
Give him a chance. Perhaps he will make everything all right for her, just as he used to.
*
It’s a couple of hours later that she goes to see Blunt.
She has no good news to present to her. No significant progress on the missing girls.
What she feels now is the need to apologise. She was out of order yesterday. Blunt was quite right. There are ways of doing things: protocols to be followed. Members of an elite unit like MIT cannot allow their emotions to get in the way of the job. Webley realises that now. Much though she would love to drop everything and go looking for Cody, it would be an abrogation of her duty. It would be just plain wrong.
And so she goes to Blunt’s door. Prepares herself to swallow humble pie.
Blunt will understand, she thinks. It’s not as if I’m alone in having a special attachment to Cody. Blunt has her moments.
Like now, for example.
Webley pauses, her fist in the air, on the verge of knocking.
What has stopped her is the sound from within. The sound of gentle weeping.
Blunt’s door is slightly ajar, and Webley cannot stop herself from putting her eye to the crack. She sees Blunt with her back to the door. One of her hands is over her mouth, stifling her cries. In the other hand is a photograph.
Webley pulls away, heads quickly back to her desk.
I shouldn’t see this, she thinks. This wasn’t meant for my eyes.
The image won’t leave her, though. It squats in her mind, confusing her, saddening her beyond measure.
The image of DCI Blunt, crying over a photograph of her lost sergeant.
66
Malcolm, in his study, a can of bitter in his hand and two empty ones in the wastepaper bin.
He doesn’t drink much these days. It clouds his already muzzy thinking.
But he’s drinking now. In the middle of the day, no less. Practically unheard of for him. Harriet would have a fit if she found out.
He’s doing it for the numbness it brings. The escape from the pandemonium in his brain.
He still doesn’t know what to do about the cop. Still doesn’t know what to believe.
Are they coming for him or not? Is there a bit of paper somewhere, a computer record, with the name and address of the Bensons on it, just waiting for someone to notice?
Cody has been here two nights. Surely his colleagues would be here by now if they were coming at all. If there is something pointing the way, surely one of them would have seen it, no matter how thick they seem.
And then there are the other questions buzzing fiercely in his head like a colony of disturbed bees. He wants the beer to drown the bastards, because they’re really starting to get on his wick.
He drains the can, tosses it into the bin, burps.
He heads downstairs, and finds Harriet in the kitchen, scrubbing the grease from the hob. He sees a vase on the window sill, containing the flowers he bought her on the Internet for Valentine’s Day. It devastates him that he feels the need to discuss matters of mutual trust on such a day.
He drags out a chair to sit down, and the noise startles Harriet into turning around.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’
Malcolm feels the gas from the beer rising in his gullet. He lets it out with a belch. ‘No, thanks.’
Harriet studies him for a few seconds, then she removes her rubber gloves
and comes to join him at the table.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Not really,’ he says.
She looks worried now. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’
He wonders where to start. So much buzzing in his head.
‘The copper. We can’t keep him here forever.’
‘No. That’s what I said to you, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but . . . Well, it’s not an easy decision, is it? I still don’t know . . .’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘What brought him here. Why did he come here, Harriet?’
‘The van. He told us they had a list of people with vans.’
‘I know. That’s what he said. But I think there’s more to it. Stuff he’s not telling me.’
‘Like what?’
‘That’s what I don’t know.’
He waits for Harriet to say something, but she doesn’t. It almost seems to him that she doesn’t want to pursue the topic.
He says, ‘And then there’s the second visit.’
‘The second visit?’
‘Yes. Him coming back here by himself, and that ridiculous excuse about his warrant card. Don’t you think that’s really weird?’
‘Yes. Yes I do.’
‘Only you haven’t said much about it. You were here and I wasn’t, but you haven’t told me much about what went on.’
She gives a barely perceptible shrug. ‘There’s nothing more to say. I told you everything I could remember.’
Malcolm thinks back to his conversation with Cody. He struggles to recall the exact words, but the gist of it is still there.
Cody was talking about police intelligence. About how it sometimes has to be kept secret because to reveal it would endanger someone’s life.
As though someone might have said something they shouldn’t have.
‘But I’m still really puzzled,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that he should turn up at our door just after you sent me out for ketchup?’
Another thought occurs to him: Had we really run out of ketchup?
‘Well, maybe he waited for you to leave. Maybe he thought he could get more out of me when you weren’t here.’
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