‘Did you try to find him? Did you report it?’
‘Yes to both. I got nowhere. The official line was that he was an adult who was free to go wherever he wanted if that was his choice. Without support, I had no chance of finding him.’
It all suddenly makes sense to Webley. If he is still alive, Evan is now about Cody’s age. That’s why Blunt mothers Cody so much: she sees her missing son in him. It also explains why she has been so affected by the abductions of the girls. Kids going missing must be her worst nightmare.
Webley continues to stare at the photograph, but she’s not really seeing it now. She is thinking about the woman sitting opposite. Thinking about how, for the most part, she is just the Boss; the one they call Ma’am; the one who winds up the mainspring of her team each day and sets them running.
But now she is so much more. What she said earlier about being a human being seems such an understatement. Even through the alcohol-induced fog, Webley can see Blunt’s fears and emotions with painful sharpness and clarity.
Webley could cry at the intensity of this moment. And later she knows she will.
‘You’re not to tell anyone else about this, Megan,’ says Blunt.
Webley shakes her head. ‘No. No, I won’t . . . Stella.’
71
The clowns visit Cody that night.
He’s been expecting them – is surprised they’ve left it so late – but it doesn’t make their appearance any less terrifying.
Even though he hasn’t slept a wink, he has no idea what time it is. It feels as though the girls went to bed several hours ago, but his concept of time has been distorted. There are too many forces pulling at his brain and body, dragging him away from the here and now.
The fire of pain is everywhere. His head, torso and limbs are all aflame. Hunger gnaws at his insides. Thirst seems to shrivel and desiccate his every cell.
And then there are the mental pressures – of what has been and what is to come. If Malcolm is to be believed, Cody has no life remaining. This is his last night on earth. It is a staggeringly profound realisation. He might have hours left, possibly even minutes. The next time that door is unbolted and the light comes on will herald his oblivion.
Hope is the thing with feathers.
Tad optimistic, Emily Dickinson, he thinks. My bird is just a crushed ball of feathers now.
The clowns hear this. They listen to his despair, his sorrow, his pain, and it calls them forth. They delight in opportunities such as this, when his strength and morale are at their lowest.
It begins with the rustlings.
Tiny noises in the blackness. Like the quick, scuttling movements of rats. His wayward mind leaps to make connections, and he sees a long, snaking line of the whiskered fiends as they scamper in the wake of the brightly clad Pied Piper. Except, in Cody’s version, the Piper has the grinning, rotting, blood-streaked face of an evil clown.
And then footsteps. Soft on the carpet, but betrayed by the occasional creak of floorboard.
Cody knows they are trying to sneak up on him. His divorce from reality leaves him in no doubt about this. The clowns are here, in this room, and they are searching for him. They can taste his odour in the air, but they cannot see him. For now, the curtain shields him from their gaze.
They have knives. He is certain of that, too. Long, sharp blades, ready to part the flesh from his bones, slice by agonising slice.
I mustn’t move, he thinks. Mustn’t make a sound.
But it’s so difficult. The pain. The fear. I can’t halt my breathing. I can’t stop my heart pounding like a drum.
And then there is light.
It must be the light that signals his execution. But it is not the full-on glare of the ceiling light. It is so dim it barely casts a shadow.
And there has been no sound of the door being unlocked and opened.
They are here, though. He knows they are here. Doors are no barriers to the clowns. And they create their own deathly light.
They surround him now. They are touching the other side of the curtain. He can smell their fetid breath as it seeps through the insubstantial cotton.
Movement.
He is certain he sees movement in the curtain. They have found him. They are closing in.
He lets out a moan. It makes no difference now. He cannot save himself.
A hand appears. He sees it as having the yellow skin of the dead, with inch-long dirt-encrusted nails. Its fingers curl around the cloth, begin to pull it aside with excruciating slowness. The scraping of the metal curtain rail is like the sound of long fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard. Cody lets out another moan. His breathing turns to panting. He strains against his bindings, rocks in his unyielding chair.
And then a figure appears in the gap.
It is just a silhouette – a hole punched into the darkness. But Cody’s mind fills that space with the slavering, knife-wielding form of his worst nightmare. His moans turn to muffled cries for help. He throws his whole weight from side to side in a desperate attempt to demolish the chair that grips him so tightly in its embrace.
But the clown gets closer, closer. It opens its mouth to reveal sharp serrated teeth, dripping with blood-tinged saliva.
And it demands to know. It insists on knowing.
‘Why did you come here?’ it whispers to him.
And he has no answer. He doesn’t know what answer could possibly satisfy this demon. He doesn’t fully comprehend the question. He just wants this to end.
If I am going to die, let it be now.
And the clown reaches for him. It touches him with its ice-cold fingers and speaks to him again.
‘It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.’
A void intrudes. An interval while the imaginary switches places with the real. An unbearable moment of relief as the burning dies down and the fear subsides.
Because this is not the voice of a monster.
It is the voice of a child.
A child by the name of Daisy.
72
She has turned on the television. It is not attached to an aerial, and there is no DVD playing; the only thing it displays is a piece of text that leaps around the screen, saying ‘No Signal’.
But the important thing is that the screen gives off light. Not much, but enough for her to see where she is going. It does not have the strength to wake the others, or to seep under the door and alert Malcolm or Harriet should they wander past.
Daisy hasn’t slept yet. She lay there for hours until she was certain the young ones were lost in the deepest of slumbers.
But now she can find out.
Mr Cody seems scared – more scared than she is of him. Perhaps it is simply because he knows he will die soon. Perhaps everyone gets that frightened when faced with the certainty of death.
And yet she suspects there is more to it. Mr Cody does not seem like someone who would fear death. He is not cowardly. Look at how he gave her permission to hurt him so that she herself would not get hurt.
No, something else is bothering this man. Something dreadful. His muffled cries and moans are like those of an injured animal. He needs help.
She never thought she would dare to get close to him, but here she is. Reaching out to him. Touching him. Telling him she won’t hurt him.
He becomes less agitated. His breathing begins to slow. He blinks, as if struggling to see her properly in the murky gloom.
And then he breaks her heart.
He breaks it with his tears. They flow freely down his cheeks and across the tape covering his mouth. His head drops, and his shoulders heave with his sobs. A single hot tear splashes onto her hand.
‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t cry. I just want to ask you something.’
He lifts his chin again. Looks her directly in the eye. Nods.
She has thought about removing the gag, but she reckons that Malcolm would be able to tell it had been disturbed. She is also not quite sure that she is willing to take the risk with Mr Cody. He seems so con
vincing, but what if he’s the big bad wolf that Malcolm claims he is? Or what if he simply talks too loudly and wakes everyone? She is not supposed to be doing this. Malcolm would punish her badly if he knew.
‘You said you were an officer of the law,’ she begins. ‘Is that true?’
He nods. Yes.
‘Is that the same as a policeman?’
Yes.
‘You’re a policeman?’
Yes.
‘Why did you come here? I mean, did you come here to take us away?’
Yes.
The answer alarms her. Malcolm told them that Mr Cody wanted to take them away. But then she realises she needs to be more specific.
‘To hurt us? You want to take us away to hurt us?’
An emphatic shake of the head. No.
‘Then why? Did you come to help us?’
Yes.
‘To rescue us?’
Yes.
‘Then why didn’t you? Why did you let them do this to you? Where are your friends, the other police?’
He looks confused, and she realises she has bombarded him with too many questions, none of which can be answered with a head gesture.
She tries again. ‘You said other people are coming. Did you mean other police?’
Yes.
‘Then where are they? Are they coming to get us?’
Mr Cody considers this one carefully. His answer is a long time in the making. When it arrives, it’s a sorrowful shake.
No. They aren’t coming. Nobody else is coming to help.
His response surprises her. This is the opposite of what he told Malcolm. He could easily have stuck to his story, and yet he hasn’t.
Does that mean he is being honest with her? Does it mean that only she is entitled to the truth? Or is it just a ruse to get her on side, to make her believe he can be trusted?
She is also saddened by his answer. If what he says is true, then there is no escape for anyone. This man in the chair is already doomed. Even if he were to get free somehow, he is too weak to do anything now. Malcolm would squash him like an insect.
‘Is Malcolm going to kill you?’ she asks.
Another pause. Then a yes.
‘Are you afraid of him?’
Yes.
She hesitates. ‘There’s one more thing I want to ask you.’
He nods.
‘Ellie’s mum and dad. Did Malcolm kill them?’
Yes.
‘Was she there? Did she see it?’
Yes.
Daisy stands there for a while, taking in what she’s heard, trying to figure out what is true and what is not. Trying also to decide what difference such knowledge would make.
She takes a final lingering look at Mr Cody. Searches his eyes for honesty, for decency, for goodness.
‘I have to go now,’ she says. ‘Malcolm . . .’
She waits for Mr Cody to protest. Waits for him to scream at her to help him.
But he doesn’t. He just nods, as though he understands. As though he is grateful to her just for daring to grant him a few brief moments of her company.
She turns, slips through the curtain.
When she sees the figure standing there like a phantom, she almost screams.
Ellie stares back at her, pale and mute. Daisy wonders how long she has been there, how much she heard, how much she saw.
‘Back to bed, Ellie,’ she whispers. ‘Come on, before we get into trouble.’
She escorts Ellie to the bed and tucks her in. Then she turns off the television and gets into bed herself.
She cuddles into Ellie, strokes her hair to comfort her.
And she tries to make her mind up about Mr Cody.
73
Mornings here are instantaneous. There is no gradual lightening of the room as the rising sun forces its way through curtained windows. No gentle encouragement to ease from sleep into wakefulness. Instead, there is blackness one moment and blinding brightness the next. The day is proclaimed with the flick of a switch.
Cody hopes his death will be as quick as that. He hopes that Malcolm will not think like the clowns, who would want his final moments to be as prolonged and painful as possible.
Malcolm’s cheery voice seems so at odds with what is to occur here this morning.
‘Good news, girls!’ he says. ‘You’re going to get your bedroom back today. I’ve found somewhere else for Mr Cody to stay.’
There is a moment’s silence, and then Daisy asks, ‘Where? Where will he go?’
‘I’m going to clear a space in the garage for him.’
Cody doesn’t doubt that he will end up in the garage, but only for a few hours. His corpse will likely be dumped behind one of the vehicles there, ready to be transported when darkness falls again. Malcolm has obviously figured out a way to dispose of his body.
‘The garage?’ says Daisy. ‘He’s going to live in the garage?’
Careful, Daisy, thinks Cody. Don’t give yourself away. Don’t land yourself in trouble on my behalf.
Malcolm’s voice betrays his irritation. ‘Yes, Daisy. The garage. Now will you stop asking me stupid questions and listen to what I have to say?’
There is no reply.
‘Right,’ says Malcolm. ‘As I was saying, Mr Cody is leaving here this morning. I’ll be giving him something to make him sleep, and then I’ll move him. You won’t have to worry about him any longer. How does that sound?’
Again, no answer.
‘Good. I knew you’d be pleased. Okay, then, get dressed. After breakfast, Mummy wants to read a story to you.’
And that’s it, thinks Cody. That’s all the kids are getting. Soon I’ll be gone, and they will forget I was ever here. They’ll return to their own kind of normality. An unvarying, mind-numbing existence in a windowless, soulless room.
Before Malcolm leaves, he pops his head through the curtain.
‘Not long now,’ is all he says.
*
Everyone is missing.
Webley has hardly slept. The wine knocked her out for a couple of hours, but then she woke up in a cold sweat. She has tossed and turned in her bed ever since then, but all she has been able to think about is the people who have disappeared.
The girls. Cody. Blunt’s son.
She has decided she would like to do something about Blunt’s tragedy. The eye-opening encounter with her boss last night has established in her mind a mission to locate Blunt’s son, dead or alive.
But that’s for another time.
There are other priorities now. The girls, of course, but also Cody. She has decided she can’t leave this to Missing Persons any longer. She needs to play a part. Even if it means spending every minute she has outside work, she needs to do something to help. She will hate herself for ever if she doesn’t even try.
And, by the way, Parker can go fuck himself.
She throws her covers aside and climbs out of bed. Takes a shower while thinking about Cody. Gets dressed while thinking about Cody. Eats a bowl of cereal while thinking about Cody.
She looks at the clock. Still early. Too early to head into the station.
I should do something with this time, she thinks. Something productive. So . . . what should I do?
Okay, put yourself in Cody’s head.
You’ve just spent a ridiculous amount of time checking out stupid white vans. You go home. You enter the building on Rodney Street. The people in the dentist’s downstairs are long gone by now. You go upstairs to the flat. You go into the kitchen. You’re desperate for a cup of tea, so you make one. You unload all the junk from your pockets. You take off your jacket and your tie and sling them over the back of a chair. And then . . .
What?
Something happens.
Yes, but what?
It’s not a phone call. Someone at the door, perhaps?
Maybe.
You let them in. They’re not the nice people you think they are. It all goes wrong . . .
No
, that doesn’t fit.
No sign of a struggle. You’re not the type of guy who would go without a fight. And on the CCTV image there was no sign of anyone else in your car.
So what, then? What could have possibly occurred to make you drop everything, get in your car and drive away? It’s that important, you don’t finish drinking your tea. You don’t intend to be gone for long, because you don’t even take your wallet, change or mobile phone with you. All you’ve got are your keys . . .
Wait, wait, wait.
Something is wrong here.
What is it? What’s missing?
Look again. See it with your mind’s eye. Wallet, phone, change, tissues, notebook, pens . . .
But no warrant card.
Are you sure? Yes. Absolutely.
Cody’s warrant card wasn’t on the kitchen counter.
So he took it with him. Which suggests he was going out on police business.
But hang on. What was this suddenly urgent business that nobody else on the force knows about? Cody is an experienced cop. He would have called it in, logged it. He would also have taken his mobile phone with him.
It still doesn’t make sense.
Unless . . .
His card was never there in the first place.
Okay, slowly now. Think about this.
You empty your pockets. You realise your warrant card isn’t among your possessions. You panic. Where the hell did you leave it? And then you remember. You know you’re going to need it tomorrow, and it’ll only take a few minutes to fetch it.
Yessss!
Or no.
This could just be the most tenuous, ridiculously manufactured explanation ever.
So continue the thought process, Megan. You were with Cody for most of the day. Where might he have lost his warrant card? When did you last see him with it?
We were looking at vans. He had it with him then, because he flashed it without fail every time we knocked on a door.
Except the last call. The – what was that weird couple called? – the Bensons, that’s it. Mr Benson took Cody’s ID from him so that he could have a proper gander at it inside.
Yessss!
Or maybe no. They might have given it back to him. Webley can’t be certain.
But it’s a possibility. His car was spotted on Wavertree Road, which would fit with a drive from Rodney Street to the Bensons’ house in Childwall. Maybe he called there, and maybe he gave them a clue as to where he planned to go next.
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