‘What is going on down there?’ Ruth asked.
They couldn’t have found Tessa, in spite of the glove, Jean thought, or Ruth wouldn’t be here now. The police had sent Terence away as soon as they’d got into the basement flat. She told Ruth how he had noticed the glove on the floor below the chair.
‘So she must have been there, in the flat,’ Jean said. ‘Terence said he heard Mrs Cox say she’d run off, but if that was true, why didn’t she tell the police?’
‘Do you think it’s likely?’ Ruth asked. ‘Surely Tessa’s too sensible?’ She remembered the terrible fright Louise had sustained at much the same age. ‘Unless she was frightened,’ she qualified. ‘But how would Mrs Cox alarm her? Louise says she often went into the flat.’
‘I think she did,’ said Jean. ‘They’d chat together the garden. Mrs Cox has a way with children – she was a nanny, or something.’
‘I’d better not mention this to Louise,’ Ruth decided. ‘The police will tell her as soon as there’s anything definite.’ There couldn’t be good news, she thought, or that would have been relayed at once. The sense of dread, which she had been doing her best to suppress, rose in her again. ‘Do bring us our lunch, please. It’s very kind of you. Perhaps we’ll be able to get Louise to eat something. At the moment she’s making a cake. She thinks Tessa might be back for tea.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Jean. ‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ Ruth said. ‘But it’s giving her something to do.’
That morning, Alan had gone out to buy the Sunday papers. He’d passed a telephone box – the one from which, on Friday, Louise had called the police – and had thought about ringing Daphne, but what could he say to her? He couldn’t explain in just a few words. It would have to be faced later, when he’d been able to think of what to say. She would have to know, in the end, about his loss of a job and about his involvement with Louise, for the one thing that mattered now was to support Louise through this horror at no matter what cost to his marriage. Daphne had friends; her work; her golf, while Louise had only Ruth Graham, it seemed, and himself, if Tessa was really lost forever.
He did not go into the telephone box.
Louise made fudge, when she’d mixed the cake, and Alan and Ruth tried to read the newspapers. Now and then they read snippets out to each other, frivolous items. All the papers carried short reports about Tessa. At intervals one of them went to the kitchen to hover around Louise. Alan found her crying, tears rolling down her face as she beat her mixture. He said nothing, simply took her bowl from her and folded her into his arms. After a while she dried her eyes and went on with her self-imposed task.
Tessa had been having a nasty dream, about hide-and-seek and bad mummies. She tried very hard to wake up and call out for her own mummy, who was a good mummy and who’d been more smiley and cheerful lately, but her eyes wouldn’t open.
She felt dreadfully sick. She seemed to remember being sick not long ago.
Retching, Tessa tried to sit up but her head bumped against something. She somehow managed to open her eyes as she fell back, but she was in total darkness. Tears sprang to her eyes – tears of terror and of discomfort, but her main awareness was of nausea. She put up a groping hand and felt some hard substance. Instinct made her push against it and it moved. Tessa pushed again, using both hands, and the wooden lid of the bunk base locker in which she lay yielded.
Pale light from the lamp of the towpath filtered into the cabin, past thin cotton curtains drawn over the windows. Tessa struggled to keep her eyes open, sitting up, blinking. She was in a small, confined space.
She retched again, and put a hand to her mouth. The jolting ride in the pram, over the recreation ground and along the towpath, followed by Mrs Cox’s struggle to heave her on board the cabin cruiser moored near the bridge, had shaken her stomach up and provoked this rejection of the mixture of drugs she had consumed.
Mrs Cox had intended to dump the child’s unconscious body in the water. She’d drown, then; and she wouldn’t suffer, since she was fast asleep. Mrs Cox didn’t like innocent children to suffer. She’d wheeled her load along the towpath looking for a suitable spot in an unlit area, but dense reeds at the riverside were something she hadn’t foreseen. She could not throw Tessa far enough into the river to clear them. Seeking a gap, she came to the boat moored by the path and stopped, remembering that other boat so long ago.
Grace had been comfortable, sleeping there in the bunk, just as Tessa had been comfortable in the chest in Mrs Cox’s basement room, and then in Mavis’s bed.
The river would be so cold, and that was bad for a child. She might wake and choke to death. Sleep was so peaceful.
Mrs Cox had propped the pram against a bollard so that, top-heavy as it was with the unconscious child inside, it would not tip up. She had peered through the rain and the gloom at the boat. A lamp nearby lit it dimly, and she saw that there was a mackintosh cover over the cockpit. Mrs Cox had taken her torch out of her holdall bag and shone it on the canopy which clipped round the cockpit, she saw, with the flap hanging loose at the bottom. She had unfastened enough of the cover to let her get into the cockpit.
The boat rocked under her weight as she moved on the narrow deck. It rocked more as she dragged Tessa, her hands under the child’s arms, across the gap from the bank to the deck and down into the well of the cockpit. It was not easy to do, but Mrs Cox was still strong. She played her torch on the cabin door. It was locked. That other boat had been open.
She could have left Tessa in the cockpit and fastened the canopy again, but it was cold out there, and damp. A child should always be kept warm and dry. Mrs Cox, friend of Mavis who had been a thief, had looked at the lock and thought it should be easy to break. She’d need to use something heavy – her shoe might do, or her torch, she’d thought. Bending down, she had peered about on the floor of the cockpit and saw, tucked under a thwart, a strong metal bar, the boat’s mooring spike. It was just the thing; a few blows and the job was done.
The boat’s interior was not very different from that of The Happy Maid. Mrs Cox found a locker beneath a berth, and placed the child inside. This time, there were no life-jackets to form a mattress, but there was an oilskin which would cushion Tessa. Mrs Cox had lifted her into the locker and arranged her neatly, hands by her sides. Using the finger holes drilled in the top, she replaced the lid. There were no cushions, for the owner had taken them into his house for the winter. Mrs Cox had closed the cabin door and had refastened the sides of the canopy when she left. The river area had already been searched, she knew. The police would not be back, or not until it was much too late to save Tessa’s life. She would not be found until the boat’s owner opened his locker, Mrs Cox had thought as she wheeled the empty pram away.
Tessa’s extreme nausea made her ignore the bruises she had sustained being dragged on board as she clambered out of the locker. Because she had so often been aboard Dick Tremayne’s boat at Portrinnock, she was somehow aware, now, subconsciously, that she was in a boat, and this helped to contain her panic as she blundered about in the faint light that came from the lamp on the bank outside, seeking a place to be tidily sick.
She didn’t quite make the small lavatory, but she had stumbled out of the main cabin, through the dividing curtain, before she vomited. She felt very cold and shaky afterwards, and tears flowed as she hugged her arms to her chest, gasping and shuddering.
As she stood, doubled over, she remembered about Mummy. Mrs Cox had said they were going to see her. Why was she in a boat? Were they going by sea to London? The boat didn’t seem to be moving, and where was Mrs Cox? Tessa called her, in a quavery voice, but there was no answer.
Moving very slowly, she returned to the main cabin. She was shivering, her teeth chattering. It was a very great effort to climb on a bunk and look out of the window. Tessa still felt very confused and sleepy as she peered out and saw land. Perhaps they were at an island?
She was so cold!
Tessa f
elt in her pockets for her gloves but could only find one, and that made her cry still more, for she loved her red gloves which Mummy had made her for Christmas. She put it on and pulled her cap down over her ears. Then because it was still night, and at night you slept, she climbed back into her box-like bed, leaving the lid open and drawing the heavy oilskin round her.
Crying weakly, coughing a little, sore from her vomiting and still feeling the effects of the drugs – but no longer retaining a fatal dose – Tessa fell asleep once more.
At midnight, the lamp on the towpath went out.
It was daylight when she woke again. Her mouth felt peculiar and her head ached. For a while she kept drowsing off and then waking. She heard the lap of the water against the side of the boat; it was a nice sound. Had she somehow been magicked on to Dick’s boat? It was the only boat she knew. She lay there, the heavy oilskin over her, while she tried to puzzle it out.
Gradually, she remembered. There was something about naughty mummies that nagged at the edge of her mind. It was Daddy, though, not Mummy, who was naughty. He went away for days and days, and then, when he came home, scolded Mummy and made her cry. He was in heaven now, with Jesus, Tessa recalled.
But Mummy – something was wrong about Mummy.
Tessa was shocked fully awake when she remembered. Waves of terror swept over her, and she wept among her oilskins. She cried for a long time, but at last her sobs diminished from sheer exhaustion, and as they lessened she realised that she was alone, for when you cried, in the end someone came.
She climbed heavily out of the locker, aware, now, of her various aches and bruises. There was a horrid taste in her mouth and she was dreadfully thirsty. She stood in the narrow alley by the bunk and stared about her in the pale morning light.
This wasn’t Dick’s boat. His had a small, separate galley with two burners and a tiny sink. This boat was bigger, and had a proper cooker. There was a sink beside it, and where there were taps, there was water. Tessa turned the tap and a trickle ran out. She looked about for a mug, and found one in a cupboard. She filled it and drank it straight down, then filled it again and drank the second mugful more slowly. She felt better after that, and when she had rinsed the cup and set it upside down on the drainer to dry, she looked in the other cupboards round the sink. Some were too high for her to reach, but she found a bucket and stood on that. Her reward was to find a toothbrush. She hoped the owner wouldn’t mind if, just this once, she used it.
Tessa brushed her teeth hard, spitting vigorously. She felt much better after that, except that all of a sudden she was very hungry. She searched through the cupboards. Perhaps there would be some cornflakes. It must be breakfast time by now.
At this thought, tears flowed again, for breakfast was always a happy time in the kitchen with Mummy, milk in the blue and white jug, her own bowl with her name on the rim, and sometimes honey.
But she was going to see Mummy in hospital in London. Mrs Cox was taking her but had somehow vanished, so Tessa must just carry on by herself – have breakfast first, and then look for someone else on this island where the boat was moored, who would show her the way to London. Once in London, she’d ask the way to the hospital; anyone in London would know where the hospital was.
There were some tins of soup and a can of beer in the galley cupboard, and a few very damp, soggy digestive biscuits at the end of a packet.
Tessa could cook some soup, if there were matches. She wasn’t allowed to light them unless Mummy was there, but this was an emergency; she knew that word; it was one her father had often used.
She found a box of matches in a drawer, and a tin opener, the kind you stab into the tin and then make walk round the edge; she had seen her mother use one like that on picnics. She couldn’t work it properly, but she made a few holes in the top of the tin and managed to get most of the soup out through them, though she cut her hand slightly and left a smear of blood on the drainer. She sucked at the wound, which was trivial.
When she found the gas wouldn’t light, she wept again, but after a short burst of sobs, remembered once more what went on in Dick’s boat. The gas came from a big cylinder and had to be turned on and off when you came aboard and left. She found the cylinder forward in the boat, passing a nasty mess of sick on the floor. It smelled horrid, making Tessa retch again, and sharply reminding her of what memory had blotted out; that it was she who had been sick here, in the night.
She felt ashamed. She’d have to clear up the awful mess, but first she must turn on the cylinder. Tessa grasped the knob on the top. It was very stiff, but at last, using both hands, she managed to move it.
She lit the gas and heated her lumpy soup. It was only lukewarm when she ate it, but she crumbled some digestive biscuits into it and tipped it into a yellow plastic bowl. There was a spoon to use. It was quite a nice breakfast, really, Tessa thought, washing the bowl and the pan in cold water from the tap and not noticing that her efforts were only partly successful.
Now she must explore. She pulled her red woollen hat securely around her ears and fastened her coat. She put on her one glove. Then she opened the cabin door, to find the cockpit enclosed by the canvas canopy.
She’d never seen one of those on Dick’s boat. It would stop her from landing on the island, which she could see through the perspex panel. She beat against it, crying again, and then saw that it hung quite loose.
Tessa wriggled through, under the flap, on to the narrow deck. Land was near, and she jumped.
It was sheer chance that she turned, on the bank, to the left and not to the right, and so, before long, found herself by the recreation ground. Even then, in the mist, with the trees dripping in the still air, she instinctively followed the path to the gate because it led away from the water and did not recognise where she was at first. She was still sobbing a little as her legs carried her in the right direction, along Shippham Avenue.
She thought of the dragon, then, on the corner. In the mist he could pounce without her seeing. Tessa ran past his bush and into Oak Way before he could snap her up.
She must get to Mummy. Mrs Cox had said she would take her. Somehow she must have left the boat and gone back to her own flat. Tessa hurried to find her.
When she saw Alan’s car in the road, her heart leaped. Alan would take her to Mummy. She hastened on, walking as fast as she could.
There were other cars outside the house, too; white ones. Tessa did not recognise them as police cars; she was too intent on reaching home; but she was rather surprised to find a very tall policeman standing just inside the gateway of number 51. He was occupying his dull vigil by inspecting a viburnum growing there as he protected the place from the curious, lest news that Mrs Cox had been taken to Berbridge Central Police Station should leak out.
He stared at the small intruder, then bent down to gaze at her incredulously.
Tessa’s face, beneath her woolly cap, was dirty and tear-stained, but it was also unmistakably the face in the photograph of the missing ch’I want my mummy,’ Tessa said, lower lip quivering.
‘Come along then, Tessa,’ said the constable, and took her hand. He led her past the steps leading down to the basement, which his colleagues were busy examining, and walked her up the steps to her mother’s flat.
‘I’ve got my key,’ Tessa said, and with the hand that was not clasping his, began to fish for it round her neck.
‘That’s all right, Tessa,’ the constable said, and cleared his throat in which a large lump seemed to have suddenly risen. ‘Mummy’s at home, waiting for you,’ and he pressed the bell hard.
A lady in a dark skirt and jacket, whom Tessa had never seen before, opened the door.
‘Here’s somebody who wants her mummy,’ said the constable, and the startled policewoman stepped back, holding the door wide.
The flat seemed to be full of people. Alan was there, and Mr and Mrs Henshaw from downstairs, and Ruth, but Tessa had no time to wonder why; her one thought was to get to her mother, who was sitting in her
usual corner of the sofa and not wrapped up in bandages, as Tessa had expected.
For an instant no one in the room moved, staring in disbelief at the small grubby figure standing in the doorway holding the tall police constable’s hand. Then Louise sprang forward at the same moment that Tessa let go of the policeman, and they rushed towards each other, both of them bursting into tears of exhausted relief as Louise fell on her knees to clasp Tessa in her arms.
20
‘Mrs Cox said we were going to see you at London,’ said Tessa, when the first commotion had died down. ‘We went in a boat. She said you’d been run over, Mummy. Didn’t you look carefully before crossing the road?’
Louise could not answer; her throat was choked with tears as she held Tessa close.
Tessa’s eye was caught by a plate of biscuits on the table.
‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Can I have a biscuit?’
Chief Superintendent Drummer came in while she was still eating it.
‘Hullo, Tessa,’ he said. ‘So you got lost, did you?’
‘I thought it was a desert island,’ said Tessa.
‘Where was that?’ Drummer asked in a matter-of-fact voice, sitting down and taking a biscuit himself.
‘Where the boat landed, of course,’ Tessa said.
‘The boat?’ Drummer asked. ‘Were you on a boat?’
‘Mm. It wasn’t the same as Dick’s,’ Tessa said. ‘There weren’t any sails. There was soup. Oh!’ and she put her hand to her mouth in dismay. ‘I forgot,’ she said, and her lip trembled. She began to whimper.
‘Forgot what?’ Louise asked, hugging her. She felt she would never be able to let her out of her sight again.
‘To clean up,’ Tessa whispered, hiding her face. ‘I was sick.’
‘That doesn’t matter, darling,’ Louise said. ‘It was an accident.’
Drummer was beaming. Find the vomit, he thought, and the lab would be able to say if it contained drugs. The evidence found in the basement flat – the drugs in the bathroom cupboard and the sediment in a glass in the bedroom – might tie up the case against Mrs Cox, though how had she managed to take the child, unobserved, from her flat to a boat? He saw that Tessa had cut her hand; dried blood was mingled with dirt. There would be traces of Tessa left in the boat, just as there were in the basement flat – blood possibly, maybe another long fair hair or some thread from her clothing. And Mrs Cox, herself, might have left proof of her presence.
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