by Sibel Hodge
‘Maybe. It’s a possibility, but I didn’t see a new phone at Sara’s house.’
‘Did you find any receipts? Or anything else?’
‘I was only really looking for the sleeping tablets, and I was in a rush to talk to you, so I don’t know. There could be something there.’
‘I think we should go back to Sara’s and have a good look around.’ He stands up just as his mobile phone goes off. ‘DI Summers,’ he answers, listening for a few moments. ‘Actually, I’m with Chloe at the moment.’ He looks at me. ‘I’ll be there soon. I’ll bring her with me. OK, see you then.’ He hangs up. ‘That was Theresa. She says something has come to light I need to be aware of. She wants to show me something, and it might help if you’re there, too.’
24
Summers drives his police issue car to the college and parks next to Jordan’s classic VW Camper that he restored himself. As I get out, I look around for Jordan, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I lead the way to Theresa’s office, and Gillian blushes, acting tongue-tied in front of Summers. That’s how anxious I felt around the police only a few days ago. Now, I just think Summers doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.
A pile of paperwork surrounds Theresa, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, when we enter her office. She glances up and rises, extending her hand to Summers before giving me an embarassed nod. ‘How are you?’ she asks me, her pinched lips quirking up a fraction. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a smile on her face in years.
‘Not that great, actually.’
She avoids looking at me and turns to Summers. ‘Thank you for coming.’ She waves us into the two seats opposite her. ‘When you came to see me initially to ask about Chloe being off sick, you didn’t go into specific details about what had happened to her.’ She gives him a stern look, and I pity the poor students sent to her office for a telling off.
Summers shifts in his chair and has the good grace to look chastised. ‘We weren’t exactly sure what we were dealing with initially, but some further things have come to light.’
‘Yes.’ She glances briefly at me before turning to him again. ‘When I spoke to Chloe yesterday, she told me a rather shocking version of events.’
I don’t point out that she didn’t believe me and practically ordered me to resign.
‘This morning, when I had a routine staff meeting with Chloe’s stand-in tutor and informed her what Chloe had told me, she went as white as a sheet and immediately alerted me to this.’ She picks up a few pieces of paper stapled together from her desk and hands it to Summers. ‘You should read it.’
I want to read it over Summers’ shoulder or better yet, rip it out of his hands. What is it, and how does it relate to me? I give Theresa a questioning look, but her gaze darts immediately back to Summers, watching him while he reads. I squirm in my seat the whole time.
When he finishes, he looks solemn and hands it to me.
It’s a creative writing assignment I gave my students just before I went on sick leave after the miscarriage. I set them a title of Darkness, and they had to write a short story with that theme. The name of the student who’s written the story is at the top of the page. Chris Barnes.
The opening paragraphs describe a man who’s secretly stalking a woman. He watches her in her house, follows her when she goes out, notices things about her she probably doesn’t even see herself, like the way she fiddles with her small hooped earrings, turning them round and round absentmindedly. This man has done it before to other women, looking for the perfect one he thinks will love him back.
He waits for the right moment. She’s alone in the house. Her husband is working away. He’s an expert in picking locks and enters the house through the kitchen door. She’s asleep in bed and doesn’t hear a thing. He strikes her on the head with a small baton he brought with him. It knocks her unconscious, and he binds her hands and feet with rope and gags her before bundling her into his car parked on the driveway, the number plates already exchanged for fake ones. It’s the early hours of the morning, and the street is quiet. Everyone’s sleeping. No one sees anything. He takes her to his house in the middle of nowhere and leaves her in the basement.
The next few pages follow the stalker’s state of mind. He hasn’t decided what to do with the woman yet. Part of him wants to kill her straight away. The other part wants to keep her there forever, to worship her and show her just how much he loves her. He’s in turmoil. The first woman he took didn’t deserve to live. She whined and moaned, always begging him for her life, so he got sick of her quickly and killed her. The second one cracked immediately. Said she’d do anything to stay alive. Anything, if he promised he wouldn’t kill her. The third…well, the third is the woman in the basement.
He starts drinking whisky, and the more he drinks, the more confused he becomes, eventually falling into a drunken sleep. When he wakes up, she’s gone. Somehow, she’s managed to escape. Or was it all just a drunken fantasy?
As I read the last word on the page, the walls get narrower, closing in on me. I fall off the chair, and the floor rushes up to meet me.
25
‘Chloe? Chloe, are you OK?’ a voice says. Someone taps my hand lightly. ‘Can you hear me?’
My eyelids flutter open. I’m lying on the floor, Theresa kneeling beside me, holding my hand.
‘You went down with a hell of a bang. Are you OK?’
I reach up and touch the back of my head. It’s throbbing. ‘Ouch.’
‘You hit your head on the floor when you fell off the chair.’
I try to sit up, but she guides me back down again with one hand on my back.
‘No, stay there. Don’t move yet. I want to get you checked out by the nurse first.’
She’s probably only worried about being sued for an industrial injury. ‘I’m OK. Really.’ I blink once, twice, to clear my vision.
‘I want to make sure you haven’t got concussion. Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?’
‘Honestly, I’m fine. I feel much better now.’
The nurse, Elaine Waters, enters the room then. She’s in her early fifties, with kind eyes. ‘Oh, dear.’ She kneels on the other side of me. ‘How are you feeling?’
I’m sick of people asking me that lately. I want to scream at them all to shut up, but that would be ungrateful and mean. ‘I’m fine. There’s absolutely no need to make a fuss. I just fainted, that’s all.’
‘She hit her head, I think,’ Theresa says to Elaine.
‘But I’m fine,’ I insist, trying to sit up again.
‘You’re not feeling dizzy or sick?’ Elaine helps me up, because she can tell I’m not just going to lie there.
‘No. I know what concussion feels like, and I’m OK. Honestly.’ I attempt a smile.
Elaine slips a hand under my right arm while Theresa takes my left, and they help me up into the chair. ‘Did you have anything to eat today?’ Elaine peers at me with concern.
‘Yes. I had a big bowl of pasta.’
‘You look like you’re wasting away, Chloe.’ Elaine rubs her hand up and down my arm. ‘This must be an incredibly stressful time for you.’
Theresa gives Elaine the same stern look she gave Summers earlier, which reminds me that he isn’t in the room.
‘Where’s Summers?’ I don’t have time for sympathetic chitchat. I need to find out what’s going on.
‘He’s gone to speak to Chris.’
I want to rub the back of my head, soothe out the throbbing there, but I daren’t risk them trying to keep me here any longer. I stand up, steadying myself on the edge of Theresa’s desk. ‘I need to find out what’s going on. I mean his assignment…’ I shiver. ‘It’s so similar to what happened to me.’
Elaine guides me gently into the seat again. ‘Chloe, this is for the police to deal with. Now, let me get you some sweet tea and a biscuit.’
I know she’s just trying to be nice and helpful, but it’s not helpful at all. This is my life we�
�re talking about here. I can’t just sit helplessly and wait. Sweet tea and a bloody stupid biscuit aren’t going to help.
‘If you start feeling unwell, make sure you call me.’ Elaine smiles before exiting the office.
Theresa and I sit in silence. When she catches my eye, she looks away. I still don’t think she believes me. She’s just covering her arse by getting Summers involved now.
When Elaine returns, she sets a cup and saucer on Theresa’s desk in front of me, along with a plate of chocolate digestives, before disappearing again. I take the saucer, but my hand shakes and the tea spills onto it, leaving a brown moat of liquid around the bottom of the cup.
Theresa pulls out a wad of tissues from a box on her desk and passes them to me. ‘Here, use these.’
I put the saucer back on her desk, fold up the tissues, and place them under the cup. ‘Thanks.’ And then I burst into tears. Shoulder-shaking sobs wrack my whole body as I wrap my arms around myself and rock back and forth. It’s comforting, calming.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ A red flush creeps up Theresa’s neck to her cheeks.
I don’t, either. Yes, Chris is a big lad. He plays rugby and is stocky and powerful, but he’s only seventeen! He’s never given me a reason to think he’d harm me. In fact, he’s always been polite and friendly in class, and conscientious with his work. Helpful, even. Always the first to volunteer when I ask for someone’s help. I suspected some kind of schoolboy crush, but kidnapping me? Surely, he couldn’t be capable of that.
So, no, I don’t know what to say. Don’t know what to think. Can only cry at this point. So much has happened in the gap of memories missing from my head, I don’t even know how to process it all. I’m drained. Exhausted. I want to sleep for a hundred years. Or sleep and never wake up. That would probably be better. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I wouldn’t have to think at all.
Summers comes back in the room a little while later. Before he can even say anything, I ask, ‘What happened? Did he admit to kidnapping me? Do you think it was him? Have you arrested him?’
He takes in my puffy eyes and tear-stained face before saying, ‘Chris was very shocked and visibility upset when I informed him that his story was incredibly similar to details you’d given us. He said you were one of his favourite teachers, and he was really sorry something bad had happened to you.’
‘Yes, but he would say that, wouldn’t he! If it were him, he’d deny it! And this can’t be just a coincidence, can it?’
Summers takes a breath. ‘He says he has an alibi for the time period you were—well, for the time period we’re missing.’
I notice he still won’t admit my abduction. He still isn’t convinced I didn’t just wander off somewhere in a drug-induced state, but I’m too agitated to make a fuss right now. ‘What alibi?’
‘Chris said he was away camping with his dad. His parents have shared custody, and since Chris wasn’t in college on that Monday, they decided to go away for a long weekend. They were apparently in the peak district on a hiking trip.’
‘Do you believe him?’
He hesitates for a second. ‘At the moment, yes. Flynn’s taken him to the police station, where we’ll wait for his father to arrive and confirm or deny it. In the meantime, are you up to going back to Sara’s house and looking around?’
I stand up too quickly, and the room spins. I blink for a few seconds. ‘Yes. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.’
As we head to his car, my scalp tingles with fear as if it’s on fire. Is it another dead end, or is Chris lying?
26
Summers opens Sara’s front door with her key and steps over the post. An eerie déjà vu hits me again, but I know that’s because I’ve already done this once today.
‘What are we looking for, exactly?’ I follow him in to the lounge.
He looks around. ‘I don’t know. Some kind of evidence you were here before, and what you did or where you might have gone. You didn’t get time to answer my question back at the station.’
‘Which question?’
‘The hypothetical one. Right here, right now, what would you instinctively do next?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Think about it. It’s the only kind of trail we have to follow at the moment.’
‘My bag was left in the kitchen.’
‘OK. Let’s start there, then.’
I lead the way.
Summers opens the fridge and peers inside. ‘These are the things you bought?’
‘They must be. They’re fairly fresh.’
‘Where’s the receipt for them?’ His gaze wanders round the kitchen. He opens the bottom cupboards until he finds a plastic bin with a swing lid underneath the one next to the sink. He pulls on some latex gloves from his pocket and removes the bin lid, putting it on the lino floor and wrinkling up his nose. He lifts out an empty pizza box, Waitrose’s own brand. Next comes the plastic base it would’ve sat on and a plastic wrapper with the remains of congealed tomato sauce and cheese.
‘Meat feast pizza,’ I say automatically.
‘Did you eat that?’
I shrug. ‘I must’ve done if it’s here. I never got to eat pizza with Liam; he hated it. Maybe I was trying to give myself a treat.’
His hand disappears in the bin again and retrieves a piece of paper screwed up into a ball. He unfolds it. ‘Receipt from Waitrose. Paid in cash.’ He shows it to me.
‘That makes sense.’
‘That’s it. There’s nothing else apart from two Waitrose carrier bags.’ He puts the food cartons back in the bin, pulls off his gloves, turning them inside out with a loud snap, and throws them in, too. Then he puts the lid back on and washes his hands. He’s wiping them on a kitchen towel when he says, ‘The food was bought on the sixth, so it’s all pointing to something happening to you the next day. I’ll get a team to make some door-to-door enquiries with Sara’s neighbours. See if they saw you or noticed anyone suspicious hanging around.’
‘OK.’ I lift my shoulders slightly. At least he’s doing something now. At least he believes me. Sort of.
We look around the rest of the downstairs but don’t find any other clues. We’re just about to go upstairs when I spy the post again. ‘Maybe there’s something in here addressed to me. If I told the bank about Sara’s address, maybe I told someone else, too.’ I pick it up and rummage through, but it’s either bills or junk mail in Sara’s name, so I put it all on the bottom stair and we head to the bathroom. On top of one corner of the bath are bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel. They’re not the brand I use, so it’s probably safe to say they’re Sara’s.
Summers opens the whitewashed wooden cabinet with a mirror on it above the sink. He picks things up, examining the items I’ve already checked as I stand next to him, tapping my foot. He gives the room one last look over, but there’s nowhere else in here the sleeping tablets could be.
‘This is Sara’s room.’ I open the door, and we go in. There are two white wooden drawers either side of the bed. Summers goes through them, and I feel sorry for Sara. It’s bad enough having my life examined under a microscope, but poor Sara is just an innocent party in all this. He pulls things out and puts them on the top. Some lavender essential oil, a pen, old earplugs in a clear plastic container, a Lonely Planet guide of Australia. I cringe when he finds some furry handcuffs, a shiny silver vibrator, and a well-used tube of KY Jelly. Other than a few crumpled scraps of paper with phone numbers and names written on them, there’s nothing else, so he turns his attention to the drawer underneath. A few pairs of knickers and socks, a suspender belt, stockings.
The drawers on the other side have nothing that could help, either. No sleeping tablets, no X marks the spot, no CLUE written in conveniently big letters.
There’s a plastic washing basket in the corner of the room. Summers lifts the lid, but only finds a lone black sock inside. I briefly wonder where the other sock is, but who cares? It’s not important. H
e opens the doors to Sara’s wardrobe, sliding sparse hangers of clothes across the rail from one side to the other. At the bottom of the wardrobe are a couple of shoeboxes, both empty. He heads out of the door, and I follow him into the spare room.
‘See.’ I point to the rumpled sheets. ‘I must’ve slept in it.’ I swing my arm around to my clothes. ‘These are mine, too.’
He nods, his gaze taking everything in. Apart from the bed and small table next to it, there’s only the director’s chair in the corner. No drawers or wardrobe to store anything. On top of the table are piles of travel books: How to Drop Everything and Travel Around the World, A is for Africa, Zanzibar to Timbuktu, A Guide to Machu Picchu, Lonely Planet Turkey, Adventures on the East Coast of Australia, Trekking in the Himalaya.
Summers picks up the books and leafs through them. ‘Are these Sara’s or yours?’
‘Well…Sara’s, I suppose.’
‘You’ve never thought about travelling before?’
‘Only for holidays.’ I pick up the Australia book and flick through, wondering why the pages look so familiar. I put it back down again and wave my hand round the room. ‘There are no sleeping tablets anywhere, just like I said.’
He walks to the opposite side of the bed, where there’s a small gap between it and the wall. He bends down, and when he stands back up again he’s holding a newspaper left open to the classified page. ‘It’s the local one,’ he says. ‘Dated the fifth of May.’
I look over his shoulder as I skim the page. Amongst several ads for driving lessons, logs for sale, kittens, puppies and hamsters, and ironing services with free collection and delivery, a few flats for rent are circled in red pen.
‘So you probably were looking for somewhere to rent.’
I shrug uselessly. ‘I suppose I must’ve been. I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with Liam banging on the door and trying to convince me to come back. I was probably hoping just to avoid him forever. Or at least until I was feeling stronger.’