From the Cradle

by Louise Voss

  ‘Frankie Philips. The other little girl.’

  Sharon’s face was a mask of confusion. She opened her mouth to speak but, instead, took in a long, rattling breath and lay still, her eyes still open, staring as if she would be confused for eternity.

  Patrick and Carmella exchanged a long, fearful look. As Patrick pushed himself to his feet, his knees crunching as he stood, he saw a woman with soft black hair running full pelt towards them, a uniformed PC in pursuit. The woman had broken through the cordon.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he said. ‘It’s Helen Philips.’

  ‘Where’s Frankie? Where is she?’ Helen gasped as she pulled to a halt beside them, the PC catching up and grabbing hold of her. She shook him off. Her face twisted with contempt as she looked at the dead woman on the stretcher, the paramedics preparing a second body bag. There was not an ounce of compassion or fear at being witness to such recent death. ‘Is that her? Is that the bitch who took my baby?’

  Then her eyes widened and Patrick followed her gaze. Liam McConnell was sitting in the back of an ambulance with two policewomen. His own eyes were like saucers and he was pale, but he was alive, found. Whereabouts known. Tonight he would be back with his family. Whatever else happened now, Patrick told himself he had to remember that. They had reunited one family with their lost child.

  ‘Where’s Frankie?’ Helen insisted. ‘She’s not still in there, is she?’

  Patrick steeled himself.

  ‘Mrs Philips, I need you to remain calm. Frankie’s not here. It doesn’t look like she was ever here.’

  Chapter 26

  Patrick – Day 4

  As soon as he could get out of DB1, Patrick headed back to the station. He’d only intended to go there to pick up his car, but once he was through the doors, he sat down at his desk and found he couldn’t move. To give himself an excuse to stay at his desk, he switched on his computer and surfed around news and social media websites reading all the breaking news reports with their differing slants and conclusions: ‘SIEGE ENDS IN DISASTER – POLICE SHOOT TWO DEAD’ ‘LIAM MCCONNELL FOUND, FRANKIE STILL MISSING’, ‘FRANKIE PHILIPS’ MOTHER DISTRAUGHT’ …

  The only person who was happy right now – apart from Liam’s parents – was Wesley, who was already back at the travellers’ camp, having been immediately released from custody.

  Eventually Patrick’s hand stilled on the computer’s mouse and he surrendered to his exhaustion. His eyes closed and he tried to empty his throbbing head. The noise of the door opening made him jump. It was Suzanne.

  ‘Didn’t think you were still here,’ he said, wearily squinting at her through one eye.

  ‘Nor should you be. Particularly not with that egg on your forehead. You look like you either need a drink or medical attention, and, call me selfish, but personally I think the former is the preferred option. Swift half before we wend our ways home?’

  Patrick grinned weakly. His head was still pounding, and if he was honest, he knew he probably should be checked out for a mild concussion – but Suzanne was inviting him for a drink? He’d have to be missing a limb to turn that down.

  ‘I’m fine, boss. The Nurofen are kicking in. You’re right ‒ I need a drink way more than I need to sit in Casualty for four hours.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Patrick had a moment of doubt. What if Suzanne was only asking him for a drink so that she could give him an off-the-record bollocking about how much he’d fucked it all up?

  Have I fucked it up? he wondered as they entered their local and Suzanne headed for the bar. Frankie was still missing and two people were dead – but Liam had been found, and they knew what had happened to Isabel. Grim swings and roundabouts. And besides, he hadn’t been the hostage negotiator …

  He headed for a table at the back of the cool dark bar. After the harshness of the fluorescent station strip lights and the dramas of the day, he needed somewhere dark and quiet for his head.

  And for his heart, if he was honest. The darker and quieter the better. In all the years he’d worked with Suzanne, they had never socialised together apart from office Christmas parties and people’s leaving dos, at which she had always been unfailingly professional – apart from that one time about a year ago, in her office when Suzanne had unexpectedly produced a bottle of whiskey and two chipped mugs and they’d proceeded to get pissed like two teenagers with their first bottle of Thunderbird. That night, Patrick had opened his heart about Gill and what had recently happened with Bonnie, and Suzanne had started talking a little bit about her own marriage. That night was seared into Patrick’s memory: the way their chairs had inched closer together as the drinks went down, the heat in the room that led Suzanne to pop open the top two buttons of her blouse, the fizz in the air … and how Suzanne had suddenly stood up and told him it was time for them to go, like she’d shoved a knitting needle into his bubble.

  Because it had never been spoken of since, Patrick sometimes wondered if it had really even happened or if he’d just imagined it.

  Suzanne came back with the drinks, handing Patrick a pint. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  He swallowed a mouthful and, despite his headache, felt the cold lager help ground him, restoring a sense of normality to the insanity of the day.

  ‘Better,’ he said. ‘Definitely better.’

  ‘How’s Bonnie?’ Suzanne suddenly asked, fiddling with a beer mat and not meeting his eyes, as though she had just propositioned him or something.

  ‘She’s fine … well, basically. We’re still living at my mum and dad’s, which is pretty … interesting … and I think they’re struggling with the childcare. Especially as she’s developed quite a strong personality.’

  ‘What – you mean she has tantrums?’

  ‘All the time, apparently,’ Patrick said glumly. ‘I feel so responsible. My folks should be enjoying their retirement, not conducting damage limitation for a narky two-year-old. They’re knackered.’

  Now Suzanne looked him full in the face. She knew, of course, all about Gill and what had happened, although rarely mentioned it. Not since that session with the whisky in her office. Her eyes were tawny and flecked with gold. ‘It’s hardly your fault, is it? And presumably it won’t be forever – won’t she go to nursery soon?’

  ‘She could do. But it’s so expensive, and I just feel she should be around people who know her really well … I’m probably being over-protective but … you know …’

  ‘I do know,’ Suzanne said with sympathy. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing an amazing job.’

  ‘Really?’ Pat said, with genuine surprise. He constantly worried that his slightly haphazard methods and sudden disappearances home to troubleshoot the latest Bonnie crisis had marked him down as unreliable in her books. ‘That’s great to hear. Thank you. I’ll feel a lot better when I find this Philips kid, though.’

  ‘If anyone can, you can,’ she said. ‘Right, that’s enough blowing smoke up your arse. Another pint?’

  He noticed that she had already finished her G&T.

  ‘It’s my round,’ he said, and got up, staggering very slightly. ‘Lovecats’ by The Cure came onto the jukebox and he grinned, quashing a fleeting notion that it was A Sign. Suzanne, he reminded himself, was not only his boss, but a married woman. And he was a married man – technically, at least. Waiting at the bar, he turned around to look at her, sitting with her back to him, engrossed in something on her phone. He liked the way her long blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders and down her narrow back.

  When he came back, there was a glint in her eyes as she put her phone away and accepted her second G&T. ‘Now, Lennon. We could talk about what just happened and what the ramifications of it all are – but you know what? I really don’t want to. What I would really like to do is to sit here with you and get quite drunk. I think we’ve earned it. Tomorrow we’ll be back at the grindstone, and today was hell, but this evening is neither one nor the other.’

  Patrick appraised her, his head on one sid
e. God, he wished he didn’t have such a headache. He sensed that this was not an opportunity that would often present itself again.

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said. ‘Are you sure everything is OK?’ He wanted to add ‘at home’, but it felt too personal.

  She immediately changed the subject as though she hadn’t heard him – something she often did at work when someone said something she disliked. ‘Tell me about those,’ she commanded, reaching her forefinger towards his arms. The tip of her finger traced the swirl of the darkest of his tattoos, and her touch sent an electric shock straight to his groin.

  He shrugged. ‘Had that one since I was eighteen,’ he said, pointing at an abstract shape on his right arm, just above the elbow. ‘I got the rest over the following ten years, one a year. I stopped when I met Gill because I didn’t want to end up like one of those freaks who get every spare inch done, even eyelids. It’s very addictive. And Gill didn’t like them.’

  ‘They look sort of Maori,’ Suzanne said. ‘I’ve often wondered about them but you usually have long sleeves at work.’

  ‘They’re Maori-inspired, but not actually the traditional Maori kori, because those aren’t tattoos done with needles like these ones are. They’re actually carved out of the skin with little chisels. I just really liked the shapes. This one,’ he showed Suzanne a spiral on his left bicep, ‘is based on a koru, which is a fern shape.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Suzanne said. Was he imagining it, or did she have a slightly dreamy expression on her face? Patrick wondered if she’d have used those same words if she hadn’t been halfway down her second double gin – ‘impressive’ or ‘interesting’ were more the sort of words he would have expected her to use. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Are they just on your arms?’ Her eyes flickered over his whole body, and he thought, fuck me, she is. She’s coming onto me!

  ‘Arms, over my shoulders, and one on my calf,’ he said, pulling up his jeans leg to show her. ‘Do you have any?’

  She laughed. ‘Me, with tattoos? No. I’m far too much of a wimp. I’ll stick to admiring yours, thanks. Besides, like Gillian, Simon would hate it.’

  Patrick couldn’t help it. He leaned forward slightly and put his elbows on the table. ‘Do you always do what Simon wants?’

  She mirrored his movement. They were inches apart, and he could smell her perfume, something musky and subtle. He forgot about his headache.

  Her phone rang. She pulled it out of her bag, examined the screen, made a face – but took the call anyway. ‘Hi darling … Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry … Did you? What channel? … Shit. Well, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of debriefing to do, so I’ll be late. Don’t wait up. Thanks honey. See you in the morning … You too.’

  She put the phone away briskly. Patrick noticed the ‘you too’ cop-out. In his experience, ‘you too’ was what you said to someone who’d just told you they loved you when the feeling wasn’t reciprocal. But perhaps he was just extrapolating more than was strictly necessary, or even fair.

  Her mood changed a little over the course of the next two drinks each, as the pub filled up around them. She was still friendly, but a distance had crept back in. There were more silences – in which they could then clearly hear that most of the conversations around them involved the siege, the found toddler and the dead couple. After a while Pat tried not to listen.

  He felt disappointed, but didn’t let it show. He had started to experience a weird sort of euphoria – survival relief, perhaps. The after-effects of the earlier adrenalin. His headache had greatly subsided, he was getting drunk with his sexy boss, and Liam O’Connell had been found alive and well.

  Things could be a lot worse.

  A thought popped into his head. ‘You know that smell at Koppler’s house? Any idea what it was?’

  Suzanne lifted her glass. ‘Sage. I only know that because someone bought me some sage incense sticks once. It’s used for cleansing, purifying.’

  Patrick nodded. He could picture it: Koppler and Sharon burning the sage after accidentally killing Isabel, thinking it would help remove the stain of what they’d done. Clearly, they felt so tainted by it that they continued to burn it at home and Koppler filled his office with the smell. Or perhaps it was something they had always done.

  Sometimes it’s easy to ascribe meaning where there is none.

  ‘Have you got a picture of her?’

  ‘Of who?’ Patrick was startled, thinking Suzanne meant of Gill, for some reason.

  ‘Bonnie, of course! I haven’t seen any of her for ages. She must have changed loads. Is she walking?’

  Flustered, Pat fished out his phone and tapped into Photos. ‘Oh yeah, she’s been walking ages. She’s almost two now.’

  Suzanne shrugged. ‘I don’t have kids. How would I know?’ But she said it in a down-to-earth rather than a bitter manner. He was pretty sure he’d heard her say she didn’t want children. The thought flashed through his mind, for just a second, that perhaps she wouldn’t be any good as a surrogate mother to Bonnie if … things ever changed …

  As if!

  As he scrolled through the pictures, holding out the phone to Suzanne, she wriggled closer to him. He almost dropped the phone, then reciprocated until their arms were pressed together. ‘Aw, Pat, she’s adorable!’ she cooed, and he laughed, with pride and amusement at how different she was when inebriated.

  A text vibrated his phone and he groaned when he saw that it was from his mum. WILL YOU BE BACK SOON? B NOT SETTLING AT ALL TONIGHT.

  ‘Oh hell. My poor mother’s been stuck with Bonnie all day and now she won’t go to sleep. Ma will be furious if I stink of beer when I get in.’

  They both collapsed with laughter at the irony of big, muscular DI Lennon getting told off by his mum for coming in late smelling of drink. ‘You’d better go, then,’ Suzanne said.

  Suddenly she leaned her head against his chest. ‘This has been nice.’

  ‘Really nice,’ he agreed, instinctively sliding his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Back to normal again tomorrow, though,’ she said warningly, looking up into his eyes.

  ‘Yes boss. Understood.’

  ‘In that case, perhaps we could risk a quick if rather unprofessional …’ Her lips were moving towards his, her eyelids floating blissfully closed and he could smell her scent and the appley shampoo she wore … He bent his head towards her, risking one last glance around and then—

  ‘Oh shit,’ he hissed, jumping away from her as if stung. ‘Don’t look round. Winkler just came in.’

  ‘Winkler?’ she snapped, immediately back in sharp focus, sharp-tongued Suzanne, all the soft edges erased. ‘Did he see us?’

  ‘No, thank God. He’s got his back to us. But I think that’s my cue … Thanks for the – decompression. It was much needed.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said gravely. ‘I very much enjoyed it. Goodnight, Pat.’

  ‘Goodnight, boss.’

  She laughed. ‘One more thing,’ she said, as he swallowed the dregs of his final pint. ‘This will never be spoken of. Agreed?’

  ‘… Agreed.’

  We’re still in London, and Frankie is locked up safe and sound while I go out to buy supplies. She’s still not eating properly and her body is starting to look like a bundle of sticks. I remember seeing a documentary about this once, a child who missed her mummy so much that she became depressed and stopped eating. As I’m walking round the supermarket I think about Sean and Helen and how they are to blame for the poor child’s mental frailty, and as if my thoughts have conjured them I look up and there they are.

  On the TV. I mean, on the banks of TVs in the electrical department. The sound is turned down on all of them, but from the headlines flashing on the screens, the shots of the house and the police cars and the stills showing the children, it isn’t hard to work out what has happened. They’ve found whoever it was who took Liam and Izzy.

  I’m so pissed off by this latest development that I leave the supermarket without buyin
g anything and walk back to the van, thinking hard.

  All the while the police thought all three children were taken by the same person, I was protected by the smokescreen of their ignorance. But now they know Frankie has been abducted, to use their word, by someone else. Right now, they will be trying to work out who, and why. Maybe they will talk to that stupid girl, find out what happened that night.

  But they will never reach the truth, which is this:

  I love this child.

  I have taken what I deserve.

  And I would rather die – that we both died – than be alone again.

  When I get back to the van, having read news stories on my phone all the way home, I let her out of the cupboard and give her a Fruit Shoot, which she gulps down. I think the sugar in these drinks is the only thing keeping her going. Without saying a word, she plods over to the table and sits down in front of her drawing pad. A crayon rolls onto the floor and she quickly snatches it up before I can shout.

  I sit and watch her. I’m concerned. If they find us they’ll try to take her away from me. They won’t believe that I love her, that she belongs with me.

  I know what I should do. Get far, far away from here. I keep driving out into the country, into Surrey and Kent, trying to escape the city, but something always draws me back, a compulsion I can’t fight, despite the danger.

  I know exactly what it is that pulls me back here …

  Or exactly who.

  I notice that she has finished her drawing, is staring into space. I get up, take the single step over to where she sits, and look at the picture. It’s a woman with long black hair, exaggerated eyelashes and a big smile on her face.

  ‘Who’s that, sweetie?’ I ask.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispers. ‘My mummy. I miss her.’

  I take the picture and screw it into a ball. ‘Shut up,’ I say, when she starts to wail. ‘Shut up! I need to think.’

  I have to decide what to do. Because things simply can’t continue like this.

  Chapter 27

  Helen – Day 5