I can almost see her staring at some point in the distance as she thinks about what I say.
‘OK. If there’s a doll theme running through this then it’s a very strong symbol. People like dolls for different reasons. But usually it’s family connection. Childhood. Fertility. They sometimes symbolise death. Or used as a likeness. What’s the third reference?’
I swallow hard. It’s so difficult to keep Cat in the dark after all she’s done for me.
‘I can’t tell you, Cat. Sorry. It’s part of the case that’s not public as yet. Not that I…’
She’s laughing.
‘Chill, Jan. It’s OK. I understand. But I can’t advise you on something that I don’t know about.’
I laugh too. I guess the past twenty four hours have told on me. Laughing is the last thing I feel like doing but it feels good. And I can feel myself opening up.
‘This thing is, I feel like I’ve seen the doll shape before. Specific. The outline. But I can’t think where for the life of me.’
‘Probably something from childhood. Something very powerful. Buried deep. You know all this, Jan, imprinting. It might be worth trying to connect with any places where you might have encountered dolls. Childhood stories. Or your mother. But quite often it’s something in the background of an important event that you don’t even notice. Like a painting on the wall of the house your grandfather died in. Or a badge on the lapel of someone who stole your mother’s purse. Or a friend who wasn’t so much a friend. Not much help. Sorry.’
I smile. It’s an enormous help.
‘No. It is a help. I’m convinced that the person who took Maisie is from round here. They know the area and if I recognise the paper doll then it must be from somewhere local. Thanks Cat. I’ll give you a call soon.’
She laughs but then she speaks to me very clearly.
‘Be careful Jan. Be careful.’
I know what she means immediately. She’s felt the same fear I’m feeling and she knows I’m at risk. I can hear her breath, quick and deep.
‘I will. I will. But it had to happen sometime.’
She snaps back. I know it’s her way of helping but it catches me off guard
‘Did it? Is this what you want, Jan?’
I feel tears prick my eyes but I won’t let it through. I’ve got this far.
‘Maybe not, but a child’s life is at stake. And maybe more. So how can I not?’
She pauses. I know she’s just worried.
‘But you can’t go back, Jan. Not after this.’
I look around the room. Blinds drawn to stop me thinking every movement outside is danger. Triple locks on all the doors. Much as I love Kirby, a dog that would maul anyone who broke in with me here. The state of the art alarm system. CCTV, obviously, with a button on my TV remote to view each camera at will. The house itself, in a remote position, no house number. Generic name. The Farm. Safety. Real fear stays outside the thick wooden front door. I’ll still have this. But she’s right. I won’t be able to go back. I’m visible now. I know Cat’s worried, and I know why.
‘No. I can’t. But maybe it’s time.’
‘That’s your call Jan. You know where I am, kidda.’
She ends the call. I go to the oven and check if my Macaronia is ready. It isn’t. Even though I suspect Kirby’s had several meals today, provided by Jean and Graham, I feed her again. She’s happy and I turn the music back up and sing along with it as I stir my coffee. I sit on the sofa and Kirby nestles her oversized body on my lap and settles down. I put my hand on her flank and feel her breathing and it soothes me.
Putting Cat’s obvious worry aside, I know what her advice about the dolls means. That I have to reach deep down into my psych and try to pull out one memory, one individual image that has so far evaded me. Deeper down, even deeper I know why this is bothering me so much. They’re not just a couple of notes with the meaning in the text. Although that would be bad enough. They hold their own meaning. Someone has taken time to cut them out in a paper chain. They mean something to someone and form a pattern. I knew that somewhere within this case there would be a pattern, something the perpetrator hangs it on. In most cases it’s a matter of finding a pattern and understanding what motivates them.
I’ve worked cases where the patterns are trademark violence or items left near, on or in a victim’s body. It can be something they leave at the scene of the crime. Sometimes even subconsciously. In some cases the patterns aren’t even at the scene of crime, they’re symbols and signs marking the location of the perpetrator, often signposting them. That’s where my expertise lies. In reaching to the bottom of my own psyche and putting myself in the place of the perpetrator. Why would they leave these symbols, these pointers? What do they mean to them?
It’s become obvious during the course of this investigation what the Magellan symbolism is. The gang is a little unusual in that it’s not drugs or money that’s at stake. But they’ve progressed along the same path and ended up in a place where they have resorted to extreme means to get their voice heard. Their signposts are the tattoos and the Magellan signature on the posters and placards. They’ve even got an online signature, where they’ve managed to weave an air of mystery around themselves. Urban legends. Their symbolism amounting to more than the whole.
But the dolls are apart from this. They carry their own ragged-edged hand-written identity. I instinctively know that somewhere in the world there will be more of these dolls, that these will have been plucked from the inner life of someone and that this pattern has developed over the years. These dolls are part of someone’s lives. These dolls are something personal.
I spend some time looking at references for dolls locally and keep coming up with nothing. I pull out my phone from under my bra strap again and check for messages. No messages. No news on the car and no news from the Met. So I return to searching my own consciousness for dolls.
The obvious trigger for this would be to revisit my childhood haunts but there isn’t time. There was a time, before I moved back here, that I would have just rushed out and done it. Hard drinking and impulsive, I would have shunned the consequences. But I’m not that woman any more. I’m me in moderation until I summon up the blood. I’m much calmer now, in control of the individual triggers that drive me. More concise. More calculating. I may be young but I know myself inside out.
It’s nine o’clock now. Twenty four hours since Maisie Lewis went missing and although the rest of the team are confident that the abductor will be amongst the Magellan gang, who Pat and Sally are currently rounding up, I’m not so sure. I need to think about everything that hasn’t yet been tied up with Glen Wright, or Magellan. My phone buzzes and I jump. It’s Steve. He’s obviously doing the same kind of resting as I am.
‘Yep. What’s the news?’
‘No news. That’s what I’m ringing to say. They’ve rounded up everyone on Wright’s list.’
Something’s not right.
‘Everyone?’
‘Yeah. Every single one of them has watertight alibis. None of them have admitted to knowledge of the plan that Wright gave us either.’
I snort. They will.
‘That’s OK. Just let Pat loose on them for a while. You OK?’
He makes a deep sighing noise.
‘I am. But I’m just wondering about this appeal tomorrow. Are you sure you want to lead it? I can easily get Lauren to do it.’
It’s tempting. Especially after what Cat said. But I know full well that it works both ways. I’m notorious, and that leaves me at risk. But it also makes me powerful, gives me gravitas. If I do the appeal whoever has Maisie will know that we mean business.
‘No. I’ll do it. I’ll step up.’
‘OK. I’ll give the Lewis’s a call and ask Lorraine to prep them. Not the kind of folk to lose it on live TV, are they?’
I think about Marc and Amy, each coping in their own way. Amy by numbing the pain with medication, and Marc by playing amateur investigator and throwing himself i
nto work. Both of them completely broken hearted. I imagine them entering another night with no news of their missing daughter, only a baby, and out there with some maniac with a car-load of dangerous chemicals.
That summons up the blood. My bloods almost boiling as I think about Glen Wright explaining about the earth and how it hurts and that’s why Maisie was taken. I fully understand what he feels about the environment, I used to be a fully paid up member of Greenpeace myself. But this is crazy.
‘No. Neither of them. They know what’s at risk.’ In my mind’s eye I see the picture of them with Maisie on the side in her empty bedroom. Their proud smiles and the way Amy holds her up, so proud. ‘They’re good people, Steve.’
He blows air out in a long whistle.
‘So see you tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight. Thinking about that poor kid and them driving around in that loaded car. Driving round Manchester.’
It’s then I remember why Steve has a limp. He was caught up in the Manchester bomb at the Arndale centre. One sunny afternoon in 1996 he’d set off to investigate a shoplifting and ended up with a piece of shutter stuck in his leg. The IRA had planted a 3300lb bomb on Corporation Street in Manchester City Centre. There were no fatalities, because there was a ninety minute warning and there was an evacuation, but hundreds of people were injured and nearby buildings were damaged so badly that they had to be demolished.
It’s well known throughout the force that the huge bomb contained semtex and ammonium nitrate. Steve was nearby when the bomb exploded. He was involved in the evacuation. He carried an injured woman and her child half a mile with a piece of shutter lodged in his calf, and went back to help more people until eventually he passed out. He’s never talked to me about it but everyone knows. That’s how it is. We never talk about it. It’s just business as usual every day.
‘Manchester’s watertight. You did a great job today. We’ll get them Steve. We’ll get them. I’m following up some loose ends and I’ll be ready in the morning. Get some rest.’
I end the call. He won’t get any rest and neither will I. I download my emails and save the attachments to my hard drive. I load up the messages and the sheet that Petra said was the second sheet, nearest to the dolls. The one with the scribbles on it. Now I see what she meant. They’re all dolls. One on top of another, overlapping and different sizes. The writing underneath is clearly a list, but only the clearest words jump out at me.
I cover them and see if anything else springs out, but have no luck. It’s not a shopping list. Or a list of items. I list the words, to see if they mean anything.
My hair flows behind me as I turn right by Victoria Station into Belgravia. There’s a record shop in a basement and I’m in there listening and smiling and tapping my feet. It’s like summer in my heart as I drink in the feelings invoked by the songs. They make me feel alive, and forget the love I have for the people who matter most. Who I do it all for? It’s confirmation of life.
All about feelings. All about love and maybe loss. Maybe joy. I put all the words into a google search engine. I’ve no doubt in my mind that Petra’s team have already tried this and come up with nothing. All the time that I’m thinking it's a love letter, to someone. It’s only when I look past the words and see the doodles I realise. Shoes. They're all shoes. Ballet shoes, boots, high heels. I my mind's eye I see the red feet of the paper dolls. Red shoes. These words are from a story.
My first thought is the Wizard of Oz. There's no place like home. I pick up my phone and almost dial Steve's number but then I realise that there's another Red Shoe story. One that's much more sinister. Where it doesn't end well? But I'm convinced that it's a story.
But how does this connect with a long drive up North to scare the shit out of a group of parents and abduct a small child? Whilst planning to bomb a nuclear power plant? It’s almost obscene, and somehow much worse, because all the words are about feelings. I try to visualise someone who loves kid’s stories but can, in the next moment, take a sleeping child from their bed. It doesn’t come. The contradiction is so strong.
I go back to the screen and open up a browser. Tiny. Winter. Kind. Pretty. Lovely. I feed in the words, the ones between the dolls. I type in more partial words and search, but too many documents appear. So I load the original story. I run my fingers across the screen and they are all there.
I stop and lean back in my desk chair. Why had no one seen this before? Surely Petra’s technicians had googled the words? Looking at them again, if they were googled individually or all together the results would be too narrow or broad based and meaningless. Like most logical searches there need to be a context. And why would the lab contextualise the words as a fairy story when they are looking for a male abductor who may be a terrorist? There’s a tendency to overthink textual evidence, assume it is a code or encryption. And sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s a valuable signpost to the mind of the perpetrator, something they have taken trouble to hide.
In this case I’m starting to think that it’s exactly what it says on the box: addresses and a fairy story. That doesn’t make it any less valuable. In many ways it clarifies what’s going on in their mind. It tells me that whoever has Maisie isn’t trying to conceal. Just like the crime scene, the impressions in the paper suggest that this is someone who isn’t really concerned about being found. Which could work both ways – either they’re completely confident about their mission, and are sure they’ll get away with it, or simply unconcerned because they’ve got nothing to lose.
It’s late now and I text Petra and Steve.
‘It's a story. The words on the sheet. It's the Red Shoes.’
Then I realise that they tell us almost nothing about this perpetrator in particular. They tell us that they have read The Red Shoes. The focus on love and loss could point to a relationship. But the loss could mean that they’ve lost a lover. Or just lost love. That story has a deep, primal meaning. It's about someone with an obsession and the Lewis they pay. They tell us that this person, the person who is driving around in a potential bomb with an abducted child is maybe bitter about a relationship, as well as having a grudge. A dangerous combination.
Chapter Twelve.
I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. I dozed in and out of dreams about dolls and shoes and Maisie until a slit of bright sunlight found a nick in my blackout blind and hit my bedroom floor.
During the night I’d been woken by Kirby’s low grumble. I’d checked to make sure that she wasn’t sleep growling, but she was awake and as soon as I moved she barked, loud and low. I went downstairs and checked the cameras around my house. They look up and down the road, to each side of my enclosed garden, and towards Jean and Graham's at the back. There was nothing obvious, only a wide open space for my biggest fears to creep up on me when I am tired and stressed. It was then, as I stood in the middle of my kitchen in the early morning darkness, which I realised that my paranoia was back. I reset all the alarms and went back to bed, phone in hand in case I need to make a quick call, and Kirby climbed on the bed with me.
By the time I’m wash and dressed, Jean’s knocking on my kitchen window. I open the back door and Kirby bounds out. There’s a small pang of jealousy when she nuzzles Jean’s hand, but I don’t have time for that. Jean hands me the morning paper. The headline chills me.
SILVER RANGE ROVER – Police search for silver Range Rover in Maisie Lewis abduction case.
I scan the rest of the article but there are no specific details and no mention of the explosives. No mention of the registration number. I’m fuming about the details of the case being leaked, but I know that it’s difficult, with so many people involved, to keep secrets.
Jean stands in front of me with her arms folded.
‘Terrible business, lovey. How could anyone do that? How could that man take a child? It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
I wish Jean didn’t have to think about it. I wish none of us did.
‘Thanks for looking after Kirby, Jean. I really app
reciate it.’
She touches my arm gently.
‘Well you just catch him. He wants stringing up.’
She turns and walks away. No matter what I think, the world has decided that whoever took Maisie is male. I watch as a car winds its way up towards my home, around the criss-cross corners and over the cattle grids. The backdrop is scenic today, with a low mist blurring the line between the moors and the sky. There’s a steep slope at the other side of the lane opposite my front gate and I watch as two rabbits run through the scrub and stop as they hear the noise of the engine. The car comes closer and I peer into the windscreen to recognise the driver. When it draws closer, I see it’s Terry Morris. No need to ask for ID. I know Terry. My jittery suspicion retreats as I get into the car.
In half an hour I’m back at headquarters. When I arrive I go straight over to Petra’s lab. I’d already had a text from Lorraine telling me that the Lewis' would arrive at nine o’clock so there’s plenty of time. I’m still niggled by the Red Shoes theory and my instincts about the abductor and I want to be absolutely sure before I make a final decision and go public. Petra’s my sanity test.
The lab’s almost empty and Petra is standing at the edge of a testing station in her white lab coat over a bright red long dress. She’s lost in her own thoughts, but when she sees me she hurries over.
‘Jan. So glad you’re here. If it’s possible, this got even more serious. Our opposite number at the Met just emailed me a list of the contents of the car, judging by the consignment notes and traces found in Glen’s flat. It’s not pretty.’
She’s solemn and sad, a sign that she’s very serious.
‘None of this is. It’s horrendous. It’s so contradictory.’
She brushes her hair out of her eyes. She looks shattered.
‘Yeah, so much evidence. So messy. Usually in cases like this there’s barely anything. I got your text about the Red Shoes, by the way. Very interesting. And a little bit strange.’
‘Why strange?’
What I Left Behind (The gripping prequel to the DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series) Page 11