by Nicci French
‘No. I’m going with Nina,’ said Alix. ‘You’re staying here.’
‘I don’t think so.’
For an awful few seconds they stared at each other, but the winner of the battle of wills was never in doubt. She turned to me. ‘Come on, Nina – it would be better if we went in my car. I’ll drive and you can direct me.’
At any other time I would have left them there together, tied up in the bitterness of their marital discord. Not now. I shrugged at Joel and turned away, leaving him disconsolate in the road. Alix and I hurried down the street towards her car. My eyes were watering in the cold; I held the sheet of paper fluttering in my hand. I climbed in and sat in the passenger seat, leaning forward anxiously, seat-belt undone. After I’d given her the address of where we were going first, neither of us spoke.
When we arrived at the seventh address on Charlie’s list, I leaped out and rang the bell of the Gordons’ house (23 East Lane, the Daily Mail), heard it sing a clanky little tune deep in the house. I heard footsteps and the door was pulled open. The young woman who stood there was holding a tiny baby to her breast. Its red, wrinkled face peered out of the white blanket. There was a milk blister on its lip. A smell of washing and baking wafted from the kitchen. Life was going on.
‘Mrs Gordon?’ I said. ‘My name is Nina Landry and I just wanted to ask –’
‘Come in. I don’t want to stand in the cold with Eva. She’s only a few days old and –’
‘I only wanted to ask if you received your Mail this morning?’
‘My Mail?’
‘Your newspaper. Did you get it all right?’
‘Why?’
‘My daughter –’ I started, then stopped and collected myself. ‘There have been a few queries about the papers this morning and we were simply checking that they’d all arrived safely.’
‘It’s here. I haven’t read it yet, though. No time. We only came back from the hospital a few –’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and stepped away from the door, hearing her voice following me down the path.
Next was Sue Furlong, whom I knew vaguely because her black Labrador was Sludge’s sister. The two sometimes had wild chasing games on the sea wall. Indeed, as I knocked at the door of her rather shabby terraced house, I could hear the dog barking frantically inside. But no one came. I pushed open the letterbox flap and peered inside. There, on the mat, lay her chewed and muddy newspaper, beside a pile of mail.
The Gunners (Honey Hall) had received their Guardian; Bob Hutchings on East Lane his East Anglian Daily Times. I could hear the radio from his kitchen: the news had just ended. Down Pleshey Road, and Meg Lee had her paper. She’d even glimpsed Charlie as she cycled up the short drive. The teenage son of the Dunnes didn’t know if his parents had received theirs, but I pressed him. He sighed, irritated, then went into the kitchen and came back to tell me it was there, opened on the table.
The houses were more scattered here. Charlie had only just started doing the paper round so she had the least desirable route, which took her twice as long as the ones that covered the centre of the town. Alix and I drove from Lost Road to the coastal road that led along the crumbling sea wall. We didn’t speak. The tide was drawing steadily nearer, rivulets of water running up the mud ditches. The long grass in the distance shimmered like a mirage in the chill breeze. It was probably not more than half a mile, but the flat road stretched ahead of us and we seemed to be getting nowhere, stranded in a monotony of scrubby grass, mudflats and oozing ocean. There was a faint streak of light where the sea met the sky, and I kept my eyes on that. I tried not to think of how we were probably wasting our time, going in the wrong direction, further away from the truth, further away from Charlie. I used to think that if she or Jackson needed me, I’d know it and know where to find them, as if they could send out some radio wave of distress that only their mother could pick up. Not any more.
Christian called and I cut him off. Rory called and started saying something about how it was my fault Charlie had run away. I cut him off too. At last we bumped down the drive to where the Wigmores lived: it was a ramshackle cottage, with a sagging roof and stained, ancient walls. Small white lights festooned the tree at the front door. I knocked, and after a while an elderly man came to the door, wearing an apron, his sleeves rolled up. His face was whiskery and shiny and he was annoyed at being interrupted. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Did you get your paper this morning?’ I asked, without preamble.
‘Eh?’
‘Your newspaper, did you get it?’
‘My paper? I’m making the Christmas cake now. I’m putting in the glacé cherries. You could have asked me before.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That’s all very well.’
I exchanged a dispirited glance with Alix.
‘Did you get your paper today, Mr Wigmore?’ she enunciated loudly, clearly, and he scowled.
‘I can hear as well as you and I got it all right, but it was missing the sports. I like my sports pages on a Saturday.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, backing away, past the ancient tractor, the pile of wire netting and old doors.
The next house was half a mile further on, a red-brick townhouse that looked built for a residential road in a northern town, but had been plucked out of context and set down unprotected on this bleak spot, in the path of the wind and rain. Its square windows overlooked the sea in one direction, and toughened grassland in the other.
As she parked, Alix said, in the same voice she had used to Mr Wigmore, as if she were teaching elocution: ‘You weren’t the first, you know.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said, you weren’t the first.’ It was almost a shout. ‘With Joel.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I opened my door and swung out my legs. ‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘He likes women. Usually younger than you, though.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, although it wasn’t true. I didn’t care about what had happened between me and Joel, and I didn’t care if there had been others before me. I knew that later these things would mean something again – unless, of course… My mind shuddered to a halt right there.
As we approached the door, Alix hesitated. ‘Is there a point in this?’ she said. ‘I mean, Charlie delivered the papers. Is this telling us anything?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’re retracing her steps. Someone might have talked to her. What else can I do?’
Alix nodded and rang the bell, then rang again. We both waited, our faces stiff with cold. A woman answered the door. She was wearing a blue housecoat. There was a mop in her hand.
‘Yes?’
Suddenly it all seemed ludicrous, hopeless, a meaningless charade. I could hardly bring myself to speak the string of words. I glanced down at the piece of paper. ‘Hello. It’s Mrs Benson, isn’t it? I was wondering if you got your newspaper this morning.’
She looked puzzled. ‘My paper? Sometimes it comes late on a Saturday, so I don’t usually get too bothered.’
‘You mean it was delivered late?’
‘They sleep in late on Saturday, the young kids, don’t they? Once it was delivered with the Sunday paper.’
‘So it was late?’ I said.
‘Have you brought it?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I thought you were bringing it,’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Will you tell them at the shop?’
‘You mean the paper wasn’t delivered?’
‘No.’
‘You’re really sure. You’re absolutely sure?’
Mrs Benson seemed confused. ‘It makes a noise when it comes. I hear the flap of the letterbox. I get it from the mat here.’
‘You might have forgotten,’ I said.
‘Come on, Nina,’ Alix said.
I made myself thank Mrs Benson, say goodbye like a normal person, and we hastened back to the road. The ground felt unsteady under my feet. We got back into the car.
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bsp; ‘What now?’ asked Alix.
‘Now we know that the paper was delivered to Mr Wigmore but not to Mrs Benson.’
‘We should double-check, though. Who’s next on the list?’
A few hundred yards further on an Andrew Derrick was out at the front washing his sports car. No, his paper hadn’t arrived and he wasn’t at all pleased about it.
Alix and I stared at each other.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Got to think. Now we know something. Charlie started her paper round. She did the first – what? – twelve houses. She delivered the paper to Mr Wigmore back there. The next house on her route was Mrs Benson’s. She never delivered it.’ I could feel the blood pumping through my body, I could feel it along my arms and up in my head, the veins pulsing with it. I felt that, if I let myself, I would faint. But I couldn’t. I had to be calm and think clearly. It helped to talk. It helped to have cold, rational Alix there. ‘Now, if you’re fifteen years old and you’re going to run away from home on the day you’re meant to be going on holiday, you might skip your paper round, because that really is the least of your worries. Or, if you’re feeling some peculiar sense of obligation, you might do your paper round and then leave home. But what doesn’t make sense is to do half your paper round and run away.’
We stared at each other, thinking furiously.
‘Could she have had an accident?’ said Alix.
‘You checked the hospital.’
‘She might…’ She paused, not wanting to say the words. ‘She might still be there – between the houses.’
‘Quickly. Back to the Bensons,’ I said.
Once there, we got out of the car again and together we began to stumble along the road, looking carefully to either side. The road was black Tarmac. There were some patches of clay on it that had fallen off the wheels of farm vehicles and tracks of car tyres across them but I saw no sign of bicycle tyres. On the left side of the road there was a ditch and some small, scrubby bushes, twisted by year after year of wind off the sea. Beyond them rough grass, like seaweed, dipped down and led towards the mud of the estuary. On the right-hand side there was a hedgerow and some trees marking the boundary of a large field that had just been ploughed so that it looked like a frozen brown stormy sea.
‘We’ll look as far as the Wigmores’ house and then –’
I stopped because I didn’t know what to say. And then what? I couldn’t bear that thought now. Leave it for later.
There are a lot of things on an empty road when you walk it slowly, staring at every inch. The remnants of damp leaves from the autumn, a cigarette packet, beer bottles, a torn shopping-bag, a soggy tissue, a sodden newspaper, a polystyrene container with some unrecognizable remnant of takeaway food stuck to it.
‘What are you looking for now? Lost something?’ said a voice.
It was Mr Wigmore, a strange tweed hat on his grey head.
I didn’t have time to explain properly. I waved a hand in his direction and said, ‘My daughter. She delivered the paper to you but not to the Bensons. I need to find her.’
‘She never delivered the paper to me.’
I straightened up. ‘What?’
‘She never delivered it,’ he repeated.
‘But you said –’
‘I collected it myself. I thought you understood. It didn’t arrive so in the end I had to go and get it. But it didn’t have the sports section.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us it hadn’t been delivered?’
‘You asked if I’d got my paper. I did get it. I got it myself.’
‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘My mistake.’
Mr Wigmore walked off, still muttering to himself about his paper.
‘Let me get this straight –’ started Alix, but I interrupted her.
‘It means we’re looking in the wrong place,’ I said. ‘It’s between Mr Wigmore’s house and the Dunnes’ that she disappeared.’
I took her by the sleeve and pulled her, half running, back to the car.
Once more, we retraced our route and stopped by the side of the road, just beyond Mr Wigmore’s shabby cottage with the Christmas lights twinkling under the winter sky. Once more, we trudged along the road, one of us on either side, not knowing what we were looking for. The day deepened. The light was changing and thickening. The tide was coming in.
Something caught my eye. A newspaper. I shouted at Alix, who was ahead of me and ran back. It was a copy of the Daily Mail, wet, spattered with mud, lying in the grass, half hidden. I picked it up. I opened it and a magazine wrapped in polythene fell to the ground, along with a clutch of cards advertising insurance and conservatories. I showed it to Alix.
‘That may explain it,’ she said. ‘Charlie must have dropped it without realizing. On a windy day like this, newspapers could easily have blown from under her arm or however she was carrying them.’
‘There’s only one here,’ I said. ‘She didn’t deliver the paper to the second house along either.’
Alix looked a little less sure of herself. ‘She may have dropped other papers too. They could have blown away.’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
I knelt down and looked closely at the ground. At the edge of the road where the Tarmac ended, it was muddy, messy. ‘Alix,’ I said, ‘does the ground look churned up here?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty muddy everywhere. There’s been a lot of rain.’
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But this is all we’ve got. This spot. Before we move on, can we make a circle about twenty yards round it and look very carefully?’
There was just the tiniest hint of a pause. I was a person about whom Alix had mixed feelings – to put it mildly – and she was a busy doctor on a free day, but she was wandering along this road in the wind and cold, and there was probably no point in it, and there must have been a million things she would rather have been doing. I could see a silent internal sigh of resignation.
‘All right,’ she said.
Alix had walking-boots on so I pointed her into the thicker undergrowth.
‘How far shall I go?’ she asked.
‘Just look for twenty yards in that direction. I’ll do the same across the road.’
Alix had got the worst of the deal. I took slow steps across the road, just a few inches at a time, staring at it so closely that I was almost on my hands and knees. But Alix had to clamber across the ditch and although she was wearing boots, I saw that her jeans were dark with damp from the long grass.
I looked at every twig, every loose stalk, but there was nothing. I walked off the road on the coast side. Twenty yards through that long rough grass was quite a long way. How was I going to search it? With my fingertips? Was there any point? Was it merely a form of neurotic activity? As I was pondering this I heard my name shouted. I turned but I couldn’t see Alix. She was on the other side of the hedge. I spotted a gap, which had allowed her through.
‘Are you all right?’ I cried.
‘Come here quickly.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just come. Now.’
I couldn’t move. My skin went hot. There was a heaving in my chest and stomach. I gulped and thought I might vomit. And then, slowly, like a dead person, I made myself walk, one foot in front of the other, as if I had never done it before. I had to step precariously over the ditch and through the gap, like a doorway, in the hedge and into the field. Alix was standing there, gesturing with both hands. At her feet, half leaning against the hedge and hidden from the road, was Charlie’s bicycle. On top of it was the bright orange bag in which she carried the newspapers. I ran forward but Alix stepped in my way so I couldn’t get at it. ‘You mustn’t touch it,’ she said. ‘We must call the police. Now.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Police.’
She took a mobile phone from her jacket pocket. She held it for a moment and then she dropped it. She picked it up. Her hands were trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s stupid. I can’t.’
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‘That’s all right.’ I took the phone from her and punched in the three digits.
Alix wanted to wait in the car, but I couldn’t be inside. I stood on the road, paced up and down it, tipped my head back to see the sky. Sullen, heavy sky. Alix was beside me, her hands deep in her pockets, face raw with cold. ‘Nina,’ she began.
‘Don’t say anything.’
I turned away from her and faced out towards the expanse of grey, inhospitable water. The sea was spreading and the island was shrinking.
I saw the police car, with its glowing orange stripes, from half a mile away, trundling towards us like a toy. Alix and I stood awkwardly, almost embarrassed with each other, waiting for it to pull up. PC Mahoney was alone. There were no pleasantries when he got out. We had met too often today for that.
‘Where is it?’ he said.
I nodded at the gap in the hedge. He walked through but we didn’t follow. We knew without being told that we shouldn’t trample over the scene.
‘And in case you’re wondering,’ I said, ‘I’m absolutely sure that it’s Charlie’s bike, and that’s the bag she uses for delivering the papers.’
I could see Mahoney in the field, standing and staring. When he walked back he seemed almost puzzled. ‘Is there any possibility that she could have loaned the bicycle to somebody else? To a friend?’
At that moment I had to control my emotions. Getting angry, shouting at a policeman, would make a bad situation worse.
‘No,’ I said, with exaggerated calm. ‘We’re sure. We talked to the woman at the newsagent’s. Charlie arrived, collected the papers and set off.’
As briefly as I could, I described how we had followed her route and what we had found out. He again seemed baffled as I told our story and I had to stop myself saying that we were only doing what he should have been doing. When I had finished he nodded. He told us to wait a moment, returned to his car and began to talk on his radio. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but it went on for several minutes and it was evident that much was said on both sides. At times he was silent, nodding. He said goodbye, or over and out, whatever people say on radios, then sat there for a few seconds before joining us.
‘I talked to the boss,’ he said. ‘This is more than I can handle. There’ll be people coming over from the mainland.’