‘Are you still taking me home?’ she asked, though she knew he wasn’t.
This wasn’t the way home.
She’d never been past the river before in order to get home and the man kept stopping, checking around them.
As if he’s looking for someone?
He’d stopped again, only this time walking over to the river’s edge. Looking down into the black water, before getting all angry and shouting to himself.
Scarlett waited patiently, not wanting to make him any madder, before they moved on a little further.
It was so cold out here now that her teeth were chattering. Her skin like ice, even underneath her lovely pink coat that her Nanny Colleen bought for her.
He lied to her, the man.
Telling her that he’d take her back to her mummy. He wasn’t going to. She just knew it.
He wanted her to keep walking. To follow him further down the river.
They were here, alone now. There was no one around. No other people. No houses nearby.
Just her and the man.
And he hadn’t said a word to her for ages, since they’d left the flat.
Taking her by the hand as they walked, he’d gripped her fingers hard inside his. Hurting her as he’d marched down streets and through the maze of passageways and walkways. Over the river’s footbridge until they reached this embankment.
And she hadn’t complained. Not once. She hadn’t dared.
She was being a good girl, just like he told her to be. So that he would take her home to her mummy and daddy.
But that was all a lie, wasn’t it?
‘I want to go home,’ she said then. Finally saying the words out loud that were going around and around inside her head.
Only for him to ignore her.
He was standing just a few feet ahead of her now. Scarlett stopped and watched the man walk in small circles. Faster and faster. His hood up, concealing his scary-looking face.
She’d made him mad again, hadn’t she? Only she didn’t know how.
She’d been good. She tried really, really hard.
He looked really cross, smacking himself repeatedly across the head. Swearing. Saying all kinds of bad words.
‘Just fucking get it done.’ ‘Do it.’ He kept saying, over and over again.
Get what done? Do what?
Scarlett didn’t know what he was talking about but he was scaring her now. She looked across the pathway, to the tall row of trees. In the distance, far back between the gaps in the leaves she saw the tiny glimmer of lights whizzing past. Twinkling amongst the shadows.
Cars? People?
She thought about running, as fast as she could.
She could hide from him then.
Only the man was probably faster than her, he’d catch her.
And even just thinking about it now, she knew that her legs wouldn’t move. They were stuck to the spot, frozen there.
Trembling beneath her from the cold and through fear.
‘I want to see my mummy and daddy. You promised,’ she said then, loudly. A plea now.
Hoping that he’d hear her, that he’d stick to his word.
She should have made him pinky promise; that’s what she does with her daddy and he always keeps his promises then.
‘Can you swim?’ the man asked suddenly, walking towards her. Standing close. Too close.
She looked up at him and shook her head. Wanting to cry again.
Why is he asking her if she can swim? Does he want her to go into the dark black water?
Why? Why does he want her to do that?
She’s bawling now. Terrified.
‘I just want my mummy. You said you’d take me home.’
She feels sick now. A horrible bubbling feeling in the pit of her belly as she scans the path, for a way to get away.
Hoping to see another person.
Someone she can call to help her.
But there’s no one else around. It’s just her and the monster.
And the river.
And the dark.
And she’s got a horrible feeling that something bad is going to happen to her.
Something very bad.
She doesn’t like it here, and she doesn’t like the man.
She’s sobbing uncontrollably now.
And the man is shouting. Louder and louder, telling her to be quiet. To stop making this so difficult for him.
Only she didn’t mean to make anything difficult.
She doesn’t even know what she’s doing that’s making him so mad.
She can’t stop crying, she’s too scared.
She should run.
Even if her legs won’t move. She should force them to.
Only it’s too late for that, she realises, as he swoops down towards her then.
Grabbing her by the scruff of her coat. Dragging her down the grassy bank. Towards the river.
Towards the black, murky deep water.
Kicking out, desperate to escape.
But she isn’t strong enough.
Scarlett starts to scream.
Thirty-Nine
‘She’s not here!’ Nancy says, collapsing on the floor of the empty flat, once again giving in to her tears.
They’d been so close, she could feel it. Only to be led to yet another dead end.
‘Where is she, Jack? Where’s my baby?’ She felt useless.
Like everything was spiralling out of control. She couldn’t fix this.
She didn’t know how to.
‘Did he lie to us?’ Nancy said, thinking about that bastard, Kyle. He had sounded so certain, so convincing when he’d told them that Scarlett was being held here.
Maybe he’d been a better actor than she’d given him credit for, telling her some random bullshit, just to save his arse.
‘This is hopeless! I just want her back. Where is she, Jack?’
Jack didn’t reply. He couldn’t, not only because he didn’t have the answer, but he couldn’t find the words either.
He felt every bit as scared and hopeless as he knew Nancy did, only he wasn’t going to voice that to her. He couldn’t.
He had to stay strong, to at least pretend that he had this all in his control. Otherwise he’d lose his head too. And he couldn’t do that. Not if they had any chance of getting Scarlett back.
Nancy was right, it was hopeless.
This was all they had to go on.
They had nothing now.
And the sight of Nancy breaking down, sobbing so uncontrollably now as she sank to her knees on the floor was enough to break his heart all over again.
Jack wanted to go to her, to hold her in his arms and tell her that everything would be okay. Only he couldn’t do that because all he had right now were empty promises.
His instincts were telling him that Kyle Boyd had been telling the truth. He’d looked so scared, and sounded so convincing.
Maybe Scarlett had been here?
He had to keep searching, to stay focused. Rifling through the cupboards and drawers, he pulled out endless bottles and packets of empty pills. A whole cupboard full of them. All without labels.
Then he began searching the drawers. Pulling out a pile of utility bills, he held them up to Nancy, raising his eyes questioningly.
‘Robert Parkes?’
Nancy shook her head. The name meant nothing to her.
Jack picked up his phone and called it in. Making sure his colleague at the station did a thorough search on the address and the occupant, before continuing to tear the place apart.
Stepping over the broken mug on the floor, the tea marks sprayed all down the paintwork, he ran his finger across the stain, still wet. Still dripping down the wall.
Whoever had been here had only recently left.
Jack made his way into the main bedroom again, having only glanced in the room quickly when they’d arrived, to check that no one was here. Now he was looking for clues. Something, anything that would tell him that Scarlett may have been
here.
He scanned the room. Wrinkling his nose up at the stale stench of sweat that lingered in the air. Bare of any personality, just a filthy-looking duvet on a double bed. A few items of clothes scattered on the floor beside it.
He went into the smaller bedroom, saw the bedding all piled up on the single bed. A cup of water down on the floor. Untouched.
Lifting up the duvet, and throwing it to the floor, his eyes came to rest on the length of rope on the mattress. The duct tape stuck to the headboard.
Then he saw the tiny purple hair clip, still clasped together tightly, inside, a few wispy strands of vibrant red hair.
‘Shit!’ he said. Louder than he’d meant to.
Alerting Nancy, who seconds later was standing in the room just behind him.
‘What is it, Jack?’ she asked, the urgency in her voice laced with fear.
He closed his eyes. Then taking a deep breath, he turned to her. Stepping aside so that she could see for herself.
‘Oh God!’ Nancy said. Recognising the hair clip from a set that she’d bought for Scarlett. She picked it up and ran her fingers along the strands of hair.
‘She was here?’ Nancy asked, already knowing that she had been, though she needed to hear Jack say it.
Jack nodded.
Then she saw the rope. The duct tape.
Her hand went to her mouth, trying to stifle the scream that threatened to explode from her.
The vomit too.
Some bastard had tied her baby up. They’d kept her here, in this dingy shithole of a flat. In this room. On this bed.
What the fuck had they done to her?
It was all too much to bear, too much to even think about.
Nancy leant over the end of the bed and threw up the contents of her stomach all over the floor.
She was crying now, sobbing uncontrollably as Jack took her in his arms, holding her tightly to him. Wishing there was something he could say to ease her fears; but he felt them too.
His phone ringing then, interrupting him before he could try and offer Nancy any words of reassurance.
Which was just as well, because they’d only be words. Empty words. He was way past the point of making them sound convincing.
Nancy watched as Jack took the call. Nodding, barely speaking. Before closing his eyes tightly as if trying to shut out whatever new information he was being told.
He ended the call and went silent, unable to find his voice and repeat what he’d just heard.
‘What is it?’ Nancy asked reluctantly. Suddenly too scared to hear his answer, the anxiety in her stomach churning, her legs starting to shake.
Preparing herself for the worst news possible.
Please God no, not my baby! Have they found her? Has something happened to her?
‘Robert Parkes,’ Jack said. His face a deathly shade of white. ‘He was a burns patient at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital almost five years ago.’
Nancy shrugged. Not sure where Jack was going with this. Why she should care.
‘He was in a coma for almost a year, his body so severely burned that they didn’t think he was going to survive,’ Jack said, repeating what he’d just been told. ‘He was housed here when he was discharged. My colleagues made contact with Robert Parkes’s social worker. They’re getting his file sent over as we speak.’
‘Okay,’ Nancy said, wrinkling her brow, not understanding what any of this meant.
What did it have to do with Scarlett? What was Jack trying to say?
‘Robert Parkes isn’t his real name, Nancy. He lost his memory. He doesn’t know who he is. Or perhaps he does.’
Jack could see Nancy piecing it all together. Trying to work it all out.
‘Five years ago. Around the time that Daniel went missing. Apparently a dog walker found him outside a disused railway shed out in King’s Cross’s badlands. It’s him, Nancy. It’s got to be.’
Nancy couldn’t speak then. Feeling as if she’d just been kicked in the guts.
The wind knocked out of her.
The badlands of King’s Cross. Near Alfie Harris’s club?
Recalling that last fateful night she’d laid eyes on her brother. When she’d handed him over to Alfie Harris, knowing full well that she’d never see her brother ever again.
‘But it can’t be? Alfie Harris dealt with him. He told me himself?’
Only she knew that it was him.
That somehow, Daniel must have survived.
All this time. He wasn’t dead after all. Her brother was alive. And without a doubt it was him, she knew that now for certain.
Daniel was the bastard who had taken her baby. He had Scarlett.
Forty
Placing the phone on the kitchen side, Bridget took a seat back down at the kitchen table.
‘Well? What did they say?’ Colleen asked, sensing by the tone of conversation and the disappointed look on Bridget’s face that they hadn’t found Scarlett yet.
It was doing her head in all this sitting around and waiting.
She felt the same as everyone else. Useless. In limbo. Jumping every time the door went, or the phone rang.
‘It’s not looking good, Colleen,’ Bridget said, keeping her voice down. She glanced behind her to make sure that there was no sign of Joanie back from the loo.
The poor woman was at her wits’ end, and Nancy had told her specifically not to mention any of their conversation to the older woman. For fear that it would send her nan over the edge again.
Joanie wouldn’t have been able to take it.
But Bridget had to tell someone though, as even she couldn’t get her head around what she’d just been told.
‘They found the place where they think Scarlett was being kept. A flat over in east Twickenham…’ She faltered then. Not able to say the rest out loud.
So many disgusting, disturbed thoughts going through her head as she thought about what Nancy had said, about the child being tied to the bed.
She’d been trying to stay positive up until then, for poor Nancy’s sake more than anything, but the longer Scarlett had been away, the harder it had been to keep up the facade. And now she knew the rest, she knew that it really wasn’t looking good at all.
‘They found rope, Colleen. And masking tape. In one of the bedrooms,’ Bridget said finally, shaking her head. ‘A child’s hair clip too. Jack had some officers out there taking samples so that they can check for DNA, but Nancy’s almost certain that it’s Scarlett’s.’
‘No…’ Colleen gasped. Her hands shaking. Her own tears escaping her then at the thought of her poor baby granddaughter’s harrowing ordeal.
God, she needed a drink so badly now.
‘What sort of sick fucker does that? Snatches a child from the park, and ties her to a bed. Tapes her mouth up with masking tape…’ Bridget mumbled to herself, unable to comprehend what had happened to Scarlett. She didn’t expect an answer. They both knew exactly what sort of a person did that.
An animal, a monster.
Colleen knew it too.
‘What did you just say?’ Joanie was there, standing behind them both in the doorway. Listening to every word that had been said.
Only she couldn’t comprehend what she’d just heard.
‘Tied to a bed? Who, not Scarlett? Please Jesus tell me you are not talking about our Scarlett?’ Joanie was falling then. Her legs giving way beneath her. Collapsing on the floor. Her chest wheezing as she struggled to gasp for breath.
Gulping at the air, trying to draw some oxygen in; only none of it seemed to be reaching her lungs.
‘She’s having a heart attack?’ Bridget cried. Running over to the woman. Trying to help her to sit up, panicking. Not knowing what to do.
She should never have opened her bleeding big mouth. She should have kept quiet, just as Nancy had told her.
‘Call an ambulance, Colleen. It’s okay, Joanie, you’re going to be okay.’
‘It’s a panic attack,’ Colleen said, rushing to her mother
-in-law’s side, knowing the signs well, having suffered spates of attacks herself for years. ‘It’s the shock. She’s hyperventilating.’
Holding Joanie carefully the two women picked her up and guided her over to one of the kitchen chairs.
‘Breathe, Joanie. You’re all right. We’re here with you. Take it easy and breathe.’
Doing as she was told, as Colleen guided her. Talking her through her panic until Joanie managed to catch her breath again.
The wheezing stopping. The colour gradually coming back into her cheeks.
Though her stricken expression remained.
‘What’s happened to my Scarlett?’ she said then, tears in her eyes as she searched Bridget’s. But she didn’t want to hear the truth, she only wanted to hear lies.
Sweet, beautiful lies that everything was all right. That her baby great-granddaughter hadn’t been harmed. That the child wasn’t in any real danger.
She wasn’t able for anything other than that.
She had to believe only the good.
Bridget knew that too.
‘We don’t know anything, Joanie. Nothing’s been confirmed. We don’t even know if Scarlett was in that flat. Jack is just ruling everything out. You know how thorough he can be, and even more so now that he’s looking for Scarlett. He’ll find her. You know that, don’t you, Jack won’t rest until he finds her. Nancy too.’ Speaking so convincingly now, Bridget wanted to believe her own words herself.
She smiled then.
‘Scarlett is a Byrne, Joanie. She’s got fire inside her. Just like her mumma. Just like you. She’s going to come home, and do you know what? She’s going to be okay. This is just some big misunderstanding. You’ll see.’
Joanie nodded, grateful then.
Feeling calmer.
She needed to believe Bridget now, more than ever.
‘I think I need to go and have a little lie down.’ The day’s events had got to her. Exhausted. She just wanted to close her eyes and make all of this nightmare go away.
To stop churning thoughts of her beautiful great-granddaughter’s plight around in her mind. The hate she had inside her for Michael, for being the one to cause all of this.
The Forgotten_An absolutely gripping, gritty thriller novel Page 27