by John Harvey
She was pretty, Helen thought, Kelly, when she smiled. She would have been pretty back then, herself and Heather, both teetering on the edge of adolescence.
'Were there many boys down there on holiday?' she asked. 'Where you were staying?'
'At the camp? A few, yeah. This little gang.'
'Your age or older?'
'Older. Fourteen, fifteen.'
'Fanciable?'
'You're kidding, right? I mean, you know what boys are like, that age. All football, cars and computers. Video games. They'll crack dirty jokes, all right. Make remarks.' Kelly had another drag at her cigarette and picked up her tea, holding the mug in front of her in both hands. 'Nearest they get to girls, most of 'em, is jerking off to some tart, wiggling her arse on MTV. Watching late-night porn.'
'Your brother, Lee, the same?'
'When he wasn't tryin' to peek through the bathroom door, yeah.'
'So there was nothing going on between any of you?'
Kelly shook her head. 'We'd tease one another, yeah? Me and Heather. This one fancies you, that one. But I doubt they ever did. Why would they? Not a decent pair of tits between us. Anyway, why d'you ask?'
'Oh, just trying to get a picture.'
'You think something happened, don't you? Somethin' more'n Heather fallin' down that bloody mine or whatever. Well, it didn't. Take my word. We went out when we shouldn't. Stupid, right? Fog or fret or whatever they call it, come down so fast we was lost, turned around, not a fuckin' clue where we was. Stayed there waitin' for it to clear an' all that happened, it got thicker and thicker. In the end it was Heather who said she was going to go back down the path, see if she could find some spot where it weren't so thick. "You stay here," she said. "Stay right here. Then I'll know where you are." I never saw her again, not till the funeral.'
'You didn't hear anyone shouting?'
'Once or twice, yeah. And I called back, didn't I, but I might as well've saved my breath.'
'You didn't see your dad? Your brother?'
'I didn't see fuckin' anythin' till I woke in that old geezer's bed. Saved my fuckin' life, that's what he did. Could've been two funerals, not just the one.' She looked at her watch. 'I've got this mate comin' round. Half an hour or so. I could put her off, if you like?'
'No, it's all right,' Helen said. 'Half an hour'll be fine.'
Over another cigarette, they went over the events of the holiday once more; talked about Heather's relationship with her own family and with Kelly's, too.
'I thought I might try and have a word with your brother,' Helen said. 'Before I go back.'
Kelly gave her a look that said, suit yourself.
'You don't get on?'
'Not so much that. Don't see him too often, that's all. Him and Everett...' She shook her head. 'Doesn't matter. Way it is. He's got his life, I got mine.'
She showed Helen to the door. 'Don't get lost now. Sure you know the way?' She told her just in case. 'Walk through on to Camden Road and then a bus towards Holloway. Get off at the Nag's Head an' turn left. Up past the Odeon. Can't miss it. Piece of cake.'
She gave a little laugh and Helen smiled and thanked her again. This time Helen took the stairs. Not just Will and Lorraine then, she thought, happy with each other, happy with their kids. Some people, she supposed, just took the cards life dealt them and got on with it as best they could. Somehow it made her feel good.
She found her way past the cinema easily enough and there was the paint shop, stretching the best part of a small block. She thought she knew which one of the assistants, all wearing brown overalls, was Lee Efford but asked just to be sure. Five eight or nine, not as tall as his dad, short hair, stubble, a tattoo on the side of his neck, brown eyes.
'Yeah?' he said, when Helen came up to him, not quite looking her in the eye. 'Help?'
'Lee? I've just come from your sister's.'
'So?'
'I thought maybe we could have a little talk?'
He looked at her then. 'Police, i'n it? What the fuck now?'
'If you've got a break coming up? I don't want to make a fuss.'
Grudgingly, he looked at his watch. 'Half an hour, three-quarters. I'll see you in the park, just round the corner. Back of here.'
Helen bought a newspaper, a packet of mints and a fresh pack of cigarettes and found a bench in front of an all-weather football pitch on which a parcel of kids who should certainly have been in school were practising penalties. There was a paragraph about Beatrice Lawson's disappearance towards the foot of page seven. A man who had been helping police with their inquiries had been released. Police would neither confirm nor deny that he had any family relationship with the missing girl. The search for the owner of a green Vauxhall Corsa spotted in the area where Beatrice had last been seen was continuing. That was all.
Forty minutes later, she'd convinced herself Lee had done a runner, which would have been interesting in itself, and there he was, walking reluctantly towards her, coat collar up.
When she offered him a cigarette at first he shook his head, then, when he saw her light up, changed his mind.
'What's this about then?'
'What do you think?'
'It's not that business with the car?'
'What business's that?'
One of Lee's mates had stolen a car and the pair of them had gone joyriding, fine until the driver lost control doing handbrake turns round the back of the Emirates stadium, two in the morning. Police were called in time to pick up Lee and his pal legging it in the general direction of Highbury Corner. Both of them arrested and bailed, probation and an official warning respectively.
Helen listened, letting Lee talk. 'It's not about that,' she said.
Lee flicked the butt of his cigarette out towards the centre of the path and watched it smoulder.
'Kelly,' he said, 'she reckons I don't think about it, what happened. Just 'cause I don't go on about it like she does, she an' my dad. It's like, when they're together, right? One or other of 'em has to start talkin' about it. Heather. Poor Heather. As if I didn't care. An' now there's that other girl, gone missing. Saw it on the telly. Her mum, it's the same, yeah?'
'Ruth, yes.'
'Poor cow. And the girl, no one's found her, right?'
'Not yet.'
'You know what?' Lee braced his back against the bench. 'Those blokes, blokes who do stuff like that, I'd castrate 'em, right? Either that or stone 'em, like they do out in—where is it?—Afghanistan, places like that. Stand 'em up and have people throw stones at 'em till they're fuckin' dead. Sweet.'
Helen watched as two young women—girls—walked past, pushing buggies, chatting, not a care in the world.
'You went looking for her that day, that afternoon?'
'Heather? Yeah.'
'You and your dad.'
'I dunno. He might've, I dunno. Never saw him, did I? Couldn't see a bloody thing.'
'You tried.'
He swivelled sideways. 'Lot of fuckin' good that did. Lot of fuckin' good it did her.'
Five minutes later, Helen was walking on through the park and out towards Tufnell Park Road, the tube to King's Cross and then the train. Did she know anything she hadn't known before, anything she hadn't learned from reading the reports Cordon had made sure were clung on to, listening to the tapes? She wasn't sure.
Back in Cambridge, she checked the messages on her computer and cleared her desk as well as she could. Will, she learned from Ellie Chapin, was in the north of the county, some panic at his son's school, she wasn't sure what, but she didn't think anyone was injured or hurt. Helen called his mobile and got no reply; she didn't know if there was anything of much use she could tell Cordon, but rang him anyway and they had a brief conversation.
She tried Will's home number, but no one was picking up.
Time to go home herself.
When she arrived, there was Declan Morrison, leaning up against the wall, a bottle of Scotch, to which he seemed to have been liberally helping himself, in his hand.
>
'Peace offering,' he said, waving the bottle in her face.
If there was one thing Helen didn't want, it was this. 'Go home, Declan.'
'Been waiting for you,' he said, beaming his lopsided grin. 'Hours and hours.'
'Go home.'
Stepping around him, she slid her key into the lock.
''S' up?'
'Nothing. I'm tired. Now go home to your wife and kids.'
'Jus' lemme in for a lil' while. Jus' for a lil' drink.'
'You've drunk enough.'
She'd learned to read the moment when his expression changed, when the face tightened and fists were formed and half-drunken good humour hardened into anger that was as unpredictable as it was brutal. With a quick movement, Helen knocked the bottle from his hand and as it shattered, she wrenched open the door and jumped inside. Slamming the door shut, she turned the key, slipped the bolt and reached for her phone. As Morrison beat his fists against the woodwork, she gave her name and address to the emergency switchboard, along with enough detail that the urgency was clear.
Stripping off her clothes as she went, she switched on the shower and stepped in, the first sounds of police sirens lost beneath the wash of water as she raised her face towards the spray.
67
'Why's he doing this?' Lorraine said.
'To show that he can.'
'But why?'
They were still sitting at the table in the kitchen, plates cleared away, glasses of wine recharged, the children upstairs and asleep long since; Jake, especially, exhausted by events he didn't really begin to understand.
'He's convinced I'm out to get him. Some sort of personal vendetta.'
'And he thinks this will make you stop?'
'Maybe. Who knows?'
'But it's not just you, he must see that. It's the police, everyone. Whatever he does to you, to us ...' Lorraine rested her face in her hands. 'It doesn't make any sense.'
'People like Roberts don't make sense. Except to themselves. Some psychiatrist, maybe.'
He drank a little more wine. He should have responded to Helen's call, he knew, but it could wait. Would wait. Morning would do. He should hear something definite back from Duncan Strand by then. Noon at the latest.
'I don't want any more of this,' Lorraine said, tapping the rim of her glass.
'Here then.' Will held up his own glass and she tipped it in.
Beside him at the sink, she rested her head against his shoulder, arm around his waist. 'If anything had happened ...'
'Sshh.'
'But if ...'
'You best stay home with them tomorrow, both of them. Till this is over. Once you explain to the college, they'll understand.'
Lorraine nodded. 'Okay.'
'And don't worry. There'll be someone on duty near the house all day.' He nodded towards the blackened window. 'You won't be on your own.'
'I know.'
He pulled her closer to him. 'You'll be safe here.'
Unseen, something moved in the dark space outside and, with a rasping screech, a barn owl flew up into the night sky, its white face turned towards the moon.
Ruth was unable to sleep. Fractured images of her children pressed down. Beatrice's smile became Heather's pain; Heather's laughter became Beatrice's tears. One moment she was holding Heather's hand, walking along the beach at Aldeburgh, sun shimmering down. But when the child spun away and ran, laughing, only to turn and poke out a tongue, it was Beatrice's face, Beatrice's voice, jubilant, taunting. 'Neh-neh-ne-neh-neh! Hate you! Hate you! Can't catch me!'
Beside her, Andrew lay with one arm stretched towards her, as if to keep her at bay. His breathing was even, heavy, broken only by an occasional whistle of air. Gradually, over the last days, he had become more distant, withdrawn; making time still to be with Ruth, and ensure, as far as he could, that she was coping with what had happened, but making time, Ruth thought, is what it was. More and more, he was reimbursing himself in the surety, the safety of his work.
It was as if, Ruth thought, part of him, the part that was missing his daughter, was becoming numb: inviolable to pain, inured from hurt. As if he already knew he would not see her again, alive, and was protecting himself as best he could. Living already with his grief.
Ruth touched his shoulder and was surprised by the warmth of his skin. Perhaps what she'd been thinking wasn't true; perhaps it was unfair. Leaning down, she kissed his arm and slid from the bed. Her dressing gown was behind the door. In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face and pulled a comb through her hair. Cleaned her teeth. Half past two. In the soft glow of lights from the town, from the landing window she could see the slow movement of clouds across the sky.
The moon was three-quarters full.
In the kitchen, she made peppermint tea and, on an impulse, buttered toast.
Heather?
When she turned towards the door there was no one there.
Taking tea and toast into the living room, she switched the radio on low, somebody playing Bach, the cello suites, she didn't know who. Carefully, she took down the book she had bought in Paris, Voyage a Giverny, paintings made in Monet's garden, water lilies, wisteria, clumps of hollyhocks and climbing roses. So beautiful. Unreal. Tears ran down her face. That holiday, sitting with Simon outside the café at night, almost as happy as she had ever been, waiting, unknowing, for the phone call that would tear her life apart.
Andrew found her there, sleeping, at five, and half-carried, half-led her back to bed. When he left, almost three hours later, she was still sleeping, exhausted.
There was only one cameraman outside the house, tired, bored; he didn't even bother to raise his camera when Andrew drove past.
Ruth didn't know where she was when she woke; voices disturbing her, voices in her head. One voice. Simon's. On and on, calling her name. She pulled the duvet up over her head to shut it out.
Pebbles, then; pebbles against the window.
Pulling aside the curtain, she looked down.
Simon was standing on the narrow path between the front door and the gate. Looking up now, waving, calling her name.
Simon, wearing an old duffel coat and khaki trousers, the coat, which might have fitted him once, now several sizes too big, so that he resembled nothing as much as a barely animated scarecrow, flapping one arm.
Go away, Ruth thought. Just go and leave me alone.
But he wasn't going to go away.
Quickly, she dressed, pulling on a shirt and sweater, an old pair of jeans. She opened the front door, put it on the latch, and stood outside on the step, letting the door close to behind her.
The air struck cold.
Dressed, her hair unbrushed and uncombed, she felt exposed.
'What do you want?' Even her voice sounded strange.
'Ruth ...' He took a step forward. 'I would have come sooner, but ...' He looked at the ground. 'I just wanted to say ... say how sorry ... how very sorry I am about what's happened. Really very, very sorry.'
'Thank you.'
'I know ... of course, I know ...' His fingers were plucking restlessly at the wooden toggles at the front of his coat. Fiddling. Fiddling. The light she'd seen in his eyes before had been replaced by something else.
'Aren't you going...?' He looked beyond her. 'Aren't you going to let me in?'
'No, I don't think so.'
A car went slowly past without stopping; on the lawn, a blackbird searched for worms: the lone photographer had long since packed up his gear and gone.
'But I ... we ... I can help you, help you understand. You know I can. I know what it's like, after all. What it's like when this happens. Something like this. Your little girl.'
Ruth shuddered inside.
'And there's nobody,' he continued. 'Nobody else. Not Andrew. Not that really understands. How can they? How? But you and I, we know. We know.'
'Simon. Go home. Please. Leave me alone.'
'Ruth, please ...'
She reached behind her for the door. 'I'm going
back inside now.'
'Ruth, you can't.' He started towards her, his eyes pleading. 'You need me. You really do. I can help you find her. You'll see.'
She slammed the door hard and moved quickly away, his last words unheard.
'Ruth, I know, that's the thing. Beatrice. I know where she is.'
68
A clear night, untrammelled by cloud, had brought the temperature down. Six degrees, maybe less. Will had had second thoughts about going in to work and leaving Lorraine and the children alone, but she had told him the last thing she wanted was him, under her feet all day, pining to be somewhere else. 'Mitchell, from what you've said, you're close to tracking down where he is. Sooner you find him, sooner we can all get back to normal. And besides, we'll be fine, you said so yourself.'
When Will crossed to meet Helen at the lay-by, he could see the ghost of his breath on the air. Helen with the almost ritual tea and cigarette, leaning against her car in the same way. How many days had started this way?
'We're going to have to stop meeting like this,' Helen said, with a smile.
'I thought we had.'
'Miss me, did you?'
'Not really.'
'Someone around to pick up the pieces, hold your hand?'
'Wind me up, you mean.'
'Besides, you've had Ellie. Younger than me, and prettier.'
Will shook his head.
'What's the matter?' Helen laughed. 'Doesn't she do it for you the way I do?'
'Thankfully, no.'
Helen nodded in the direction of the van, where a small knot of lorry drivers stood, hands in pockets, waiting for bacon rolls, the smell vying with the scent of diesel on the morning air. 'You getting anything?'
'I don't think so.'
Helen lit another cigarette. 'I heard what happened yesterday. Out at the school. Lorraine and the kids, they're okay?'
'Pretty much.'
'There's no doubt it was Roberts?'
'Doesn't seem to be.'