by Nina Milton
SEVENTEEN
The Missing Person form that Rey had photocopied gave me tiny glimmers of information about the girl who might have been the Wetland Murderers’ first victim.
Twenty-three years ago, Patsy Napper had been fifteen and living with her parents, Diane and Arnold Napper. I had the date of her disappearance and the date when they closed the case. And I had her old address—a high-rise block of flats in Taunton.
I tried to reckon out the chances of finding Mr. and Mrs. Napper still at the same address. How long did people live in one place? Most of my various friends moved round a lot, but Gloria and Philip had lived in Oak Villa in Bristol since Charlene was born, and I knew that Bren and Rhiannon had moved into their little house outside Bangor the day they were married.
I had no clients booked for the whole day. My Reiki client had cancelled by text, adding to my sense of overall failure. But the glimmer of weak sun that warmed the spring morning brought my spirits up; that and the stupidity of my hens. Juniper and Melissa are usually satisfied to stay in the hen run while I clean it out, but if the door’s left ajar for even a second, Ginger will escape and be off on some intrepid adventure. I found her in my kitchen, kindly pecking breadcrumbs from the corners and not so kindly leaving a trail of muddy hen-shaped footprints over my kitchen floor.
Magic, according to the shaman I trained with in Glastonbury, is a combination of the power of will and the power of coincidence. If you want it, you must make it happen. I really wanted to find Patsy’s family, although I hadn’t actually got round to asking myself why or wondering what I’d say to them if I did find them.
I lit a candle and burned some rosemary oil with frankincense—the first for memory and the second to open my mind to the spirit world. I asked my guardians for a boon … a little bit of luck … a chance to find out what actually had happened to Patricia Napper twenty-three years ago.
Taunton was our nearest big town and offered a night life that Bridgwater could not provide. But perhaps surprisingly, a few of my clients took the half-hour drive over to keep appointments with me. There are alternate therapists in Taunton, but maybe I have something they don’t. Hope so.
Twenty-three years ago, the Nappers had lived on the other side of the town, in the centre of what was reputed to be the worst housing estate in Taunton—what used to be called a sink estate. When the Wetland Murderer was hunting for small children, it must have been heading towards its most sunken status, but it had grabbed itself by its bootlaces and started to haul itself out of the mire. Four 1960s tower blocks rose up at me, monolithic in height and and shape. They still belonged to the local authorities and had recently been painted; one in salmon pink, one in a soft yellow, one in sky blue, and the final one in a sort of khaki shade, as if it needed camouflage.
The address for the Nappers was way up inside the khaki tower block. I saw the warden as I parked my car. He was tending the rose bushes that grew around the front of the complex.
“Nice day for gardening,” I called out, eager to pass for a bona fide member of the visiting public. He doffed his hat in a jovial manner—a bright red baseball cap he was wearing back to front—and went on wielding his gardening shears.
I walked around the massive walls. The block was called Watchet House, Watchet being a harbour-side town on the coast to the north of Taunton, so I guessed that the other blocks were also called after local seaside places. Maybe to bring a feeling of salt air and fun days into the minds of people who lived in faceless corridors that oozed depression and limited opportunities.
As I reached the entrance, I had one of those tiny sparks of memory. Me and my mum had lived in a tower block like this. It must have been in Bristol, where there are high-rise flats all over the city, but I’d forgotten about it until this moment. I must have been quite tiny, maybe three or four, because I could suddenly recall just how high the walls had loomed and how I’d run along the corridor that seemed to go on forever, looking for our door. I had stronger memories of living in basement apartments and even sleeping on people’s floors, but at one time, we must have been council-housing tenants.
I shook the memory away. I hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it. I was here for my client. I pressed the buzzer for number thirty-four, where hopefully Mr. and Mrs. Napper were still in healthy residence. I waited and buzzed again. If they lived here, they weren’t at home to callers.
Deflated, I wandered in the direction of my car. I decided to go into town and window shop, then come back in an hour or two. The warden had finished his pruning and weeding and was trundling a wheelbarrow away from the beds.
“You okay there, missie?” he called out in the bur of his Somerset accent.
I shrugged. “I was hoping to catch the people who live at number thirty-four. That is, if the people I’m looking for still live here.”
He pulled the cap from his silver hair. “Who wants ’em?”
“Ah. My name’s Sabbie Dare. I’ve never met Mr. and Mrs. Napper. They don’t know me.” I chased around for a good excuse to be visiting. “I’m sort of asking after their daughter, Patricia.”
The pretty fib slipped off my tongue. I wasn’t expecting any sort of reaction, but the warden’s face took on a transformation. His ruddy colour turned to grey and his lips thinned into a straight line.
“I be Arnie Napper,” he said. His eyes were sombre and shocked, with a wary element deep down. “You never knew my daughter. You wouldn’t call her Patricia if you did.”
“Patsy,” I said. “She was Patsy.” It was a confirmation for me.
“My daughter ain’t been around since you were a babby.” Arnold Napper lifted his wheelbarrow and marched past me, his eyes on his pile of cuttings.
I skittered after him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m desperate to find someone I can talk to about Patsy.” It was hard to keep up with Arnie’s long, fast stride. The barrow tilted this way and that as it bumped along in front of him. He was going so fast that I almost careered into him when he stopped in front of a galvanized bin.
He twisted off the lid and I took my opportunity in both hands, literally. I scooped a large armful of the clippings, rose thorns and all, and tossed them into the bin. “Won’t this take ages to compost down?” I asked.
“It’s for burning.”
“Oh.”
He watched me empty his barrow, a bemused smile beginning to smooth out the lines of irritation. “Like gardening, do you?”
“Love it,” I said, flinging the weeds in after the thorns.
As soon as the barrow was empty, he grasped the handles in his firm hands, the backs of them as brown as hen feathers, and marched off again, moving into the shadow against the wall of the flats.
I did not follow. I stood still, watching him go, my hands already beginning to prickle with scratches. Will I ever learn? I had craved a boon from my spirit guardians, but it looked as if they’d chosen to show me that half-truths could cost me dear.
Arnie manoeuvered the barrow to turn the corner of the building. He had almost disappeared from view when he looked back at me across his shoulder. “I’ll put the kettle on, eh?”
Arnie’s apartment was over-warm and filled with the ticking of the mantel clock. It was crammed with the memories of his life, but there wasn’t a dirty cup or speck of dust to be seen. Local papers were tidily piled on a table in the hall, under which his slippers were lined up alongside a pair of polished brown brogues. Arnie untied the laces of his trainers and pulled them off. He swapped them for the slippers. “Just me, now. Me wife’s been dead these twenty years.”
It was clear he lived alone. In the living room, the one easy chair was positioned directly in front of the telly. By the side of the chair was a trolley that vaguely resembled the one Caroline pushed crustless sandwiches about on, but this held everything that Arnie might need in his day—crossword book, newspaper, ashtray, c
igarettes and a pile of cheap lighters, a biscuit tin decorated with red and yellow roses, a half-full glass of diluted orange squash drink, and a half-full (but definitely not diluted) bottle of Three Bells Scotch.
Photos placed into cheap certificate frames adorned the wall above the gas fire. The most recent was a wedding picture with an almost identical groom and best man. Photos of babies in cots or on shawls were dotted around, some very new, some with faded colours. A girl laughed down from a farm tractor, her legs long and her shorts short. For a moment I thought it was Patsy, then I did my sums and realized it had to be her mum at about the same age. Finally, there was Arnie, alone and clearly still in his teens, his uniform cloned with all the others in the passing-out parade, his shoes as glossy as the ones under the hall table.
He saw me looking. “Cyprus. Somerset Light Infantry.” He sniffed. “Better get that kettle on. How d’you like your tea?”
“As it comes,” I said. “Milk, no sugar.” I wasn’t sure whether or not to stay where I was, but he continued to talk to me while the taps hissed and the kettle clicked on, so I wandered into the glistening kitchen. I’d’ve thought the cooker had never been used if it hadn’t been for the overpowering smell of artificial cleansers.
“Army were the making of me. I made sure my two boys went into the armed forces straight from school. Derek went into the Grenadiers, and Richard took to the sea. They were twins, meant I lost ’em both together, only months after our Patsy walked out. Before that they were a right worry, heading for the clink! I dragged them off to the recruiting office kicking and screaming. That did the trick. Gives you a sense of discipline, see. Both married now. Brings their kids to see me. Little imps, they are.” He nodded to himself, and I had an image of small children chasing in circles around the tea trolley.
“You don’t have many photos of your daughter.”
“That baggage.” He sloshed a small amount of UHT milk into two large mugs before pouring in a liquid the colour of molasses.
Arnie motioned me into the winged chair and pulled a hard-backed seat from the miniature dining table for himself. He was an old soldier, so I didn’t quibble. I placed my mug down, its contents straining at the sides, and tried to summon up the right words. I couldn’t sit and make small talk until he knew why I was here. But I had no idea how Arnie would react to the things I wanted to discuss with him. “What do you mean, she walked out?”
Arnie coughed into his fist. “She were getting to be a handful, the minx.”
I gulped back a brave sip of tea. “Was she destined for the army too?”
Arnie gave an almost pensive shake of his head. “She weren’t really like the twins at all. Broke the mould, she did. Always writing stories and making up games. Used to wonder if she did take after me a mite, ’cause I reckoned if I’d’ve been born different I’d’ve made something of meself.” He blinked a couple of times, and I was sure that he’d turned slightly pink. “The boys were never going to amount to much—no discipline to them, only boisterous bother—and me wife were a lazy git. Sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that’s the truth of it. She liked her drink, did Diane. Well, we both did, but I could take mine, if you get me meaning.”
“And Patsy?”
“Patsy were different. Mind you, she were a bossy bugger from early on. But soon as she hit her teens, she changed. Makeup plastered on and a yard of flesh between her jeans and whatever passed as a top. And that mouth! Teachers saying that she’d lost her promise, our Diane tearing ’er hair out about drugs.” He glanced up at me, suddenly, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. “Vanished, she did. Cleared out one day and never did come back.”
“She went of her own accord?”
“She went of her own bloody-mindedness. She were nowt but fifteen, and she turned her backs on us, never gave any of us a second thought.”
“Didn’t she leave a note, anything like that?”
“No, but she nicked ’er mum’s suitcase and twenty quid out my wallet. Even so, I went all over the estate asking. Got soaked through, more than once, and I was thinking … she’s out in this, somewhere, stupid chit.”
“She hadn’t gone to friends?”
“They’d caught no sign of her, thought she might’ve got the bus to Bristol, or London.” He stopped and slowly shook his head, staring into his mug. “We’d had trouble with the boys, but it felt worse with Patsy, because we did all wrong, see? After she went, I wished I’d paid her more attention when she were a good little girl. If I’d got to know her earlier, when it mattered … well, it might’ve helped, that’s all.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Haven’t thought about it in years.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry to haul it all up again, I really am, but—”
“See, she never did know. Never had chance to tell her. Weren’t that sort of family, is the truth.”
“Never knew what?”
“That we were proud of her. Loved her. That I didn’t mean to be so quick with the flat of my hand. One row, I brought her eye up in a bruise. Didn’t know my own strength.” He swallowed, and continued in a quieter voice. “Didn’t know my own anger. It were okay with the boys. I dunno, they sort of expected it. But Patsy—she came home one night pissed on drink and I slapped her full across the face. And she screamed at me. She said we hadn’t ever loved her, so why should she care what we told her to do? It felt too late to say I’d been scared off by the way she’d answered back.
“She ran off into her room. She’d had the little box room since we’d moved into the flat and I guess at her age it were a mite too small for her, but what could we do? Anyway, it went all quiet. I were congratulating meself on winning. All I wanted was me little girl back. The one that got on with ’er homework.” He suddenly stopped, as if his lungs were heaving for air he wouldn’t let them have, lest tears came alongside. “Are you going to tell me who you are, missie?”
“I’m the therapist of Cliff Houghton.”
“Who?”
“He’s been on the news, lately.”
“I don’t watch the news,” said Mr. Napper, his voice grumpy with displeasure. “I like the football channel.”
I pointed to the Taunton Herald, lying on the bottom self of the tea trolly. “It’s local news. The man who was arrested for the murder of Josh Sutton.”
His eyes widened. He’d expected anything but that. “That little boy?”
“That little boy, and the one that’s still missing.”
“You’ve lost me,” he said. He was shaking his head, but his eyes had narrowed. I didn’t think I’d lost him as much as he was letting on. I didn’t want to open old wounds or create new ones, but I had to tell him.
“I don’t think Cliff has anything to do with these kidnappings, but he’s caught up with them because he has a memory of being kidnapped himself twenty-three years ago. He is sure that someone—a girl—was being held captive in the same place, by the same people.”
Arnie rubbed a hairy forearm across his mouth. I saw a washed-out tattoo, a curling, naked woman with ankle-length and suitably positioned locks of hair. “What d’you mean?”
I shook my head, as if in warning. “I’m trying to piece things together. My client started remembering all this from his past. He’d blocked off awful memories about being kidnapped as a child.” I shuddered. “And tortured. But then this girl helped him get away. Her name was Patsy.”
“Patsy?” Arnie’s eyes had begun to water. “Sounds far-fetched to me. Who would take kids like that?”
“The Wetland Murderer.”
His mouth opened, the bottom lip hanging like a slug. “Them bodies in the peat bogs?”
“Yes.”
“But all of them were babbies. Our Patsy weren’t never found out there.”
The reflection in his voice made me look at him. “When they found the bodies, you did wonder, di
dn’t you?”
“Of course I bloody wondered,” said Arnie. “I were there when they dug ’em up.”
Arnie had pulled out the bottle of Three Bells and filled his empty tea mug with whisky. He took a long time over the first few swallows, but I stayed silent, pretending to sip my tea.
“It were our Diane who made me go to the police,” he finally began. “Guilt, you might say. She never forgave herself for not sticking up for Patsy during our rows, but she was usually too hungover to bother. After the police took the details, I said to our Di, ‘When she gets back, I want her to find you dry. I want you to give up the booze. You do that, I’ll never hit her again’. To her credit, she did try for a week or two.” Arnie sighed and drained his mug and lifted the bottle. I bit my lip. I didn’t want to comment, but I wasn’t keen to sit with an inebriated Arnie Napper.
“Sure you won’t?” he asked me, swinging the bottle. There was not much more than a last slug at the bottom. I let him fetch me a glass, thinking that even if I didn’t touch it, at least Arnie would lose the chance to down it himself.
“Funny thing, kids,” said Arnie. “When Patsy were born, I loved the pillow her head lay on. By the time she’d got to her teens, I could’ve smothered her with it. But it didn’t take long after she’d walked out on us, it got so I was desperate to see that sullen face of hers. Then it got so I was frightened that I’d never see it again.
“It must’ve been months before the other children went missing. They never came back to us, the police. I went to them and said I’d like to sign up to the search team. They have this kind of look, don’t they, cops? Like it’d be a great job, policing, if it weren’t for the crime. They said it’d be unlikely, finding Patsy. She ‘didn’t fit the scenario’.”
“But you joined the search parties?”
“Lot of good it did anyone. We were concentrating on the wrong areas. As soon as the bodies were found, the peat bogs seemed the obvious place.”