“D’you wanna know what Sam said when you and Maisie popped to the ladies?” he began. “Couldn’t believe how I’d managed to net myself such a classy bird.”
“Cheeky!” Jess tittered. “And what did you say to that?”
“Must be my charm, my good looks, or I’ve got the gift of the gab. Nah, seriously, I told him every woman likes a bit of rough...”
“Joe!” she breathed, flicking foam at his face. “Don’t put yourself down!”
Joe ducked, but not before getting his jibe in. “You didn’t fancy him, then?”
“First impression? Drop dead gorgeous! But I’ve had enough of men who think they’re God’s gift. All they do is break your heart.”
Sinking into the steaming water, she closed her eyes. The soft glow of candlelight enhanced her flawless skin, and she had never looked more desirable.
“So what did you think of him?” she added.
Joe raked the foam from his damp hair, whilst carefully considering his answer. “He’s not the Sam I remember. That kid was a nervous wreck when we lived at Orchard Grange. The adult version – well, if anything, he seemed a bit cocky.”
“Yeah,” Jess murmured, “but he’s bound to have changed. Didn’t you say he moved to Scotland and lived in some castle? I guess he’s had a totally different upbringing.”
Joe nodded. Thinking back to their day in London, snippets of conversation crept back to him.
Completely isolated.
Forced to sever all connections from Orchard Grange.
Seeing Sam again felt eerie. Suave and over-confident on the outside he might be, but Joe couldn’t help wondering if he was hiding something.
Next day, any last niggling thoughts about Sam were driven from his mind as he worked his shift at the supermarket. Grateful for his regular lifts now, he was even fantasising of having his own car. Such musings catapulted him right back to the old days when he had lodged with Al and Shirley. Al had been the closest thing he’d had to a father figure and had taught him to drive. But that was before George Oldman had swooped in, snatching him from the nest like an eagle.
George had furnished him with plenty of flash motors over the years, but if he’d only known of the devil’s pact he was being drawn into, things might have been very different.
He pushed the reminiscences aside, enjoying the company of his colleagues around him. But today was a day when the past was destined to keep haunting him.
A little later, as he demolished a full English breakfast at the Waverley, Jess asked him how the police investigation was going.
Joe mopped up the last of his egg with his toast, and setting down his cutlery, welcomed an opportunity to talk about it. Jess was not personally involved. Jess would not judge people, nor be swayed by the news or social media.
“Well,” he began, “one thing I’ve learned is those homes were permanently closed down in winter 1995. About a month after I scarpered...”
“Strange,” Jess gasped. “Do you wonder if you had anything to do with it?”
Joe shrugged. “Since talking to Sam, everything seems fucked up. Mortimer was such a shit to me when he vanished, though according to records they were shut down for financial reasons. Dunno. Maybe he went bankrupt.”
Fingers steepled above the shiny wooden veneer of their table top, he stared out of the window, deep in thought. In truth, the police report troubled him. As if there was a piece missing from the puzzle. For if Thomas Parker-Smythe (then a Cabinet Minister) had promised extra funding, surely it would have saved the homes... unless the Government had refused. The educational standards were poor, something Mortimer should have improved upon - yet never really cared about.
Joe on the other hand, would never forget the anarchy in Mortimer’s homes.
“I told the cops about Orchard Grange,” he resumed. “Fucking great place. They were all named after trees, you know.”
Jess’s gaze intensified, her eyes shiny with intrigue. “The police have found records of them all?”
“Yeah,” Joe mumbled. Fidgeting in his chair, he shuffled up close to whisper. “Those hell holes deserved to be shut down. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to invest a penny in them, which calls to mind the politician...”
“You think he had a more personal interest?” she murmured.
“Bloody right,” he hissed, “‘cos he’s not exactly squealing. If he’s so innocent, why doesn’t he shop Mortimer? Makes me wonder if the bastard’s got some hold over him.”
Jess finished her coffee. “That figures. How do you know all this?”
“The Met have been updating us by email... Well, Maisie’s email. I’m not sure they trust my hotmail account. I mean, look how easily those arseholes found me on social media, and the police reports are confidential. We daren’t put anyone at risk.”
Jess’s hand froze around her coffee cup. “What do you mean, exactly?” Her eyes flitted sideways and suddenly she looked uneasy.
Grasping her hand, he exhaled a troubled sigh.
“Let’s go back to your flat. This ain’t the best place to be talking about stuff like this and like I say, it’s confidential.”
The intimacy of her apartment had never felt safer. Yet it wasn’t Jess who was in danger, so much as Sarah. He had seen the latest update on Maisie’s laptop before the weekend; a report that sent ripples of shock through him.
According to police records, there had been no investigation into the homes.
Joe shuddered. Sam swore he had told his social worker everything. That being the case, how come nobody had acted on this knowledge? Sam, a vulnerable eleven-year-old, had borne witness to a horrific scene. Yet none of it was on record.
He spared Jess the details but to think, they could have arrested that bastard, Mortimer, there and then; Sam the only boy who could ‘blow the whistle.’
“I wonder if he was telling the truth,” he muttered. Relaxing in each other’s arms on one of her sumptuous sofas, he stared idly into space.
“About confiding in his social worker?” Jess probed.
“Yeah,” he said, “’cos from what I gather, she wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Downright cagey, in fact. Unless, whatever Sam said was treated as make-believe! All she confirmed was he’d been taken away by another family member, but refused to go into any detail.”
“But that’s outrageous,” Jess spluttered.
Visions of a forest loomed, columns of trees surrounding them like prison bars. Lost in his reverie, Joe felt a knot in his throat. Thinking of Sam’s account turned him cold with dread, but with those thoughts, another idea rose to the surface.
There were so many layers of secrecy where Sam’s social worker was concerned, especially now Sarah had been targeted.
“How can it be right when kids report abuse, no one ever seems to believe them?” Jess kept digging.
“Who knows,” Joe said, “on the other hand, maybe she was warned to keep her mouth shut. Keep this to yourself - but a friend of Maisie was threatened and all because she saw the same social worker, asking similar questions about Sam.”
“How spooky,” Jess murmured. Heaving herself up onto one elbow, she teased a stray curl from his forehead. “This is beginning to sound like a cover up.”
Joe shivered. “I know, that’s what I thought...”
“And talking of Sam,” she added. “When is he coming to visit us?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest. Let me check WhatsApp.”
Prising himself from her arms, he moved away from the sofa to find his mobile. He pulled it from his coat pocket and drifted over to the window to get a better signal.
“Don’t look like he’ll be down for a few days yet, due to work pressures.”
“Oh well,” Jess sighed, rising to her feet. “He did say he was an estate agent.”
“Yeah, got property deals in the pipeline, clients to see...” He gave a wry chuckle. “Flash git.”
His gaze wandered down to the promenade. The sun was out, but
a veil of wispy cloud obscured it, sapping the warmth from the air. Just before he turned away from the window, though, something jolted him.
Maisie. It was her hair that gave her away.
How could he miss that unmistakable auburn gleam in the distance? As she ambled along the sand, he spotted the willowy adolescent boy loping along next to her. This could be none other than Connor, Sarah’s foster son. They must have gone fossil hunting after all. Rows of rocks squatted like islands along the sandbank in their encircling moats of water. It gave him an idea.
“D’you fancy going for a walk on the beach?” he called to Jess.
Regrettably though, they failed to reach them.
By the time Jess had her coat and shoes on, her hair brushed and her lipstick refreshed, the cloud cover had intensified.
Joe tensed as the air temperature turned chillier.
A tang of salt coiled through the breeze, and he looked up to see a curtain of grey mist billowing in from the sea. He stared in disbelief, the shape of the rocks turning hazy as they were swallowed up by the fog. And all the while it was advancing, everyone on the beach gradually dissolved too, Maisie and the boy among them.
Joe wrapped his arm around Jess’s shoulder, unable to explain his feelings... but something about the scene struck him as ominous.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Hannah Adams. Registered Psychotherapist/Counsellor. West Sussex
Client: Maisie Bell
20th May 2015
“I’m glad you came,” Hannah began. “Sit down.”
Her face appeared relaxed as she held my stare, but I noticed she wasn’t smiling.
“I don’t suppose the police have been in touch?” I asked her.
“They have,” she said. “I spoke to DI Fitzpatrick, who seemed very concerned about your emotional state, given the claims coming out of these sessions. But I gather they’re being investigated now.”
“That’s right,” I confessed. “I told them I was having therapy and hoped you’d back me up. Though it seems our enemies know this, too.”
“Enemies?”
My mouth turned dry as I recalled our day in London.
Those sightings of the black car hanging around near her house left a chill in me, yet it seemed only fair to warn her...
“I saw the CCTV footage,” I finished uneasily.
“Oh well,” Hannah murmured. “I am sorry to hear this, Maisie, but to put your mind at rest, I’m happy to assist with the investigation in any way I can.”
Her words trickled over me like warm water, massaging away my fears. Whilst relieved it was out in the open, though, this was not the reason I was here.
“Relax now, and let your mind settle. Is anything else troubling you?”
Yes. There had been a major change in our lives, and I wasn’t sure where to start. She had made mention of the investigation, but what of the threat to Sarah? My developing bond with her foster son? And everything else paled into insignificance beside the one person who lay at the heart of all this.
“It’s Sam.”
His name hung in the air, shrouded in secrecy.
“Not the ‘Sam’ you mentioned in your previous sessions?”
“That’s the one,” I said, in a monotone. “When Joe and I went to London, we were told another witness had come forward...”
With my eyelids turning heavy, I allowed them to drop like shutters.
Sam was due to visit us soon; the adult Sam, who felt very much like a stranger. Maybe this was my chance to recapture any last lingering memories of the boy I had met at Orchard Grange... before the night he disappeared.
“Sam didn’t die. He was taken away to live with someone else.”
Shadows gathered in the tunnels of my mind as his story began to emerge.
“First, he relayed his memories of the party they went to. Him and Joe. A scene in a forest where he heard chanting - saw a circle of cloaked figures. There’s no way he could have made that up, is there?”
“Impossible,” Hannah said. “It’s no coincidence how much this sounds like your nightmare, but was he able to tell you any more?”
The memories swirled darker, conjuring up the horror Sam depicted, except it didn’t seem right to repeat it.
“What he described sounded like some creepy satanic ritual, but I have to keep it to myself... or at least until the investigation is over.”
“Of course,” she murmured. “I wasn’t prying. Just wondering if this has helped you in any way, or given you those much-needed answers.”
The atmosphere around me turned dreamlike as I pictured his face.
“Sam is a crucial witness,” I said. “Joe remembers the drugged punch and little else... and the only evidence I can present is my dreams.”
“You do have memories, though,” Hannah reassured me. “Things you repressed. I have recordings of all our sessions and as I said, I’m willing to vouch for you.”
I let the words sink in. Having a professional therapist to back me up brought a moment of relief, and I clung to the hope her knowledge of the human psyche would verify everything I had experienced.
With neither of us talking, it didn’t seem long before the stretch of silence dragged. Something else niggled me. It hung on the edge of my thoughts, a path I was reluctant to take, and as I shifted in my seat, Hannah detected it too.
“Go on,” she prompted. “Did either of you suspect Sam was in danger before this happened?”
Deep in my subconscious, the fog was beginning to thin and there he was... the half-remembered figure of Sam hovering before me.
“Oh yes,” I whispered. “The first time we saw Sam, he looked terrified. Glancing around like a little lost boy, the tough ones sizing him up. I remember them whispering to themselves and sniggering... an ugly sound. Later that day they got him in the toilets, and Joe had to go and break the fight up...”
“You always said he was the protective one, but how did you feel?”
A glow of adoration spread inside me. “I felt just as protective as Joe, and from that day onwards, he clung to us like glue. No one had ever looked up to me the way Sam did, and in a way it made me feel special.”
“Special,” Hannah echoed. The warmth of her chuckle stirred a smile in me.
“Very much,” I sighed. “He absolutely doted on me... I remember how deeply I cared for him too.”
“How long did you know him before he left?”
“Not long,” I shivered. “A few months, maybe.”
“What happened then? Can you recall the day after he vanished?”
Knots in my shoulders tightened as an invisible key unlocked a memory. I knew where her words were guiding me now, and thrown back to the aftermath of Sam’s disappearance, I relived the painful days that followed.
Staring at Joe, I had all but forgotten the stricken look on his face that morning.
A sense of friction bit the air.
‘Where’s Sam?’ I hissed.
Noise boomed all around us, the same bun fight we had to endure every morning, kids grabbing for cereals, arguing over whose turn it was to have what... but it all sounded muffled, as if I were hearing the commotion underwater.
‘Sam’s gone,’ Joe shuddered. ‘He wasn’t in his bed this morning.’
A prickle of cold fear ran over me, leaving a tingling sensation.
‘How come? What happened last night?’
He sat very still, his gaze never leaving me. Something in his expression unnerved me, every facial muscle on edge.
‘Dunno,’ he muttered, finally. ‘They drugged me...’
He would have said more, I was convinced of it, but in the blink of an eye the atmosphere shifted. It was no longer the horror on Joe’s face that panicked me so much as Mr. Mortimer’s intrusion. His pale reptilian eyes flashed across our table, seeking us out, and latched onto Joe, where they lingered.
‘What did you say?’
Joe flinched. Even I detected the menace curling into his voice.
‘None of your business, Winterton,’ Mortimer snapped, ‘but your little friend is quite safe, so there is no further need for you to baby him.’
‘So where’s he gone?’ Joe pressed.
I could have sworn Mortimer swelled several inches bigger, his bulk casting an ominous shadow over us. But how I felt for Joe. The man glowered at him in a way that froze my blood, his face a darkening cloud. I don’t think I had ever seen Joe look more anxious either, his spidery arms wrapping around his body like armour.
To our dismay, though, we never did get an answer.
Struggling to survive in that awful place, Joe insisted we had to watch our backs now. The trouble was, we were never alone. Schiller, Mikolov, Mortimer... one of them was always lurking. If we crept into the yard, they followed us. The kitchen. The lounge. Even the classroom. Invading our space, day in, day out, they seemed intent on eavesdropping on our every conversation.
It didn’t take long before Sam’s absence began to bite deep. In a selfish way, I missed the attention he lavished on me - the power of his smile casting a little sunshine into our lives. With Sam gone we felt unhinged. For despite Mortimer’s excuses, we suspected something more sinister had happened.
Recalling it now brought a well of unshed misery to the surface, and I couldn’t fight it. Tears pooled behind my eyelids, my heart hammering in my chest, and the next thing I knew I was sobbing.
“Take deep breaths,” Hannah’s voice echoed through the darkness. “It’s obvious how much this upset you at the time, but it’s over now. You have found him, so let’s fast forward a bit shall we?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I sniffed.
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