by M. A. Hunter
Mrs Sullivan rushed to the small door in the private room and called for a nurse to come and help clean up. Natalie simply lay back in the bed and allowed them to fuss around her. When they asked her to open her eyes, she did; when they asked her to put the thermometer under her arm, she did; when they told her to take a sip of water, she did. It was as if she was no longer in control of her body; someone else was now pulling the strings.
And when the tall detective appeared at the door and asked her mum if it was okay to come in, Natalie knew the writing was on the wall.
‘It’s nice to finally meet you, Natalie,’ the detective offered warmly, her nose noticeably long and pointing up slightly at the tip. She perched on the end of the bed, notepad in hand, ready to commence the interrogation. ‘How’s your leg, Natalie?’
Natalie moved her foot beneath the covers and felt the tight bandage around her calf, where the plaster had previously been. They knew about her leg.
‘It’s fine,’ Natalie mustered, her throat unbearably dry.
‘Nasty injury that,’ the detective continued, ‘quite infected from what the nurse told me, but too recent for any real infection to take hold. Did you injure yourself in the woods last night?’
Natalie looked from the detective to her mum: they both knew what had happened. Louise and Jane must have told them everything.
‘Don’t worry,’ the detective continued, shuffling a bit closer, ‘you’re not in any trouble. Well, certainly not with me, though I’m sure your parents will want to speak to you about sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. Listen, to cut a long story short, I know that the four of you went down to the woods last night. What I want to know is what happened after the game of truth or dare.’
Chapter Fourteen
Now
Ealing, London
Maddie’s lack of response to my calls has me frantic with worry. I’ve never had her landline number as she’s always been contactable via her mobile night and day. I remember once having a full-on meltdown on the day of publication of Monsters and sending her a text message at three in the morning asking if it was too late to cancel the whole thing. Of course it was – the question had been rhetorical and my mind’s way of seeking reassurance – but she’d phoned me back immediately to tell me everything was going to be okay. I don’t know if talking clients down from the ledge is a common thing for agents to do, but mine does – and so much more.
Scouring the web, I only find the number for her office in central London and I already know she’s not there as her assistant said she’d gone home. But that was hours ago; even in the A40’s worst tailbacks, she should have made it there by now, which means she’s choosing not to answer my calls and messages. After what happened on that rooftop, can I really blame her for not wanting to hear from me? To be reminded of what happened?
I can’t just leave things alone though, as my anxiety is worsening. The fact that she doesn’t want to speak to me – in my head, at least – means that she really needs to speak to someone. Maddie doesn’t have much by way of family as far as I know. A divorced husband whom she was pleased to see the back of, and no children that she’s ever mentioned, so if her mental health is at a low following Natalie’s suicide, then she needs someone to talk to. I might not have been on a training course, but I know a cry for help when I see one.
Dialling Maddie’s number again, I follow it up with a text message telling her to answer my call or I’ll come round and start banging on her door – not that I know exactly where she lives. She took me to her house once, back when I first signed, but it was only a whistle-stop tour to collect something she’d forgotten. I couldn’t tell you the name of the road, or the number, so even phoning a taxi won’t help. Not that she knows any of that; as far as she’s concerned, I’ve been to her house and could turn up again at any moment.
I’m relieved when she answers. ‘Maddie? Oh thank God, what’s going on? Why have you been ignoring me?’
There is silence on the line.
‘Maddie? Are you there? Can you hear me?’
Her response when it comes is tired and sullen. ‘What do you want, Emma?’
It’s like I’m speaking to someone else. I know it’s Maddie’s voice, but there’s something wrong with it; she’s usually so bubbly and hyperactive, but this Maddie sounds down and out.
‘I returned to your office to check on you after seeing Jack, but your assistant said you’d gone home early to work from home instead. I just wanted to check you were okay after what happened.’
She grunts. ‘Why would anything be wrong? I’m not the one who threw myself from the building.’
This is definitely not the Maddie I know and love – the woman who sees a silver lining in every cloud. Someone leaves a bad review for Monsters and Maddie will say it just helps provide some balance; I have a day when I don’t manage to add any words to my manuscript, and Maddie says that’s just fewer words that will need to be edited or cut. She is the most positive person in my life – to an annoying degree at times – and I don’t like that the shoe is now on the other foot.
There can be only one reason her presence has dipped so low.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I say quickly, bracing myself for a backlash that doesn’t come. ‘You did your best, Maddie, but even Sergeant Daggard said this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to take her life. With the best will in the world, when someone is adamant about ending their life, there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. She was a very troubled young woman, and it was only by chance that she ended up on the roof of your building. At least her final moments were filled with your optimism.’
I take a breath to allow Maddie to respond or challenge what I’ve said, but she remains silent.
‘Do you want me to come round? I’m a good listener.’
‘No. Thank you, Emma, but no, I’d rather be here on my own. I appreciate you phoning and your concern though.’
For the briefest moment I’m reminded of my first encounter with Freddie Mitchell. When we first started talking at the homeless shelter he was full of bullish bravado, but I sensed it was all an act he was putting on and after I asked a couple of probing questions, he finally allowed me to see beyond his mask. He spoke of low self-esteem, a lack of reason to keep going, but without the strength to actually commit suicide. He reminded me that it isn’t the coward’s way out, and actually takes a huge amount of courage. It troubles me that this memory is the one that has chosen to appear while I am speaking to Maddie.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I repeat. ‘Tell me you don’t blame yourself.’
She sniffs loudly, and it’s only now that I realise how close to tears she is. ‘I just keep wondering whether I should have left it to the professionals. That inspector had managed to talk her down before, but maybe that’s because she hadn’t had some interfering busybody trying to do her job for her.’
‘You did nothing wrong, Maddie. If anything, I thought you were making better progress before Inspector Marcziesk arrived.’
‘As soon as I heard someone was up there, I thought it was fate calling me to action. I thought, this is it; this is my moment to shine. The work I’d done with The Samaritans, the training course, all of it had been building to this moment. That’s why I was so keen to get up there and try and talk her down.’
‘You gave it your best shot, Maddie. You kept Natalie talking when she could easily have jumped before the inspector arrived. You gave her a chance to save Natalie, but nothing was going to change her mind. Don’t you see? I’ve been reading up on what she told us about. That Sally Curtis thing. Do you remember what she said? She told us to find Sally and to tell her she was sorry.’
‘I vaguely remember… what of it?’
I proceed to relay what I’ve learned this evening about four girls going to the woods to play a game of truth or dare, and only three of them emerging. ‘Sally vanished that night,’ I conclude, ‘never to be seen again. You said you thought fate dro
ve you to that roof, and maybe you were right. Maybe fate wants us to find out what really happened to Sally Curtis.’
She’s quiet for a moment. ‘Maybe that’s the reason you were there, but that sort of thing is what you do, not me. My purpose was to keep her alive… and I failed.’
Despite her moving the phone away from her face, I can hear her weeping.
‘Why are you so certain that that’s why you were there?’ I say, allowing my tone to become slightly more aggressive, in an effort to snap her out of self-pity.
‘Because I sensed Jordan was there with me.’
Who the hell is Jordan, I want to ask, but settle for ‘Jordan?’
‘My son,’ Maddie says, her voice barely audible down the line.
‘I didn’t know you have a son.’
‘Had. He died eight years ago.’
She has never spoken of children before and I’m totally on the back foot. ‘Oh God, Maddie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’
I hear Maddie blowing her nose and the tears are beginning to sting my own eyes. Of all the things I expected her to say tonight, this was surely the last. I’ve known Maddie for close to three years now, and I’m certain she’s never mentioned being a parent before, certainly not one who had to bury her own son. There are no pictures of family in her office, just the framed artwork she loves to sit and stare at.
‘He was at university,’ she eventually explains. ‘It wasn’t long after his father and I divorced, and I think I suspected he wasn’t coping with that change. I did encourage him to speak to a counsellor of some sort, but I don’t think he ever did. What I didn’t realise at the time – none of us did – was that he was suffering from major separation anxiety. Moving to Edinburgh University had been Jordan’s choice, but with me working full-time in London and his dad off shagging his way around the Caymans, we had no idea how lonely and isolated he felt. He’d always been such a confident young man, and I hadn’t thought he would struggle to make friends, nor that he was crying himself to sleep every night.
‘I’d phone and speak to him once a week, and he always sounded so chirpy and full of life… or maybe I was just hearing what I wanted to. I was due to fly up and visit him in a couple of weeks when the call came through. It was a Sunday morning, and they’d located my mobile number in his phone records. I refused to believe it at first. Not my boy. He wouldn’t kill himself. There had to be some kind of mistake. It was hard enough when my own father took his life, but my boy wouldn’t put me through that again.
‘I flew up there immediately, half expecting to be told it was a case of mistaken identity the moment I stepped off the plane, but there was no apology. Two female officers collected me from the airport and took me to the morgue to identify him. The image of his ice-white face beneath that sheet has never left me. It was my son, yet not, somehow. He looked so different without that verve for life I’d always seen in him. People often say that a dead body looks like a relative sleeping, but not Jordan; I barely recognised him. He’d lost a lot of weight – a symptom of his separation anxiety – and when they took me to his room at the hall of residence, he hadn’t even unpacked any of his things. He’d started skipping lectures near the end, developing agoraphobia, until it became too much, and he…’
Maddie’s words trail off, and I don’t feel the urge to push her to finish the most painful sentence she’s ever thought to say.
‘Oh gosh, Maddie, I’m so sorry. I wish you’d told me sooner.’
‘It’s not something I talk about very much,’ she says, and I’m relieved that a fraction of the old Maddie is back in her voice. ‘I don’t want people to feel they constantly have to walk on eggshells when I’m around.’
‘So that’s why you were so desperate to help Natalie.’
‘Yep. I thought it’s what Jordan would have wanted. I wasn’t there when he needed me, but I hoped I might be able to save another naïve parent from the pain I’ve suffered.’
‘You tried your best, and I’m sure Natalie’s parents would be grateful for that.’ I take a deep breath, considering my next words. ‘Do I need to be worried about you tonight, Maddie?’
A small laugh. ‘No, you don’t need to be worried, Emma. I’ve felt the pain suicide causes, and I’m not at a point where I feel all is lost. I just need some time to get my head together. Okay? I might take a few days off work if that’s okay with you? It’s practically Christmas anyway, and the legal team at your publishers are still dragging their feet over Ransomed, and that won’t get resolved until January. You should take a few days off too. Go and spend some time with your mum before it’s too late.’
Overwhelming guilt floods my mind in a split second. Here I am talking with a woman who would give anything to spend one more second with her child, whilst I haven’t been to speak to my own mother in over a week. The call of home echoes louder than ever in my ears.
Chapter Fifteen
Now
Kings Cross, London
I’m not expecting to be woken by the sound of my phone ringing, nor the urgency in Jack’s voice when he tells me he needs to see me immediately. I ask him what it’s regarding, and whether we should meet somewhere for breakfast, but he simply says it’s probably best if my stomach is empty. He refuses to go into specifics over the phone. Even when he collects me from Rachel’s flat and starts heading along the A40 into Central London, all he’ll tell me is he’s received a call from Sergeant Daggard, the officer who took mine and Maddie’s statements after Natalie jumped, and that it was Daggard who thought I should take a look inside Natalie’s room at the hostel in Kings Cross.
Abandoning his car in an overpriced NCP car park, he leads me to the opening of the hostel. I’m surprised there is no police tape, nor any kind of guard preventing entrance to the building. We head in past the bald guy in reception, who doesn’t bat an eyelid when he sees Jack leading me through. We head up two flights of stairs, and then I spot Sergeant Daggard standing at the entrance of a room at the end of the corridor. He takes off his cap and smiles as we approach.
‘Thank you for coming, Miss Hunter. I hope you didn’t mind me asking Jack here to call you?’
In the bright light of the corridor, I can now see Jack better and his face is as pale as milk.
‘That’s fine,’ I respond, ‘though I’m a little confused as to why I’m here.’
Daggard runs a hand through his bright white hair. ‘To be honest, I didn’t know who else to contact. I came here as per procedure to check for any kind of suicide note, or to find anything that might shed light on exactly why Natalie Sullivan took her life yesterday morning. I didn’t expect… it’s all a bit beyond my experience, to be honest. I remembered us talking yesterday, and I’m obviously aware of the work you did to support the Met’s investigation into the disappearance of Cassie Hilliard earlier this year. I know Jack from years ago, and so I phoned him and asked if this might be more akin to your work and he agreed to fetch you.’
Neither of them is making much sense and both seem to be avoiding stating why they felt there would be some benefit in me coming to see Natalie’s room in the hostel, which in itself must be breaching all manner of police procedures.
‘What exactly am I here to look at?’ I ask when I can take the suspense no longer.
‘It might be best just to show you,’ Daggard begins to say.
‘But we should probably warn you first,’ Jack interrupts, ‘that what lies beyond this door is not easy to take in.’
My imagination is now racing with all manner of evils: a dead body, a dead animal, something worse?
Jack nods and Daggard returns the hat to his head before twisting the handle and pushing the door open. The first thing I notice is the faint smell of incense, reminding me of the years when Mum would force us to attend Catholic Church every Sunday. The room is pitch-black, and as I allow my eyes to adjust, I can see that the curtains are closed and there is no trace of the streetlights we passed outside the hostel.
‘Mind yo
ur step,’ Daggard says, holding the door open with an outstretched arm, but not actually entering the room himself. Jack isn’t making any effort to move forwards either.
‘Can you switch on the light?’ I ask, as I peer into the darkness, and my hand begins to feel along the wall immediately to my right. I stop as I touch some kind of sheet of paper on the wall. As I begin to pull my hand away, my finger brushes against something tight – a cord of some kind.
‘The light fitting has been disabled,’ Daggard whispers beside me. ‘You’ll need a torch.’
Reaching into my pocket, I remove my phone and switch on the torch app; at the same moment Daggard flicks on his larger torch and cascades the beam across the far wall. I gasp at what I see.
I don’t know what I was expecting to find in the room, but the dead eyes of the pig’s face staring back at me never entered my imagination. The head is crudely secured to the wall approximately five feet from the floor using large nails which protrude from the skin of the neck that remains in place.
‘This is how I found the room when I arrived,’ Daggard winces.
A large, thick-rimmed black circle has been etched around the pig’s head, but from this distance it’s impossible to tell whether it’s paint or some other unknown substance. For the briefest of moments, the positioning of the head reminds me of the kind of crude reverence commonly associated with devil worship, but I instantly dismiss the thought.
Daggard continues to shine the torch around the room and I see now that the cord my fingers brushed against is in fact coarse red string that has been pinned to the walls using drawing pins. There are loads of strands criss-crossing from one wall to another, like the sort of laser maze you’d find protecting priceless works of art.
‘What is all this?’ I ask rhetorically, not sure anyone bar Natalie would actually be able to answer me.