Lock Me In

by Kate Simants

  Maybe she would have done.

  There was a click from the living room door, and the voices were clear again. Right outside the bedroom where I was hiding, crouching like a shamed dog. I mouth-breathed, absolutely silent, quiet enough to hear Ben Mae’s deep breath before he said, ‘What happened before …’

  What happened before. I pressed my hands against my temples, and Siggy grinned.

  Don’t think about it, I told myself.

  The only images I have in my head of the night my friend died are Mum’s, just hand-me-down mental pictures appropriated from her description. The problem was that these appropriated visual details are lodged so close to my own memories – of the endless summer before it and the black-hole horror of the months after – that I sometimes feel that it was me who was there, not just Siggy. But that would mean the lines between her and me had started to blur, and if that could happen …

  Just don’t think about it. Calm down. Breathe.

  Mum found her down by the river, where we go on Cherry Tree Day, to mark a special day for Siggy. I’d never taken Jodie there before, and it’s a secret place, inaccessible, overgrown and wooded. But I – or Siggy – had taken her there that night. It was days until Mum admitted to me what she’d found.

  The missing belt—

  I can’t breathe.

  The missing belt from my—

  Shit. I can’t breathe!

  The police were still in the hall, just a couple of inches of plasterboard separating us. I tried to force myself to think about something else, because this couldn’t happen, not with them there – the police! – right outside the bedroom door with my mother lying to them.

  Breathe. Breathe. Please just breathe.

  Everything rotated. A slow, dark tornado, twisting around me, and the vacuum in my chest got harder, tighter. My vision darkened at the edges and my skin started to burn, and the insides of my lungs started to curl up from the heat and this was it but right at the last second, the pressure broke, and I was breathing but

  Calm. Calm down.

  Too fast now. I couldn’t stop.

  Deep breaths. Slow. You are having a panic attack. Slow down – breathe slowly – but I couldn’t stop. In and out and in and out and too shallow, not enough, not enough air, and all the time the only thing I could think was all the things Mum had eventually told me—

  The missing belt from my coat, sodden and caked and wrapped twice around Jodie’s neck and

  her fingernails broken and her hair bloodied and studded with broken leaves and

  not enough air!

  the skin of her throat pressed white and her mouth slack and her eyes wide and glazed and

  the rain falling against their bulging, panicked, unblinking surfaces

  Because of me.

  Movement in the hallway. I felt myself lighten, losing consciousness. Were they, were they coming in? They were coming in.

  They know what you did.

  The last thing I heard was the front door opening, and then everything went black.

  11.

  Charles Cox Psychotherapy Ltd.

  Clinical audio recording transcript

  Patient name: Eleanor Power

  Session date: 21 August 2006

  CC: So let’s start by checking in. How are you feeling today?

  EP: I’m OK.

  [pause: 32 sec]

  CC: I’m sensing some anxiety.

  EP: No. I’m fine.

  [pause: 22 sec]

  EP: Can you – why do you leave these huge long gaps all the time?

  CC: OK. I’m glad you asked. Sometimes we find that when we’re not rushed, when we’re given the time to go into greater depth, we discover things that really help our journeys.

  [pause: 23 sec]

  EP: I haven’t got anything to say.

  CC: Sure.

  [pause: 35 sec]

  EP: OK, look, fine. She came. Last night.

  CC: Siggy came?

  EP: Yeah.

  [pause: 19 sec]

  CC: Would you like to talk about the episode you had?

  EP: Well I don’t know, do I? That’s the whole fucking – sorry

  CC: That’s fine

  EP: That’s the whole problem. I don’t know anything about it. It’s like I go to bed every night and I’m me but then this other person I don’t know or like or want there, this other me climbs in. She moves me about, says things like she’s me, like I’m, I’m, I’m just this, this puppet. I don’t think you can possibly know what that’s like. It’s terrifying. I’m terrified, and I can’t even think about it without ending up – look, like this – ending up shaking. Do you see that, my hands?

  CC: I do.

  EP: It’s like, and I know that I shouldn’t say this and that it’s not the same thing but having someone else in your body, someone you, you hate, who is there without permission, it’s like waking up and finding you’ve been … I can’t say it.

  CC: You feel … let’s say, you feel violated?

  EP: Yes. Yes. Even if she’s just got me up and walked around the flat. I can’t remember any of it. [crying] Anything, at all. And just – my mum, the way she describes it – I just-I just [crying] I want to just

  [pause: 1 min 6 sec]

  EP: Sorry. I’m sorry.

  CC: OK. Ellie, can you look at me? I know it’s hard, but just look at me just a moment. Thank you. There is no judgement here. None at all. Anything you say will be heard and believed.

  [pause: 56 sec]

  CC: OK. Do you need some water before we go on?

  EP: I’m OK.

  CC: It’s extremely difficult for you to talk about; I can see that these episodes affect you very deeply.

  EP: Yeah. Yeah, they do. I’m scared. I never know when it’s going to happen. Like, I had this fight with my mum last night, because I wanted to try school. I mean, like sixth form. I haven’t had a fugue for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks? She just kept saying I wasn’t strong enough and about how last time we tried, my panic attacks got worse and everything, and we fell out big time because I just want to do normal stuff. Go out and live my actual life, you know?

  CC: I do.

  EP: And then I went to bed and I wake up and this has happened. She said – my mum said – Siggy was really angry last night. Like, she was scary, Mum couldn’t get near her to talk to her without her lashing out. Then she went out—

  CC: Siggy went outside?

  EP: Yeah went out and Mum had to follow me … follow her round the block until she’d agree to go back in again. Here, look this is where she fell over at one point when she was running. Look can you see on my elbow—

  CC: That’s quite a scrape—

  EP: Yeah. Yeah it-it really hurts.

  [pause: 20 sec]

  CC: What I’m hearing is a lot of conflict between you and Siggy. It’s a battle.

  EP: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is.

  [pause: 22 sec]

  EP: The days after the fugues, I can feel Siggy kind of … there, all of the time. Like she’s got to rub it in, make sure I know she’s won, you know? Like last night was her telling me …

  [pause: 27 sec]

  CC: You feel she’s telling you something. Can you say a bit—

  EP: It was like she was telling me to stay scared. Like it was a warning.

  12.

  Mae

  They said nothing until they were back at street level, outside the Powers’ flat. Fine rain sieved across the street, and Mae shrugged up the collar of his pea coat. Kit strode back to the car, heading for the driver’s seat.

  ‘Well that was weird,’ she said, when Mae was in beside her.

  ‘In what way?’

  Kit frowned into the middle distance. ‘I spoke to the guy at the hospital, Leon, right? The dude who called it in.’ She turned to him. ‘And he gave me Ellie’s name as someone who knows Matt and said how he’d said she volunteered there. So I called the HR office and got them to find her address. He searched for
Power on the staff system – he spelled it out loud as he typed it in – and he said “Here it is, one entry, first name Eleanor”. Hers was the only record they had. Which means Christine isn’t on their system, even though she works for them.’

  ‘Maybe she’s agency staff?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but everyone needs clearance at a hospital, surely? Kids and vulnerable adults at a hospital, you need a DBS or whatever.’

  Mae frowned, went to get his phone out, but Kit was eyeballing something in the rear-view.

  ‘What?’ he asked, turning in his seat to see.

  On the pavement, staring into the car, was a young man. Caucasian with black, tightly curled hair, a faded band T-shirt under a checked flannel shirt. Early twenties, but already a little old for the gloomy, emo vibe he was projecting.

  Kit was out of the car and coming round the front before Mae was even out of his seatbelt. ‘Help you?’ she asked him, brightly.

  Mae joined them on the pavement.

  ‘Doing surveillance?’ the guy said. His voice was scratchy, something Mae immediately put down to the yellow plastic wallet of rolling tobacco protruding from his top pocket.

  Kit already had her pad out. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The people in the van!’ His jittering glare ricocheted endlessly between them. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  Which may or may not have been true, but what Mae knew with a reasonable level of certainty was that he was a nutcase. Kit, on the other hand, needed maybe a little more field experience.

  ‘We’re the police, CID,’ Kit said, and gave their names, proper by-the-book. ‘We’re checking out a possible missing person. Do you live round here?’

  He nodded across the road to the rear access of a shop that sat underneath the Powers’ flat. Mae had clocked it on the way in, a Polish place.

  ‘I see a lot.’ The young man pointed enigmatically to his eyes with the V of his index and middle fingers, then turned the gesture on the street. ‘But what I want to know is, what are you doing with the van? You want to listen to what I’m saying in my own house?’

  Kit glanced around. ‘Can you see this van now?’

  ‘I’m not imagining it! It’s just gone, right now, obviously!’

  Kit nodded diplomatically and tucked her pad away again. Mae couldn’t fault her professionalism: she gave him the non-emergency number, closed the conversation, stayed polite and respectful. The guy was still talking when Mae swung his own door shut.

  ‘… parabolic microphones, serious kit, and if it’s not you, it’s MI6, or SO-15, or whatever, and I know about it. I know, OK, man?’

  Kit waited until they were around the corner before she took her eyes off the road. ‘Jesus. Get that a lot?’

  Mae laughed, and got out his phone.

  By the time they hit the Boston Manor Road he’d found what he expected to find. Not only was Christine not on her employer’s records – at least not under her own name – but there were no records on Christine or Eleanor Power at that address anywhere else. No entry on the local government system, NHS, banks, credit agencies, nothing.

  Didn’t happen by accident.

  So, what? Were they hiding? Why?

  Kit turned on the radio, flicked quickly away from Heart, found nothing, turned it off.

  ‘Christine Power was pleased to see you though, yeah?’ she said, biting the edge off a wry smile. ‘Big DS Mae fan. Ker-azy pheromones coming off that one.’

  ‘Kit. Please.’

  She lifted her hands from the wheel in surrender. ‘Just saying. But what did she mean about—?’

  ‘Can we leave it?’

  She blew out her cheeks. ‘What’s next then? Open-door search then grade it? I couldn’t get hold of the guy at the moorings, but I can go down there now, sure I’ll find someone to let me in. Won’t take long.’

  The open-door search was the first point of call usually, checking the missing person’s home in case they’d got sick or stuck or injured anywhere. But if it was a narrowboat it was going to be a pretty quick job.

  ‘After lunch,’ Mae said, suddenly aware of the chasm in his stomach. ‘I’ll go to the marina, you hit the phones. Talk to his manager about what he got sacked for.’

  His phone buzzed against his leg and he pulled it out, checked the screen: Nadia. Turning in his seat for whatever privacy he could get in a five-door, he hit the green button.

  ‘Are you OK to pick Dominica up from violin?’ his ex-wife wanted to know. ‘I’ve just been asked to go to this meeting.’

  No hi, no how’s things. And it was Dominica now instead of Bear, like they couldn’t even agree on the name of their kid. ‘Sure.’

  ‘And bring her back at half eight?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Mike’ll be here, OK, so … just so you know.’

  Mike. Who had ten years on Mae, twelve on Nadia, although a stranger could easily place him in his mid-sixties because the guy was utterly, relentlessly grey. It wasn’t like Mae hadn’t tried to find something interesting about him, something likeable. Mid-west American, drove a Citroen, played badminton three times a week, with a record that couldn’t be cleaner if it had been formulated in an aseptic lab. Never so much as a day late with his TV licence. There was, of course, more than a slim chance that Nadia’s attraction to Mike was all Mae’s fault. That ten years with him had turned his funny, brilliant, game-for-anything wife into a reliability junkie. Or maybe it was just that maybe Mike happened to be hung like a centaur.

  ‘Mike. Sure.’

  Nadia sighed. ‘Try to do something fun with her after, OK? She always comes back from you so … I don’t know. Flat.’

  He took the screen from his ear and thumbed the red circle until he could feel the casing start to bow.

  ‘Touch-screen means you only have to touch it, you know,’ Kit told him.

  ‘Uh-huh. And advanced driving means keeping your eyes on the road.’

  13.

  Ellie

  Quarter of an hour passed before I felt halfway normal. After the police left and the panic subsided, Mum brought me sweet tea, made herself late waiting until I could convince her I was fine. She fetched the duvet from the bedroom and tucked me in on the sofa, then checked the time and swore softly under her breath.

  ‘I have to go and make up for that shift.’ She bent to kiss me goodbye. ‘Just stay put. Don’t let anyone in.’

  ‘All right, Mum.’

  She tapped her fingers on the edge of the mug, running something through her mind. ‘They’ll go to his boat next, I should think,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Maybe they’ll find something there.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing.’ She found a brief smile, shrugged her shoulders.

  When she finally left, I got straight up from under the duvet and went into her room, pulling a corner of the curtain aside to watch her through the window. She paused at the car, glanced up at me, and touched her fingertips to her lips. Then got in and drove away.

  Maybe they’ll find something.

  She meant a note.

  Was there a note?

  I wasted no time. I pulled some shoes on, and looked for my raincoat before remembering I’d been unable to find it earlier. I dug around in a drawer until I found the fleece-lined zip-up hoody I’d borrowed from Matt and refused to return. I left the flat with Siggy still tiny and shuddering in my chest.

  14.

  Mae

  Mae bit into his bagel. Pinned to the fabric-covered room divider behind his workstation was a page from a set of ACPO guidelines, thoughtfully printed out and displayed by whoever had last occupied Mae’s desk. IF IN DOUBT, THINK MURDER, it read. It had been there so long that the drawing pins had gone rusty, and snagged on the cloth when Mae pulled them out. He balled it up to lob, with flukily perfect aim, into the recycling, just as Kit walked in.

  ‘Like things spic and span, don’t you?’ she said, looking around, holding a pen drive and standing in a st
rict at-ease. ‘Speaks of a need to instil order.’

  Mae held out his hand for the drive. ‘Spare me the amateur mind reading. What have you got?’

  ‘Apart from a first-class honours degree in psychology?’

  He laughed, then stopped. ‘Really?’

  She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I can see into the very blackness of your soul,’ she said, before breaking into a grin. ‘No but seriously, tidy people do tend to crave reliability and control, and you tend to crave the things you didn’t get as a kid. Just saying.’

  He opened his mouth, shut it again, totally at a loss for what to say. What to even think. ‘You do remember that I’m your boss here, right?’

  She shrugged. ‘Fluid thing, though, hierarchy, isn’t it? Anyway,’ she said, leaning over him to slide the drive into a port and commandeer his keyboard. ‘Headlines. I couldn’t get hold of the person who dealt with Corsham’s contract but the HR person I spoke to said it looked like he was on short contracts and just hadn’t been offered a new one. I’ll keep trying for his direct line manager though, see if there’s any more to it.’

  Mae nodded, scanning the document she’d opened. ‘Any more workmates?’

  ‘The guy he shared an office with said he was talking about buying some vintage lomo gear.’

  ‘Lomo?’

  ‘Kind of cult photography thing. Analogue, retro stuff. Apparently Corsham had been reading up on the ones where you take the picture and they spit the thingy out, and you …’ she mimed waving a wet photograph, ‘you remember?’

  He scrolled through the rest of the notes, ticking off the lines of investigation. Matthew Corsham was an only child, estranged from his father since infancy; mother dead from cancer a few years previously.