Lock Me In
Page 19
Leaning across me, Leon took the mouse and pointed with the cursor. ‘It looks like it’s just going to be work stuff. These down here,’ he said, moving the arrow across folders with names like ONC. Lab TO DO and PAED. for review, ‘they link to the central server. Whatever’s in them refreshes whenever you link in to the system.’
‘Can I have a look anyway?’
He blew out his cheeks. ‘I guess so, if you want.’
I took the mouse and opened one at random. It was empty.
Leon drew in his chin. ‘That’s weird.’ A little spinning-ball icon appeared in the folder. ‘There, you see? The system’s repopulating it now.’
On the screen, files were pinging into place. But Leon’s frown didn’t lift.
‘What are you thinking?’ I asked. ‘He must have been trying to hide something if he’s deleted everything.’
‘That’s just it. I don’t get why he would have bothered. He knows that they just repopulate like this.’
I clicked open another few folders. It was the same story for all of them. There were hundreds of files now, but it wasn’t exactly helping. Every filename followed the same Surname/Forename/Date pattern, topped and tailed by some kind of code. The handful I opened at random were clearly patient-related. Even if there was anything in there, some clue, finding it would take hours, days probably. If Leon’s increasing agitation was anything to go by, I was already on borrowed time.
I scrolled despairingly through the lists, unsure what to do next. There had to be something here. It occurred to me that if Matt had wanted to conceal something, hiding it under one of these maddeningly innocuous names would be the best way of making sure it was never found. Short of deleting it.
I straightened, thinking, surely not.
I opened the recycle bin, mentally crossing my fingers. There were a dozen folders in there. And between one he’d named ‘Exhibitions’ and another called, inexplicably, ‘Corporal James Scott’, was a folder called Cox/Arden/Powers.
Arden? I had never breathed a word about Jodie to Matt. Also: Powers, plural? My heart throwing itself around in my chest, I clicked it open.
The folder was completely empty.
I turned to Leon. ‘Will this repopulate as well?’
‘No, only the shared stuff. Deleting your recycle bin is a bit more permanent but …’ he tipped his head, thinking about it.
‘But what?’
‘Well, it’s not permanent permanent. Something to do with bytecode: the tech guys explained this to me when I deleted something a while ago before they brought this shared system in. It’s complicated but basically, unless you really know what you’re doing or, like, you dissolve your hard drive in acid or whatever, deleted files can usually be restored without too much trouble.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘God no. But the police probably could,’ he said with a sideways glance. Then, looking at a space just behind me, he jumped to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, I was literally just about to—’
I turned. In the doorway and with a look of outraged horror on her face was Helen, the children’s ward volunteer coordinator and Matt’s line manager.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. Then pointing at the laptop she said to Leon, ‘Tell me that’s not it?’
I got up, dodged her, and ran until I cleared the building, until I was out of the complex completely.
By the time I got to the bus stop the other side of the Hanwell shops, my lungs were burning with the cold air. But I wasn’t thinking about my lungs. I wasn’t even thinking about what Helen would do about finding me there.
I was thinking about what was in that folder. About the fact that Matt must have gathered enough information to warrant keeping it all together somewhere.
And about what could have motivated him to delete it.
42.
Mae
Helen Williams was applying powder to her cheeks when Mae and Kit found her in her office.
They sat without being invited, and Mae folded his arms.
‘Right. Let’s start from the bit where you promised you would tell me if anything that might be of interest came up. Did the return of his laptop not seem of sufficient interest?’
Williams dropped the compact into a large cardboard box sitting on her desk. ‘Forgive me. I’ve been very busy.’
‘So where’s the computer now?’ Kit asked.
She pulled out a drawer and laid the laptop reverentially on the desk. Looked up. ‘I thought I better save it for you. That’s why I got it sent up from downstairs. I was just about to call when you rang.’
‘Is that so?’ Kit raised her eyebrows, then tore open a packet of nitrile gloves from her pocket and put them on. ‘Who brought it in?’
‘Delivery note’s in there. I don’t know the name. It wasn’t Matthew, anyway.’
‘Has it passed through anyone else’s hands since it got in the building?’
‘Leon Baxter – he’s in the imaging lab, where Matthew worked.’ She paused, broke eye contact.
‘Who else?’ Mae asked.
‘No one,’ she said, a little too quickly.
Mae didn’t have time for this. ‘We’ll talk to Leon anyway so if he’s going to have something to tell us, you’re going to want to have told us first, all right?’
She sighed. ‘Eleanor Power.’
‘What?’ Mae and Kit said in unison.
‘She intercepted it. Somehow talked Leon into letting her have a look before he brought it up to me.’
‘Right,’ Mae said, closing his eyes. ‘Excellent.’
‘She didn’t mess with anything. Nothing was copied or deleted. He assures me.’
‘Right, well, if he assures you, that’s your due process sorted then.’ Kit gestured to the boxes. ‘What’s the deal here, then? Moving offices?’
The smile stiffened on her mouth. ‘Pastures new,’ she told them stiffly. ‘Private sector.’
‘Coincidence,’ Kit said flatly.
She batted it away. ‘Not really. Everyone worth their salt is leaving. NHS is going to the dogs, haven’t you heard?’
Outside, after sealing the laptop in an evidence bag and locking it in the boot, Mae gave IT forensics the heads-up, telling them he was bringing the machine in for a thorough combing. Hanging up, he thought of something.
‘How about you go back to the front desk,’ he said to Kit. ‘If the laptop came in to the reception, they’ll have a record of who brought it in, presumably.’
‘Maybe surveillance?’
‘If we’re lucky.’
They split up. After settling himself in the car, he dialled Ellie’s number. She picked up on the second ring.
‘You better have a very good reason for doing what you just did,’ he told her.
There was a pause. ‘I was going to phone you.’
‘Was that before or after you decided to try to intercept his computer? Ellie, I can’t help you if you just go ahead and do things like that.’ He hadn’t even asked her about the car yet, what she knew about it. ‘We need to meet. I’ve got things I need to talk to you about. Your mum, too. This is serious, OK?’
‘Oh really? Because I thought it was all a big joke.’ Anger in her voice. ‘I thought you were convinced he’d just decided to skip town.’
‘I never said that,’ he said, knowing that the caveat was that he had thought it. But what did he think now? Cox was involved, stolen drugs, money. The hospital was telling him one thing and the evidence another. Cox admitted speaking to him about Ellie, but he was hiding something. The rent had been paid but no one had seen the guy for days. His phone was dead, the evidence was chaotic, his home was a dead end, and his girlfriend was … well. His girlfriend was Ellie Power.
So, was Matthew Corsham missing? Was he fine?
Ellie breathed out a long breath. ‘He’d been in touch with Lucy Arden.’
‘Matt had?’
‘Yeah. She sent him this book, this … diary thing that we used to have.
Me and Jodie.’
He remembered it. Remembered poring over with gloved fingers, hours and hours at a time, looking for an overlooked detail, a code, anything he could use.
‘And I’m going to go and see her,’ Ellie was saying. ‘I’m heading there now.’
Mae almost laughed. ‘No. No, you’re not. This is a police investigation, Ellie. You get that, right? I’ll go and see her. Where is she, Brighton still?’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But nothing. You need to keep clear of this. Let me do my job.’
43.
Ellie
I couldn’t go to Lucy’s now, but that was OK. There was something else I needed to do.
There was no need to check a map. Although when I was Dr Cox’s patient I’d only ever had my sessions in Brighton, I knew exactly where his London office was. Jodie had been up there; she’d come home buzzing with stories of their illicit weekends. Mum had forbidden me to contact Cox after what happened, but I knew his website like the back of my hand, and when I approached the address on Highbury Park, I knew it almost as if I’d lived there.
Siggy lit up like a circuit as I mounted the stone steps. The intercom box crackled with an answer from inside.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice. Instantly familiar.
‘Samira? It’s Ellie. Ellie Power.’
There was a small gasp, then the lock clicked. ‘Come on up, sweetheart.’
I pushed the heavy door open, and went inside, up the wide, carpeted stairs to the first floor. On the landing, the door into Cox’s suite swung open, and there she was. She had on a cardigan that looked impossibly soft, and it took everything I had not to let myself fall into the arms that were outstretched towards me. But I didn’t do it.
Eventually the arms dropped, and she gave me a sad smile, pushing the glasses she hadn’t worn when I’d last seen her onto her nose. ‘No hug. OK.’
I shrugged, tightly. She was hurt, I could see she was hurt, but I didn’t care.
Because whatever she said, Samira had never believed I was sixteen. She couldn’t have done: she had kids of her own, girls. Even with the clothes I borrowed from Jodie, I was a little kid, barely pubescent. Although I hadn’t seen it for what it was until Mum explained grooming to me, Samira was a key part. She facilitated. I trusted her, because she made me trust her.
‘I need to talk to Dr Cox,’ I told her, matter-of-factly. I didn’t want to chat; I didn’t want a hug. I just wanted to know what the hell he was doing talking to my boyfriend without my say-so.
‘Come through,’ said a stiff voice from behind me. I turned. He was standing in the doorway to his office. New creases on his face. Arms folded, his lips a tight, straight line like a No Entry across his face.
‘I wish you’d called ahead,’ he said flatly as he turned and went back in. ‘Do close the door,’ he told me as I followed him in.
I did as I was told, and stood there by the door, and stuffed my hands in my pockets so he couldn’t see them trembling.
‘It’s been a very long time, Ellie,’ he said, lacing his fingers into a knot on the desk in front of him. ‘How have you been? Are you working? Studying?’
‘I haven’t come to talk about my education.’
A brief, joyless smile. ‘No. You want to know about Matt.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘I know you were talking with him.’
‘I did. He had a lot of questions about your condition, and your past. He was very interested in—’ he paused, as if the word was unpleasant in his mouth, ‘in Siggy. He wasn’t sure he was getting the whole picture.’
I waited, pretending this wasn’t news. But I felt as if I’d been punched, and Siggy recoiled, stung, leaving me fighting an instinct to wrap my arms around myself to soothe her. So what, he thought I was lying? Misleading him in some way?
Cox just sat there watching me like an exhibit of middling but familiar interest in a zoo.
‘You’re feeling anxious,’ he told me.
‘Don’t you tell me how I’m feeling. You don’t know anything about me.’
He sighed, picked at a loose thread in his cuff. ‘You might be right, Ellie. But I tried.’
‘No, you didn’t. You exploited me.’
He winced at that, screwed his eyes shut for a moment. ‘Ellie, I did not exploit—’
‘Yes, you did. Both of us, me and Jodie.’
I had sworn I would not cry. But the shell I’d built around the sadness, the humiliation: it all suddenly felt very weak. Siggy enveloped me like a skin, holding me in.
‘I made a very big mistake with Jodie. I should never have allowed myself to—’ he started, but I bristled, held up both hands.
‘I don’t want to hear anything about what you did to her.’
‘With her, Ellie. She was not a child.’
‘She was. She was a child. I was a child.’
‘I didn’t touch you. I would never have—’
‘You did worse. What you did to me was worse.’ I flexed my hands out of the fists that had involuntarily formed by my sides, remembering what Mum said. There is no greater scope for exploitation than in the promise of a cure. Breathing a heavy sigh, he crossed to the window and poured himself a drink.
Swallowing, he turned to the window. ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’
‘I’m nineteen years old.’
‘Yes, of course you are. An adult.’ He took another mouthful. ‘Independent from her.’
I shrugged, not understanding, and tried to swerve it by getting to the point. ‘There was a file on Matt’s computer. All of our names in the title: yours, mine and Jodie’s. Why?’
He paused with the glass halfway to his lips. He stayed that way for a breath, two, then set it noiselessly down on the desk. ‘And you know this how?’
‘I saw it.’
‘Where did you see it, Ellie? The police told me his laptop was missing.’
‘It doesn’t matter where I saw it. I’m asking you—’
‘If you’ve seen his laptop and you’ve seen a folder, how is it that you’re asking me what was in it?’
‘Because he’d deleted the contents. That’s why.’
‘So maybe he didn’t want you to know.’
He obviously wasn’t going to budge. I brushed at a non-existent speck on my shoulder like I didn’t care one way or the other. ‘Well, I guess the police will find out what it was, whether you tell me or not.’
‘How could they? I thought you said it was deleted?’
‘Doesn’t make any difference if the bytecode is still there,’ I said, like I knew what that meant.
There was a long pause. Cox went to the window, opened it, then lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
‘I think you should leave now.’
‘I’m not leaving until you tell me what you know.’
He didn’t take his eyes off me. After a few long drags, he stubbed the cigarette out. ‘Do you remember the last thing I said to you?’
I did.
When they discharged me, miserable but functioning and with my throat stitched and bandaged, my care was transferred to Dr Cox. He met me and Mum in the CAMHS inpatient unit. Right up until we got to the car park, I thought he and Mum had put their differences aside so that I could keep seeing him after all. I remember pulling my bag onto my knees in the back of our car, Mum reaching over and fastening my seatbelt. I thought he was coming with us, like they said he was. But he just stood there, hands hanging, and Mum drove us away.
And that was the last I saw of him.
The whole thing of him signing the forms was all just for show, just to get me out of there. A favour to Mum, to settle things, she said, so it could just be the two of us again, because after everything, and after what he’d done, I was just a little girl who needed her mum.
Even though Mum forbade me from contacting him, I’d been desperate to speak to him, wanted more than anything for him t
o explain. Because I just couldn’t make it fit – the way he’d been with me, and what Mum told me he was really like. I had been so convinced that he had cared about me, and being wrong about that was just – catastrophic. Once she found out, Mum forbade me to contact him. I’d lied to her about it, seen him without her consent because she’d sworn off any more doctors after the endless, fruitless searching of years before. I’d made a huge mistake, she said, an error of judgement. I’d thought I could trust him, and I’d been wrong, and that was all I needed to know.
I remembered the last thing he’d said to me because it was a phrase Matt used, too.
Challenge everything.
‘You betrayed me,’ I said.
He sat back down behind his desk and rearranged his mug, bringing it to the exact centre of the desk with his forefingers, before repositioning his laptop, phone, pen, then lastly the flats of his hands.
‘I did not betray you. That’s not true.’
‘No? Why did you need those images, Dr Cox?’
‘It was professional documentation!’ he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table and making the mug jump. Breathing heavily through his nose as if calming himself, he was silent for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was low. ‘Let me tell you something, Ellie. What you did, the lies you told about my having something to do with Jodie’s disappearance, it nearly ruined my career.’
‘What you did to me, that nearly ruined my life. If it’s a conversation about morality.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Your mother made me swear I would never even speak to you again—’
‘My mother?’ I was on my feet and Siggy was there, turning in a tight, black coil of rage. But I wasn’t afraid of it, that fury. It was something I could use, something uniting us. ‘Without my mother I would still be thinking you were all right. That you were decent. But you’re not, are you?’
‘Ellie.’
This wasn’t what I had come to say, but it was too late to stop it now. ‘How many little girls have you had up here? Huh? How many desperate kids who think you’re someone they can open up to? Tens of them? Hundreds?’