by Kate Simants
‘Please, I don’t want to see it, please, that’s not him.’
It couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it. I didn’t even get as far as looking at the face on the screen. I couldn’t have said what colour his hair was, whether he even had hair, whether he was tall, short, thin – anything. All I saw was what he was wearing.
Green uniform. Green, khaki, camouflage.
He was a soldier.
What this woman was saying was that my father was a soldier.
If Siggy could have screamed, she would have shattered the sky.
53.
Mae
Kit was waiting for the one decent colour printer to fire up when he found her.
‘The tech at Brighton and Hove called back,’ Mae told her, leaning against the wall. ‘Those images of Ellie were definitely from Cox. They had someone get access to Cox’s old clinic and took some pictures of the room he used to have. Background and lighting signatures match up. And with the timing on it, with the absence of the scar, means—’
‘She was definitely well underage.’
Mae nodded stiffly.
‘So, what we thinking, Cox sold them?’ Kit asked. The copies of the pictures emerged like tongues from the machine, and she took care lifting each one between thumb and forefinger, like dirty laundry, turning them face down in her folder.
‘Don’t know yet. Possibly.’
‘And no clues on where he’s gone?’
Mae shook his head. ‘We’ve had UKBA put a stop on his passport though, so he’s not going far.’
She gave a cynical sniff. ‘We hope.’
Mae waited for her to finish with the prints before walking with her to the lifts. They stood in silence, then emerged onto the ground floor, where the neutral décor of the upper levels was replaced by walls of wipe-clean blue and alarm buttons embedded at intervals along the mid-height bumper.
They paused at the snack machine, and Mae dug in his pocket for some change, fed it in, and punched in the code for a cereal bar.
Kit leaned against the radiator. ‘These pictures. Do you think they’re something to do with that money, the cash his colleague said about? Maybe Corsham … I don’t know, maybe he got off on young girls with injuries? Liked the idea of his girlfriend being degraded by someone else?’
‘Quite possibly. We’ll need to get Helen Williams in, and her manager, everything about this pharmacy theft: dates, specifics on what was stolen. Here,’ he said, handing her the snack bar. ‘Energy.’
‘I’ve eaten.’ Her voice was robotic, and her face was set, a one-way street. Not even looking at him.
‘OK. Come on. Code 99, let’s go.’
‘What?’
He’d forgotten how new she was. ‘Code 99: tea break.’
‘Ah, no. Too much to do,’ she said, waving her hand vaguely but not meeting his eyes.
He stood right in front of her, forcing her to look up. ‘You OK? I need you present and correct.’
‘I’m fine.’ She pushed herself off the wall, walked off towards the lifts.
‘Kit,’ he said. She must have heard him, but she didn’t respond. ‘Kit,’ he said again. ‘DC Ziegler.’
This time she stopped. Turned around. Walked back.
‘One of my sisters, right?’ Everything about her was tight. Fists, shoulders, jaw: even her stance was rock-hard, as if she was expecting an impact. She stopped a few steps from him and dragged her hands hard through her hair. ‘Younger than me, twenty-four. She lives with my mum. When I say she lives there, I mean, she lives there. Stays in. All the time. Thank fuck for the internet and everything because as least she’s got “friends”,’ she said, putting quote marks around it bitterly with her fingers, every word acid-sharp, ‘but social life, real life stuff?’ She turned the corners of her mouth down, shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
If Mae didn’t know her better, he would have thought she was going to cry. He kept his mouth shut and listened, because he knew the deal with these why-I-really-signed-up stories that not everyone had. If someone joined the force because they needed to believe in the whole making the world safer line: invariably, they’d have a pretty good reason.
She folded her arms. ‘So, when she was in sixth form, she was raped.’ Fissures appeared in her voice from the effort of controlling it. ‘One of those stranger-in-a-park rapes, opportunist. Bad fucking luck. Up to that point, everything was going perfectly: straight As, football captain, ran the student newspaper, nice line in creative writing. Now? She eats. Just … she can’t stop. She has flashbacks. Panic attacks like two, three, four times a day. For eight years. You ever have a panic attack?’
He shook his head.
‘No. She thinks she’s going to die. She can’t breathe, she literally can’t—’
Kit cut herself off and tipped her head back, swallowing the rest of the sentence.
Mae waited.
She took a few long breaths, then looked back at him, creaked out a weak smile she didn’t really mean. He hoped she wouldn’t apologize, and she didn’t.
‘The fucker who took these pictures,’ she said, tapping the folder under her arm, ‘he’s why I’m here. He’s why I spent two years of my life that I’ll never get back, scraping drunks off pavements. So I could get here, get into a room with a fucker like that, and make him pay.’
Mae nodded. ‘Good.’
‘What?’
He unlocked his arms from across his chest. ‘I said, good. I’m glad you’re angry. I’m angry, too. A lot of people here, they’re not, not really. They’re complacent. Just here for the status, for notching up the shiny silver badges on their shoulders, the retirement after thirty years’ service, or whatever. But people need us pissed off, we’re no good to them if we’re content. If I had it my way we’d all have to be fuming when we went on shift. There’d be like some kind of little monitor built into your radio. You’re nice and calm, go home and – I don’t know – watch some Britain First posts on YouTube. Come back when you’re good and seething.’
She laughed, and the dam cracked. The tears that they’d both thought she was going to hold in broke across her face, and she turned, rubbing angrily at them, saying, ‘Fuck. Fucking hell.’
He let her cry. He didn’t look away. ‘What I’m saying is, you’ve got this far being you, coping the way you cope. But separating the anger out like it’s something to be ashamed of? You don’t have to do that. There is a middle way. The anger isn’t going away, so you just use it, make it sing for its supper. Don’t hide it.’
From a pocket she produced a tissue, smiled sadly as she unfolded it. ‘You practised that little spiel on Bear?’
He opened his mouth, closed it again. Because he suddenly found himself ashamed that the answer was no. The pep talks he gave Bear were all about being tough, keeping it all in. Why?
After noisily blowing her nose, she asked him the question he should have seen coming.
‘So what got you into the job? And please spare me the “giving back to the community” crap.’
He shrugged. ‘The pay?’
They both laughed at that, but not for long. Eyes still red, Kit asked it again. ‘Really, though. Something bad happened, didn’t it?’
The gold watch hung like a bar of solid iron in his pocket. He opened his mouth, unsure of what was going to come out of it, but then his phone buzzed.
He pulled it out, checked the screen: a voicemail. Mike.
‘I’m going to have to call this one back,’ he told her, waving the handset. He turned back the way he’d come, bringing up Mike’s number to call him back.
Kit called back after him. ‘You’re wrong about one thing.’
Pausing at the double doors, he took the phone from his ear, glanced back.
She shook her cropped head as if clearing long hair from her face. ‘About the rage.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I don’t hide it. I just save it. You want to see what pent-up means, you’re going to want to see PC Pain in action.’
‘It’s a deal,’ he told her, and laughed as the double doors closed behind him.
Finding Mike’s number busy, Mae went straight to the CID kitchen. After filling the kettle and sticking it on to boil, he checked through the window that he wasn’t about to be disturbed, and rang the voicemail.
Mike’s nasal voice, its warmth as artificial as a two-bar fire.
‘Ben. Hi.’
Mae held the bridge of his nose and realized that deep down, he already knew what was coming.
‘Listen, Nadia asked me to make this call to you because she didn’t know how you would, uh, take it.’ The unsaid things jostling against each other behind every word, stacking up against each other. ‘So I know it might be hard to hear this, but we’re, um, the plan actually is, ah—,’ and there was the jar in his voice now, confirming that Nadia was with him, gesturing, pulling his little puppet strings, ‘we’re going to be putting in an application to move back to the States. Make a go of it, the four of us.’ Mae listened to the pause, his heart jolting under his ribs like a series of sobs. ‘Yeah. We, ah, we thought it would be better for Bear – for Dominica – to just, to make a clean break. Nadia asked me to call because she was worried you’d be – uh – you might not take it that well.’
More broken, stilted, clichéd non-information followed: that they’d already sorted the visas; that they were hoping to find their feet and then work out the detail regarding his contact with Bear. That they’d already chosen a nursery for the toddler, and they’d seen a school for Bear that was just perfect. What a great opportunity it would be for her, what great experiences she’d have.
They’d talked it over with her, he said. She couldn’t wait, he said.
‘So yeah. Exciting times. But it all rests on you, now.’
Mae listened to the whole thing. He listened to the voice after the message, telling him what options he had. To listen again, press 2. To delete, to save. None of them good options. None of them involving making it right, being his daughter’s dad. Her real dad, not just the guy she got her almond eyes and her temper from, who would call her from the other side of the world. Who said he loved her, but somehow never managed to show it.
The main menu repeated in his ear, several times over.
This was him being written out of her story. My real dad lives in England, she’d tell her new friends when they asked how come her parents were both white. No, I don’t see him much.
The coffee was stone cold by the time Kit came bursting in, excitement was firing out of her in all directions. She was on her radio, but grabbed him by the sleeve.
‘Abson Street, the names are Eleanor and Christine Power. Don’t let them leave.’ Then, after signing off, ‘Where have you been?!’
He waved his phone. It wasn’t something he was going to go into.
‘It doesn’t matter, come on,’ she told him, pulling him into the corridor. ‘Big fucking news.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘AV room, now. You’re going to want to hear this.’
54.
Ellie
Bernadette had hailed a cab for me and sent me home with a twenty for the journey and a promise to be in touch very soon. But I stopped the driver and got out a few streets before ours, and walked the last bit. I walked past slowly. I couldn’t be sure she was out, but I didn’t want to risk knocking, risk seeing her. Having to talk, having to lie. I found a small stone, checked around me, got a bit closer and threw it at the window. Retreated. Waited a minute, two, but she didn’t respond. Threw again. Nothing.
I went in.
There was a note for me on a sheet of A4 on the hallway floor.
I’m out looking for you, if you come back, stay here, will be back by seven.
I glanced up at the clock. I had half an hour to find something, anything at all that would prove or disprove what Bernadette had just told me.
I balled the note up, tucking it into one of the three black binbags queued up along the wall. Then, starting in her room, I made a search. If Mum really was lying to me about something as big as this, there had to be a clue, some evidence of it. A letter, a card, a photo I didn’t care what form it took. I just wanted answers.
I opened drawer after drawer, using just my good hand because the other one was so sore. Everything was already packed. Under her bed, where there had been crates of paperwork and other stuff, there was nothing. If it hadn’t been for the suitcases and boxes on the bed, it would have looked like we’d already left.
Into my room. Clothes folded and stacked onto my bed. Everything else, books and notebooks, keepsakes, make-up and jewellery, the lot: gone.
The kitchen door, which Mum usually left locked, was open. I soon saw why. It had been scrubbed and emptied, the fridge was bare, the food cupboards the same. Plates and mugs and knives and forks: the locks had been removed, but so had everything we owned.
So she’d made her mind up. We were leaving.
I stood in the hall and tucked my hands in my armpits, which reminded me in no uncertain terms about the damage to my palm. I unwrapped the dressing: the injury no longer burning, but it was numb, and I didn’t dare look at it. I went back to the suitcases. I opened the first one: it contained just clothes, but just underneath the lid was an A4 envelope.
Inside were passports, one for Mum, and one for me.
I didn’t even know I had a passport.
I took mine, and replaced the envelope. In the next case was the first aid kit. I picked it up, felt its weight. I’d seen it before of course, many times, but it was always locked away until Mum needed it: I’d never held it, certainly never opened it up. But as I unzipped it and rifled through, looking for something for the pain, the first compartment I tried held none of the usual things, plasters, bandages, ibuprofen. Just an unmarked bottle of pills, half a dozen glass vials with their labels peeled off. Under that: syringes.
I rocked back on my heels.
Syringes?
I zipped it back up, and tried the other side, where I found what I’d been looking for. I took a double dose of painkiller, the last four tablets in the blister pack, then closed the whole thing back up and put it back where I’d found it. I took the empty packaging to the bin. No bin liner. The bins were in the hall.
Three black sacks. I nudged one with my toe. Paper inside, loose, dry things: not a kitchen bin.
I got down on my knees, and I undid the knot. As fast as I could I went through the first two bags, checking each item as I took it out, putting it to the side until I almost gave up: there were only so many old free papers and till receipts you can sift through before you lose heart. But I made myself open the third: if a job’s worth doing. There, crumpled up inside an oversized receipt for our new locks, was a letter, addressed to Mum’s other name, Christine Scott.
It had been sent to a PO box, not our address. Dated a week and a half ago, from a storage company called Logic Storage near the Hanger Lane tube. As a valued storage unit holder here at Logic, we’d like to inform you of some changes, it started.
I flattened the letter, smoothing out the crumples, and read it through. Just a circular, but it wasn’t junk. She was a customer. At the top was her name, the PO box again, a customer number, and the unit number: 003/27.
Folding the whole thing along its original crease lines, I pocketed it and went back to sifting through the bag.
I stopped. Froze. Someone at the door.
And through the narrow pane of glass beside the door, I could make out the unmistakable colour of a police car.
Banging on the door. A man.
‘Miss Power? Eleanor?’
Not Mae, and this was a squad car, not CID, which meant …
‘Eleanor? Christine? It’s the police. We need you to answer the door, please.’
It meant they’d found something. They’d worked out it was Mum who’d moved the car – or something worse. It could be something much worse.
The reality of what this meant came quickly i
nto focus, like someone had turned a dial in my head. If I opened that door, it would be over. Whatever the truth was behind the things Bernadette had said, and whatever Matt had been trying to find out: if I got arrested, I would never have a chance to unearth it. So I made my decision. I grabbed the letter and with my back flat against the hallway wall, I edged swiftly along until my fingers connected with the handle on my bedroom door.
I already had my shoes on, but grabbed an extra top and tied it around my waist. I didn’t waste another second. From the extreme right of the window, I had a full view of the car on the street, and I could see it was empty.
The window was still open from the last time I’d needed it. And although I couldn’t be sure I could get down to the street without being spotted from the door, now was as good a time as any to try.
55.
Mae
Mae and Kit waited for McCulloch on the CID floor. Mae had called her – interrupting her evening run – the moment Kit had finished playing him the recording the data team had found in Cox’s van, then he’d listened to it another three times. It didn’t get any less incredible.
When she arrived, their boss was flushed and out of breath. She leaned against the doorframe, finished a plastic bottle of water, binned it, and nodded at Mae.
‘Hit me. You found Cox?’
‘Not yet. We’re trying various—’
‘Got something out of the Powers?’
Kit resisted the instinct to look at Mae and said, ‘We were expecting interviews with both of them, but – uh – we’re—’
McCulloch’s bloodhound instincts kicked in at the pause. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve gone AWOL.’
Kit grimaced and inspected her hands.
McCulloch turned to Mae. ‘Do not fucking tell me they’ve gone AWOL. Ben.’
He held up a finger and a thumb, an inch between them. ‘Teeny chance. Probably fine.’
‘Mae sent a car round,’ Kit chimed in.
‘Why are you not there yourself?’ McCulloch demanded. But then something dropped and she narrowed her eyes. ‘There’s more, isn’t there? You didn’t call me away from my constitutional just to tell me that you’ve lost our two key witnesses, or whatever they are?’