by Alice Castle
‘Ok?’ he said.
‘Oh, absolutely.’ She lowered her head over the seatbelt buckle, hoping he couldn’t see quite how terrified she’d been. If he’d ever needed a demonstration of how unsuited she really was to the police force, that had definitely been it. Her hands were still shaking so much that pressing the simple red button to release her belt was a major achievement.
York laughed. ‘You didn’t do too badly. I’ve known new recruits to be sick as dogs after their first full-speed chase through London. All right, we weren’t actually in pursuit this time, but I had my foot down. It was the right thing to do,’ he said, springing out of the car. Beth fumbled with the door and he came round and held out a steadying hand as she stumbled slightly on the pavement. ‘Let’s get going. Something tells me there isn’t a moment to lose.’
Chapter Six
18 Hours Earlier
Sophia Jones-Creedy, finally happy with the face she saw in the mirror – and more than happy with the stream of slavish likes rolling in for her off-the-shoulder pic on Instagram – clicked her mascara shut, dropped it into the sparkly evening bag she’d pinched from her mother’s wardrobe, and left her room. She didn’t feel any qualms about swiping her mum’s clutch. It wasn’t like her mum ever even used it; stuff like this was totally wasted on her. The door slammed on clothes drifting across every surface from her try-on session, with enough make-up littering her dressing table to deck out the cast of Cats. No time to think about tidying now – or ever. Laters.
But after a moment, the door opened and she reappeared, and took up her favourite stance again in front of the mirror, her weight on one skinny hip in the way she’d found really emphasised the switchback curve of her tiny waist, one eyebrow pulled up high, as usual, as she blew her reflection a kiss. ‘Good luck, darling,’ she said softly. It was the sort of thing a doting mother would say to a beloved child, off on the threshold of an exciting new venture. But there was no-one here at her side, to wish her well. Sophia shrugged, her little face becoming hard for a second, before she remembered – sad thoughts made sad lines. She hoisted her bright smile again. Would anyone even notice if it didn’t reach her eyes? It was too bad she was on her own. But, for God’s sake, she was used to it. She’d just have to do it all by herself. As-per-bloody-usual.
***
Beth sat by the girl’s bedside, holding a small pale hand in her own, much warmer one. In fact, she was uncomfortably hot all over; the heat of the day seemed to have coagulated in this airless, cheerless, determinedly blank room. Her gaze flicked away from the still features of the girl to the three walls, painted in the uninspiring dead lettuce tone that hospitals seemed to buy in bulk. The window dominating the fourth side of the room was no more inspiring. Dusk had fallen, the traffic was muted, and all she could see were eerie reflections from the room she was in, played out on the dusty pane of glass.
She started trying to take off her thin cotton cardigan, but realised she’d have to let go of the girl’s hand to do it. While she knew it couldn’t actually matter – and what on earth was she doing, holding hands with a stranger? – she knew that physical contact was important. If it were ever, God forbid, her own child lying there and she was unable to be by his side, she would want anyone with an ounce of compassion to do what she was doing now. She squeezed the inert fingers encouragingly, though by now she’d lost her first, initial, totally unrealistic hope, that the girl would sit bolt upright in her bed and open her eyes as soon as Beth, with her magical mummy powers, had walked in. Meanwhile, she was stuck with her cardigan at half mast, feeling not a little ridiculous, but still determined to do whatever she could.
***
She was chatting away in a soft voice, when York sauntered up outside. He passed a plastic cup of coffee to the PC sitting on guard, and peered through the small window in the door. He could see that Beth’s cardigan seemed to be slipping right off her shoulders, but she was oblivious, leaning in close to the bed. If it hadn’t been for the preternatural stillness of the girl lying there, it would have looked like a normal girly gossip in progress. York wondered what on earth she was saying. As soon as he pushed the door, though, she clammed up, as he’d known she would.
He smiled down on her, as a nurse bustled in, her unflappability and sense of purpose somehow making the atmosphere of the room less rarefied. Yes, a potential tragedy was unfolding here, but the nurse, in her sensible blue tunic trimmed with white at collar and cuffs, black machine washable slacks, pens in her top pocket, security lanyard swinging round her neck, seemed the very embodiment of a safe pair of hands. Her slightly harried air, her dry-looking dark hair coming adrift from a scrunchy, her broad snub nose shiny as the ancient air conditioning system failed to get to grips with a warm day, and even the sense that this girl was just one of many patients under her care, helped to normalise what was happening.
‘Now then, time to do all my checks. Family, are we?’ she said, a broad smile beaming across pleasant features and lighting up big brown eyes, showing her approval that people had finally turned up for this poor child.
‘Not exactly …’ Beth began, but York broke in.
‘Any change since this afternoon?’ Something about his tone told the nurse straight away that this was business – well, that and the PC on the door, of course. She looked over at him, got his measure, stood a little straighter, opened the notes folder she was carrying, and scanned the last page quickly.
‘No change at all since I took over. Poor lamb. I’ll be looking after her till morning. And I’ll be saying a prayer for her, that’s for sure. She needs her mum,’ she said, casting a compassionate glance at the still figure.
‘Poor girl,’ echoed Beth, her hand clasping the girl’s. ‘Do you know if she’s likely to wake up, any time soon I mean?’
The nurse looked from Beth to York and shook her head very slightly. ‘I’m thinking you should talk to the doctors about that.’
‘You must have seen things like this before,’ Beth said pleadingly.
The nurse sighed, approaching the bed and checking the monitors, writing in her notes, scanning a professional eye over the girl’s blank features. She put her folders down on the bedside table, then came round and gave the blue covers a professional tuck over the girl, smoothing out every crease from the faded blanket. There was little enough she could do for this patient, but she could show this care at least.
‘Of course. People are all different, though. The ones you think are going to make it, pah… then a little girl like this can sometimes surprise you. Sometimes they can be stronger than you think. You never know, until you know,’ she said with a shrug. Her eyes flickered again across the girl, and slid to Beth’s hopeful, pretty face. ‘See you later, guys,’ she said, padding away with a beaming a wide smile at Beth and a more circumspect glance at York.
‘It’s so frustrating,’ said Beth, once the door had closed again and the atmosphere in the little room went back to tense expectation. She stared at the inert girl. ‘She’s locked in there; with everything she could tell us. She knows what happened. If only she’d speak.’
York dragged the other plastic chair round so that he mirrored Beth’s position on the other side of the bed. They looked, more than ever, like anxious parents, bookending their sick child, he thought. No wonder the nurse had initially made that mistake. ‘The worst thing is I’ve checked with the paramedics. No-one remembers that backpack.’
Beth sat up, shocked into dropping the girl’s hand. ‘You’re kidding! We were relying on that. How can no-one remember it?’
‘Well, it was quite a scene. Tricia was pretty much out of it, from what you’ve said…’
Beth tutted at the memory. She shrugged out of her cardigan, while she could, and then took up the girl’s hand again as though she were drowning and clutching at a rope. ‘This is dreadful! I should have taken the bag myself, I don’t know why I didn’t,’ Beth said, looking towards the silent third party in the room again. ‘Oh, this is so awfu
l, I was pinning everything on it.’
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said York, his head bowed. He looked up. ‘Ok, just let’s just go through everything about the moment when you found it. Did you look inside? Was it full of stuff, was it heavy? Anything at all.’
Beth looked distraught. ‘I know it was only this morning, but it seems like years. Ok, I’ll try.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘So, seeing it was initially such a relief. It was bright red, you see, and that flash of colour… well, I thought it explained what I’d seen that was so out of place. But just as I was thinking, yippee, just a bag, nothing awful – no blood – Tricia saw her. And that really pushed everything else out of my head.’
‘I know,’ said York as patiently as he could. ‘But you’re the only one who can help us with it now. Well, Tricia might remember something – but I wouldn’t put money on it, would you?’
Beth looked at him and dropped her eyes. It was all down to her. And could she really remember anything at all? So much seemed to have happened since. She sank her head onto her hand, resting on the small wheeled bedside cabinet, which held a plastic jug of water and a cup. She looked down at the scuffed, unloved surface of the table, its varnish clouded by hot drinks and spillages she didn’t want to think about – and an idea came to her.
She settled the girl’s hand back on the bed, as though positioning a holy relic, and scooted her chair nearer to the cupboard, then pulled on the handle. It was stuck. She clasped the metal knob with both hands and tugged for all she was worth. Nothing. York looked over at her, understanding dawning on his face. ‘Locked?’ She nodded.
He leapt up and ran into the corridor. The PC quickly sat to attention, but York ignored him, staring up and down the corridor. Sure enough, their nurse came into view, coming out of a side ward. ‘Can you help us?’ York yelled, waving his arms.
The nurse broke into a lumbering trot, and collected a couple of colleagues along the way. York realised, too late, that she thought it was another cardiac incident. He was shame-faced by the time she’d burst into the room, mob-handed, with a mobile defibrillator machine bringing up the rear.
‘Sorry, we just need the key to this cupboard,’ he mumbled, rattling the handle uselessly. There was an audible tsk from a junior doctor, but the rest ambled away without complaint. There’d be another life or death situation along in a minute. Their nurse grimaced a little, but squeaked over and unfastened the offending cupboard with a master key fished from her pocket.
The door swung open, to reveal a completely empty, slightly dusty interior. ‘We usually put belongings in a plastic bag and hang them here these days. People kept leaving their stuff behind,’ said the nurse, motioning to the side of the cupboard.
Beth’s heart leapt again for a moment, but the hook on the outside of the cupboard was bare, too. She and York exchanged a hopeless glance. They weren’t having much luck.
Then, with no warning, the door crashed back on its hinges. A powerfully built man in his forties stood there, visibly exhausted but crackling with nervous energy. For a second, Beth wondered if he was going to do some Incredible Hulk-like transformation; he seemed wired enough. His short brown hair was covered by a surgical cap, which he whipped off and threw on the floor, and his scrubs were rumpled, one leg daubed with a stain that looked suspiciously like dried blood. His tired eyes, beneath capacious pouches, took in York, Beth, and the nurse, then his gaze went irresistibly to the still figure on the bed.
Behind him, the PC popped up, looking apologetic, ‘Sorry sir, he just dashed past me…’ he said lamely to York, who shot him a glance as scary as a major tongue-lashing, then jerked his head to tell him to wait outside.
‘They told me Sophia was here. They said she’s been here all day.’ The man’s voice was rigorously controlled, his ferocious anger all the more palpable as a result. Someone, somewhere, had decided that a full list of patients took precedence over his sick child. Beth was glad she hadn’t been the one to give him the news. Though she understood that rescheduling operations was a logistical nightmare, things weren’t quite so bad that this man was the only surgeon in south London. She wouldn’t want to be that decision-maker now.
The doctor strode forward, his face intent. He got within a foot of the bed and stopped dead.
‘I don’t understand. Is this some kind of sick joke?’ he hissed at York.
York and Beth looked at him, baffled. The nurse, perhaps more practised in the way of the top ranks of the medical profession, busied herself by bending over her folder of notes and avoiding everyone’s eyes.
‘What do you mean, sir?’ said York. His manner wasn’t exactly deferential, but it was definitely designed to be conciliatory. There was clearly not much length left on this man’s personal tether. It was not the moment to rebuke him for abusing the Metropolitan Police, let alone blameless members of the public.
‘I mean this isn’t my fucking daughter, is it?’ the man yelled at top volume.
Chapter Seven
Once calm had been restored, and Mr Jones-Creedy, consultant orthopaedic surgeon, had taken himself off home after a disastrous case of mistaken identity, Beth and York were left looking at each other blankly once again.
There were more questions facing them now than there had ever been. Who on earth was the girl in the bed? She might not have been Sophia Jones-Creedy, but she was someone. And someone’s daughter, too. Meanwhile, according to the au pair, the real Sophia Jones-Creedy was yet to return home.
Beth scrutinised the pale face of the girl on the bed, opened the Facebook app on her phone, and dredged up the picture that, in her mind, had linked this poor waif with Sophia. She showed the shot to York. He studied it in silence, then returned the phone to Beth. Yes, there was a strong resemblance, anyone could see that. But Beth now realised the Jones-Creedy girl had so much more animation. Like her father, whose presence had crackled through the room, Sophia seemed to have the ability to light up and dominate any space she was in.
Beth flicked through her endless parade of Instagram snaps. In a group shot, the eye went straight to her, skipping over her contemporaries, though on the face of it they were every bit as pretty and winsome. The only reason she looked a bit like the girl in the bed, in that one particular photo, was because it was a rare picture showing her quiet, still, and – maybe – actually asleep.
‘They look very similar. But at the same time…’ said York.
‘I know. There’s no real comparison, is there? I’m sorry, I was so sure…’
‘Don’t apologise. We had almost nothing to go on.’
‘Thanks to me not keeping an eye on the bag.’
‘That was not your responsibility. Don’t go blaming yourself. No-one’s put you in charge of every aspect of this investigation – yet,’ said York. Beth met his eyes with a small smile.
‘So, who on earth is this girl, then?’ Beth looked down once more at the wan little face. The girl looked even more washed-out and insubstantial now, compared with the images of Sophia and the live impact of her Mr Jones-Creedy’s restless anger. Beth felt a tug at her heartstrings. There seemed to be no-one who cared about the girl enough to notice she was missing. No-one, that is, but Beth.
York, meanwhile, was thinking, too. ‘So, where on earth can this Sophia have been all day? And all night? She doesn’t strike me as the truanting type.’
‘Doesn’t she? We’ve never met her, though. We’re just making assumptions based on her background, the fact that her parents have responsible jobs, she’s middle class so she must be a nice, hard-working girl. But she could be a total slacker, for all we know,’ Beth reasoned.
‘The College School, though? Don’t tell me that’s the type of place that tolerates truanting,’ said York.
‘Hmm, you’ve definitely got a point there.’ Beth was impressed at how quickly he was picking up Dulwich nuances. Though it was hardly a secret that parents would kill – more or less – to get their boys into Wyatt’s and their girls into the Coll
ege School. If any student started to cut classes, there were plenty more on the waiting lists ready to fill their places. Beth couldn’t see the College School’s headmistress giving anyone much leeway and, judging from her Facebook profile, Sophia Jones-Creedy was already an enthusiastic boundary-pusher.
***
Little did Beth know it, but Miss Douglas was pondering exactly the same matter, alone in her office at the College School. She liked the place best when it was empty. Much though she enjoyed the girls, there was no question that the school at night was a much more restful place – perfectly still, classrooms standing ready for the next day’s lessons, floors polished, chairs tucked under desks just so. She loved the peace, and the sense of expectation and promise it held. So different from the days, when the girls and their endless demands – and the teachers and their complaints – seemed to fill her days with alarums and excursions. Even the street, which she could survey now without worrying about random delivery men popping up, was quiet and tranquil, the behemoth cars of the parents safely squeezed into tiny parking spaces on Dulwich’s narrow roads. She sighed a little and turned back to the matter in hand.
Spread before her were Sophia Jones-Creedy’s academic records. She’d been at the school since the age of four: in pre-prep where she’d been obstreperous and controlling; then into the junior school, where she’d started exerting her influence on her peers in a less obvious, but infinitely more manipulative way, devising endless games which had the aim of excluding whoever in the class had fallen out of her favour. Her contemporaries then had seemed like deer caught in the headlights of her peculiarly commanding stare, falling in with whatever she suggested and adopting her chosen pecking order without question. Really, sometimes it was too easy for these strong personalities, thought Miss Douglas.