The Final Child

by Fran Dorricott

  “We’ll figure it out,” said the big one.

  These boys… Jenny didn’t need them like Dana did. Like Mouse did. If Dana took the boys to Jenny’s tonight, they’d only run away again. So… why not make the most of this?

  Normally Dana liked to plan. If she’d learned anything from Jack it was that a well-concocted plan was like gold. She hadn’t even known he’d killed himself for thirty-six hours because he’d designed everything perfectly – his tool-belt in hand, a rope waiting in the basement – and she hadn’t asked any questions, hadn’t even realised he’d been wanting to do it since before they moved into the house.

  And yet, here was an opportunity. A ready-made plan. She could keep the boys in the house, downstairs. Or in the shed first, if she needed to make sure they wouldn’t run. Later on she could fix it so they’d even have their own spaces, downstairs where the rooms were bigger than they needed to be.

  She’d get them settled and then she’d go get Mouse from the childminder. It would be easy. They could keep whichever boy Mouse liked best. They might even keep both.

  Then Mouse wouldn’t ever have to be alone again.

  “Come on then, boys.” She unlocked her car doors and ushered them inside. “Best climb in the back. There are picnic blankets down there, I think. Make yourselves comfortable. Birmingham, here we come.”

  TWENTY NINE

  Harriet

  ERIN WAS OUT OF the restaurant before I could process exactly what had happened. What had started in my head as a vague inkling of a suspect had suddenly bloomed into something real, something tangible. And Erin was already gone.

  I rushed to catch up with her. By the time I reached my car, Erin was fumbling at the lock.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. She spun. Her face and hair were wild. She looked as though she was on the verge of collapse. I reached to steady her, grabbed her elbows. But she shook me off.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said. “Let’s just wait. Take a second.”

  We got into the car. Erin collapsed into the passenger seat with her hands between her knees. She looked like she might vomit.

  “Do you think it’s true…?” she asked eventually. “Do you think it could be her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said gently. “But if this woman was a carer and she travelled – that would give her access to all kinds of different people. Medicine too. Something like morphine maybe. That’d knock kids out easily enough. And I bet a carer could easily lift an unconscious, pliant child. The insulin, too – it wouldn’t be hard to steal if she had diabetic patients.”

  “Do you really think she would kill, though, if she was a carer?” Erin clenched her fists a couple of times and then dug around for her phone.

  “It’s not unheard of,” I said. I thought again of the Beverley Allitt case. Those true crime nuts might have been closer than they realised.

  “There’s got to be a reason, though.” Erin was swiping angrily at her screen. I saw Google and then she leaned away. “For Monica, for Jenny. For everything that’s happening now. For the candles and the doll. I just don’t know what it is yet. All these little things make sense though, don’t they? I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Erin, we need to call the police,” I said firmly. “That’s what we need to do.”

  “I know that. I’m just…” She paused, still staring at her screen. “I can’t see any information about her online, nothing about if she’s still alive. Oh, but she’s still on the electoral register with a local postcode. I think it’s the one in Elby. The smaller house. Maybe if somebody else does live there they might have a forwarding address for the place near Stanshope.”

  “Erin—”

  “I’m going to call the police. I think we should meet them at this Elgin Road house. I’m sure I can find it on Google Maps easily enough.”

  “Erin, have you thought about this at all? If she is a killer, and we just turn up at her house, what then?”

  “It won’t be like that,” Erin said. She was still vibrating with nervous, almost manic energy. “We’re going to wait for the police. Please, Harriet. I just want to drive over there and – see the place. We won’t leave the car. It might jog my memory, you know? I can’t just sit in that hotel room while the police…” She looked at me now, properly, and her expression was filled with hope and fear, and I felt myself relent.

  “Erin…”

  “Harriet, look, you kept asking me if I remembered anything at my house. Well, I remember that rubber smell and then being carried out of my window, and then I remember stairs and darkness, and a girl who might have been Jaswinder, and then I remember the woods. All I’m saying is, I don’t remember a man. I’ve never remembered a man. What if this is the truth? I need to know. I have to remember. Please can we just go and see the house? I’ve got to be sure it’s not…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence, but I knew.

  I need to be sure it’s not where I was kept.

  A hundred thoughts crashed over me at once. I was angry that Erin was putting me in this position, but I knew she didn’t have a choice. She hadn’t asked for this, and she didn’t want it. But she needed to know what had happened to her, to Alex and Monica and Jenny Bowles. And I wanted to help.

  “Okay,” I said firmly. “But you call Detective Godfrey right now. We’re not moving until you get her on the phone. And we are not leaving the car.”

  “Fine,” Erin said. “I don’t want to. I just have to see.”

  I drove on autopilot, fear churning inside me as I listened to one half of a conversation Erin reluctantly held with the detective on the phone. She explained everything slowly, everything Adam Bowles had told us and everything we had drawn from it. I couldn’t tell what response she got but she maintained the same level of nervous energy the whole time.

  “They’re going to send somebody to meet us there,” Erin explained afterwards. “Godfrey didn’t give anything away. It’s so hard to tell what she’s thinking.”

  “That’s probably her job.”

  I could just turn around, right now. I knew that. I could pull over on the side of the road and lock the doors, or I could drive straight past this little arrow on the map and keep going until we wound up back at the hotel. That would keep Erin safe, keep us both from getting hurt. But what if Erin was right? What if her memory was vital evidence? What if she held the key to conviction? I felt sick at the thought that I might stand in the way of that. I flicked my indicator and turned.

  “I think we’re almost there,” I said quietly.

  We drove a little further, at a crawling pace now. Ten miles outside of Derby. It wasn’t even a village. It was so tiny, just a corner shop, a post office and a book exchange in a weathered red phone box, and then we were out into a wooded area, the smattering of houses stretched far apart between patches of greenery, little falling-down stone walls bordering the properties from the road.

  I coasted right to the end of the hamlet, where Elgin Road grew winding and bordered by tall trees. There was one more house here. Tucked away so well you could only just make out the shine of a window through foliage that was all green and red and brown.

  “This must be the one,” Erin murmured shakily. “Adam said it was right at the end – this is the last one.”

  The car just about fit onto a muddy spot where I cut the engine. It was getting dark now, and much colder. We sat silently, staring into the dimness as the last of the sun cast golden rays in between the leaves. Erin twitched. From here you couldn’t see the rest of the houses; there was just this one against the trees and the sky.

  “There’s nobody here,” I said, as much to myself as to Erin. There was no Dana Wood as far as we could tell, no car or sign of life, but no police either. I locked the car doors just to be on the safe side. When I turned to face Erin she’d gone green. “Hey, are you okay?”

  She didn’t speak at first, just nodded slowly. Her eyes were wide as she took in all of the
details, the small house and the ramshackle garden. The trees seemed filled with shadows.

  “I need to get out,” she blurted.

  “Erin, no—”

  “I think I’m going to be sick. Let me out. Let me out—”

  Panic surged and I clicked the locks. Erin opened the door to lean out, and then bolted to a bush. She vomited, the sound wrenching through the still air.

  I got out and approached her slowly, fear and anger and frustration still churning. I kept one eye on the house as I patted her back. When she’d righted herself she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and swallowed with a grimace.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  “Back in the car now,” I said.

  But Erin made no move to get back in. Instead, she stood looking at the house. The windows were dark, reflecting what was left of the daylight. I felt very exposed out here. There were no cars nearby, just the wind in the trees and the distant sound of cattle in a field out of sight.

  “Erin,” I warned.

  She just shook her head and started to step towards the house. I reacted, holding out my arm and catching her before she could go any further.

  “Are you kidding me? What part of ‘wait in the car’ do you not understand? Erin, you’re obviously not thinking properly. Do you not understand how dangerous this could be?”

  Erin shrugged me off but didn’t push past me. “This house,” she said. “I have this horrible feeling. I… What if somebody is in there?”

  “Nobody is here.”

  “How do you know? What if… What if she’s going to do it again? What if there’s somebody else in there and she’s going to hurt them? What if that’s where she’s keeping Jenny?” I hadn’t thought of that and it filled me with dread. But if they were her fingers, if she’d bled a lot, surely she would already be dead…? That thought was worse.

  “Erin, that’s not your responsibility,” I tried. “The police are on their way. We need to wait for them.”

  “Why? If they’ll be here soon then we can at least find out if the house is empty?”

  “I’m not just going to watch you walk in there on your own. For God’s sake, Erin, don’t you care about your own safety? What about me?”

  “Of course I do!” she exclaimed. She flung her arms up angrily. “Fucking hell, this isn’t just about us. I can’t stand out here when there might be somebody inside. And anyway, what’s she going to do? She’s one woman; there are two of us and the police will be here any minute.”

  “That’s no excuse to blindly march into danger.” I folded my arms across my chest.

  “If you’re that afraid then you should stay here. I just need to make sure there’s nobody in there.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I snapped. “Well, okay. I’m terrified. But that’s not the point. I just don’t want…” I don’t want you to get hurt. “I just don’t know what we might find in there. It’s not up to us. We’re not prepared.”

  “You don’t have to come!” Erin shouted. I’d never seen her this angry, all of that fear and frustration wound up together, and I hated that it was directed at me. “Just let me go. Jesus Christ, Harriet, you’re not my mother.”

  “Erin, this isn’t fair!”

  “You think any of this is fair?” Erin let out a stringy laugh and I felt my stomach drop. My anger began to subside. Erin was right. The police would be here any minute. “Please, Harriet,” she said softly. “Please. The car’s open; if anybody is in there we’ll get the fuck out.”

  I didn’t move. My whole body felt frozen with fear and indecision.

  The air smelled strongly of autumn: cold wind, damp earth, and somewhere not too far away a bonfire tinged the air with its tell-tale scent. Through the hedgerow there was a little section of garden path – although the garden itself was badly overgrown and hardly contained by the old stone wall. Cracked concrete slabs marked the path to the front door, where pots of plants were thriving only due to their own scraggly hardiness.

  “In and out,” I said. “And I want you to know I’m only agreeing because I know I can’t stop you and I won’t let you go alone. Because I came to you. I dragged you into this. I found you. And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  We both stood very still for a moment. Erin’s gaze was fixed firmly on the house. I felt a shiver start at the top of my spine. Erin’s golden hair blew in the wind and she didn’t push it back. This was a bad decision.

  We headed for the front door together. My brain scrambled for a plan and I hoped to God Erin knew what she was doing.

  I raised my fist and I knocked. Once. Twice.

  Nothing.

  Or, not nothing exactly. It was more like an absence of something. The birds continued to sing. The distant noise of a plane flying overhead hummed through the air. Somewhere a creature scurried back into the hedge.

  Inside, though, was silence. There were no signs of life.

  I looked at Erin again. She frowned.

  “Nobody’s home,” I said.

  Erin reached out, her hand snagging on the door handle.

  “Erin!”

  “I’m just checking,” she said.

  She pushed it and it didn’t resist. The door wasn’t locked.

  “What if Jenny is in there?”

  I didn’t argue. I was almost certain there was nobody here, but what if I was wrong?

  The house was dark. In the grey late-afternoon light I could see that the decor was sparse chintz furniture and dusty wood.

  Erin pushed the door all the way back and we peered inside.

  “Hello?”

  Erin stepped through the door and into the hall. I followed. It was a small space, dim and quiet, splitting off into a lounge on the left that looked very square. It was a tight fit, but I moved quickly so Erin didn’t leave me behind.

  All of the surfaces were as dusty as those by the door, the side tables covered in a thick, uninterrupted film. The dark carpets were grey with it, too.

  This place didn’t just feel empty, it felt abandoned.

  This thought made me feel more confident. Safer. I stepped ahead, picking through the room, cataloguing everything. There was a cabinet up ahead, just through into the small dining area with a table against one wall. The cabinet might have been lovely, once. The cherry wood was lush and glossy beneath the dust; the glass door had been decorated in the corners with little engraved swirls. There was a small golden handle.

  I moved closer.

  “Nobody lives here,” Erin said distantly. She was somewhere behind me now. “I wonder if she’s still paying bills…”

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. The cabinet grew before me, like something out of a nightmare. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from its contents. And then Erin’s silence told me she’d seen them, too.

  The tennis ball, doodled on one side with a red heart; the silver harmonica, tarnished after so long behind glass; the Manchester United shirt, folded neatly on a shelf; the stuffed bear with a hole in its foot and a braided green bracelet around its wrist; the baby doll in her little pink dress – the letters P A U still branded on one foot… They were arranged like fine china.

  I sucked in a breath at the sight of the teddy bear. Remembered what my aunt and uncle had told me once, about Jem’s love of making friendship bracelets for his toys. My body vibrated as I wondered…

  And then something else made me pause. A single flat pebble, a hole drilled at the top and a long black cord through it. It had black marker initials on it. JC.

  “Erin…” I whispered. “Is that yours…?”

  She was at the glass. She lifted her hand to touch it, but stopped herself just as I reached out to prevent her. Her face was ashen. She blinked slowly, taking it all in.

  “Yes,” she said. “Alex made it. I used to wear it around my neck. I must have had it… the night me and Alex were taken. It’s… Why is it here?” She gulped air as if she was drowning. “And that doll. It’s like the one in my bedroom… except older. I think – I
think I remember it. From – wherever she took us. Harriet, why does she – what are we going to do?”

  “We wait for the detectives,” I said firmly. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “But what about the bitch who did this?” Erin spoke through gritted teeth. “Where is she?”

  AFTER

  Mother

  THE RAIN POURED. DANA wondered with a small thrill whether the river might break its banks again. There was flooding elsewhere, so why not here? That would give the police something else to tackle. The house around her was empty. Silent.

  For the first time in – God, more years than she could count – Dana had the place entirely to herself.

  It was for the best, obviously. With everything that had happened she’d decided to go to the backup plan early. It was always meant to be a last-resort contingency, but in the years since she’d come up with it, technology had changed and so had she. She’d grown… Not more reckless. That could never be true. But perhaps less careful. Was that a fair distinction?

  The girl had been… an oversight. If Dana had suspected they were both going to run she’d have done something. Mouse knew, or she thought he might have had an idea, but he’d thought it was a good test of their suitability. Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. It had certainly split the wheat from the chaff.

  Dana peered out of the curtains. The house was spotless – or just a little less than spotless. She’d cleaned the whole place, top to bottom. Made sure it was absolutely pristine. And then she’d let Mouse track in and out a couple of times with dirty feet, artfully arranged a plate of biscuits complete with crumbs. The house, this part of it at least, looked lived in, but tidy.

  Over the years she’d become very good at keeping up appearances. People from her old life came to see her sometimes – dates in the diary well in advance, of course, and she never let them stay long. It was nice to take the risk, sometimes. To liven things up. But this was different. This time she would have to be really on the ball.

  She hadn’t slept. She’d been outside most of the night, checking the lay of the land. The rain hadn’t stopped, and she could hear the rushing of the already-swollen river when she got close. The banks would be a mire, the planes alongside the narrower bits like a swamp. The air was thick with the scent of river water.