“You’re a keen gardener?”
“I’m retired,” Clive said, as if this answered the question.
Sam thought carefully for a polite way to phrase what she was thinking. After a moment she came up with, “How long has the room been like this?”
“After a while it didn’t seem likely that she’d be coming back.”
“What did you do with all her things?”
“Annie dealt with all of that. Most of it went in the bin, I think . . . you know what teenage girls are like. It was a mess, no matter how many times we told her to clean it up.”
Sam nodded, as though she had teenagers herself and could empathise. Trying to keep her tone light, she asked, “Did you keep anything?”
Clive turned to go back downstairs. “As I said, you’ll have to ask Annie.”
“When will she be back?” Sam asked again.
Through an open door Sam caught a glimpse of the master bedroom, the neatly made bed with a satin quilt over it, suitcases open on the floor next to the bed, piles of clothes. All the other doors on the landing were firmly shut. Clive had stopped at the top of the stairs, frozen, one hand on the banister and the other on the wall as if to stop himself pitching forward. He made a small, strange sound.
“Clive?”
Without answering her, he turned and walked past into the bedroom, lowered himself onto the edge of the bed slowly. Dropped his head into his hands. Then he took a deep breath in and sat up straight again, offered her a brief, tight smile through the open door.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just needed . . . a moment.”
“What is it?” Sam asked.
He shook his head slowly. “I . . . I can’t. I’m finding all this a bit . . . difficult . . .”
“Difficult? You mean—the burglary?”
“All of it. Annie is—she can’t cope with it very well. I’m worried about her all the time, with Scarlett being missing and then suddenly reappearing. She is very fragile. I think she’s—I don’t know. It feels as if she is . . . falling apart.”
On the last two words his voice cracked and broke and he lowered his head into his hands again.
“Why don’t you come back downstairs?” Sam asked. “Let’s have another coffee and talk it through, shall we?”
Downstairs, Caro was in the hallway with her coat on, examining the wedding portrait of Scarlett’s parents with a smile on her face, as though she was a family friend. When Sam came down she directed a raised eyebrow at Caro, and a quick nod to the kitchen, and they all filed in without another word.
“Sit down,” Sam said to Clive gently.
While Sam pulled up the chair next to Clive’s, Caro set about filling the kettle and rinsing out the mugs.
“Annie needs counseling,” Clive said, his voice an octave higher, “but she won’t go. She says nobody understands but I don’t see why she won’t even try. She’s been on so many different tablets from the doctor, I can’t keep track of them all. I don’t think they do any good. She wakes up crying every day. She doesn’t sleep. She comes downstairs in the middle of the night and sits here waiting for Scarlett to come home.”
He paused for breath, mouth open a little. Sam looked at the protruding lip, a pout like a little boy being told off.
“You mean recently?”
Clive shook his head. “Every night. She hasn’t slept a whole night since Scarlett went, even with tablets. And she makes Juliette worse. They wind each other up. Juliette gets fretful and then Annie panics that something’s going to happen to Juliette. She hasn’t wanted to let Juliette out of her sight since she tried to take her own life, and that was—well, it was ten years ago. Ten years of this . . . hell. And now Scarlett’s back, and neither of them is able to cope with it! I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“It sounds as if you’re going through a lot, Clive,” Caro said. The kettle was boiling and she had found the coffee.
“I’m so tired,” he said, his voice trailing away. “So tired of it all.”
“You’re the one that has to hold everything together, aren’t you,” Caro was saying. “It’s a lot for one person to take on for all this time.”
That wasn’t what Sam thought at all, and quite probably it wasn’t what Caro was thinking either. What Sam actually thought amounted to something along the lines of you selfish bastard, your daughter has been through ten years of hell and you’re feeling sad and sorry for yourself because you had to carry on with your life?
“I worry that she’s going to do something,” Clive said then.
“Do something? You mean—harm herself?”
“I don’t know. She just seems so unpredictable, so unstable. I don’t know which one of them’s worse.”
“I’m sorry, Clive,” Caro said, “you’ve lost me. Are you talking about Annie? Or Juliette?”
He gave a short grunt. “Both of them. They’re both as bad as each other. I’m walking on eggshells the whole time. Every single day.”
“Sorry, but what did you mean, you worry that she’s going to do something? What sort of thing?”
“Annie has panic attacks, spends most of the day crying. Juliette sometimes harms herself. Usually we don’t go out and leave her, not now.”
Sam looked at Caro, who pulled a face over Clive’s shoulder.
“I just wish things had been different,” Clive was saying. “I wish Scarlett had just listened to me, behaved herself. She was only fifteen. Just a girl.”
Just a girl.
SCARLETT
Wednesday 24 October 2012, 06:23
“We can run.”
Saying it into the darkness made it suddenly real. It brought back a memory, of standing in some trees in the early hours of a cold night, trying to make eye contact with a scared girl, trying to get her to summon up a bit of spirit and fight back. It hadn’t done Yelena any good, back then. It had cost her her life . . . and possibly saved Scarlett’s.
The same thing might happen again. Or, this time, it might be Scarlett’s turn to get the bullet through the head.
In the darkness there was a soft, sarcastic grunt. “You crazy.”
“If we both run, when they open the door . . . they won’t expect it. It will take them seconds to react.”
“Where we run to?”
Scarlett kept quiet. There was no answer to that, and besides, they had to run in different directions—that was the whole point. Outside, she could hear footsteps again, voices. They’d already been in this hell-hole for what felt like hours, it must be nearly morning, and it sounded as if the men were going to come for them any minute now. Whether the girl was in agreement or not—and it didn’t sound as if she was—there was no point discussing it further. Careful not to make a sound, Scarlett slipped off the stupid high-heeled shoes. The metal of the container was freezing against her bare feet. She stuck her nail under the rubber heel and twisted it off, feeling inside for the roll of notes. Her fingers were numb, trembling.
They were coming closer, she could hear them. She had seconds, maybe.
She tugged the money free, tearing it a little but not caring now. Then she had it. Shoved the notes into her bra, pushed the heel back together.
The men were outside now, laughing and joking with each other as if they were about to go out for a drink with a mate. Not watch two girls die, while they filmed it. Scarlett was shaking from head to foot. She wouldn’t be able to keep to her feet, never mind run.
The metal door scraped open and as the crate flooded with light—it was still dark outside but compared to the inside of the container it was broad daylight—Scarlett half-closed her eyes, screaming like a banshee and launching herself forward, stilettos in one hand, gripped and held overhead like a weapon.
The man grabbed at the sleeve of the woolen coat. Scarlett spun and slipped out of it, leaving him clutching the coat and not her.
She ran.
There was shouting from behind her. The concrete floor slipped under her feet and she ran into
the dark warehouse, skidding behind containers. She heard the metal door clanging shut again, and then screaming from somewhere else, another woman—the girl who had been with her? Was she running too? It was so dark that Scarlett could just make out the metal walls of containers on either side. Her bare feet made no noise as she ran, checking around each corner before moving on. She could hear their footsteps—how many?—two, three of them?
Scarlett crouched against a container, breathing. She had lost the advantage. She should be out of here by now. Without the distraction of the other girl they only had her to focus on. She peered around the end of the container. It was a blank wall, breeze blocks: the back of the warehouse. It was a dead end.
Concentrate.
She held back a sob, hugging her knees to stop the shaking, the stilettos still clutched in her hand. Her feet were icy and it was so cold she was shivering. A breeze lifted the hair from her cheeks, a cold blast from somewhere. Footsteps again, urgent whispers. They were on the move again. The sounds echoed around the walls, making it impossible to tell where they were coming from. Scarlett’s eyes had grown accustomed to the lighting now and she could see more than just shapes—the corrugated metal ceiling, far overhead, all the way to the other end of the warehouse, just visible in the narrow space between two of the crates. And in that split second she saw a figure cross the gap. She gasped and shrank back.
This was no good. They would keep looking until they found her, and then she would die. She had to get out.
She headed for the back wall: there might be a fire escape or something. The breeze chilled her flushed cheeks. There had to be a door.
The crate next to her was much larger than the others; the wall seemed to go on and on. And then she realized it was the soundproofed room they were using as a film studio. If they’d bothered to soundproof it, that must mean that they were bothered about people hearing what was going on! Which meant that there must be people nearby. Probably they did their business overnight, when the other units in the industrial estate were empty, but, even so, they didn’t like noise.
On the wall next to her Scarlett saw a big red button in a box. It was a fire alarm. Would it work? Would it distract them? She took hold of her stiletto and smacked the glass as hard as she could. Almost instantly the warehouse seemed to come alive with sound, a shrieking, wailing clamor that rang in her ears and echoed from wall to metal wall.
She ran.
A wall rose in front of her—the corner of the warehouse, a thin gap—not big enough to squeeze through—behind the soundproofed room and the far wall. Another dead end. She turned sharply and ran back the way she had come, sobbing now because over the din nobody could have heard her anyway. It had been a stupid thing to do because now she couldn’t hear footsteps, couldn’t hear their shouts, never mind whispers.
Then she saw it—the gray outline of light, the shape of a door. When she reached it she realized there was a bar across it. A fire exit—thank God! She shoved, expecting it to be chained shut or rusted or painted closed. The door stayed shut. She shoved again, pushed harder, and this time it gave, slightly.
From behind her came a bang and a spark of bright light next to her face as a bullet hit the metal door. They had her now.
She shoved the door one last time with all her strength and it flew open, propelling her out into the darkness, over the tufts of rough grass that had grown up around the door outside and had held it closed.
And now, the cold, fresh air giving her a new blast of energy, Scarlett ran.
LOU
Sunday 3 November 2013, 12:30
With no further news about Scarlett’s whereabouts, Lou tried Stephen Waterhouse again, who managed to answer this time. He seemed to have regained his former belligerence.
“How are you getting on with McDonnell?” Lou asked.
“Why do you ask?” he said, his tone anything but friendly.
“Just that when my sergeant saw him yesterday he indicated that he was aware of the surveillance—”
“He always tries that one. It’s a bluff. Unless someone’s tipped him off, that is.”
Lou hesitated. “Nobody on my team knows about our discussion in the SB briefing, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Well, I heard you’ve got a leak.”
Lou paused again, trying to gauge the tone of his voice; eventually she decided he was trying to wind her up, get her properly angry so she’d say something unprofessional. What was wrong with him?
“I trust my team, but I still don’t discuss things that aren’t relevant to the jobs we’ve got. Unless you’ve got some evidence to back up that accusation, I suggest you wind your bloody neck in.”
Waterhouse gave a throaty laugh, which reassured her that it had been a bad joke. “Just don’t expect me to keep you updated with what my teams are doing.”
Time to change the subject. “Did you see my report about my meeting with Annie Rainsford?” Lou asked.
“Yes, all very interesting, but what they failed to tell you ten years ago isn’t actually that much use to us right now, is it? That Greek boy, whoever he is or was, could be anywhere on the planet now. Probably running his own little crime empire. Or running for parliament. And since we can’t even ask Scarlett to confirm her mother’s account . . .”
“As you know,” Lou said evenly, “she’s twenty-five. She hasn’t committed any crime, as far as we’re aware, so we don’t have a reason to arrest her or hold her against her will.”
“I was counting on you to persuade her to engage with us,” Waterhouse said.
“You didn’t actually want me to have anything to do with it,” Lou said, “in case you’d forgotten.”
He hung up on her.
Well, let’s hope I never have to ask a favor of SB, she thought. Bastard shitting tosser.
There were thirty-four emails—on a Sunday, for crying out loud, it never stopped—and yet Lou was still distracted by the crime report of the burglary at 14 Russet Avenue. It would be interesting to know if the unusual features of this offense weren’t unusual after all. It was easy to lose touch with what was going on in the area and it was possible that someone out there was actively targeting older cars, or even Volvos. Russet Avenue might just be part of a crime series and therefore it might be nothing more than a coincidence that the Rainsford property had been targeted. Yet this wasn’t the sort of thing she could look into without drawing attention to the Rainsfords and her interest in them.
One possible solution presented itself—someone she knew she could trust.
Date: 3 November 2013
To: PSE Jason MERCER
From: DCI Lou SMITH
Re: Crime series
Hi, Jason,
Could you let me know if there are any current crime series in Briarstone involving car key burglaries? If so, what the series criteria are?
Thanks,
Lou
SCARLETT
Wednesday 24 October 2012, 07:09
Scarlett ran without stopping, ran and ran until she was out of the industrial area and on a wide main road, with shops on one side and apartment buildings on the other. The traffic was building as dawn started to break. She slowed to a walk when she realized nobody was behind her, and, because the soles of her feet were stinging, she stopped and put the stupid shoes back on. She kept to the shadows of the buildings, realizing that cars were slowing down as they passed her.
I need clothes, she thought, pulling her thin blouse tighter across her chest, folding her arms over it. I need food. I need somewhere to hide, to think.
She was vulnerable here, on the main road. If they followed her in the car, they would spot her. She turned into a passageway to the right, a stairwell, and through the other side was a sort of open space, a courtyard shared by the flats; across the middle, a washing line was strung between four concrete posts in a wide Z. There was a wall running at head height, and beyond it a row of dumpster bins. She rounded the corner and saw another passageway leadin
g back to the road. A low wall separated the ground-floor apartment from the passageway, bikes chained together behind it.
She sank down slowly, catching her breath.
What to do next? Maybe if she waited an hour or two, till it was light and busy, they would have given up looking for her, if they were even bothering at all. In any case, it couldn’t hurt to wait here; she was out of the wind. Scarlett kept thinking of the overheard conversations, late at night; the other girls talking about the men who were sent to test them out, and what happened to them afterward. None of them knew that someone else might come to take you away too—a man who pretended to be your rescuer. Presumably most of the girls who had gone with Stefan had died. And if any of them, like her, had managed to get away . . . who would ever risk going back?
She thought about ways in which she might be able to get a message back to the other girls, at the same time knowing that she never would. Even if she could summon up the courage, she didn’t know where the apartment was. She didn’t even know any of their real names.
A while later Scarlett heard a sound and looked up. A woman was in the courtyard, hanging washing on the line, her back to Scarlett. She looked young, Scarlett’s age or maybe a little older, and she was dressed in blue jeans and a pastel pink sweater that looked as though it would be soft to touch. Too tired to move, rooted to her doorstep with a mixture of exhaustion and fear, Scarlett could not tear her gaze away from the woman. The washing she was hanging up was a mixture of baby clothes—brightly colored dresses and tights and onesies—and adult gear: a man’s boiler suit, three blue shirts with some sort of logo on them. A ray of golden dawn sunlight burst unexpectedly through the space between the apartment blocks, illuminating the scrubby patch of grass. The woman’s hair, brown and wavy and loose down her back, almost to her waist, shone. Scarlett couldn’t take her eyes off her: the shape of her, the normal clothes, the sheer ordinariness of a life that involved hanging out washing early on a weekday morning.