Scarlett had waited so long to ask that question. And then, when she’d seen her mother in the house in Kingswood Road, she’d known the answer anyway. Annie hadn’t realized what she’d witnessed. She had thought Scarlett had gone off with Nico. And the next morning, when Scarlett wasn’t back—when she didn’t come back, even though they were supposed to be going home—she couldn’t very well own up to having seen Scarlett being pushed into the back of a van the night before.
And so it had been easier to say nothing, to have seen nothing, to have no idea where Scarlett had gone.
Annie had said something that had summed it up so well. “Sometimes you make mistakes. And if you don’t own up to them, sooner or later they turn into bigger mistakes and bigger ones, and then you can’t admit to them at all, ever.”
And she hadn’t owned up. Even after Scarlett came back, even after she had been brought face-to-face with the consequence of what she’d failed to do.
Technically Scarlett had survived. In reality she had been dead inside from the moment in the warehouse when the other girl, the one in her crate, the Dutch girl she’d never even seen, had been silenced with a shot. The bullet had taken Scarlett’s soul along with it. She was living, breathing, but not actually alive.
And so there was no point continuing, was there? Not anymore. This was how she was going to end it. Making her own decision. This was hers, her life, what was left of it, anyway: and she was going to choose the leaving of it. Not them. Not even Juliette.
She leaned forward, slightly, the wind whistling up the side of the building and pushing her gently back. Holding her steady.
A few more minutes.
SAM
Tuesday 5 November 2013, 09:52
Caro Sumner’s car was parked at the front of the Travel Inn when Sam arrived. She had half-expected—hoped—to find Caro waiting outside for her.
The reception desk was deserted, as it always was. Sam went through to the bar, pulling her mobile phone out of her bag and getting ready to call Caro’s number.
“Sam! Over here.”
Caro stood up and crossed the bar to where Sam stood. Juliette was sitting upright, her back to them.
“Where’s Scarlett?” Sam said.
“Let’s just go out here a minute.” Caro steered Sam back out toward the hotel reception, out of Juliette’s hearing.
“What? Caro, just tell me. Where is she?”
“Juliette told me Scarlett left this morning, about an hour ago. She’s been telling me all about it, Sam. We need to get her statement.”
Sam was feeling panic rising in her chest. “Where’s she gone?”
“Juliette doesn’t know. Or if she does, she’s not telling me. But Juliette thinks Scarlett might have had something to do with Clive’s murder.”
Sam groaned. “I know, I know! We need to find her.”
“I rang the office. There are patrols out now, looking for her. In the meantime I’m trying to get something useful out of Juliette. Maybe you’ll have more luck than me.”
Sam said, “I’ll be there in a minute. You go and sit with her. I just need to make a few calls.”
Sam went out to the car park, dialing Lou’s number first. Voicemail again, damn it!
“It’s Sam again. I’m at the hotel; Scarlett has taken off again. Caro has put out a call for patrols to do a search. I’m going to see if I can get anything useful out of Juliette about where she might have gone. Then I’ll go and look, too. Ma’am, I think Scarlett got Paul Stark to attack her parents. We need to find her straight away.”
She rang off. There was something else she could try. She scrolled through the address book until she got to “Spare phone.”
It rang and rang. Just as Sam was about to give up, the call was answered.
“Hello? Scarlett? Can you hear me?”
There were noises on the line. Wind, and something that might have been a sniff, a breath.
“Scarlett. Talk to me.”
“It’s okay, Sam,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She laughed, a short bitter laugh. “I don’t even know.”
“I’ll come and get you,” Sam said. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
“It won’t. But it doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t.”
“Scarlett, please, let me come and get you. We can talk about it . . .”
“I left you a letter. It’s at the reception desk at the hotel.”
“Wait, hold on . . .”
Scarlett rang off.
Fuck it!
Sam redialed, but this time there was no answer. She rang the office number, waited and waited. Eventually Les Finnegan answered. “Incident Room, can you hold the line . . .”
“Les! It’s Sam. Wait a minute, this is urgent.”
“I’m on the other line, guv.”
“Never mind that. I need you to get the Comms unit to set up a live cellsite trace.”
“What?”
“This is the number: write it down. 07101 405441. Got that?”
“Yep. What’s the rush on it?”
“Scarlett Rainsford has gone missing. Talk to the boss, get authorization. It’s really urgent—Scarlett’s got that phone on her. Please, Les, go find the boss right now and get her to set it up. And then get her to call me. Okay?”
“Message received, guv. Doing it now.”
Sam stood still for a moment, thinking hard and fast and wishing she knew what to do, where to start. There was nobody behind reception. Sam rang the white doorbell on the counter, wondering if it even worked. A minute later a young man emerged from the back office, smiling as if it was his first day on the job.
“Can I help you?”
“There’s a letter for me. Sam Hollands.”
He had a root around on the desk, then went into a drawer, shuffling through papers and boxes of staples. Come on, Sam thought. Clearly they didn’t often have letters left for people. Eventually he found it, bringing it forth with triumph. It was a white envelope upon which was written a single word in black ballpoint pen. SAM.
Sam went back into the bar. Juliette was still sitting bolt upright, Caro next to her, head cocked to one side, looking up at Juliette’s face searchingly, an encouraging smile on her lips. She was trying her hardest to get through to her, and by the look of it nothing was working.
“Juliette,” Sam said, sitting down on the other side of her. “My name is Detective Sergeant Sam Hollands. I’ve been spending a bit of time with your sister in the past few days.”
Juliette had tears pouring down her cheeks, dripping from her chin onto her pink sweater. She wasn’t wiping them away. Wasn’t moving.
“Did she mention me, at all, Juliette?”
Nothing. Just more tears. The silence from her was unnerving.
“I really care about her. I want so much to help. I think I can help, Juliette, but I need to find her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Juliette said, her voice just a whisper. “I let her down.”
“How did you let her down, Juliette?”
“I didn’t try to stop her.”
Sam breathed. Take your time, don’t rush her . . . “Try to stop her doing what?”
Juliette gave a deep, shuddering sigh. More tears fell. “She went out to meet that boy. I should have stopped her. I knew they’d be angry, they’d kill her.”
“Who?”
“Dad. He hit her when he knew she was seeing the boy. She went out to meet him and I didn’t stop her. And she . . . she never came back . . .”
“She’s talking about the abduction,” Caro said redundantly.
Sam shot her a look. “But Scarlett’s all right, Juliette. She did come back. It took her a long time, but she came back for you, didn’t she?”
“She phoned up and they didn’t believe it was her . . .”
“When?”
“A year ago. Scarlett rang the house. I kept saying I knew she wasn’t dead, I knew it, but they didn’t want
to help. They pretended that it wasn’t her, that it was a hoax, but they knew it was real. She needed money, she needed their help, and he just hung up on her.”
“Your dad?”
Juliette nodded, slowly. “And then she came to find me, when they went out. And she was really alive.”
“She is alive, Juliette. But I really need you to help me find her. Can you do that? What did she say to you this morning?”
“She said . . . she said if she went away again I would be all right now. I’d be all right on my own.”
“Because of your mum and dad, what’s happened to them?”
Juliette nodded. Her voice was hoarse. “She said she had got it all wrong. I don’t understand—I don’t understand why she had to go. I tried to get her to stay but she wouldn’t. I did everything I was supposed to. I don’t know why they ended up hurt; that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Juliette, what do you mean? What was supposed to happen?”
“We needed money. We were going to move away, me and Scarlett, get a flat together. But we didn’t have any money, so we were going to get Scarlett’s mate to pretend to break in. We were going to share the money with him. I had to leave the window unlocked downstairs. I told her where everything was. I wrote down Dad’s PIN. That was my job.”
Caro said, “So you and Scarlett planned to help someone burgle the house?”
Juliette nodded.
“And your mum and dad? What happened to them?”
Juliette wailed again, sudden and loud. “I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Did they know you’d been meeting up with Scarlett?” Sam asked. “Did they know she was back in Briarstone, before we told them last week?”
“No, they didn’t know. Scarlett made me promise not to tell that I’d seen her. But she’s gone, she’s gone. I don’t know what to do without her. I want Scarlett; I want her to come back!”
“Where do you think she might have gone, Juliette? Please think.”
Juliette closed her eyes. “She gave me a letter.”
From her pocket Juliette brought out an envelope, folded and creased. Caro took it, unfolded it. On the envelope, a single word: JULIETTE. Caro passed the envelope over to Sam.
Sam’s phone was ringing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
As she walked away, she heard Juliette saying, “Can I go home? I want to go home.”
Sam ran out to the reception area before she answered. “Lou? Did you get my messages?”
“Yes. We’ve got a live trace on that number, Sam. It’s in the town, near the shopping center. That’s the best we can manage. I’ve got more people out there but no sightings so far. How’s Juliette?”
“I’m going to leave her with Caro; can you send a patrol out to get them from the Travel Inn? Juliette just told us they planned the burglary, to get money to go away together, make a fresh start.”
“And the attack on the parents?”
“She doesn’t seem to think that was part of the plan. She seems pretty traumatized, though. I’m not sure she really knows what’s going on.”
“I’ll get someone out straight away, don’t worry. Reggie Stark’s on his way into custody. They’re doing a search now. I just heard they’ve got a pair of trainers from the wheelie bin outside.”
Despite the pressure, Sam managed a smile at the thought of this. One of the Tac Team was going to earn an anecdote and several pints out of that one.
“And the baseball bat was under the bed. Looks as if it’s been very badly washed.”
SCARLETT
Tuesday 5 November 2013, 09:52
She was crying now, but tears didn’t help. She had learned that a long time ago, but for some reason she couldn’t stop them.
This was foolish; this was just wasting time. It wasn’t as if Sam wanted any more to do with her. She’d made that clear, crystal clear, last night.
Below, far below, Scarlett could hear sirens. It felt as if she was running out of time. She saw the flashing blue lights of the police car, giant black letters on its roof, chasing past the building. Nobody had seen her. Nobody knew she was here. She was invisible, half-dead already, disappearing. She had been disappearing since the minute the Dutchwoman had given her this coat.
Just a little shift forward, and she would fall.
“Bye, Sam,” Scarlett whispered into the wind. “Bye, Jul.”
05/11/2013, 09:54
Dispatch Log 1105-0175
•CALL FROM STACEY JOHNSON DOB 19/12/87 EMPLOYEE AT BRIARSTONE BOROUGH COUNCIL
•CALLER STATES SHE CAN SEE FROM THE OFFICE WINDOW THAT THERE IS A GIRL SITTING ON THE EDGE OF THE ROOF OF THE CAR PARK
•THIS IS THE ROOF OF THE SHOPPING CENTER CAR PARK ABOVE THE BUS STATION
•PATROLS DISPATCHED PZ22 PZ88
•PZ88: CONFIRMED, FEMALE SITTING ON THE WALL, SOUTH SIDE OF THE SHOPPING CENTER CAR PARK TOP FLOOR
•PZ88: ESTABLISHING CORDON AT BASE OF CAR PARK
•ARRIVA NOTIFIED, BUSES TO BE DIVERTED VIA KING STREET
•INITIATING PERSON IN CRISIS PROCEDURES
•HNs TEAM NOTIFIED
•DS 9004 RYMAN ACKNOWLEDGED, WILL ATTEND
SAM
Tuesday 5 November 2013, 10:12
Sam was heading for the bus station—because after all it was worth a try—when she heard the exchange coming over the Airwaves unit in the car.
“All units, person in crisis, roof of bus station car park . . .”
By the time Sam made it there, there was already a patrol car parked at an angle across the access road, and a PC winding scene tape around a lamp-post to stop people getting too close. Sam stopped as close as she could without causing an obstruction, got out of the car and sprinted across to the officer.
“Sorry, you can’t get any closer . . .”
“DS Sam Hollands,” Sam puffed. “I think I know who that is, up there. Please, I need to get to talk to her . . .”
SCARLETT
Tuesday 5 November 2013, 10:18
“I don’t want to worry you,” the man said. “I’ve just come up here to talk to you for a bit, is that okay?”
Scarlett didn’t answer. She could not acknowledge him, this man who’d turned up, was standing a few meters behind her, to her right. He couldn’t stop her, couldn’t do anything. There was no point in him being there, so there was no point in acknowledging that he was real.
“My name’s Mick,” he said. “I’m with the police. Can you tell me your name?”
Police—of course he was police. It wouldn’t be some random passer-by, would it, on the roof of the car park?
If he was police, then Sam would know she was here.
“I’d really like it if you could just come down off the wall. Do you think you could do that? Just for a moment or two, while we have a talk?”
The wind was getting stronger. It was cold up here and her cheeks were already numb with it, her teeth chattering a staccato rhythm in her head. All of this would be done; all of it would be over. No more cold, no more nightmares, no more waking up with a jolt because you’d forgotten where you were and who you were with—bracing yourself against an impact because that was all you’d come to expect.
“Can you just tell me your name? Just to let me know you can hear me, because for all I know I’m talking to myself right now, eh? Can you just say something, to let me know you can hear me?”
Out of the corner of her eye she could see him, the shape of him, although turning her head to look properly felt like way too much effort. No, she wouldn’t tell him her name. He’d find out soon enough. She didn’t even know what to call herself anymore. . . Stella, Katie, Scarlett. Were any of those people even her? If she didn’t have a name of her own, did she even exist?
SAM
Tuesday 5 November 2013, 10:20
They had set up a rendezvous point at the foot of the ramp leading up to the car park roof, just out of sight of Scarlett and the trained negotiator, who Sam learn
ed was called Mick Lister. The RVP location comprised two men standing around, at the moment, but there was an air of organization hanging over it which Sam found instantly reassuring.
As she approached with a uniformed officer by her side, one of the men looked up. “You’re DS Hollands?” he asked, holding out his hand for her to shake.
“Yes.”
“DS John Ryman—I’m coordinating. This is Pete Watson—he’s recording. Have you been in a situation like this before?”
“No.”
“Okay. We need to do a very quick briefing. I understand you know the person we have sitting on the wall out there?”
“I haven’t seen her yet . . . but I’m missing a witness, and I met her here once before.”
“Right. Then I need you to come with me, quiet as you can; we’ll just go to the other side of the ramp so you can get a visual and hopefully you’ll be able to confirm identity, okay?”
They walked a little way up the ramp until Sam could see across the empty car park, across the puddles and the marked spaces, to the concrete wall on the far side. She could see a shape huddled into an oversized khaki jacket, short dark hair. It was definitely Scarlett, her back to the ramp, hands on the concrete wall by her sides as if any second she was going to lever herself off the edge. Just behind her, to her right, was a man, standing with his feet comfortably apart; and behind him, the only one glancing back toward the ramp, was a third figure, another man.
Sam turned to John Ryman and nodded. In turn he raised a hand to the man on the roof, who took a step forward to his colleague, said something and then headed back toward the ramp.
“That’s your witness?” Ryman asked, when the second man had joined them.
“Yes, her name is Scarlett Rainsford. Her parents were attacked last night: her father is dead and her mother is seriously injured. Her sister is with my colleague back at the Travel Inn. It’s possible they had something to do with the attack.”
“All right. Just take a moment, yeah?”
What? Sam looked at him in surprise and realized then that she was shaking. Pull yourself together, Sam. “I’m fine. Just so cold up here, isn’t it?”