“Chambers,” Stone said.
“Damien Chambers. Yes. He told us Charlotte was generally in the company of another girl on the Wednesdays of her music lessons. This girl was apparently with Charlotte this past Wednesday as well. We’ve been looking for her in the hope she’d be able to tell us something about what happened that afternoon. So far, we haven’t been able to find her.”
“But the description of the vagrant,” Eve Bowen said. “That gives us something.”
“Yes. And if you can find the girl and get her to confirm that description—perhaps to confirm that the vagrant was back in the area at the time Charlotte went in to her music lesson—you’d have something more solid to give the authorities.”
“Where else could she be?” Eve Bowen asked. “If not at St. Bernadette’s and not at the Shenkling school?”
“One of the other schools in Marylebone. Or there are other possibilities. Her dancing class, for instance. Someone from the neighbourhood. A child who sees the same psychotherapist. She has to be somewhere.”
Eve Bowen nodded. She raised her fingers to her temple in a thoughtful gesture. “I hadn’t thought before this, but the name…Are you certain it’s a girl we’re looking for?”
“The name’s unusual, but everyone I’ve spoken to says it’s a girl.”
Alexander Stone spoke. “Unusual name? Who is it? Why isn’t it someone we know?”
“Mrs. Maguire knows her. Or at least knows of her. As do Mr. Chambers and at least one of Charlotte’s mates from St. Bernadette’s. She’s apparently a girl Charlotte sees on a catch-as-catch-can basis.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s a girl called Breta,” Eve Bowen said to her husband. “Do you know her, Alex?”
“Breta?” Alexander Stone rose. He went to the fireplace, where he picked up a photograph of a toddler on a swing, himself behind the swing laughing into the camera. “God,” he said. “Jesus.”
“What?” Eve asked.
“Have you spent the last two days looking for Breta?” Stone asked St. James wearily.
“In large part, yes. Until we had the information about the vagrant, it was the only thing we had to go on.”
“Well, let’s hope your information about the vagrant is more viable than your information about Breta.” Stone gave a desperate-sounding laugh. He set the photograph facedown on the mantel. “Brilliant.” He looked at his wife and then away. “Where have you been, Eve? Where the bloody fuck have you been? Do you live in this house or just make visits?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Charlie. I’m talking about Breta. I’m talking about the fact that your daughter—my daughter, our daughter, Eve—doesn’t have a single friend in the world and you don’t even know it.”
St. James felt the ice washing through his veins as what Stone said and what he might mean began to coalesce ineluctably. Eve Bowen, he saw, had finally for a moment lost a vestige of her mien of cool tranquillity.
“What is this?” she demanded.
“The truth,” Stone said. And he laughed again, but this time the laugh rose the scale and teetered on the verge of hysteria. “Breta is no one, Eve. She’s no one. No one. Breta isn’t real. You’ve had your hired gun spend the last two days combing Marylebone for Charlie’s imaginary friend.”
12
CHARLOTTE WHISPERED, “BRETA. Best friend Breta,” but her lips felt caked and her mouth felt like it was filled with crumbs of old dried bread. So she knew that Breta couldn’t hear her and, more important, that she wouldn’t respond.
Her body was achy. Every place it was supposed to bend, it hurt. She couldn’t tell at all how long it had been since she’d made the tape for Cito, but it seemed like days and months and years. It seemed like forever.
She was hungry and thirsty. Her eyes felt like there was a cloud behind them that pressed against her eyelids and filled the rest of her head. She didn’t know when she had ever been so tired, and if she hadn’t felt so draggy in the body and heavy in the arms and legs, she might have been more than a little cut up about the fact that her tummy had started to hurt because it had been so long since the shepherd’s pie and the apple juice. But she could still taste them—couldn’t she?—if she rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
A pang shot through her stomach. Lying where she was on the damp blanket, she dragged her knees up and clutched herself round the middle, which dislodged the blanket a degree or two and exposed her to the dank air of her lightless prison. She said, “Cold,” through those same caked lips, and she released her stomach to tighten her cardigan round her body. She put one hand between her legs to keep it warm. The other she stuffed into her cardigan’s pocket.
She felt him, then, inside that pocket, and her eyes opened to the darkness all round her as she wondered how she’d forgotten little Widgie. Poor friend she was, thinking about herself, wishing she could talk to Breta when all the time Widgie was no doubt cold and anxious and hungry and thirsty, just like Lottie.
She murmured, “Sorry, Widge,” and closed her fingers over the hump of clay, which had—as Cito had carefully explained—been fired and glazed and long ago put into a Christmas cracker for a child who had lived decades and decades before Charlotte’s own birth. She felt the ridges on Widgie’s back and the point at one end that served as his snout. She and Cito had seen him one day among a display of other similarly tiny figurines in a shop in Camden Passage, where they’d gone to scout out something special for Mummy for Mothering Sunday. “Hedgehog, hedgehog!” Lottie had squealed and pointed at the tiny creature. “Cito, he’s just like Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.”
“Not exactly like, Charlie,” Cito had said.
Which was true, because, unlike Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, the hedgehog in question wasn’t wearing a striped petticoat, a cap, or a gown. He wasn’t wearing anything at all except his hedgehog prickles and his especially precious hedgehog face. But despite his lack of attire, he was still a hedgehog and hedgehogs were Lottie’s favourite extraspecial live things. So Cito had bought him for her and presented him to her on the palm of his hand, and he had ridden in her pocket ever since, like a lucky charm, no matter where she went. How had she managed to forget about Widgie when he’d been with her all along?
Lottie took him from her pocket and held him against her cheek. At the touch of him, she felt a blueness settle inside her. He was cold, like ice. She should have kept him warmer. She should have kept him safer. He depended upon her and she had failed him.
She patted in the darkness for a corner of the blanket on which she was lying, and she rolled the hedgehog into it. She said through the lips she could hardly move, so caked they were, “Snug like that, Widge. Don’t you worry. We’ll be going home soon.”
Because they would be going home. She knew that Cito would tell the story that the kidnapper wanted, and that would be the end of all this. No more dark. No more cold. No more bricks for a bed and bucket for a loo. She only hoped that Cito asked Mrs. Maguire for help with his story before he told it. He wasn’t very good at telling stories, and they always started out the same. “Once upon a time, there was an evil, ugly, twisted magician and a very very beautiful little princess with short brown hair and spectacles…” If the kidnapper wanted something different for his story, Cito was going to need Mrs. Maguire’s help.
Lottie tried to gauge how long it had been since she’d made that tape for Cito. She tried to gauge how long it would take Cito to create his story once he heard the tape. She tried to decide what kind of story would please the kidnapper best and she wondered how Cito would get the story to him. Would he say it into the tape recorder like she had? Would he tell it on the phone?
She was too tired to think up answers to her questions. She was too tired to even suppose what the answers might be. With one hand scrunched deep into her cardigan pocket and her other hand tucked tightly between her legs and her knees drawn up so that her stomach didn’t hurt, she closed her eyes and thought
about sleep. Because she was so tired. She was so awfully and terribly tired…
Light and sound crashed upon her simultaneously. They came like lightning, only in reverse. First a furious crank and a desperate smash-boom, then the backs of her eyelids suddenly were red and glowing, and Lottie opened her eyes.
She gave a gasp because it hurt so much to have light falling on her. Not the regulated incandescence from a lantern this time, but real light that came from the sun. It blazed through a doorway in the wall and for a second nothing else was there. Just the light, so bright, so difficult to look at. She felt like a mole, cringing back and squinting and giving a cry that sounded like, “Ahtch,” and curling farther into a ball.
Then through the slit in her eyelids, she saw him. He moved into the doorway and stood there framed with the light at his back. In the triangle of his legs, she could see the colours blue and green and she thought about daytime and the sky and trees, but she couldn’t tell what was what because she hadn’t her specs.
She mumbled, “Need my specs.”
“No,” he said. “That’s what you don’t need. You don’t need your specs.”
“But I—”
“Shut your gob!”
Lottie cowered into her blanket. She could see the shape of him, but with the light behind him—so bright, so furious, like it wanted more than anything just to eat her up—she couldn’t see anything else. Except his hands. On them he wore gloves. In one of his hands he carried the red Thermos. In the other he held something that looked like a tube. Lottie’s eyes fixed on the Thermos thirstily. Juice, she thought. Cold, sweet, and wet. But instead of uncapping the Thermos and pouring her a drink, he threw the tube onto the bricks by her head. She squinted hard and saw it was a newspaper.
“Dad didn’t tell the truth,” he said. “Dad didn’t say a word. Isn’t that too bad, Lottie?”
There was something in his voice…. Lottie felt her eyes prickle and her insides seemed to be trying to shove something hard into her throat. She murmured, “I tried to tell you. I tried to say. Cito can’t tell proper stories.”
“And that’s a problem, isn’t it? But no matter, because all he needs is a little encouragement. We’re going to give it to him, you and I. Are you ready for that?”
“I tried to tell him…” Lottie attempted to swallow. She reached an arm out towards the Thermos. “Thirsty,” she said. She wanted to lift her head from the bricks, she wanted to run into the light behind him, but she couldn’t manage it. She couldn’t manage a thing. She felt tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
What a baby, Breta would have said.
He used his foot to kick the door closed. It swung to, but it did not latch. A strip of light remained, telling Lottie where it was. A strip of light that told her what direction to run in.
But too much of her ached. Too much of her couldn’t move. Too much of her was hungry and thirsty and tired. Besides, he was three steps away, and in less than a second he’d taken those steps and she was looking at his shoes and the bottom of his trousers.
He knelt and she cowered away from him. She felt a lump beneath her head and knew she’d accidentally rolled onto Widgie. Poor Widgie, she thought. I’ve not been much of a friend to Widgie. She moved herself off him.
“That’s better,” he said to her. “When you don’t fight, it’s better.”
Through a blur, she saw him uncap the Thermos. She said, “My specs. Could I have my specs?”
He said, “For this, you don’t need your specs.” He slipped his left hand beneath her neck and drew her head upwards.
“Dad should have run the story,” he said. His fingers tightened. They pulled on her hair. “Dad should have followed the rules.”
“Please…” Lottie felt her insides quiver. Her feet began to scrabble. Her hands clawed at the floor. “Hurts,” she said. “Don’t…My mummy…”
“No,” he said. “This isn’t going to hurt. Not the least little bit. Are you ready for your drink?”
He was holding her firmly yet her spirits lifted. He didn’t mean to hurt her after all.
But instead of pouring juice from the Thermos into its cuplike top, instead of lifting that cuplike top to her mouth, he gripped her neck harder and tipped her head backwards and brought the Thermos itself up to her mouth. He began to pour.
“Swallow,” he murmured. “You’re thirsty. Swallow. It will be all right.”
She coughed. She sputtered. She gulped the liquid. It was cold and wet, but it wasn’t juice. She said, “It isn’t—”
“Juice?” he said. “Not this time. But it’s wet, isn’t it? Fast as well. Come on. Drink it up.”
She struggled against him, but when she squirmed, he only held her tighter. So she knew the way to freedom was to do as he said. She drank and she gulped. He poured and he poured.
And before she knew it, she was drifting and floating. She saw Sister Agnetis. She saw Mrs. Maguire. She saw Mummy and Cito and Fermain Bay. And then the darkness returned.
13
IT WAS FIVE FIFTY-FIVE in the afternoon when Detective Constable Robin Payne received the call he’d been waiting for, three weeks after the conclusion of his training course, two weeks after his official appointment as a detective constable, and less than twenty-four hours after he’d decided that the only way to relieve his anxiety—stage fright, he called it—was to phone his new detective sergeant at home and request to be included in the first case that came up.
“Eager to be someone’s blue-eyed boy, are we?” Sergeant Stanley had asked him shrewdly. “Looking to be CC before you’re thirty years old?”
“I just want to use my skills, Sarge.”
“Your skills, is it?” The sergeant had sniggered. “Believe me, sonny, there’ll be plenty of chances to use your skills—whatever they might be—before we’re through with you. You’ll be ruing the day you ever put your name up for CID.”
Robin doubted that, but he reached into his past for an explanation that the sergeant might understand and accept. “My mum brought me up to prove myself.”
“You’ve years to do that.”
“I know. But will you anyway, sir?”
“Will I what, sprat?”
“Let me be part of the first case that comes up.”
“Hmph. P’rhaps. We’ll see what we’ll see” had been the DS’s response. And when he’d called to grant the request, he’d finished by saying, “So let’s see you engage in some proving, Detective.”
As he left the narrow high street of Wootton Cross behind him, Robin admitted to himself that his earnest request to be assigned to the first case that came up might not have been the best of ideas. His stomach was clenched fiercely round six dried-up tea sandwiches which he’d been in the process of ingesting at his mother’s engagement party—DS Stanley’s telephone call having blessedly rescued him from the unappetising sight of his mother and her corpulent and shiny-pated intended slavering over each other—and at the moment it seemed intent upon heaving those sandwiches upward and ejecting them outward. What in God’s name would DS Stanley conclude about his rookie DC if Robin was sick when he looked at the corpse?
And it was a corpse that he was driving out to view, according to Stanley, a child’s corpse that had been found along the bank of the Kennet and Avon Canal.
“Right beyond Allington,” Stanley had informed him. “There’s a lane that runs by Manor Farm. Cuts through the fields then heads southwest to a bridge. Body’s out there.”
“I know the spot.” Robin hadn’t lived in the county for all of his twenty-nine years without doing his share of country walking. For ages country walking had been the single best way to escape his mother and her asthma. All he ever needed to hear was a place name from the countryside—Kitchen Barrow Hill, Witch Plantation, Stone Pit, Furze Knoll—and a mental image of that location clicked into place in his brain. Geographical perfect pitch, one of his teachers had called it when he was in school. You’ve a natural future in topography, cartography
, geography, geology, so what’ll it be? But none of that had interested him. He wanted to be a policeman. He wanted to right wrongs. He was, in fact, quite passionate to right wrongs. “I can be there in twenty minutes,” he had told his sergeant. He’d gone on to ask anxiously, “But nothing’ll happen before I get there, will it? You won’t draw any conclusions or anything like that?”
DS Stanley had snorted. “If I have the case solved by the time you arrive, I’ll keep it to myself. Twenty minutes, you say?”
“I can do it in less.”
“Don’t kill yourself, sprat. It’s a body, not a fire.”
Nonetheless, Robin made the drive in quarter of an hour, heading north towards Marlborough first, then veering northwest just beyond the village post office, where he clipped along the country road that bisected the lush farmland, the downs, and the myriad tumuli, barrows, and other prehistoric sites which together constituted the Vale of Wootton. He’d always found the vale a peaceful place, his first choice for tramping away the tribulations that were sometimes inherent to living with an invalid mother. It was no more so than on this late afternoon in May when the breeze was ruffling the fields of hay and when his invalid mother was about to be taken off his hands. Sam Corey wasn’t right for her—twenty years too old, all pats on the arse and nuzzles at the neck and sly winks and dim remarks about bouncing on the box springs “when I get you alone, sweet pear”—and Robin couldn’t see what she wanted with him. But he’d smiled when he was required to smile, and he’d lifted his glass to toast the happy couple with warm champagne. And at the sound of the telephone he’d made his escape and tried to put from his mind the antics those two would get up to once he’d shut the front door. One didn’t like to think of one’s mum rolling round with a lover, especially this lover. It just wasn’t nice.
The hamlet of Allington lay in a curve of the road, like the knob of an elbow. It consisted of two farms whose houses, barns, and assorted outbuildings were the most significant structures in the area. A paddock served as the hamlet’s boundary, and in it a herd of cows were lowing, their udders swollen with milk. Robin skirted this paddock and cut through Manor Farm, where a harried-looking woman was shooing three children along the verge in the direction of a thatched, half-timbered house.