Anything for Her (14 page)

‘Dad bought me it.’

Jessica suddenly gains respect for the man she had previously judged. He doesn’t belittle his son for wanting to play with toys that society has deemed he shouldn’t. She will have to fight the urge to praise him when she leaves.

‘Nice Dad.’

‘Mum and Dad say I should only play with my dolls with them, though – or with Brooke. Some of my friends might not understand why I want to play with dolls, they say.’

‘I think that’s an excellent idea. Well done Mum and Dad.’

‘And Brooke,’ he adds.

‘Yes, and Brooke.’

She spots a doll’s leg poking out from under the bed.

‘I used to hide my comics.’

‘You read comics?’

‘Yeah. All my friends played with pink toy ponies and
Barbies like this one, but I preferred to read comic books and pretend I was Batman. They didn’t understand why I didn’t want to play with all the pink stuff. They thought I was weird.’

‘People think I’m weird too.’

‘What I’ve learned, Dominic, is that it isn’t us that’s weird, for not following society’s rules, it’s those who cannot think for themselves that are the weird ones.’

‘Yeah,’ he says, smiling in agreement.

She smiles at him and looks around his room, admiring the time and effort that went into decorating it.

She wonders if Louise and Michael did it themselves, or whether they paid a professional to do it.

Silence sits between them for a few seconds.

‘Are you here about Brooke?’ he asks.

‘I am. I’m trying to find her.’

‘I hope you do.’

‘I hope I do, too. I was wondering if I could ask you about her. Mum and Dad told me how close you both are, so I thought you would be the best person to speak to.’

‘You saw my mum?’ he asks.

‘Yes. She’s very pretty.’

‘Yes, she is,’ he replies, smiling proudly. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Dad said that Brooke was quite scared. Screamed
sometimes. Do you know why?’

‘I’m not allowed to know,’ he says.

‘Not allowed to know what?’

She focuses her eyes on the doll and strokes its hair, trying not to pressure the boy.

‘Mum and Brooke are sad. They have a secret. Brooke told me that only her and Mummy can know about it.’

‘But you do know something? Something you’re not allowed to know?’

He nods his head, his eyes on his red toy car, not her.

‘Do you mind telling me what you know? It could really help me find Brooke. I won’t tell her or your mum that you told me.’

He hesitates, torn between betraying his mother and sister and helping this stranger.

‘They said they hurt people.’

‘When was this?’

‘Ages ago.’

‘Do you remember exactly what they said? Who said it to who?’

‘Brooke was crying. She said she wanted to die because of what she did. Mum said they were in it together. She had done wrong, too. They couldn’t take it back, but they could try and keep it to themselves and move on. Brooke said she kept dreaming of hurting those people that night.’

‘That night,’ she repeats, trying to remember every word so she can write it down, having heard similar things from the boy’s father just moments before.

‘Yeah, they said that a lot. I felt bad for spying, so I ran upstairs.’

‘Thank you for telling me that, Dominic. Hopefully it will help me find your sister much faster.’

‘There’s something else,’ he says.

‘Yes, Dominic?’

‘I have to show you.’

He gets up and leaves the room. Jessica clambers to her feet, her ankles and buttocks numb from sitting with crossed legs.

‘This is Brooke’s room,’ he says, looking up at Jessica standing in the doorway. He sits on the bed.

‘It’s lovely.’

The walls are duck-egg blue and the bed white, with white bedding and faux fur throws. A bookshelf dominates the room; it displays a collection of literary classics:
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Rebecca
.

‘Your sister likes to read?’ she asks, standing in front of the bookshelf and admiring the missing girl’s taste.

‘Yeah. She likes to write, too.’

He puts his feet to the floor and kneels down before the bed, digging his hands under the mattress. His little hands pull out a black journal. It’s tattered and
worn; the pages have been turned many times. The corners of the cover have begun to curl inwards with age.

‘It’s Brooke’s. When she’s sad, she writes in it sometimes.’

Jessica takes the journal in her hand and flicks through the pages. It seems to be filled with prose and poetry.

I cannot clean the blood,
From my hands in which it stains
.

I cannot escape the guilt,
In which it has me slain
.

‘Do you mind if I borrow this, Dominic? I promise I won’t tell Brooke.’

‘It’s okay, she will want to write in it when you find her.’

‘You’re a good boy, Dominic. Thank you.’

He smiles awkwardly.

‘I’m going to go and look for Brooke now, but I’ll keep this journal and the secret you told me really, really safe.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Stay safe.’

Jessica leaves Brooke’s room and heads downstairs. She repeats in her mind the secret Dominic had told her, refusing to forget a single word
before she can write it down.

‘I’m not allowed to know.’

‘She wanted to die because of what she did.’

‘They said they hurt people.’

‘
They were in it together.’

Her mind reels with the endless possibilities, and many unanswered questions buzz impatiently to be answered.

The more Jessica discovers about the Leightons, the more intrigued she becomes. Most of all, she is becoming increasingly concerned for Brooke’s welfare. She knows in her heart of hearts that this isn’t a teen runaway case.

Where are you, Brooke? And what are you hiding?

Chapter Thirty

Louise sits in the living room by the fire, listening to the crackle of burning wood.

She cannot focus on anything other than Brooke’s disappearance and DI Dean attempting to dig up the dirt beneath her feet, in the hope of finding her buried secrets.

At midday, two police officers from the Gloucestershire Constabulary, dressed in their black uniforms, arrived at the front door. The first officer had a severe frown permanently engraved into his brow, along with a patronising smile that she longed to punch. The second officer, an attractive and astute-looking younger man, stood silently and greeted her with an authoritative nod.

A swab of saliva was taken from the inside of her cheek with a large cotton bud, and inserted into a clear tube. The officer wrote on the label and placed it in a clear evidence bag before putting it in his briefcase. Apologies were made, as if they were to blame. What does one say to a mother who has lost her daughter? What could possibly be said that has any merit or meaning, without it sounding typical, rehearsed or pointless?

Louise said nothing. She stared in front of her,
longing for them to leave. Their presence reminded her of her missing child, that this was real life and not some sick, twisted nightmare from which she would soon wake.

When the officers left with the DNA sample, the search team entered the house. Louise slipped into her coat by the door. She ventured back into the kitchen to grab a bottle of red wine from the rack, and hid it inside her coat, before escaping the house, which had suddenly became infested with police officers; they had already begun to tear the place apart.

She walked down the lane and stood at the bottom, taking in the sight of the barn. Someone had been in there. She just knew it.

She walked on into the nearest field before opening the wine bottle, having made sure she grabbed a bottle with a screw top. She began drinking from the bottle, her lips stained crimson from the very first gulp, and relished the numbness that crept into her with the wine’s slow sedation.

She had walked for over two hours until the cold seeped through her clothes and began to sink into her skin, until the wine bottle was drained, and until the sky began to darken.

When she returned to the country house, numb and unsteady, she found two police officers standing in the open doorway waiting for her return. The search was
over. The house was hers again. The officers tried to ignore her wine-stained lips and the scent of her breath, and walked off down the path.

The house looked as though it had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled open and the contents rummaged through. Sofa cushions lay scattered on the floor, bed sheets had been pulled back and the contents of wardrobes emptied. Nothing was left untouched or put back in its rightful place.

***

After getting the house back in order, Louise settled in front of the fire.

The enticing idea of suicide has already floated into her mind, but she instantly clears the suicidal mist with a dismissive hand. She can’t. She can’t leave her son. She can’t die without knowing Brooke’s fate. She missed her chance. Now she must live.

She considers writing in her journal, to offload her dark, dominating thoughts onto its pages, but with the investigation growing more intrusive by the day, she decides never to use it again. She must destroy it. She cannot betray herself or her daughter with her own scribbled confessions.

She will burn it. She won’t take her eyes off it until every page has blackened and disintegrated into ash.

She gets up from the sofa, and wraps herself up in
her coat and wellington boots.

Once DI Jessica Dean had left that morning, Louise had pulled herself together and focused her thoughts. She knew she had to hide the journal if the police were going to search her house. She had wrapped it in a carrier bag and buried it deep within the garden, far away from the house, in a lonely, neglected flowerbed. She couldn’t burn it then; but now, she has no choice but to destroy the only confidant she has and brave her reality alone.

Torch in hand, she leaves the house through the back door and walks down the garden into the shadows.

She reaches the flowerbed, which is so deep into the garden and the overgrown ferns that no officer would have thought to venture near it. She kneels down and places the torch beside her, allowing its beam to shine on the bed. She begins to dig with the small hand shovel she had hidden beneath a nearby bush. Fresh snow has settled on the dirt as though it hadn’t been disturbed at all. She digs in the spot she had dug up that morning. She keeps digging, and digging, and digging, surprised how deep she has to search without finding it. After ten minutes, when the shovel refuses to penetrate hard, impossible clay, she begins to worry.

I didn’t bury it this far down
.

She looks around her. She definitely buried it here.
She begins to dig next to the hole and creates another. Still no journal.

Her heart begins to quicken its pace.

Did the police find it? Wouldn’t they have arrested me by now for the confessions inside? Would they really cover the hole once they were finished? Wouldn’t they dig up the whole garden if they were going to search like this?

Deep within her mind, she knows who took it. It is the person who seems to come in and out of her life with ease, leaving dead birds, taking journals, abducting children, creeping around the house while she sleeps; it is the person who vanishes before she wakes, and lurks in her shadow, watching every move she makes.

Whoever is doing all of this has taken the journal filled with confessions of the crimes that she and her daughter committed.

Chapter Thirty-one

Louise has become fearful of the outside world. The more time she spends isolated behind closed doors, the more she separates herself from civilisation, as though the world, and everyone in it, is her enemy. She cannot sleep properly because whenever she does, she wakes to discover that dead birds have been left on her bed. When she does sleep, she dreams of what the person is doing inside her house. She imagines him watching her from the shadows in her bedroom, silent and unblinking, thinking inhuman thoughts about how he wishes to disturb and destroy her. When she wakes, she wonders if the man in her room was not a dream at all, but reality.

She sits in front of the fire, disturbed by the dark evening behind the windows, thinking of Brooke, thinking of Michael, thinking of DI Jessica Dean, thinking of the dead birds.

When the doorbell rings, she jolts in horror and spills scalding tea on her clothes and skin. She places the mug on the coffee table and shakes droplets from her hand as she heads for the door. She glances through the window beside the door and sees DI Dean standing outside, with a handsome man beside her. She opens the barrier between her and the outside
world.

‘Louise, hi,’ Jessica says.

‘Hi.’

‘This is my partner, Detective Inspector Christopher Jones.’

‘Call me, Chris,’ he says, giving her his hand to shake.

The DIs enter and Louise closes the door behind them. They remove their snow-speckled coats and hang them on the coat rack. Louise leads them further into the house.

Chris looks around, taking in the warmth of the house, which is lit by lamps in every corner of the lounge and the flickering flames under the mantle.

‘I’ll make us all a cup of tea,’ Louise suggests. ‘How do you take it?’

‘No sugar,’ Jessica says.

‘Two for me,’ Chris adds.

She makes the tea while the two officers sit on the stools at the island unit behind her.

‘How did today go? With Michael and Dominic?’ she asks over her shoulder.

‘Good. Informative.’

Louise busies herself making the tea, not wanting to hear any more.

‘It’s time to start searching, Louise.’

She stops twirling the teaspoon around the mug. Her stomach clenches.

‘For clues? Or for her body?’

‘Louise, we don’t know if she’s—’

She turns to face them.

‘Are you looking for clues of her whereabouts? Or her dead body lying frozen in a nearby lake?’