Creeping Ivy (4 page)

‘Are you sure you didn’t want to tell us something? You see, I think there is something you can’t bear to go on keeping to yourself.’

‘No, there isn’t.’

‘I’ve been doing this job for years, love, and I’ve seen girls like you before. I
know
there’s something nagging at you that you want to get off your chest.’

Nicky sighed. Round and round: they couldn’t let go, could they? But however long they went on at her they weren’t going to get anywhere. She was about to tell him so when she saw that there was a kind of pitying look on his face. And then she thought she understood.

‘You’ve found her, haven’t you?’ The sick feeling in her stomach got worse. ‘That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You’ve found her, and someone’s been hurting her. Is she …? What’s happened to her?’ Her voice thickened in panic. ‘You’ve got to tell me. You’ve got to.’

‘Calm down, love,’ said the sergeant. He looked as if he was enjoying himself. ‘We haven’t found her yet – nor any clues. But we will.’

Nicky looked at him. There wasn’t any pity in his face any more, just creepy curiosity and gloating.

‘And then we’ll know what’s been done to her and who’s done it. You understand that, don’t you, Nicky? It’s not the sort of thing that can be hidden. Lots of people don’t realise that. They think a bit of a shaking won’t leave any marks, or that a slap or two just makes a little bruise; but it’s not like that. That sort of thing damages little children much more than people think, and doctors can always spot it. Sometimes people looking after kids think they’re just handing out a bit of discipline that won’t really hurt, but then it goes too far. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

She stared at him, hating him. What he was trying to make her say was horrible. And he was horrible, too: a bully. She’d met plenty like him before.

‘I’ve never laid a finger on Charlotte,’ she said, making her voice less like her own and more like Antonia’s. It was typical of creeps like the sergeant that he began to look at her differently after that.

‘So if not you, then who? Her father ever hit her?’

‘He’s not her father. Her mother’s divorced. Lottie never sees her real father.’

She saw the two of them look at each other and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. They’d probably start going after Robert now. The police always did that – treated everyone like suspects till they knew what was what. Still, Robert would be able to stand up to them better than her.

‘When are you going to let me go?’

There was a funny kind of silence, and then the older one said, ‘Whenever you want, love. You came here of your own accord, remember? We didn’t bring you in and we’re not keeping you here. You’re not under arrest or anything, you know.’

The sweat on her face was much colder than it had been and the table seemed to be moving as she got up. She put both hands down on it, hating that she was leaving sweaty patches on its shiny surface. For a minute she thought she was going to pass out, but then she got it all under control and looked at them again. They were staring at her with even nastier curiosity than before.

‘You all right, love?’ asked the sergeant. ‘You look very pale.’

‘I’m fine.’ She wasn’t going to tell them about feeling so dizzy and sick. ‘Except for worrying about Charlotte. Will you promise to phone me when you find her? I’ve given you the number.’

‘Your boss’s number,’ said the sergeant, still staring at her. ‘She’s back already, you know, from New York. It was on the news before you got here. We saw her. She’s furious.’

The table swayed again. Even Antonia couldn’t make her feel any guiltier than she already did, but the thought of the things she was going to say was unbearable.

‘How’re you getting back, love?’

‘I’m walking.’ It might not be too bright outside. If it wasn’t, the fresh air might stop the dizziness.

As soon as she turned into Bedford Gardens she saw a crowd of men and women at the bottom of the steps of Antonia’s house. Lots of them had cameras and it was obvious what they were doing. Nicky stopped dead at the corner. She knew if she attempted to get back into the house they’d take pictures of her and try to make her talk to them and probably say all the things the police had just been saying. Worse, too, maybe.

She looked to see whether Robert’s car was back outside the house, but there was no sign of it. If she’d known he’d be there in the house, she might have been able to force her way through the journalists. Robert would’ve helped her, whatever they said. Antonia wouldn’t. Even in normal times she’d never help. She’d just say it was all Nicky’s fault and probably laugh.

Nicky knew she’d have to face Antonia soon, but she couldn’t do it yet; not alone and not with the journalists to get through first. She just couldn’t.

As the breathlessness came back and the top of her head started to feel floaty, Nicky leaned against the dark-blue sides of someone’s BMW and tried to breathe through the dizziness and find some courage from somewhere.

Chapter Three

Trish was sitting in a damask-covered wing chair, feeling even more suffocated by the pretentious grandeur of the drawing room than usual. All the windows were shut so that none of the journalists outside could hear anything that went on in the house, and the room smelled stale.

Antonia herself was a mess. She was still wearing the dark-blue tracksuit Trish had seen on the news. Like all her clothes, it was the most expensive version available and it fitted beautifully, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was a tracksuit. Her highlighted hair was tousled and needed washing, too, and yesterday’s mascara was smudged down the sides of her nose.

But anyone would have agreed that she was a good-looking woman, bigger in every way than Trish. Her face, which was long and dominated by her direct grey eyes and firm chin, suited her better at thirty-four than it had done a decade earlier, before her achievements had caught up with her confidence. She usually held herself well and spoke firmly in a voice that had become rounder and plummier with each new success, but that morning she sounded vulnerable and looked as though the connections between her vertebrae had loosened in some way, allowing her whole body to collapse in on itself.

She was sitting hunched over hey waistband and clutching her knees, tightening her hands whenever she had to say anything about Charlotte. The movement made her rings flash, accentuating the size and brilliance of the matching hoops of diamonds she wore on each hand.

They looked absurd with the tracksuit, but Trish knew that Antonia was so used to wearing them that it would never have crossed her mind to take them off. To her they were neither status symbols nor an advertisement of her latest bonus; they were merely toys she liked and felt she deserved after all her hard work.

She was trying to explain to the two plain-clothed detectives why Charlotte could not possibly have been kidnapped for ransom. Trish wished she had got to the house earlier and been able to hear everything they’d had to say from the start. As it was she had no idea whether the kidnap idea was a longshot or something they were taking seriously. She assumed they’d already discussed the possibility that Ben, Antonia’s ex-husband, might have Charlotte with him. He could never have harmed her, Trish was certain, but the police wouldn’t have known that, and his house must have been one of the first places they’d thought to look.

Although DCI Blake was watching Antonia’s face as she talked so earnestly, Trish noticed that the much younger woman officer was staring at the rings and apparently trying to assess their worth. Constable Jenny Derring’s expression suggested that she thought Antonia’s wealth was quite enough to make the kidnap theory feasible.

‘Anyway,’ Antonia said as though she was summing up a meeting, ‘if they were after a ransom, they’d have been in touch by now.’ Then her certainty wavered and she sounded like any terrified mother. ‘Wouldn’t they?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said the chief inspector gently.

He was about the same age as Antonia and he was treating her carefully. Trish had been impressed to see that although he was visibly sympathetic, he was not allowing his own emotions to leak into his voice and he had not offered any reassurance. That in itself would have made her trust him. There could be no honest reassurance for anyone until Charlotte was found.

‘They could be trying to soften you up, Ms Weblock, to make you more receptive to their demands. Or you could be right and her disappearance has nothing to do with any ransom demand. What—’

He did not have time to put his question before Antonia had covered her face with her hands, muttering into them. Eventually Trish worked out that the words were: ‘I feel so guilty.’

She ached to help, but there was nothing she could say or do. She could not even ask questions or offer advice until the police had gone. This was their interview and she was here only to be Antonia’s silent support.

‘Guilty?’ repeated the chief inspector with no less gentleness. He had an attractive voice, deep and seductive. It would make confession almost easy, Trish thought.

‘Why do you say that, Ms Weblock?’

‘Well, it’s all my fault. It has to be. If I … Oh, Christ!’ Antonia must have been on the verge of losing control for she took her hands away from her face, pulled a handkerchief out of the open, sacklike leather bag at her feet and held it over her eyes for a moment. Then she blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief up her sleeve.

The telephone rang. Antonia leaped to her feet, but Blake grabbed her wrist before she could run to answer. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘OK – now. And take it carefully.’

‘Hello?’

They all watched as her body sagged again.

‘Yes. Thank you, Georgie. It’s really kind of you to ring. No. No, there’s no news. Yes. Of course. If there’s anything, I’ll ring you. No. No, that’s OK. Right. Bye.’

She was breathing heavily as she returned to the fender stool.

‘Just a concerned friend,’ she said to Blake. ‘Another one. They think it helps. What was it you were saying?’

‘You’d just said you felt guilty and I couldn’t understand why. You weren’t even in the country.’

‘That’s why,’ she said with an unsuccessful attempt at briskness. ‘If I’d been here, it would never have happened. I know that. If I hadn’t let my work take me away, Charlotte wouldn’t have had to be with someone irresponsible enough to let this happen. She …’

Antonia couldn’t go on and sat biting her lower lip and staring helplessly towards Trish, who got up at once and went to sit beside her on the wide fender stool. The fireplace behind them was empty and smelled faintly of soot and brass polish.

‘Look,’ she said quickly, ‘that’s not true, Antonia. Lots of mothers who’ve gone back to work have to be away at weekends occasionally. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known this might happen.’

‘No, but it has, and I wasn’t here to stop it,’ said Antonia. ‘And it was I who chose Nicky to look after Charlotte and so it
is
my fault. It has to be. You must see that.’

‘Yes. Now, Nicky Bagshot,’ said DCI Blake. Trish had the feeling that he was working hard to sound calm, almost uninterested. ‘Tell me about her, Ms Weblock. Where does she come from?’

‘There’s not much to tell. She’s only twenty-one, but she trained at the Wincanton School of Nursery Nursing, which has a wonderful reputation.’

‘And was that how you found her? Directly from the training school?’

‘No. She got herself on the books of Holland Park Helpers, who have one of the safest names in the business. They’ve got all her details. I’m sure they’ll hand them over if you ask. She’d done a series of temp, jobs by the time she came to me, and she got good references from them all. She’s always seemed reliable, and absolutely truthful. That’s why I believed her.’

They were on to it at once, even before Trish had opened her mouth. It was the WPC who voiced the question.

‘But you haven’t spoken to her since you got back this morning, and you said it was Mr Hithe who telephoned you yesterday. When have you talked to Nicky?’

‘I haven’t. What d’you mean?’

‘You said it was because of her truthfulness that you believed her. That sounds as though you’ve spoken to her.’

Antonia produced a smile of sorts.

‘Not about this, Constable Derring. It was a few weeks ago. I was worried about something but Nicky reassured me and I believed her.’ The smile disappeared as Antonia started to bite her lips, first the top and then the bottom, gnawing like a rodent trying to eat its way out of a trap. Trish briefly touched her hand just as the chief inspector said:

‘What were you worried about?’

‘I didn’t think it was sinister, you see. She’s a nice girl, kind. I’m sure she is. If anything she’s usually too soft on Charlotte. I’ve noticed she can’t bear to hear a child crying and so she tends not to be very strong on discipline and she gives in much too easily. But Charlotte loves her. I know she does – and she wouldn’t have if they’d meant anything, would she?’

‘If what had meant anything?’ asked Blake before Trish could yell at Antonia to get on with it and tell them all whatever it was she was withholding. Then the telephone started to ring again.

After a moment it became clear that it was yet another sympathetic friend who wanted to offer support and help, rather than a kidnapper demanding a ransom. When Antonia had thanked her enough times, she cut the connection and then laid the receiver on the table beside the telephone.

‘I can’t stand it. If it’s anyone important, they’ll ring back.’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure that’s right,’ said Blake, just as they all heard a series of electronic bleepings and a metallic voice ordering them to replace the receiver. Antonia got up impatiently to bury the telephone under a pile of cushions.

‘Now, Ms Weblock,’ said Blake as she sat down again beside Trish, ‘you were telling us about something you had seen, something that Nicky Bagshot reassured you about. What was it?’

‘Bruises,’ said Antonia at last, looking at him with eyes that seemed huge and almost black, as though the widening pupils had obliterated her irises. ‘There were bruises on Charlotte’s arms.’