Dark Place to Hide (20 page)

Just as I turn to go, Clara pulls at my cuff and declares, ‘He’s not a wizard at all – he’s a wolf and a very bad one.’

This is the first time I’ve felt properly lucid in ages. I try to stay rational – it’s hard, because I’m so confused and my head is woolly and full of bright lights; I can barely hold it up. I must have spent most of the time asleep or unconscious. I try again to move and I can see now, why I can’t. My hands and feet are tied with orange twine; there is something sticky glued over mouth. I look down. I’m sitting on broken straw – ah, I knew this – I must have been awake before. There are bales of the stuff all around me. It smells of manure.

I try shouting for help, but it comes out as a pathetic muffled moan. It wouldn’t even scare the field mice away and it certainly won’t be audible beyond the heavy wooden doors at the far end.

Beside me is a dog bowl with the remains of some food – lumpy porridge oats. I must have eaten. I’m bruised and weak, but I’m not hungry. That’s something. But it also means someone must be coming here and giving me food and water. Who’s done this to me? Why would they keep me here like this, injured, imprisoned?

The smell of animal excreta is pungent, but there’s something else that’s worse. My jogging bottoms are wet. I’ve soiled myself. I gag at the disgusting stench of it and fight back tears of humiliation. There’s a tin bucket a few feet away, but if I’ve been in and out of consciousness I won’t have been able to use it. In fact, I need to pee now. I shuffle over on my backside. It’s hard to do anything with my hands and feet tied, but I hoist myself onto a small milking stool and manage to roll down my jogging pants in tiny stages with my contorted hands. From there I tip sideways on to the bucket.

I try to think back to when this must have started. I remember an ambulance, a room full of people in gowns and masks. I’d been in hospital. Had I been in an accident? Undergone an operation? Maybe that’s why I’m in so much pain. I’d come home – I remember that much and I’d been taking sedatives. I feel like I’m still on them – I’ve got that detached, woozy feeling of not quite being here.

The place I’m in looks like an old stable. But where? And who could have brought me here? I could be in Nettledon or miles beyond, as far away as Scotland. I try to go back but my memories are patchy, like a newspaper with huge sections ripped out. I remember leaving the house, getting in the car. I had my phone – I feel for it with my tied hands – it’s not here. I was going to the village shop for painkillers. That much is clear. What happened next? Pictures start to jump around behind my eyes. A figure. There was a figure running into the bushes along the lane leading to the village green. There’s nothing else. That’s all. My recollections hit a brick wall.

I want to scream, but I’m afraid I’ll suffocate. I fight the tears for the same reason. I’m trembling, dumped and discarded like a fish tossed onto the riverbank. What have I done wrong? What is going to happen to me?

Someone help me! Please!

11 August – 12
^th
day missing

I’m feeling proud of myself today. It’s faint self-praise, I know. All I did was manage
not
to have a slug of whisky before I came out to meet your friend, Tara. It’s hardly anything to write home about, is it?

I walk down the High Street in Cosham. I love the summer months, but I’m barely aware of them this year. Cricket matches, tennis tournaments, outdoor concerts are passing me by.

Once again, it’s awkward at the start. Tara is exquisitely beautiful and I find myself avoiding her beguiling green eyes. She’s wearing impossibly high heels, tight fifties-style capri pants in peppermint green and a stripy top. I hardly know which part of her to avoid looking at first. I don’t want to be in this position when you’re not with us, Dee. It feels like a betrayal.

‘It was kind of you to ring,’ I say weakly, to get the ball rolling. She’s managed to persuade me to have morning coffee. She’s on a mission to save me.

‘I wanted to see whether you’d heard anything – and check you were okay,’ says Tara. ‘This dragging on is terrible.’

‘Twelve days,’ I say, leaning against the lamppost outside the café that has a poster of your face wrapped around it with sticky tape. Many of them do around here. I trudged the streets for hours putting your picture up everywhere; billboards, shop windows, telegraph poles. I’ve had to cover posters advertising fetes and festivals with pictures of you.

I lean against the lamppost, my cheek against yours, Dee. I expect it to be warm, but it’s in the shadows here and is cold, damp and wrinkled. I pull away.

I don’t want to tell Tara I’ve been sleeping late and turning into a slob. I’ve not hoovered or laundered in the last week. The food in the fridge is off, I’m not answering the phone, not calling people back – not looking after myself. Apart from the occasional visit to Marion, I’m closing myself off from the real world. All I do is mutter to Frank and take him on long walks in such a daze that I don’t recall a thing once I get back.

Most of the cafés in Cosham are of the ‘greasy spoon’ variety, but this one, called
Number Three
, is a cut above and doubles as a wine bar in the evenings. We sit on low leather chairs at the back with a long chunky table in dark wood at knee level. The waiter creates a fern design in the foam on my cappuccino and Tara has a hot chocolate that looks like an ice-cream sundae – I wish I’d ordered that instead. I wonder if you’ve been here before with Tara; I know it’s the kind of place you’d like, with sparkly lights, candles and dribbling paninis.

As I sink back after sipping the coffee, I feel like I haven’t let out a full breath since you disappeared. The blend is rich and has a strong aftertaste and for a second it’s as though I have a faint memory that simply sitting like this can be effortless and unburdened. Then I remember that everything in my life is annihilated and I have to swallow hard to keep the coffee down.

‘Growing a beard?’ Tara asks. I feel my chin.

‘No, not deliberately – it’s just…’ I realise I’ve done a lot of this – not finishing my sentences. I seem to run out of impetus halfway through a thought. I don’t want her to know I’m regressing into monosyllabic conversations with most people. I’m not watering the plants, Dee – I’ve not called your parents, I’ve had the TV on, but I’m not watching it. I can’t seem to get both eyes to stay open at the same time. I feel beaten. I’m sinking fast.

‘I think I’m going to stop the fertility treatment,’ I tell her.

‘Why?’

‘Too many nosebleeds.’ The handkerchief in my pocket is already saturated with the episode I had on the way over. ‘In any case, there’s not much point, is there?’

‘But, when she comes back – she’ll be so disappointed.’

‘I think we’ll have other things to discuss rather than starting a family, don’t you?’ Tara looks like she sees my point. ‘I’m going to wait until she comes back.’

‘Have the police heard anything?’

‘There have been no more social media messages from Dee and Alexa told me yesterday she’d not had any further texts. It wasn’t a surprise when the police called to tell me they think her phone has either run out of juice by now or been destroyed.’

‘Oh…’

‘But they do have a last location for it – somewhere near Heathrow, like the ATM that was used, so I still don’t know if she got on a plane. She might still be in this country, but it’s looking more and more likely that she isn’t.’ I close my eyes, suddenly exhausted with the endless cycle of hoping, wondering and speculation.
One call, Dee – that’s all it would take. One bloody call.
‘It makes the little posters I’ve dotted around look rather pathetic when she could be in Paris, New York or…Australia, for all I know.’

Tara pulls a defeated face. ‘Can’t the police – or passport control, or whatever – tell if a passport has been used – you know, gone through the gate?’

‘They can, but whether they will or not is another matter. The police can consult the UK Border Force for details of people leaving or entering the UK by air, sea or rail. I’ve pressed everyone I know at the local force – even stuck my neck out and gone above them to the chief constable, but it’s a no-go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because as far as they’re concerned there is no crime. They think she’s gone of her own free will – she took belongings, she had a reason to go, she’s been in touch…’

Tara scrunches up her nose. She still manages to look pretty.

I make a feeble attempt to ensure we don’t spend the entire time talking about my misery. ‘What have you been up to?’ I say in a lighter tone.

She puffs out her cheeks. ‘Oh – nothing. I’m bored, to be honest. I spent all of last term willing on the school holidays and now they’re here, I don’t know what to do with myself.’ She runs her finger inside the glass to catch the last fluff of cream. ‘No boyfriend – and no best friend…’ she says, casting her eyes down. ‘I’m not very good on my own.’

I’m about to say something philosophical in response that I know will only sound trite, when my phone rings. I normally hate mobiles interrupting me, but I never turn it off – not now – I can’t afford to miss any calls.

‘Harper? She’s gone.’ It’s a number I don’t recognise, but I know the voice.

‘Who’s gone? What’s happened?’

‘Clara – she’s gone missing – I can’t find her,’ Marion gasps.

I shuffle forward. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘She was at the hospital,’ she blurts out, ‘with my mother – she took Clara to see Dr Pike this morning, because I wasn’t…feeling too well. Mum left her with the nurses there, because she had to go to see her own GP in Portsmouth. One of the nurses was supposed to see Clara into a taxi home.’

‘Have you contacted the hospital? Checked she’s not waiting with somewhere else?’

‘I’ve rung everyone – the nurses, babysitters, school friends. Sheila, the nurse, was supposed to meet her, but she said she didn’t see Clara come out of Dr Pike’s room. When she
tapped on the door, Dr Pike said they’d finished ten minutes earlier.’ Marion is overwhelmed with tears. ‘The taxi was…supposed to bring Clara home…but she wasn’t waiting at the right place.’

Dread fills my mouth. ‘Have you called the police?’

‘Yes – they’re on their way over.’

‘I’ll be there,’ I tell her.

A police car is already parked outside when I arrive – the front door is wide open. In the hall, two officers are trying to persuade Marion to sit down, while an older woman – Clara’s grandmother, I presume – and two younger women I recognise from the village, are holding her up. Everyone seems to be getting in each other’s way and I stay on the step and consider that my presence might be one too many.

Marion spots me, breaks free and rushes at me as if I’m her missing child.

‘Harper – thank goodness you’ve come – I’m beside myself.’ The tendons in her neck flicker violently under her skin. She grabs my wrist and pulls me inside.

I recognise one of the police officers, PC Rose Felton who made a corresponding visit to our cottage. She seems to know Marion. The other one introduces himself as PC Mole.

‘She’ll be hiding somewhere,’ Felton says, ‘like last time – and she’ll have lost track of time.’

Marion turns to me. ‘PC Felton rescued Clara from the pit at the castle,’ she explains. I’m holding her arm firmly, it’s barely enough to keep her upright, so I lead her to a chair in the kitchen and lower her gently down. She looks as if she’s shrunk since I saw her last.

‘She gets herself into places,’ Marion continues, knitting her fingers together, ‘you know, she climbs in – then gets herself stuck…’

‘We’ve got a team at the castle right now,’ PC Felton assures her, ‘just in case she went back there. Where else might she have gone?’

‘There’s the bell tower at St Hugh’s Church,’ Marion croaks. ‘It’s cordoned off, but she’s been getting in.’ PC Felton presses a button on her radio and passes on the information.

‘Where else?’

Marion lists various places: the allotments at Grangers’ corner, the wasteland by the school, the woodlands at the beck. ‘She’ll go anywhere – people’s garages and sheds, lofts, cellars, farm buildings…’

PC Mole has been frantically scribbling. ‘Right – we’re on it,’ declares Felton.

I interject. ‘She was last seen at the hospital?’

‘Yes,’ PC Mole replies. ‘We’re scouring the area. Stopping the cars leaving the car park, talking to hospital staff.’ I know that the first forty-eight hours are crucial, especially with a young child. I hope no one says it – it would only bring a fresh cloud of doom into the room.

Marion is on her feet. ‘I must go and look for her…’ I grab her around the waist as she disintegrates in my arms. ‘You need to be here when she comes back,’ I say, firmly. She needs to be in bed, but I know that’s the last place she’ll go.

My phone rings. It’s Tara. I move into the living room and tell her what’s happened. She insists on coming over to help with the search.

‘Go to the hospital,’ I say. ‘I’ll see you there; that’s where she was last seen.’

In the next few hours a major police operation is launched. Out-patients and visitors to the hospital join police in covering the area, including the car parks, the fields to the right, the
supermarket, library, local shopping mall. Tara walks beside me as we help scour the playing fields and scout hut. We move on to the nearest school and carry on across the fields – all day long – until it starts getting dark. I’ve been in regular contact with Marion by phone; she’s had a visit from her doctor following a request from worried neighbours. She is now heavily sedated, in bed.

By the following morning, everything is cranked up a level. Dogs are brought in, the house to house is extended. The main hope for information is the hospital CCTV, but management are in the process of replacing the analogue system with an Internet Protocol surveillance system. The cameras at the entrance have been faulty for days, but the powers that be have seen fit to turn a blind eye to them as the entire network is being overhauled.