Dark Place to Hide (36 page)

You spent two days in hospital, before I had the joy of bringing you home. The fireplace is still spewing bricks, the builders can’t come now until October, and there’s further subsidence in the kitchen, but I don’t care, because my life is whole again.

We made love for the first time the night you were discharged. Swann was only interested in children – the nasty sod – he hadn’t touched you, but still, after your ordeal, I was gentle and tender and waited for you to initiate. I washed you as you lay on the bed and carefully dried every inch of your body. Then I laid naked next to you and gently stroked your skin with perfumed moisturiser. You were still recovering, so I was slow and measured. The doctors said you’d suffered internal bleeding, but, with your athletic constitution, you surprised them all with the way your body was healing itself. Despite falling around forty feet onto a rocky crag, you hadn’t broken any bones, not even a rib.

You reached out to me on the bed and I curled myself around you. Making love was sublime and beautiful – I felt like it was our very first time and I was falling in love with you all over again. Afterwards, you wanted more and wouldn’t let go of me. While we stayed entwined, I told you something important. I told you about the flash of new insight I’d had about my father.

‘I’ve been targeting
myself
with the shame and humiliation I felt towards him, Dee.’ I stared into the distance. ‘I didn’t even realise that’s what I was doing.’ A beat passed. I wanted to tell you the whole thing. ‘I never told you, but when my father tried to teach me football when I was little, he made me wear this heavy welder’s mask. It was supposed to make me get a feel for the ball just using my feet, but I always ended up toppling over and it turned into a kind of humiliating punishment.’

You blew out your cheeks, sharing my mortification.

‘That’s where my anger came from; that’s how it started. Sometimes, I felt rage so overwhelming I didn’t know what to do with it. Hiding in the chicken coop seemed to be the only way I could calm down. I don’t know why, but it became a ritual.’

‘It’s okay,’ you whispered.

I pressed your fingers to my lips. ‘I couldn’t talk about it. I was so ashamed and confused – I didn’t know where to start. I’m so sorry.’

‘I can see how it’s all bound up with your dad. Your unresolved grief and anger got mixed up together. You found an outlet for it…which was a bit…unusual, that’s all. You understand it more now. We can work through it together.’

‘That spell at the police station made me feel differently about Dad, somehow. I told Tara about it. I don’t feel like it was my fault he left any more. It was his choice and I was only a kid. I didn’t let him down.’

You curled your fingers around mine and sank your head on my shoulder. ‘I’m so pleased, Dibs.’

I laughed. ‘The penny dropped, at last.’ I stroked your shoulder, still marked with bruising. ‘I had so much time when I was detained with nothing to distract me, so I ended up chewing things over. I thought about Clara, too. About how she seems so balanced about her father’s death. Marion must have handled it so well, because Clara always speaks of him with warmth and acceptance, even though in the eyes of a child, he “left her”. It made me think.’ I kissed a small scratch near your nose. ‘Everything feels different. When I think of getting angry now, the idea of stomping off to stew in an empty hut seems ridiculous. I don’t think I need to do that anymore.’

‘We’ll see how it goes,’ you said softly.

‘Yes – I’ll need to put it to the test, of course, but it feels like a thing of the past. And smashing vases and plant pots seems so…extreme now, too…so
juvenile.
’

‘I think that could be the point – anger always seemed to take you back to your childhood.’

I sighed and thought of the glass I flung at the wall after Alexa accused me of killing you. It was only a few days ago, yet it seemed a lifetime. ‘I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but I think I can find better ways of handling my anger.’

‘And we can talk about it now. That’s the big difference.’

‘Yes. We can.’ I cradled your face. ‘I’ll see someone,’ I said, ‘I’ll make sure I sort this out, once and for all.’

Tara’s meal – Mexican this time – is superb, as I knew it would be. You even have an extra helping.

‘Got to build up my strength,’ you say, patting your stomach. I can’t believe how well you’re looking, after what happened. There is colour in your cheeks again and your hair has regained that raven gloss. You’ve arranged to have counselling too, which sounds like a sensible idea. Get everything out in the open.

Everyone in the village has been incredibly kind. We’ve had flowers and baskets left at the front door and Clara has been in and out to tell us what she’s been doing. She’s incredibly sparky after her ordeal; I’m in awe of her resilience. She hasn’t mentioned Swann. Her sessions with Dr Pike are continuing and Marion says she’s making progress, although Marion herself is spending more of her life either in a wheelchair or in bed. An incident like this must take its toll on those who have so few resources to draw on. You and I know we’ve been lucky.

Tara has a quick chat with me in the kitchen when you go to the bathroom. ‘Has she mentioned Morrell? Does she know what happened after the party?’

‘No,’ I tell her in a hushed voice. ‘One thing at a time. I’ll tell her about the paternity test when I think she can cope with it. I’ll let her know the rest after that.’ I feel nausea rising at the back of my throat. ‘What on earth makes a bloke want to rape a woman when she’s unconscious is beyond me.’

Tara wraps the end of the tea towel around her middle finger. ‘When I used to work in the clubs, we used to come across all kinds of pervy types. Ted Bundy apparently slept with women who were
dead
– I mean, can you imagine?’ She shakes her head.

‘It’s probably all about power, isn’t it?’

‘And there’s little threat of it being reported, because the victim isn’t going to put up a fight.’ She stops to think. ‘And Gillian – does she watch or join in?’

‘I don’t want to think about it.’

You’ve told me in little bits and pieces what happened to you the night you disappeared, but I haven’t pushed you. All in your own time. You’re back – that’s the main thing. I know that the day we found you, you’d kicked Swann in the face with your bound legs when he’d appeared with a tray of food. He was furious and climbed up into the attic to retaliate, but you kicked him again. Once he was down you somehow managed to squeeze his head between your knees until he passed out. I can’t believe your courage! He fought back, of course, he’d punched you in the face before he went down.

You confirmed to the police that Swann was the man you saw with Clara at the Anderson shelter in the woods. He must have come back to the cottage when I was out looking for you. I
was sure someone had been in, at the time. Neil confirmed that Swann used your phone, found your passport – they weren’t hard to find in the filing cabinet – and used online passwords scrawled in your appointment diary to fake your movements. He even took a pair of my shoes and swiped a slick of your blood on them – to implicate me – before hiding the car on a busy local campsite, near Chichester. Then he caught the train to Heathrow to use your cashpoint card at an ATM.

‘Sounds like he’s a man who loves playing sick games,’ Neil had concluded, ‘laying a trail of false clues to make us all think Diane had left the country was just one of his little tricks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was well practised at this and has always got away with it until now.’

We were taking a stroll along the stretch of river at the end of the garden one afternoon, when you suddenly felt able to talk more. It was the figure you mentioned first, the one that dashed in front of the car that night, as you drove to the village shop.

‘I couldn’t even be sure what it was,’ you said. ‘It was a fast blur and I wasn’t expecting it. I thought it could have been a deer, a dog – then I realised it was a child. I stopped and got out, then climbed down the bank, pressing through the foliage and I saw her – and he was standing right behind her. The scene looked all wrong. When I realised who she was, I remembered her father had died. I didn’t know the man with her was your specialist at the hospital, but it was pretty clear the creep was up to no good.’

You were collecting wild flowers and seemed robust enough for me to give you more details. I filled you in with what Neil had told me following Swann’s arrest. ‘He’d threatened
Clara – told her he’d make sure her mother didn’t recover from the cancer if she didn’t go along with it.’

You dropped the sprigs of cow parsley you were gathering. ‘Utterly diabolical,’ you hissed.

‘He knew she’d retreated into fairy tales; that it was a traumatic response, and he was banking on that continuing.’ I glanced at you just to make sure this wasn’t all too much for you. ‘The police discovered that alongside his work with fertility treatments, he was carrying out a privately funded project into child sexuality. That’s why he had free time during the day to meet her. Obviously his professional interest had turned into something else altogether.’

‘Did he…?’

I took hold of your hand. ‘No. Clara hadn’t been…violated…’

‘He didn’t hurt her?’

‘No – but, he played “touching” games with her. It started with the visit to the hospital after she was trapped in the castle. He was on the lookout for little girls who were independent and were used to wandering off on their own. He ‘made friends’ with her that day, when he heard what she’d been up to. She was exactly the kind of target he was looking for – she’d spent a whole night outdoors and relished it – so she played right into Swann’s hands. He gave her an apple on that first visit, and after that, every time she went to the hospital he found a way to take her into a secluded consulting room or arrange to meet her at the Anderson shelter in the woods, luring her with books and toys. That’s why her condition was getting worse, not better.’

You snatched a trembling breath. ‘And
Little Red Riding Hood
was her escape mechanism?’

‘The story is essentially about telling young girls to stay away from strange men. I should have seen it sooner.’

‘You found her though, that was incredible.’ You leant your head on my shoulder. ‘How did you track her down?’

‘Clara was trying to tell us all along what was happening to her. I tried to remember every encounter I’d had with her, especially what she’d said. I was looking for anything that linked to individuals at the hospital. I considered Clive, the security guy; Dr Pike; Dr Norman; even Dr Guha, Marion’s specialist. There were others who could have made visits too, a guy at the allotment; the boyfriend of a babysitter; police officers.’ I didn’t mention Morrell – he would get his comeuppance, but it seemed he was entirely unconnected to the abductions. ‘Then I started to see a few links with what I’d witnessed in Swann’s office during my consultations. I realised he’d been right behind her in the foyer in the CCTV footage, the morning she disappeared. He had a snow globe in his pocket that I’d seen in his office. I’d spotted a kid’s DVD in his briefcase, too.’

‘Had he targeted other children?’

‘Neil is in the process of getting records from two hospitals where Swann used to work; one in Scotland, the other in London. Sadly, I don’t think it will be an isolated case. Neil thinks he had developed a honed routine over time.’ Your hand claps tightly around mine. ‘Apparently, Swann spent most of his life in South Africa, although I didn’t notice an accent. He’d always planned to go back there eventually, then a promotion opportunity came his way. He knew he only had to keep Clara quiet for a short time, then he’d disappear overseas. When he heard I was poking about, he started to panic.’ I kick at the long grass. ‘He left Clara for dead; tried to make it look like she’d got into the windmill by herself and couldn’t get out again. He was gradually
clearing the place of toys and once she’d died of dehydration, his plan was to leave the door unlocked, but blocked on the outside with rubble. Like the oubliette scenario, only far worse.’

We sat down on the bank and watched for fish. Your eyes darted back and forth and took you to another thought. ‘Why did he keep me locked up for so long?’ you asked.

‘I think he…was working out what to do with you. Neil told me that, according to his confession, Swann was hoping you’d die from your injuries so it would look like an accident, like Clara, so you’d never get the chance to report him. He took you to an old stable near his property first, then he moved you soon after you starting smashing down the door. He found the sedatives you had with you following the miscarriage – so it was easy for him to knock you out whenever he needed to.’ I threw a stick, idly, into the bustling current. ‘In fact, Neil told me this morning what he intended to do.’

Your face shot round. ‘
Tell
me – what?’

I swallowed. I’d said too much now to go back. I took your hands between mine, squeezing them tight. ‘Swann admitted he was planning to take you to the coast to force you over a steep rocky cliff – to make it look like suicide – before leaving the country. If you’d died in his own attic – it would have only implicated him.’

You snatched a breath in disbelief. ‘Oh my God! He
was
going to kill me. Come to think of it, I think he tried to do it earlier at the bell tower when I was drugged up to the eyeballs, but Clara came along…’

‘It really was only a matter of time. He was keeping you in the attic until he was all set to leave.’

‘He’d packed his bags, hadn’t he? I remember seeing them when you carried me down the stairs. That would have been my last day…’

I nodded, with a grimace.

Once Tara has left, you draw the downstairs curtains and I lock the back door. It sets Clara’s butterfly spinning and I smile. I’ve lit candles and we’re ending the evening with a small glass of port and Dido on the music system.

I pull you close on the sofa and think of the facts you don’t yet know. I haven’t yet told you about the Morrells and their despicable date-rape set up. You’re still not ready for the truth at this stage, and I’m going to have to be patient. As soon as you feel stronger I’m hoping to help you fill out the sketchy parts of that party, with the evidence from Elaine’s photos, so we can press charges. I’ve already spoken to Neil about it. We’ll get the bastards – it’s only a matter of time.