From the Cradle (27 page)

‘We can. But not if the battery has been removed. We’ll t
ry though.’

His own phone rang. It was Suzanne, no doubt wanting an update. He rejected the call and said, ‘That’s it for now. If you think of anywhere Alice might have gone, or if you hear anything from her, please let me know immediately. And it would also be useful to have a list of her friends.’

‘I’ll do that for you,’ Helen said. She looked completely drained.

‘Thank you.’

He left the house and walked a little way down the street, before calling Suzanne back. As he waited for her to answer, he looked back at the Philipses’ house. A week ago, it would have been vibrant, noisy, full of mess and energy.

Now it was a silent, empty nest.

Chapter 31
Winkler – Day 5

Winkler stood in the station car park and watched Lennon and his bitch of a sidekick, Carmella, drive off in separate cars. He was still smarting from the way that lesbian had spoken to him in the meeting, but most of his fury was directed at Lennon. How the hell was he still the lead on this investigation? He couldn’t work out if he was actually fucking the DCI or if they merely had the hots for each other. It had to be one of those, and one of these days he was going to find out and expose the pair of them so everyone could see how corrupt this department was. But first, he was going to put Lennon in his place by finding the kid and showing the tattooed twat up for the crap cop he really was.

He drove home, made himself a cup of green tea – it was important to keep his body in tip-top condition – and sat down at the computer. He rested a hand on his belly, feeling his taut abs, and ran a hand through his lovely hair.
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble.
He resisted the urge to visit the Japanese fetish site he’d become addicted to lately and went to Facebook, logging out of his own account then logging in, for the first time, as Helen Philips.

Lennon reckoned that the teenage duo, Alice and Larry, were responsible for what had happened to the kid but, like he’d said in the meeting, he couldn’t see them having the guts or gumption to pull that off. The girl would have crumpled during her first
interview
.

No, Winkler was now sure the parents were to blame. An accident, maybe. Or straightforward infanticide. Shit, you’d think
Lennon
would be able to spot a child-killer a mile off, being married to an attempted murderer. But look at the odds – in cases like this, after they’d discounted the neighbourhood child snatchers, it was always the parents. Behind that middle-class veneer of respectability, Sean and Helen Philips were hiding something dark. He could smell it on them. The thought of Helen, with that perfect peachy arse, having a wicked secret gave him a semi. Maybe he’d find some flesh-bearing shots on her Facebook page.

He was disappointed. Pretty much every picture in Helen’s Facebook albums was of Frankie, along with a load of pictures of bracelets she’d made in her spare time (all of them with tons of likes from her girly mates) or boring close-ups of bees and flowers she’d taken with ‘my fab new macro lens’ in the park. Interestingly, there weren’t many photos of Alice or Sean, apart from a few Christmas snaps in which Alice looked pouty and Sean appeared pie-eyed. There certainly weren’t any pictures that revealed her to be a member of a Satanic cult or anything juicy and incriminating like that.

Her status updates were as vanilla as his ex-wife’s sexual tastes too. Lots of sharing of LOL-tastic pictures of cats and ‘nom nom’-inducing shots of cakes, plus loads of ‘hilarious’ (i.e., completely unfunny) things that Frankie had said or done.

Still, he hadn’t been expecting to find much on here. What he was really hoping was that, like many people, Helen’s Facebook log-in was the same as her email. There could well be something illuminating on there. Before, checking that out, he decided to take a look through her messages.

There wasn’t much. An exchange with an old friend, arranging a play date. A couple of gossipy exchanges with some woman from the gym. A mutual moan-fest with another chick about the challenges of parenting toddlers. Apparently, Frankie had bitten some kid at nursery and Helen was in a total panic about it, though ‘Sean doesn’t see it as a big deal. He says it’s just a phase.’ Interestingly, there was also a string of exchanges, from about 18 months ago, with a friend who lived in Switzerland, Sara, bitching about their respective mother-in-laws. Helen had really gone off on one about Eileen.

‘She turned up out of nowhere and told me about how I was too soft on Frankie, that I need to be stricter with her or she’ll end up going off the rails like Sean. I asked her what she meant, coz as far as I know Sean has never done anything bad – nothing I know about anyway!! – but then she clammed up and said she didn’t mean anything by it. I tried to press her but she said she just meant Sean was a bit naughty at school, nothing to, in her words, get my knickers in a twist about. When I asked Sean about it later he said he had no idea what Eileen meant.’

That was interesting. Sean Philips had a dodgy past. What did they know about him? He’d been brought up by a single mum, Eileen, in Braintree where Eileen still lived. Gone to study business at uni in Birmingham, then come to London to work in the City. Done well for himself, and set up his own management consultancy firm about five years ago. The Essex boy done good.

Winkler made a note that he needed to talk to Eileen, or maybe go back to Essex and find some old mates of Sean’s.

There was another interesting message about Eileen from Helen, writing to her friend Sara.

‘She’s such a racist. Even though I’m mixed race, I overheard her once saying she didn’t think Frankie should go to the nursery she goes to because there are too many of “them”. Can you believe it? Has she not noticed that Frankie’s mixed race too?!?’

Sara made some horrified statement and Helen continued:

‘I reminded her that both her granddaughters are mixed race and she said, “Exactly”.’

Winkler pressed print and waited for his shitty printer – was there ever a more temperamental piece of technology? – to grumpily awaken. That could be interesting too. Was Eileen’s reference to Sean going off the rails merely something about him fathering a child with not one but two black women? If Eileen was some kind of BNP nut, that would no doubt be seen as a terrible sin to her. He sighed. That probably was it, in which case the reference to Sean going off the rails when he was younger wasn’t going to lead him anywhere. It was just the ranting of a racist old woman.

There was no sign of the messages from the woman who had apparently contacted Helen saying she knew where Frankie was. He guessed that this woman had come to her senses and deleted all her messages.

He was about to move on to try to log in to Helen’s email when the little chat box in the bottom corner popped up with a new instant message.

It was someone he hadn’t heard of before, someone called
Hattie
Styles. Not one of Helen’s existing Facebook friends. Styles’ avatar was a mean-looking black and white cat. Winkler immediately smelled a rat. And the name . . . he was no fan of recent pop music, but even he had heard of One Direction and Harry Styles. It was an obvious play on that name. Did that mean he was dealing with a teenage girl here?

I knew Frankie wouldnt b in that house
, the message read.

Winkler paused, his fingers poised over the keyboard. He typed, as Helen,
How did you know that? Who are you?

The reply came back immediately.
U need to look closer to home . . .

What do you mean?

He paused. He felt tense and excited. He added,
Please tell me. I need to know what happened to Frankie. I’ll be so grateful if you can tell me anything.

There was no immediate response. Shit, had he frightened her off by being too needy? Maybe the best tactic would be to play it cool. But he wanted ‘Hattie’ to believe that she had power, make her want to show off. Of course, it was highly unlikely she actually knew anything, but it was worth a try.

Finally, the reply came back.
You have a demon livin in ur house.

This was interesting. Was ‘Hattie’ talking about Sean?

He typed,
What are you talking about?

Ur stepdaughter. She is evil. An evil bitch!!!

He responded with
???

Alice killd little Frankie. She is a devil. Her and her boyfriend. They are evil and r goin 2 ROT IN HELL for wot they have dun.

Winkler smiled. An obvious nut. Probably seen a picture of Alice in the paper and taken a dislike to her face.

Don’t be ridiculous,
he wrote.
Alice is a nice girl.

Immediately the response came back:
That’s wot YOU think. I can prove she is evil. And eny1 that evil could EASILY kill a little kid. I KNOW wot she is like.

He typed,
I thought you had real info for me but you are talking nonsense.

‘Hattie’ came back with,
I can proov it. Im sending you a link to a video that ur stepdaughter made. REMEMBER evil Alice did this. SHE IS GUILTY!!!

Winkler waited for what seemed like forever and was starting to think that ‘Hattie’ was bluffing or had chickened out, when another message popped up, with a link to an external site.

He clicked it. As ‘Hattie Styles’ had promised, it led to a video. Winkler clicked play and started watching it.

‘Well, fucking well,’ he said.

Chapter 32
Helen – Day 5

Helen sat in the office with her back to the door, but kept an eye on the laptop screen for a movement in the reflection that would signify Sean’s approach. It would only make things so much worse if he spotted the contents of the email discussion she was having with Marion. After returning from the encounter with Janet Friars, Helen had got home to find an email from her gym-buddy, as
king he
r how she was doing. Quickly firing emails back and forth, Helen had asked Marion what she was up to that evening and her friend had replied that she had a date with a guy so hot he made Brad Pitt look like Shrek. Sex was, apparently, very much on the cards.

I actually can’t imagine ever having sex with Sean again,
Helen replied. She paused and stared at the photo montage on the wall above the desk, a selection of the best photos from their last few holidays, of her, Sean, Alice and Frankie, mostly on beaches with wind-whipped hair and summer-dark skin, only Sean pale and freckly next to the mocha skin tones of the three girls. She wondered, not for the first time, if Alice minded the fact that she, Helen, could pass for her mum.

Then she added,
How depressing is that?

Marion had replied immediately.
Try not to worry, honey, you’re under so much stress. Sex is probably the last thing on your mind.

Helen crossed her legs, squeezing them tightly together.
No,
she replied, typing furiously, her fingers pounding the keyboard.
I’m gagging for it, to take my mind off everything. Seriously. But every time I think of Sean and I doing it, the way he is now, so cold and distant, it just turns me off again. And I feel so guilty for even thinking about it, with F missing . . .

Helen hesitated before hitting ‘send’. Perhaps she was ‘over-sharing’, something she knew she was prone to doing, usually after too much white wine. She
was
over-sharing, she decided. She deleted the last few sentences and instead wrote,
Yeah. Not really in the mood these days . . . Anyway, got to go . . .

She was unwilling to admit the reason ‒ that her Diazepam was about to kick in
.
It had been her only chance of getting any sleep since Frankie had gone.

. . . Thanks for messaging me. It’s good to hear fro
m you.

Marion replied,
See you at the gym, honey. You’ll get your princess back again soon. Hang in there. XXX

Sure,
said Helen, brushing away a fat tear that dropped onto her keyboard.
Bye XXX.

Then she sat still for a long time, thinking about the words she had almost sent her friend in a moment of honesty. She wanted sex so badly; craved its oblivion – but her only available option was currently staring blank-eyed at the TV screen downstairs, an almost-empty bottle of red wine beside him, his tongue stained black. Last time she had popped down to get a cup of tea, Sean had been watching
Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model
, a programme that Alice loved, but that Sean would, under normal circumstances, rather scoop out his eyes with a spoon than watch voluntarily.

When had they last made love? It took her a moment to recall: it had been the day before Frankie was taken, a middle-of-the-night wordless quickie. The next evening in the restaurant she remembered wondering if she could already be pregnant. She recalled her feeling of pure heady happiness at the thought of another baby, sanctioned by Sean, a confirmation that their marriage was working and their family putting down deeper roots – and then, less than an hour later, everything was in pieces, as though a giant wrecking ball had come long and bashed their lives to shit, its huge hard smooth surface blotting out all light and future and hope . . . at least until Frankie came home.

She didn’t bother saying goodnight to Sean. Overcome by a huge tiredness, so great that she couldn’t even summon up the energy to trudge downstairs and tell him she was turning in, it just seemed easier to close her laptop lid, give her teeth a perfunctory brush, strip off all her clothes and collapse into bed in a drug-blurred haze.

She awoke several hours later in the pitch dark, lying on her side, not quite sure if she was dreaming the prodding sensation in the area of her coccyx. Not entirely sure if she was even awake. Sean’s breathing was light and fast on the back of her neck and the prodding became more insistent. Instantly aroused, she moved her bottom up and back, returning the pressure, feeling the tip of his cock slip between her naked buttocks. Perhaps because it was dark, perhaps because she had her back to him, and she didn’t have to see the naked grief in Sean’s eyes, or maybe because of her lustful thoughts earlier on, she felt almost overwhelmingly turned on. Everything in her focused on his penis, the softness of the head of it as it probed her, squeezing briefly, tantalizingly, towards her anus, then further down, slipping in, shoving hard into her wetness . . . Helen felt her breathing change too, and she moaned.

‘Sean,’ she murmured. ‘My darling.’

He came almost immediately, pushing deep inside her and shuddering. ‘I love you,’ he said.

Only now, she noticed the smell of stale alcohol coming off him, and before she could decide whether to say something about it, his breathing changed. He was asleep.

Helen lay in the dark, her eyes open, staring at the digital clock, wondering where Frankie was right now, if she was warm. If she was suffering. Sean shifted against her in his sleep, muttering something. She felt more alone than ever before.