The Reckoning (40 page)

‘First of all, she wasn’t the sort of person to walk out on her job without saying anything. She ran the nursery and had a good relationship with the owners, so there was no work stress to run away from. She got on well with her colleagues. Very well, in fact – she was a bridesmaid for one of them, and godmother to another one’s kids. She adored children, according to her dad. She used to talk about her job constantly – lots of cute stories about what the little ones had done and said.’

‘Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad,’ Liv said cautiously.

‘It certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of job you’d walk away from without as much as a phone call. And Patricia was the only member of staff who had the keys to the nursery. If she’d been planning to leave and never return, you’d have thought she’d have left the keys behind, either in the building or in her flat.’

‘But she took them?’

‘So it seems. They were never found. And that wasn’t the only strange thing about her packing. Mrs Farinelli told DS Rai she was worried because Patricia had left her contact lens case and formula behind. That didn’t make any sense – she’d been wearing the lenses the last day she was seen, so she’d have needed to clean them unless she was just going to throw them away, and they weren’t disposables. Patricia is incredibly short-sighted, according to her mother, and self-conscious about wearing glasses. She always wore her contacts if she could, and she carried a pair of glasses with her in case she had to take the lenses out for any reason. She had spare pairs at work and at home. It was like an obsession. Completely understandable, since her mother said her eyesight was so bad she literally couldn’t get from here to the door without help.’

‘I’ve forgotten things when I was packing. Important things, too.’

‘Mrs Farinelli was adamant that she wouldn’t have left them. They were always the first things she packed. She also left behind a jewellery box with a few pieces she’d inherited from her grandmother – a diamond ring and a couple of pairs of earrings. Even if she didn’t want them, Mrs Farinelli thought it was strange she hadn’t sold them to raise money for her trip.’ I took a sip of tea. ‘Then there were her clothes. Patricia had put on a lot of weight and her wardrobe ranged from a size twelve to size twenty. The clothes she took were twelves and fourteens. She would have had nothing to wear for months if she’d been planning to lose weight to fit into them.’

‘I’ll give you that one.’ Liv stirred her tea, staring at the liquid swirling around her mug. ‘What are you thinking? That she didn’t pack for herself?’

‘Pretty much. The whole thing sounds as if it was staged to me. Someone made it look as if there was nothing to investigate and because we’re conditioned to see adults as independent and free and not in danger unless the circumstances are obviously sinister, they got away with it.’

‘Yeah, but who? And if we assume it was the same person who took Cheyenne, why did he target an overweight nursery manager and a teenager? And how?’

‘I don’t know why, but I am willing to bet the how was something to do with the Internet. Patricia’s laptop disappeared with her so it wasn’t possible to recover any information about which websites she’d used. But she was single and not happy about it, from what her mother said. I think someone gained her confidence and persuaded her to trust him, just the same way Kyle convinced Cheyenne to come and meet him. I think the person we’re looking for targets women – and girls – who are needy and lacking in confidence and want to be loved. Cheyenne was desperate to be a grown-up and seen as beautiful. Patricia was overweight and lonely. Easy targets for some fake charm.’

‘It’s possible. There’s no way to prove it, though.’ Liv began to say something else, then stopped herself.

‘What is it? I promise I won’t get cross.’

‘Well, you’re upset about Patricia. You’ve been talking to her parents – they would say she was perfect. Parents are not good judges of their children. What if she ran away to be with the person who kidnapped Cheyenne? What if Belcott was right and it was like Hindley and Brady – they did team up to attack a child?’

‘If that’s the case, why would it have taken so long for them to act? She’s been missing for eighteen months.’

‘We don’t know they didn’t.’ Liv let that cheerful thought sink in for a moment. ‘Plus, the fantasy might have been enough for them for a while. Just being together, talking about it, planning it – that could have been part of the fun.’

‘I take your point about not believing the parents. She was an angel from heaven according to her mother, and her dad said much the same thing. No one is that perfect.’

‘There’s a good chance they don’t really know what her life was like either,’ Liv said delicately. ‘I mean, most people don’t tell their parents everything, even if the parents think they do.’

‘You’re so right. My parents wouldn’t be able to tell you much about my love life. At least I hope they wouldn’t.’

‘Did she have any close friends we could talk to? What about the girls from the nursery?’

‘Good idea. They were the last ones to see her as well. Worth a chat, I’d have said. I’ll see if I can track them down.’

‘When you have, will you tell me what they say?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Curious?’

‘This is twelve times more interesting than what I was doing.’

‘What was that?’

‘Reading the file on a guy named Dave King to see if he had any reason to want to upset John Skinner. It’s that thick.’ She held up her forefinger and thumb about two inches apart. ‘He’s an associate of Ken Goldsworthy. I never thought violence could be so
boring
.’

‘Not to them,’ I said simply. ‘Everyone needs a hobby.’

In the end, it was relatively simple to find Meg Spencer, Patricia’s second-in-command at the Happy Hoppy Nursery; the mobile number that DS Rai grudgingly dictated to me still worked. I was glad I had started with her rather than Helen McCann, because Helen had moved to Australia, Meg informed me as soon as I mentioned her. Meg was not the sort of person to hold back. She was garrulous to the point where I had to ask her to slow down once or twice, as my pen slid across my notebook at top speed.

‘She went about six months after Patricia disappeared. We never actually talked about why she was going, but to be honest with you I think it had a lot to do with Pat.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, Jamie, Helen’s husband, he wanted to move to Australia anyway, and with Patricia going, it was like a sign that she should do something to change her life too. You know, life’s too short to stay in one place and wish you had the courage to do something different.’

‘That suggests Helen thought Patricia had come to harm.’

‘We all did.’ Meg laughed a little. ‘The only people who didn’t take us seriously were the police.’

‘I’m sorry about that. I promise you, we’re taking it seriously now.’

‘It’s a bit late for that.’ She hesitated. ‘Actually, why are you ringing now? Is there any news?’

‘We think Patricia may be involved in the disappearance of a teenage girl.’

‘Involved? What are you talking about?’

‘I can’t say anything more at present.’

‘Well, if I don’t know what you’re talking about, neither can I.’ She sounded uncompromising.

‘I wish you would. It could be really helpful to us.’ I dug my pen into the desk, frustrated. ‘It could help Patricia.’

‘Obviously I want to help her, but I don’t want to get her into trouble.’

‘That’s not what this is about,’ I said quickly. ‘The main thing is to find her.’

When she replied, her voice was softer. ‘I never thought that would happen. I thought she was gone for good. I really blamed myself for not asking her more questions about where she was going that night.’

Bingo
. ‘Did you think she was going out?’

‘Oh yeah. Definitely. She was all dressed up. Put on her make-up before she left and everything. No way was she just going home, which was what she said. Helen and I just nodded at it, you know, because we weren’t going to make her tell us what she was doing if she didn’t want to.’

‘And what did you think she was doing?’

‘We assumed it was another date.’

‘Another date? I thought she was single.’

‘She was.’ Meg sighed. ‘Patricia was so unlucky, you know. She never met the right kind of person. She was really shy, but she wanted to get married and have kids. She never even got close to it. She fell madly in love when she was in college but from what she said he was a total nutter – a hippy with long hair who was massively into some animal liberation movement – and he was more interested in little rabbits than a relationship. Pat followed him around hoping he’d notice her and then got arrested on a demo. Typical of her luck, basically. I mean Patricia was not radical in the least. She just did it because she thought it would impress him.’

She didn’t sound like a very strong character, which made me even more worried for her. Someone like her could be manipulated into doing dreadful things. I passionately wanted to find out that Patricia was an innocent victim, not a collaborator with Cheyenne’s abductor.

Meg was bowling along merrily. ‘So, it took her years to get over him, literally. And they never even went out! She said she could never find anyone who measured up to him.’ A snort. ‘I mean, this guy was a total loser. I don’t think he ever even got a proper job. Pat just saw the best in everyone regardless of what they were really like.’

‘Some people are like that.’

‘Yeah, well it makes life hard for them. You need a bit of cynicism to get by, don’t you?’

‘It helps. Did you say she was dating, though?’

‘Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. At least, Helen and I thought she was. She’d done some Internet dating and speed dating and stuff about three years ago but it never went very well. She’d get all excited about meeting someone because his emails were nice. She’d imagine it was going to be true love as soon as someone showed any interest in her – she really wanted to meet Mr Right. But she didn’t. They’d never email her again, or they’d be really rude about how she looked, and it completely demolished her confidence. She swore off it completely – said she’d meet someone the traditional way or not at all. But then, a couple of months before she disappeared, she was behaving differently – texting all the time, and dressing a bit better, and making more of an effort with her appearance. We were pretty sure she’d met someone and she didn’t want to tell us about it because she’d met them online and she thought we wouldn’t approve. Or because she was superstitious about telling us in case it all went wrong again and she felt like a fool.’

‘Or because he told her not to tell anyone about it.’ I was thinking about the single message we had to prove Kyle’s existence, the insistence on secrecy.

‘She’d have done whatever she was asked to do,’ Meg said dismally. ‘She didn’t have any free will of her own. She just wanted to be loved. And she deserved it, you know? We were so happy to see her going off that night. She had a beautiful dress on, a peacock-feather print, and high heels, and she looked really pretty. They always say that, don’t they, about girls who are a bit heavier – “oh, she has a lovely face”. But Pat definitely did.’

‘I haven’t seen a picture of her yet, actually.’ If DS Rai ever got off his arse and found the file, maybe I would.

‘I’ll send you a couple now if you give me your email.’

I thanked her, surprised that she had offered.

‘You’re the first person who’s acted as if Patricia was a person.’ Meg’s voice had become hoarse and I guessed she was welling up. ‘If you can find her – if she’s okay – tell her I miss her, right? Tell her I can’t wait to see her.’

‘I will,’ I promised. I hung up and Liv was at my elbow instantly.

‘Tell me everything she said.’

I dragged my hands through my hair, having given up on trying to maintain the sleekness some time during my phone conversation with Meg Spencer. ‘You know, the more I hear about her, the more worried I am for her. And the more furious I feel with Rai for not investigating it.’

I opened my email to find that Meg had been as good as her word and had sent a file with three attachments. ‘Do you want to see a picture of Patricia?’

‘Of course.’ Liv leaned in to look as the attachments downloaded.

‘The first two are pictures from Meg’s daughter’s christening, looking at the file names.’

‘I take it that’s Meg.’

I nodded, examining the slight young woman with a tense expression, clutching a baby version of herself who looked comically worried. ‘Not what I imagined from talking to her. She sounded … bigger.’

‘That happens to me all the time. I can’t help picturing people when I talk to them on the phone and I’m never, ever right.’ She pointed. ‘That must be Patricia.’

In the first picture she was standing at the back of the family group, half-obscured by Meg’s husband. She was wearing black, and her sole concession to looking celebratory was the enormous red flower she wore as a corsage. Her posture was hunched, as if she was trying to take up less space, as if she wanted to disappear. She was plump, but nothing like as big as she evidently felt herself to be.

The second one was a candid shot from the same day, taken over someone’s shoulder. It was a close-up. Patricia was looking into the camera with a doubtful expression in her eyes, as if she had just noticed she was its target. Her skin was peachy perfect and her eyes were a beautiful chocolate-brown. She was pretty, as Meg had said, but the overall impression I got was of someone who was desperately unhappy, ill at ease with themselves and the exposure of a social occasion.

The third image was also unposed, Patricia caught straightening up from behind a desk. Her mouth was open and I presumed she had been talking when the picture was snapped. This time, there was no make-up and her eyes were hidden behind thick glasses with red and black rims. Her hair was scraped back in a ponytail that cruelly emphasised the roundness of her face, the soft flesh under her chin. In the message that accompanied the images, Meg explained that Patricia hadn’t liked to be photographed, and that these were the only three she could find.