The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) Read online

  A narrow alleyway confronted her. The streetlight was out. Trying once again not to ask herself what she was doing there she walked on. Something crunched underfoot – broken glass, broken pavement, she didn’t know – and the sound echoed round the walls like sonar announcing her location.

  She came through the alleyway, found herself in a courtyard. The weak yellow streetlight showed up a square of patchy grass decorated with old fast food wrappers, crumpled tabloid pages and selected discarded household appliances. She thought she had stumbled onto the set of The Wire.

  Except this was no set. This was real.

  She walked round the perimeter of the square, heading towards the flat she wanted. She saw no one but felt eyes on her constantly.

  She reached the outer door, opened it. A timed light came on inside as she did so. A black rubberised floor covering felt sticky beneath the soles of her boots. It shone dully and deeply and would have looked more at home in a fetish club. The hallway had a textured ceiling with fake miniature stalactites dripping down. The walls were a colour that she could only describe as ‘functional’.

  She walked up the stairway to the first floor, found the flat she was looking for. Checked her watch. Probably too late to be calling but also late enough for him to be at home. She knew immediately which door was his. It had been vandalised with graffiti and painted over. And it had been reinforced after what looked like signs of forced entry. She found a buzzer. Rang it.

  No reply.

  She tried again.

  She could hear a TV from inside. Eventually there was a shuffling sound as someone made their way to the door. She waited.

  ‘Who’s it?’

  ‘It’s… my name is Marina Esposito. I’m… Caitlin Hennessey sent me.’ She thought that name rather than Mary’s would help her get in.

  ‘Why?’ No curiosity, more of a statement.

  ‘She… I’m working with the police. Could I… could we talk please?’

  ‘What have I got to talk about?’

  ‘If you open the door I’ll tell you.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Please, Mr Prosser.’ As she spoke she found it hard to keep the tiredness from her voice. ‘I’ve come a long way, I’ve had a hell of a day and I’m very tired. And I need your help. Please just answer my questions and I’ll leave you alone.’

  Silence. Eventually she heard the door being unlocked, chains being removed and it opened.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said.

  She summoned up a smile. ‘Thank you.’ And entered.

  She walked down a hallway to a living room. There was a bookcase full of books but they looked old and unread for a long time. Some DVDs rested beside them. A TV, big but aged, occupied one corner. Old, sagging furniture sat around like tired squatters. An off-brand laptop was open on the floor, screen grey with dust and greasy finger smudges. The lighting was low, a couple of ancient occasional table lamps, nothing else.

  ‘Sit down, then.’

  She turned, getting her first real look at Michael Prosser. He was a big man, like he had been fit once but had run to fat. His stained sweatpants and old jumper needed a wash or perhaps burning and replacing. But it was his face she was drawn to. She knew she shouldn’t stare but also that she couldn’t help it.

  Where his left eye should have been there was just a rough pink crater that resembled a lunar surface more than skin. The terrain spread towards his hairline, down to his jaw. She tried to look away but he had caught her.

  ‘Acid,’ he said, sitting down. ‘You’ve probably read about it. Not everyone gets public sympathy and a rebuilding job. Not everyone can be a pretty fucking model.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone threw acid at me,’ he said, his voice aiming for matter-of-fact but unable to hide the bitterness beneath, ‘fuck d’you think?’

  He snapped the TV off. The room fell to silence. Prosser looked at her. She couldn’t read him.

  ‘What d’you want, then?’

  ‘I’m part of a murder investigation and I’d just like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘You’re not a copper. Don’t look like one. Or act like one.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m attached to the investigation. I’m a psychologist.’

  He smiled. His face split, cracking unpleasantly. ‘Another one. Just what we need. Seen enough of them in my time. So what’s this investigation, then?’

  ‘Fiona Welch.’

  Prosser froze. Marina was sure she saw fear in his one eye.

  ‘What about her?’ His voice low.

  ‘Someone’s been pretending to be her. Calling herself by that name. This person has killed… well, we don’t know how many people she’s killed. And now she’s abducted someone. We have to find her.’

  ‘Abducted?’ He snorted. ‘You’ll never see them again.’

  Marina’s heart skipped. Both from his admission and what he had actually said. She was onto something. But she needed to move quickly. ‘So you know who she is, then?’

  Prosser’s mouth clamped shut. ‘Didn’t say that.’

  ‘But can you —’

  ‘You’re not a copper, you said?’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘So I don’t have to say anything to you. Legally.’

  ‘No, you don’t. But —’

  ‘Then fuck off.’

  Marina stared at him. ‘Mr Prosser, please.’

  ‘I said fuck off. Get out. Now.’

  Marina took a deep breath, another. This was a chance. A real chance to get a solid lead on Phil’s whereabouts. He needed to be handled with finesse. Coaxed into giving out the information. She tried a more personal approach.

  ‘Mr Prosser, please. The person who’s been abducted is my husband. A police officer. This woman has threatened my family before and thinks she has some kind of hold over him.’ She leaned forward, her body language begging. ‘Please. We need to find her. We need to stop her. And I need to find him.’

  Prosser stared at her without speaking. Marina waited, holding her breath. Eventually he smiled.

  ‘No.’

  Marina stared at him, opened her mouth to make another entreaty. He got there first.

  ‘Your old man’s a copper, yeah? Hope he gets what’s fucking coming to him.’ A malicious glee dancing behind his one eye.

  Marina felt anger rising within. Couldn’t stop herself from speaking. ‘Is this because you lost your job? What you were doing in the children’s home, how you were running it?’

  He stood up, moved towards her, his face now red with anger.

  She continued. ‘Or rather what you were running it as.’

  He stopped, stared at her. ‘You cunt.’ The words spat at her.

  Anger spiralled out of control now. ‘You can’t blame anyone for that acid attack, can you? Apart from yourself.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I’m sure the people here love having a nonce for a neighbour.’

  He was on her then. She tried to get up but his hands found her. She could smell him, the sourness of his body, his clothes. She nearly gagged. She struggled, tried to get away, but he had her.

  ‘I don’t know who fucking sent you or why but you’re out, now.’

  Saying that, he grabbed her hair with one hand, her shoulders with the other and marched her down the hall towards the door. Her feet fumbled and dragged, she caught one ankle with the other, nearly went over. Would have done if he hadn’t been holding her upright. She tried to speak, explain. No words would come out.

  He opened the door, threw her outside. She lost her footing, stumbled, fell down on the landing.

  The door slammed behind her. She lay there unmoving. And hating herself for what she had done. Embarrassed for the outburst.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid… Should have waited, should have seen him in the morning. Should have… should have…

  She felt suddenly exhausted.

  She picked herself up. Her ankle was throbb
ing. She made her way slowly and painfully towards the stairs.

  23

  Phil opened his eyes. Still clamped to the chair, his body unable to move or even relax. He felt pain down from his neck through his back, along his legs. Stiffness from sitting in the same position combined with rigidly cramped muscles resulting from the tension in his body, the fear, the uncertainty in his mind. And the more purely physical pain: his head still throbbing and aching from the attack.

  After the woman left the room, the first thing he had done was give in to the pain. He knew that was the wrong thing to do, like sleeping after a concussion, but his body gave him no choice. The pain, combined with his terror-filled situation, caused his body to close down, to either sleep or pass out, he didn’t know which. He didn’t care. The numbness, the absence of being, came as a relief.

  But now he was awake again. Disorientated, alone. His body felt like it had been on a long-haul flight with an economy airline and not allowed to move for the duration of the trip. It screamed out for movement. But, try as he might, straining and pulling against the leather straps, he just couldn’t provide any.

  He tried to calm himself down, quell his rising fear. Take deep breaths, focus. Calm. Calm. Think about what he knows, try to put it in order. Try to formulate some kind of plan. Don’t give in to despair or helplessness. Don’t have another panic attack. Not now.

  Focus. How long had he been in the chair? He didn’t know. Could he tell from the way his body was feeling? Unlikely. Several hours, it felt like, judging from the pain in his muscles. No other way to judge what time it was.

  What can you see? Nothing. No, wait. That wasn’t quite true. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and could make out vague shapes and shadows in his surroundings. He was still in the facsimile of his dining room, could still make out the features on the walls. Light, faint and small, must be getting in from somewhere. But he had no way of knowing whether it was artificial or day.

  Close your eyes, listen. What could he hear? Nothing around him. Silence in the building – wherever and whatever the building was. Listen harder, expand his reach: still nothing. No TV, music, no traffic beyond, no noise from anywhere apart from his own movement, his own breathing.

  No trace of the woman.

  What else? He needed the toilet. His bladder was aching.

  Phil sighed. He had rarely felt so alone.

  He shook his head. The throbbing increased. He tried to ignore it. No. No. Don’t give in to despair, to self-pity. He was alive. He had hope. He had to assume that Cotter had worked out what had happened, that she would have a team out looking for him. That Beresford – if it was, in fact, him – had been brought in for questioning and given him up.

  Hope. That was all he had. And he couldn’t give up on it.

  In the meantime, he thought, if he was alone, he should try and turn that to his advantage. He looked round the room, eyes now as accustomed as they could be to the darkness. What did he see? What could he use? And then he saw it.

  The door.

  Yes, he was strapped to a wheelchair, but there was a door in front of him. A working door that the woman had used. Turned the handle, gone in and out. It closed, it opened. And there had been no sign of a lock on it.

  Something small fluttered inside him. Hope. There it was again. He tried not to let it build too much, take on unworkable aspects, false properties, but he didn’t dismiss it either.

  Feeling the aches in his muscles diminish as adrenalin pumped through them, he wheeled his way towards the door. It was slow going, his bare feet, strapped at the ankles, being his only method of conveyance, his stomach muscles cramping as he used them to push too.

  Gasping and grunting, he eventually reached the wall. He stopped moving, allowing his breath to return. The movement had left him light-headed. Black stars danced before his eyes, took away sections of the room from him. He tried to ignore them. Breathe deep. Concentrate. Just try to get out of that room.

  He was up close to the wall now, able to see it closely. When the photographic images of his house had been enlarged the colours had leached away to near black and white, the sharpness of the small image now blurry. But he could still make out details.

  He pushed himself round the perimeter of the room, examining those details, trying to work out, from what he could see, when the photos had been taken. Within the last year, he concluded. Not too recently because there had been certain additions to the room – ornaments, books on shelves, small things of that nature – but nothing large enough or specific enough to resonate in his memory. But it meant that someone had been in his house. With enough time to catalogue every room. And the worst thing of all, they had done it without him knowing or even suspecting it.

  He kept moving, slowly, agonisingly slowly, until eventually he reached the door. Like the walls, it was a photographic representation of his dining room door, the one leading off to the kitchen. He didn’t know where this one would lead but wouldn’t have been surprised if his kitchen lay beyond, or at least a photographic facsimile of it.

  The door handle was real. Three-dimensional. A copy of his, of course. Not quite perfect for close scrutiny, but good enough to be taken as the real thing from a distance.

  Phil didn’t care about that right now. All he wanted to do was open the door, get to the other side. See what lay beyond, negotiate his way to freedom.

  He was facing the door. He tried to reach out, grasp the handle, but couldn’t. The restraints held his hand too tightly. He would have to try it sideways. Grab it that way. He pushed back the wheelchair with his bare feet, agonisingly slowly once more, feeling even worse than when he had started because the handle was so tantalisingly close.

  He tried to move the wheelchair sideways into the wall, found it wouldn’t go. So he had to move it slowly backwards and forwards, incrementally, like trying to parallel park a large car in a too-tight space when he couldn’t see the kerb.

  Eventually he managed it. He was sweating, gasping for breath and again seeing stars once more when he came to a stop beside the handle. But he ignored all that. He had made it. He had done it. He was one step closer to freedom.

  The handle was near his left hand. If he could reach out and pull it down then push his weight against it while still holding it the door would open. It had to. He thought again. Had it opened inwardly? Had she come through that way? A tremor of doubt ran through him. If that was the case his plan wouldn’t work. He thought once more. No. Outward. From the dining room, into the kitchen. Yes. He was sure of it.

  He took a deep breath. Another. Tamped down his nerves. Grasped the handle.

  And screamed.

  24

  Marina felt the cold of the late evening almost as keenly as she felt the pain in her ankle. The stairs had been a challenge for her but now, trying to make her way as quickly as she could through the estate and back to the car, she couldn’t help shivering. She tried to use the cold to her advantage, concentrate on it, hope that by doing so it would take her mind off her foot. She hoped she had just twisted or sprained it. If it was broken she wouldn’t be able to move for weeks. And that, she thought guiltily, desperately, meant she could play no further part in looking for Phil. And that wasn’t something she was prepared to face.

  The door slammed behind her. Upstairs, she thought, Michael Prosser was watching her leave. She had no idea what he was thinking but knew it wouldn’t be good. She was still angry with herself for the way she had behaved with him. Unprofessional. Letting him wind her up like that. She had to rein her emotions in if she was to get anywhere doing this. Treat it as another case. Yeah, she thought. Because that isn’t impossible.

  She again ignored the square of scorched earth in the centre of the quadrant, walked round the outside. Kept to the light. Or what there was of it. Then she reached the narrow alleyway. She could see her car ahead. Only a few metres to go. But she was thinking so much on the way she had behaved with Prosser, so wrapped up in her own thoughts, that sh
e wasn’t aware of being followed.

  It wasn’t until she had set foot in the alleyway, walked away from the buildings, that she noticed. She was grabbed from behind, a strong, heavy arm wrapping itself round her throat, another arm round her midriff.

  A muffled voice: ‘Scream and I’ll fucking cut you.’

  She looked down. Her attacker had a knife against her throat. She didn’t scream. Instead she spoke.

  ‘I’ve got… I’ve got money… Here, take, take my bag, it’s… it’s just under here…’

  She moved against the arms, heart hammering away, trying to get her bag out.

  ‘I’ve got… cards, my cards, credit cards are in there…’

  ‘I don’t want your fucking money,’ the figure said.

  Because of the fear, the adrenalin and blood pounding round her system, deafening her to everything but her wildly running heartbeat, it took a few seconds for Marina to process the words she had heard.

  ‘You… what?’

  The figure gripped her even tighter. She felt the air huff out of her lungs, her throat constrict. Couldn’t get enough air into her body.

  ‘What did you want with Prosser? What did he say?’

  ‘He…’ She gasped, unable to breathe properly. Not enough air to speak with. ‘We talked…’

  Tighter again. ‘What about? I’m not fucking about here.’

  ‘I… we… can’t breathe, please…’

  The figure didn’t relax its grip. Just pushed the knife against the skin of her throat. ‘Answer the question.’

  Marina felt wetness on her neck, a small stab of pain. The blade had broken skin. Her body now trembling she tried not to move, barely to breathe. ‘I…’ Focus. Concentrate. ‘I asked him some questions. He wouldn’t tell me anything.’

  She felt the knife push harder against her skin. Tried to gasp, breathe her neck away from it. Couldn’t.

  ‘What kind of questions? Who about?’

  ‘About… about… Fiona Welch…’ She didn’t think it was a good time to lie. Or even attempt to negotiate. Do nothing to antagonise her assailant, inflame the situation. That was all that was running through her mind.