The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) Read online

  ‘What d’you want?’ Anni barely lifted the words, turned the question into a statement.

  Marina sighed. Seemed to accept that this was the way the conversation was going to go. ‘I… I was…’ Another sigh. Anni knew Marina was trying to find a way to make pleasantries, to ask how she was. She had cut her off. There would be none of that. And even if Marina did manage to ask anything, did manage to try and break through, she would just cut her off again. Tell her she was fine.

  Marina continued. ‘I need your help, Anni.’

  Anni said nothing, waited.

  ‘It’s… it’s that woman. The one who called herself Fiona Welch.’

  Anni’s stomach flipped over once more. And kept flipping. She couldn’t breathe. Her legs shook. She was thankful to be sitting down.

  ‘What…’ Her voice seemed to have deserted her. ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s back again. She’s… she’s killed three people. Men. You… you might have heard about it. One in Wrabness, one in the Dock Transit building, one in that house at the bottom of East Hill, the one where we —’

  ‘I know what we found there. I’ve heard about this.’

  ‘Right. OK. Well, it’s worse than that. She’s… she’s got Phil.’

  It felt like Anni’s heart had stopped.

  ‘She’s taken Phil. And I need… I need help. I don’t think that the police at my end are doing enough or will do the right thing. I need someone to help me. Someone who knew him.’

  Marina stopped talking. Anni picked up on it. She had spoken about her husband in the past tense.

  Marina stumbled over that, kept going. ‘She’s taken him. Abducted him. And I…’ Another sigh. ‘I need to find him. I need your help, Anni. Please.’ She seemed to struggle to keep the pleading from her voice. Failed.

  Anni felt her defences being breached, her heart being touched. She couldn’t allow that to happen. If she did, if she stopped protecting herself, she might just fall apart. And she didn’t how long it would take to put herself together then.

  ‘The police can help you. I can’t.’

  ‘But Anni —’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She hung up while Marina was still pleading with her.

  She held the phone in her hands, looked at it. Sighed. Turned it off. It was only a temporary measure, she knew that, but it would stop any more calls for the time being.

  She took a deep breath. Another one. Felt her body still shaking. Knew she had to do something about it, knew she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on what had just happened.

  She walked towards the bag once more, strapping her gloves back on as she went.

  Started punching as hard as she could.

  Rebuilding the Castle

  The window was dirty. It had been cleaned, just not enough. But it would take a lot of scouring to rid the glass of all the grime and dirt that had accumulated and gathered over the years. Like the glass had pores and the dirt was stuck in them. And no amount of rubbing would make them clean again.

  She knew that was stupid. Knew glass didn’t have pores. But that was what it looked like. She took a finger, stuck it in her mouth until it was good and wet, tried wiping the dirt off. She ended up with a dirty finger and smeary glass. She wiped her finger on her jeans. Didn’t try that again.

  She spent a lot of time at that window, looking out. Not that there was much to see. A railway line. An industrial estate. Beyond that, a road. People came and went. Nobody stopped for long. Except her. And the other children. They never went anywhere.

  The worst thing that could have happened, happened. Mr Wignall had had a stroke. Mrs Wignall said it was inevitable, the way he kept on eating the wrong things and smoking and drinking when he thought she wasn’t looking. Mrs Wignall was angry when she said it, angry at him for what he’d done, but also sad. Sad for her and him. And, when she’d stopped thinking about her and him, sad for all the children.

  She didn’t know what Mrs Wignall meant by that: sad for all the children. The children were all right. None of them had suffered a stroke. None of them had eaten the wrong things or smoked or drank. Well, a couple of them might have smoked, but that was all. But not as much as Mr Wignall. Not yet, anyway. So the children were all right.

  But they weren’t.

  I can’t look after you any more, said Mrs Wignall. She had called them all into the living room after they’d come back from school that day. I would love to. But I can’t. Since Mr Wignall had his stroke I have to look after him. And it’s a lot of work to look after him and all of you. And I love you all but I’m afraid I can’t keep looking after you. She looked round the room, into all of their eyes and cried when she spoke. Some of the children cried too. Boys as well. But most of the boys just balled up their fists and made faces to stop the tears. None of them looked at each other.

  But she didn’t cry. She didn’t know what she would be crying for.

  She had enjoyed her time at the Wignalls’. But now she had to go somewhere else. She understood that. And inside her something small felt sad. Something small felt like crying. But she had tried to hide that. Like the castle she used to play with, put what needed to be defended in the heart of something, then build the biggest, strongest set of walls around it that she could. Let no one in there. So no one could hurt what was there. Not even herself.

  She still saw Caroline from the centre but less and less. She had come to see her at the Wignalls’ to ask how she was doing. Fine, she had said. Good. Are you making friends? Yes. Who? She had thought. James. Good, said Caroline. This seemed to have been the right answer. And Melanie. Caroline had nodded. I’m very pleased to hear it, she had said. She had said the right thing. That was good. And are you happy? Oh yes. I’m happy here. And she had tried to look happy when she said it. She knew what happy was. She had heard the other children talking about it. And she had watched the way they looked when they said it and tried to imitate them. She thought she had got it right.

  Nothing had made her smile since she had built her castle wall. Since she had decided no one was going to hurt her any more. But she couldn’t tell them, couldn’t let them know that that was what she had done. So she watched. Learned. Pretended to think the way the others did, feel the way they did so they wouldn’t leave her out. She was clever. It was easy.

  Caroline had gone away happy. It had worked and that was good. She wouldn’t be calling back any more, making her go over sad and unpleasant things once again. Getting inside the walls.

  She often wondered what the thing that she kept locked up, the sad and happy bit of her, looked like. She thought she knew. Her old doll. Belinda. She even called it that, the thing inside her. Belinda. As good a name as any.

  And so Mrs Wignall said goodbye to them all. She had seen Mr Wignall before she left. He looked like he’d got old. Really, really old. He stared at her funny. He dribbled things and blew spit bubbles from the side of his mouth. Some of the other kids were upset, even appalled by it. She was just fascinated. How someone could change so much. Go from being one person to another. Just like that. Snap. Something to remember.

  They moved her to a children’s home. Some of the other children went on to other foster homes. The happier ones. The easier ones. But not her. She was in this home now and the castle walls around her had grown even stronger.

  The other kids all looked at her funny. Like they were angry with her when she hadn’t done anything to make them angry. Like they didn’t want her there even though they couldn’t understand why. But she could see that the anger hid something else behind their eyes. Fear or something. It didn’t stop them, though. Just made them worse.

  One girl in particular was bad. Collette. Collette said she couldn’t have the bed she wanted. It was too near to Collette and Collette had the best bed in the room. Then Collette said she smelled funny and that she was a nasty little whore. Collette had friends who stood behind her and laughed at what she said when she told them to.

  She said nothin
g. Just ignored them. Kept those castle walls strong.

  She liked going to school. That was one thing. Liked the lessons, the reading, the learning things. She was clever, liked to know things. She asked for books that had facts in them. Spent time on the internet looking things up. She got homework and enjoyed doing it. But others didn’t like her doing that. Collette didn’t.

  One night Collette came over to her. She was sitting at the table, the room still smelling of the food they had eaten, the TV on loud. And she was doing her maths homework. She had her compass out and was drawing a circle, ready to make a pie chart of it.

  What you doin’?

  Homework.

  A snort from Collette. Homework. You’re a fuckin’ pussy, aren’t ya? Doin’ homework. She looked around, ready for her gang to take their cue and sneer and laugh. They did so.

  Collette kept on. About what type of girl did homework. About what was wrong with her. And more. And more. About her parents being dead. Poor little orphan. Poor little smelly, stinking orph —

  She had had enough. She yanked Collette’s head back as far as it would go, pulling her hair so tight some of it came out by the roots, twisting the girl’s body round to get her face where she wanted it. Then she calmly picked up her compass and, still without saying a word, stuck it into Collette’s right eye.

  Collette screamed, her gang screamed. They ran. Collette couldn’t go anywhere. She held her eye as the blood fountained out. She watched, fascinated. And something inside her felt warm. For the first time in years, she smiled for real.

  She got Collette’s old bed after that. And Collette’s old gang, if she wanted them but she didn’t. She didn’t need a gang. Didn’t want a gang. There was just her. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t be there for long. She knew they would take her somewhere else. Or thought they would. Because of what she’d done.

  She had been called in front of the home manager to explain herself. She remembered what children did in situations like that and cried. Said Collette had been bullying her and she’d had enough. Just lashed out, didn’t know what she was doing. Found the compass in her hand, didn’t realise…

  The manager seemed to accept that. Even though she also said that some of Collette’s gang had been scared when she did it, that she hadn’t shown any emotion. I was frightened, she said, crying again. Wailing. That seemed to be enough. She hadn’t got away with it, don’t think that. What she had done was very serious. But at least she understood why she had done it.

  Then the manager had leaned across the desk, hands out, sighed. Come to me next time. Before something like this happens again.

  She said she would.

  So now she stood at the window looking out. Not knowing if they would take her somewhere else or let her stay here. Not caring, really.

  But she had learned something. She had learned that fear wasn’t something to be kept hidden away.

  It was a tool, to be used.

  And she was just beginning to understand how to use it.

  16

  ‘Do we start off in here or get out and go looking?’

  Imani was still in the Queensway station with Beresford. They had left Franks’ office and entered the incident room. The case was on the way to a high classification so there were plenty of officers working on it with the promise of more coming in. At the moment Beresford was in charge of the case. And Imani wanted to know what they had so far.

  ‘Start here,’ said Beresford. ‘Have a look at what we’ve got so far, get yourself up to speed.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Shouldn’t take you too long.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘We don’t have a lot,’ said Beresford, leaning over his desk, grabbing a pile of files. ‘That’s most of the paperwork. Some is still on computer.’ He gestured to his desk. ‘Be my guest.’

  She sat down. Her presence in the room had drawn attention. It seemed that Beresford didn’t intend to make a formal introduction so she would have to do so as she went on. She also noticed something else: she was the only black person in the room. A couple of brown faces but no black ones. Sometimes she forgot how non-diverse other parts of the country were.

  She opened the first file he had given her, read. Crime scene report with photos. She scanned the photos, seeing a body hanging in a wooded area. Read the forensic report, the CSI report. Looked up.

  ‘Nothing there,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ said Beresford. ‘Nothing that could identify him. Some tattoos, and that’s what we’re going on. But we can’t match him to anyone else in the system. No mispers match, nothing.’

  ‘What about DNA? A PM?’

  Another grim smile. ‘Still waiting on the results.’

  Imani frowned. ‘But it’s been…’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Should have been almost instant. But the lab we use have got a backlog. Apparently there’s been so many unsafe convictions recently involving evidence supplied by this lab that they’ve got to be thorough now. Double-check everything.’

  ‘Use another lab.’

  Beresford shrugged. ‘Politics, best practice…’

  ‘Right. And the PM?’

  ‘Same thing. Backlog.’

  ‘So in the meantime, nothing.’

  ‘Yep. No name, no match. No DNA, no match. Nothing beyond what he looks like.’

  ‘And presumably you’ve done media appeals?’

  Another nod. ‘Nothing as yet.’

  She looked down at the report again, read. ‘The tarot card. Anything on that?’

  ‘Deck of Thoth, apparently. Aleister Crowley’s. The Great Beast, and all that. Pretty common in those circles, available from all good hippy-shit stores. The pen that was used, a Sharpie. Again, not uncommon. We’re getting tests run on them, but the results won’t be any time soon.’

  ‘And the location?’

  ‘Wrabness. Where DI Brennan was involved with a very high-profile case. Better known now for some art thing put there by that gay artist.’

  Imani frowned.

  ‘The one in a dress.’

  ‘Grayson Perry?’

  ‘That’s him.’ A smirk. ‘Her. Whatever.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s gay.’

  Another shrug. Beresford clearly didn’t care one way or the other.

  ‘Right.’ She looked at the next file. ‘And this one?’

  ‘More of the same, really. Body found in the cellar of an old house at the bottom of East Hill in town, just by the river. Exactly the same thing, and another location where DI Brennan was involved in a major investigation. You’re welcome to look. Feel free.’

  She did so. And found the same paucity of information as in the previous file. ‘And no DNA,’ she said.

  ‘Same reasons.’

  ‘Is it worth me looking at the third file now?’

  ‘You’re welcome to. But…’

  ‘I get it.’

  She put the file back on the desk, looked round the room. Eyes flickered up, caught hers, then down again. One held her gaze for slightly longer than the rest. A young male detective. Must fancy me, she thought. Then castigated herself for being so arrogant. No, she thought. Don’t even think that. Remembered what happened last time you allowed yourself to get involved with someone on the same case. Look what happened to him then. She went back to the report, scanned it, glanced up again. He was no longer looking at her. At least not obviously.

  ‘All these people,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘In the room, on this case. All these people. And not one single, solid lead?’

  Beresford flushed slightly. A look of anger swept across his eyes. He clearly didn’t like having his professional integrity brought into question.

  ‘So what? Some cases are like that. You should know, you’ve probably worked on plenty.’

  ‘Yes I have.’

  ‘Well, then. You know what it’s like. All you need is that one spark to ignite it, that one thread to pull and the whole thing starts to unravel. It�
�ll come.’

  ‘Have we got time for that, though? Phil Brennan was abducted this morning. By someone answering your description driving a car exactly like yours. You were here, you say. Fine. But I think we need to cultivate a sense of urgency, wouldn’t you say? Step things up a bit?’

  That anger was back again. ‘What d’you mean, “You say”?’

  Imani sighed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be confrontational. I just want to get things moving a bit faster, that’s all.’

  Beresford nodded.

  But before he could reply, a voice called from somewhere in the room.

  ‘Boss?’

  They turned. It was the detective who had been staring at Imani moments earlier. He became aware that all eyes on the room were on him now.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ he said. ‘Think we’ve got a name.’

  Beresford turned to Imani before crossing the room. ‘That quick enough for you?’

  He went over to the other detective.

  Imani was about to follow. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had glimpsed – just glimpsed – something in Beresford’s eyes on the announcement. Anger? Fear? Which one?

  She followed him across the room.

  17

  Pork and chorizo goulash. Just as she had said. And it was good, too. He wondered where she got the recipe from – or rather how she had obtained it – because it tasted the same as if he had made it.

  She sat opposite him, staring at him, watching him eat. Still dressed in a facsimile of Marina’s clothes. Her face eager, expectant. Waiting to be praised for the good she had done, seemingly needing that acknowledgement.

  He had found himself in a wheelchair, coming round after the tasering. He was sitting in a copy of his dining room but again the lights were low, even lower than he had them at home and that was so low that Marina always complained. In the darkness he could make out the walls, the door. Everything looked flat, lifeless. Near to his house, but not quite.