‘How can we contact him?’
‘He’s on a ship – at sea – a dredger. I – can’t remember – what his hours are – when they’re ashore.’
Grace nodded. ‘Can you give us his phone number? We’ll try him.’
‘Can’t I speak to him myself?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘Can’t I just make – I thought I could make – one phone call?’
‘After you are booked in.’
She looked at both men in despair. Grace looked back at her with compassion but remained firm. She gave them Mal’s mobile number. Glenn Branson wrote it on his pad, then immediately dialled it.
121
There were only two things to read in the room. One, pinned to a green door with a small window in it, said, NO MOBILE PHONES TO BE USED IN THE CUSTODY AREA. The other read, ALL DETAINED PERSONS WILL BE THOROUGHLY SEARCHED AS DIRECTED BY THE CUSTODY OFFICER. IF YOU HAVE ANY PROHIBITED ITEMS ON YOUR PERSON OR IN YOUR PROPERTY TELL THE CUSTODY OFFICER OR YOUR ARRESTING OFFICER NOW.
Lynn had read them both about a dozen times each. She had been in this grim room, with its bare white walls and bare brown floor, seated on the rock-hard bench that felt like it was made of stone for over an hour now, sustained by two small packets of sugar she had been given.
She had never felt so terrible in her life. None of the pain of her divorce came close to what she was experiencing inside her mind and her heart now.
Every few minutes the young police officer who had accompanied her here from Wiston Grange glanced at her and gave her a helpless smile. They had nothing to say to each other. She’d made her point over and over to him, and he understood it, but he could do nothing.
Suddenly his phone beeped. He answered it. After a few moments, during which he gave monosyllabic responses, he held the phone away from his ear and turned to Lynn. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Branson – he was with you earlier, at Wiston?’
She nodded.
‘He’s with your ex-husband now, at your house. There’s no sign of your daughter.’
‘Where is she?’ Lynn said weakly. ‘Where?’
The officer looked at her helplessly.
‘Could I speak to Mal – my ex?’
‘I’m sorry, madam, I cannot permit that.’ Then he suddenly pulled his phone closer to his ear and raised a finger.
Turning to Lynn, he said, ‘They’ve got Streamline Taxis on the phone.’
He listened for some moments and then said, into the phone, ‘I will relay that, sir, if you hold a moment.’
He turned to Lynn again. ‘They’ve been in contact with the driver who picked up a young lady from Wiston Grange about two hours ago – answering to the description of your daughter. He said he was concerned about her state of health and wanted to take her to hospital, but she refused. He dropped her off at a farm in Woodmancote, near Henfield.’
Lynn frowned. ‘What was the address?’
‘Apparently it was just a track – that’s where she insisted on getting out.’
And then the penny dropped.
‘Oh Jesus!’ she said. ‘I know where she is. I know exactly where she is. Please tell Mal – he’ll understand.’ Fighting tears again, she sniffed, her voice jerky with sobs. ‘Tell him she’s gone home.’
122
Shortly after four o’clock, in the failing daylight, the sky was leaden with sleet and Mal needed to put the MG’s headlamps on. The deeply rutted track, which was mostly mud peppered with flint stones, had a heavy coating of leaves from its overhanging trees, and he drove slowly, not wanting to ground his exhaust, or kick up dirt at the police car following behind him.
He was trying to think how many years it had been since he’d last come up here. They’d sold when Lynn and he divorced, but two years later he’d seen it was on the market once more, and had brought Jane up here in the hope of buying it again. But she took one look at it and rejected the idea flat. It was far too isolated for her. She said she would be terrified on her own.
He had to agree that she was right. You either liked isolation or you didn’t.
They passed the main farmhouse, occupied by an elderly farmer and his wife, who had been their only neighbours, then drove on for another half-mile, past a cluster of tumble-down barns, a partially dismembered tractor and an old trailer, then wound on into the woods.
He was worried sick about Caitlin. What the hell mess had Lynn got into? Presumably it had to do with the liver she was trying to buy. He still had not told Jane about the money, but at this moment, that was a long way from his mind.
The police would not tell him anything, only that Caitlin had run off and her mother was desperately worried about her failing health – and the opportunity of a liver transplant, which had come up and she was in danger of missing.
A ghostly slab of white shone ahead, as they approached a clearing. It was Winter Cottage, once their dream home. And the end of the track.
He angled the car so that the lights were fully on the little house. In truth, behind the ivy cladding was an ugly building, a squat, square two-storey affair, cheaply built in the early 1950s out of breeze blocks to house a herdsman and his family. In the farming slump of the late 1990s they’d been made redundant and the farmer had put the place on the market to raise some cash, which was when he and Lynn had bought it.
It was the position that had appealed to them both. Utter tranquillity, with a glorious view of the Downs to the south, and yet it was only fifteen minutes’ drive to the centre of Brighton.
From the looks of it, the place was derelict now. He knew the couple of Londoners they’d sold to had big plans for the place, but they had then emigrated to Australia, which was why it had gone back on the market. It had clearly not been touched for years. Maybe no one else had come along with the cash or the vision. It certainly needed plenty of both.
He grabbed his torch off the passenger seat and climbed out, leaving the headlights on. The two police officers, DS Glenn Branson and DS Bella Moy, climbed out of their car too, each holding a switched-on torch, and walked up to him.
‘Don’t suppose you get many Jehovah’s Witnesses around here,’ joked Branson.
‘That’s for sure,’ Mal said.
Then he led the way, along the brick path he had laid himself, up to the front door and around the side of the house, under a holly archway that was so overgrown all three of them had to duck to avoid the prickles, and through into the back garden. The brick path continued past a rotting barbecue deck, and then on, along the side of a lawn that had once been his pride and joy and was now just a wilderness, through an almost-closed gap in a tall yew hedge, into what Caitlin used to call her Secret Garden.
‘I can understand why you needed to come with us, sir,’ Bella Moy said.
Malcolm smiled thinly. He felt a tightening in his gullet as the beam of his torch struck the wooden Wendy house. Then he stopped. Nervous suddenly.
In a way, he was surprised it was still there, and in another way, he wished it wasn’t. It was too much of a reminder, suddenly, of the pain of his split with Lynn.
The little house was made from logs and supported on stubby brick legs at each corner. He had rebuilt it himself as a labour of love for Caitlin. There was a door in the middle, with steps up to it, and a window either side. There was still glass in both of them, although the beam of his torch could barely penetrate the coating of dust through to the interior. He was pleased to see that the asphalt roof was still in place, although curling at the edges.
He tried to call her name, but his throat was too dry and nothing came out. Flanked by the two police officers, he walked forward, reached the steps, turned the wobbly handle and pushed open the door.
And his heart leapt for joy.
Caitlin was sitting on the floor at the back of the little house, all hunched up like a bendy doll, staring down into her own lap.
A tiny green glow came from her iPod, which rested on her thighs, and in the silence he could hear a refrain that went, ‘One… two… three… four…’
He recognized it. Feist. Currently one of her favourite singers. Amy liked her too.
‘Hi, darling!’ he said, trying not to dazzle her.
There was no response.
Something lurched inside him. ‘Darling? It’s OK, Dad’s here.’
Then he felt a restraining arm on his shoulder.
‘Sir,’ Glenn Branson cautioned.
Ignoring him, he hurried across, dropping down on to his knees, putting his face up close to his daughter’s.
‘Caitlin, darling!’
He cupped her face in his hands and was shocked how cold she was. Stone cold.
He raised her face gently, and then he saw that her eyes were open wide, but there was no flicker of movement in them.
‘No!’ he said. ‘No! Please, no! No! NOOOOOOOOO!’
Glenn Branson raised his torch, stared into her eyes, looking for any movement of the pupils or lids or lashes. But there was nothing.
Desperately, Mal laid Caitlin gently down, pressed his lips to his daughter’s and started giving her the kiss of life. Behind him, he heard the voice of the female detective radioing for an ambulance.
He was still frantically trying to resuscitate Caitlin twenty minutes later, when the paramedics finally arrived.
123
Ten days later the kindly woman PC and the female translator walked Simona across the apron at Heathrow Airport, towards the British Airways plane.
Simona clutched Gogu tightly to her chest. The officer had rummaged through all the wheelie bins at Wiston Grange and recovered him for her.
‘So, Simona, are you happy to be going home in time for Christmas?’ the PC asked chirpily.
The translator repeated the question in Romanian.
Simona shrugged. She didn’t know much about Christmas, other than that there were lots of people around with money in their bags and wallets, making it a good time to steal. She felt lost and confused. Shunted from place to place, room to room. She did not know where she was and did not want to be here any more. She just looked forward to seeing Romeo again.
She looked down at the ground, not knowing what to reply, and it still hurt to talk. It was from the breathing tube, they had told her, and it would get better soon.
She didn’t understand why they had put the breathing tube down her, nor why she was being sent back now. The translator told her that bad people had planned to kill her and take her insides away. But she did not know if she believed her. Perhaps it was just an excuse to send her back to Romania.
‘You’ll be fine!’ the PC said, giving her a final hug at the foot of the gangway. ‘Ian Tilling has arranged for someone to meet you at Bucharest Airport and take you to his hostel – he has a place for you there.’
The translator repeated the assurance.
‘Will Romeo be there?’ she asked.
‘Romeo is waiting for you.’
Simona climbed the steps forlornly, unsure whether to believe them.
Two stewardesses greeted her cheerily at the top, checked her boarding card, and led her to her seat, then helped to buckle her in. She stared in glum silence at the rear of the seat in front of her for most of the flight, clutching the passport document she had been told to present at the other end, and left her tray of food untouched. She just thought about Romeo constantly. Maybe he
would
be there. Maybe, when she saw him, things would be OK again.
Maybe they could find a new dream.
124
This had always been Roy Grace’s favourite walk, underneath the chalk cliffs, east from Rottingdean. As a child it was almost a Sunday ritual with his parents, and recently, at least on those Sundays when he didn’t have to work, it was becoming a ritual for himself and Cleo.
He loved the sense of drama, particularly on rough days, like this afternoon, when there was a blustery wind and the tide was high, and occasionally the sea surged right up the beach and sent spray and pebbles crashing over the low stone wall. And the signs that warned of the danger of falling rocks added to that drama. He loved the smells here too, the salty tang and the seaweed and the occasional whiff of rotting fish that would be gone in an instant. And the sight of cargo ships and tankers out on the horizon, and sometimes yachts, closer in.
Today was the last Sunday before Christmas and he knew he should be feeling free, and looking forward to some time off with the woman he loved. But inside he felt as churned up as the roiling, spuming, grey Channel water to his right.
They were both wrapped up warmly. Cleo had her arm comfortably looped through his and he wondered, suddenly, if they would still be doing this walk as wrinkly old people in fifty years’ time.
Humphrey trotted along on his extended lead, holding a large piece of driftwood proudly in his mouth, like a trophy. A small brown dog bounded towards them, yipping, its owner some distance away yelling its name. Cleo broke free for a moment and knelt to stroke it. But it backed away nervously when Humphrey dropped the driftwood and growled. Hushing him, she took a step towards it and it bounded back again. They both laughed. Then, recognizing its name, it suddenly raced away.
‘So, Great Detective, how do you feel?’ she asked, placing her arm back through his.
‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. He watched Humphrey struggling to pick up the wood again.
‘Tell me?’
‘Was it the Duke of Wellington who said that the only thing worse than losing a battle is winning one?’
She nodded.
‘That’s how I feel.’
‘Something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How were all those medical people kept silent for so long?’
‘A surgeon in Romania earns 4000 euros a year. Other medical staff even less. That’s how. They were all making a fortune at Wiston Grange, so they were happy as hell.’
‘And tucked safely away in the countryside.’
‘Most of them not able to speak English. So no gossiping with the locals. It was a smart set-up. Ship them in, let them all make a bundle, then ship them out again. They’re members of the EU, so no cross-border work restrictions, no questions asked.’