Behind Closed Doors (13 page)

If she saw him again, he would sleep with her, she knew it. She would go back home to Cerys and be able to tell her that she’d met this guy, how gorgeous he was – she would make sure she got a picture of him – and that she had done it with him.

The only way she was ever going to see Nico again was if she turned her back on the family and didn’t go home. Ever.

When things got bad like this, the only thing that ever helped was to retreat into a fantasy world. So she thought about Nico, about somehow slipping away and meeting him. He would be waiting for her, and he would have been waiting all night. He would sweep her into his arms and tell her how worried he’d been, how he had been thinking of her and afraid for her all night. He would tell her he loved her over and over… he would touch her and soothe her, tell her it was going to be okay, that he would take care of her and nobody would ever hurt her again.

And then he would take her to his house – and the family would all be out somewhere… he would sneak her in, into his bedroom, and he would take her clothes off one piece at a time, asking her permission at every stage, checking she was all right. He would kiss her, every bit of her skin as it was revealed to him, and then finally the passion would overtake him and he would carry her over to the bed and make love to her. And it might hurt, a little – because that was inevitable, wasn’t it, the first time. But it would be fine.

Fantasy, all fantasy, every bit of it. From Nico waiting for her, to Nico taking her virginity. None of it was true. None of it would ever come true, either.

In the early afternoon, Juliette came into the room and went to sit on her bed with the book. The curtains had been drawn across the patio doors to block out as much of the sun’s fierce light as possible, and she made sure they were closed behind her. She went to shut the door too, until Scarlett objected.

‘There’s no air, Jul. Leave the door open a bit.’

Mute as always, Juliette left it open. From outside, the sounds of the pool, splashing, children shouting and shrieking, a happy, discordant tune which was easy to block out.

‘What are they doing?’

‘Who?’ Juliette said. Today, apparently, she felt like talking.

‘Mum and Dad. Are they by the pool?’

‘They’ve gone in for a siesta.’

Scarlett sat up on her bed, slowly, as though she was eighty and not fifteen.

‘How are you?’ Juliette asked. It came out a bit like a statement – flat. But Scarlett appreciated the effort it must have taken for her to say it at all.

‘I’m okay,’ she said. Managing a smile. ‘Thank you, Jul.’

She got to her feet and made her way to the bathroom, washed her face and looked at herself in the mirror.
I hate them
, she thought.
I hate them both.

Back in the bedroom, she pulled a pair of shorts and a top out of the suitcase that lay on the tiled floor like a felled beast, its guts a tangle of multicoloured fabrics. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said to Juliette. ‘I won’t be long.’

Juliette was buried in her book already, which meant that this time she went unacknowledged. Her sister was lost in the other world; concentrating on more than one reality at a time was beyond her capability.

‘Love you, Jul,’ Scarlett said quietly, meaning it. She was the only one.

This, too, was not enough to raise Juliette’s head from the book, but there was a hint of a smile playing about her lips, either from the story or from Scarlett’s declaration of love, it was impossible to tell.

Scarlett pulled the curtain aside and stepped out into the glaring sunshine. On the clothes-horse on the patio was Scarlett’s baseball cap. It was dry now but it had been wet yesterday when she’d jumped into the pool wearing it. It was snug, but at least it shaded the sun from her eyes.

The patio door to the apartment next door was closed, the curtains behind it shut too. The whirr of the air-conditioning told her that they were both inside. She walked down to the gate and thought about what she was about to do, whether it was worth it. Of course it was. Every small measure of freedom she could allow herself felt precious.

She went through the gate and started to walk in the direction of the town. She wasn’t going to look for Nico. She wasn’t going to do anything more dramatic than stretch her legs, get some fresh air.

She got as far as the market square. The cafés were all busy with tourists enjoying their lunch: pizzas and Greek salads and steaks; chips and beer, even the odd full English, of course, because Brits couldn’t do without their bacon and eggs no matter where they were in the world.

There was no sign of him. She walked back past the Pirate Bay bar. The internet terminals were all in use, apparently working. She thought about Cerys and what she might be doing today; wished she could be brave and turn on her mobile phone long enough to call her. Tell her what had happened. Cerys would understand. She would make her laugh.

She was walking away when she heard Nico’s voice behind her, calling her name. ‘Scarlett! Hey!’

She stopped walking and for a moment considered carrying on, not acknowledging him. Giving him the out he had so clearly wanted last night when he’d run away from her without looking back. She dropped her head, didn’t look round, didn’t move.

He caught up with her, grabbed her by the waist, lifted her and spun her round, making her gasp.

‘Hey! How are you, beautiful girl?’

‘Put me down!’

He was laughing and then he stopped. She slid down his body until her feet felt solid ground, pushed him away.

‘What is wrong?’

She looked up at him and his face was so beautiful, so full of love and concern and care that she felt tears pricking her eyes again. He put a hand on her arm, tentatively, as though he might not be permitted this contact any more.

She raised both her hands. They felt so heavy. And then he put his arms gently around her and pulled her against him. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked again. ‘Scarlett?’

She sobbed, just once, into his shirt. And then quickly regained her composure. This wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all.

‘It’s okay. I’m okay. Thank you.’

‘You got in trouble yesterday?’

‘A bit.’

She chanced a look at him again, falling for him, falling for those dark eyes and that beautiful face all over again. He was so gorgeous, so lovely. And last night… she remembered it, remembered the taste of him, and, despite what it had cost her, she wanted that again, and wanted more.

‘Maybe they don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Maybe they forget how it feels to be happy with someone.’

‘Can we go to the beach?’

They walked side by side to the wooden pallets laid like stepping stones in the hot sand, leading down to the sea. Last night, here, she had lain on the beach next to him and kissed him until he lost control. Now, the beach was crowded with tourists, children playing in the sand. The smell of coconut suntan oil and cigarette smoke.

She wanted to hold his hand but he was keeping his distance from her.
For my sake
, she thought.
He is being careful, for me. He is worried that I’ll get in trouble.

They got down to the water’s edge, where the sand was flat and wet and firmer to walk on, and headed up the beach in the direction of the apartments. A few hundred metres away from the town, the beach grew quieter and the shops and bars and tavernas on the promenade gave way to dunes.

‘This is no good,’ he said, without warning. ‘I should say goodbye to you.’

‘You’re the only person who has ever made me happy,’ Scarlett said, her head down.

‘You make me happy too,’ he said. ‘You are a special girl, Scarlett. You are – ’

‘I love you,’ she blurted.

He stopped walking, then, and turned to her. ‘This is not a good idea. Your parents? It will be worse for you.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ she said, unable to stop the words now she had started. ‘I’m only fifteen.’

He laughed at her. ‘You look younger. I think, maybe, eight, nine…’

She pushed him, pretending to be cross. ‘How old are you, then?’ she asked.

‘I am sixteen years old,’ he said, smiling at her.

He looked older, Scarlett thought, not having any real concept of how old he should look. She had thought he was around eighteen. Didn’t they have a minimum age to be working in bars here in Greece?

She sat down on the sand, sheltered from the breeze by the dunes. Nico sat next to her, his arm draped casually, heavy, over her shoulders. He pulled off her baseball cap, kissed her temple, and she turned her head so he could kiss her properly.

‘You want to get away from them?’ he asked, after a moment.

Her heart soared at the thought of it, an escape. ‘Can I?’ she asked, thrilled. ‘Can I stay with you?’

‘No, no. Not stay with me. But I can help you get away.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I have friends, you know – they can find you work.’

‘What sort of work?’

He laughed. ‘All kinds. Good money. Enough to live.’

Without thinking, she said, ‘Yes, yes. Please, yes. I’ll do anything, anything. But why can’t I stay with you? We could get a house together, we’d be earning money, we could live together…’

Laughing again, pushing her back into the sand, shutting her up with a kiss. He wasn’t taking her seriously. He thought she was just a kid.
I’ll show him
, Scarlett thought.
I’ll show him I’m serious about it.

After a moment he sat up again, looking at the few people sitting on this part of the beach. ‘I take you back,’ he said. ‘You think about what I say to you?’

‘It’s my last day,’ she said. ‘We’re going home tomorrow.’

Nico frowned. ‘That is very sad.’

‘I don’t want to go; you know I want to stay here.’

He touched her face, stroking his fingers lightly over her cheek. ‘I wait for you tonight,’ he said. ‘You want to get away, you come to me tonight. I wait for you on the road. But now you have to go back. I take you.’

Scarlett was numb with disappointment but she followed him, nonetheless. They walked the remaining three hundred or so metres in silence, up the path through the dunes that led to the road and the apartment complex just past that.

‘Best not come any further,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

He handed her the baseball cap, took a step backwards, away from her. The pleasure she’d had, seeing him again, was being swamped already with the misery of being back here.

‘You come tonight, Scarlett?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. What time?’

‘I finish work at two.’

Her mum and dad would be asleep by then. She could do it. It was her last chance, after all: their flight home was at four in the afternoon.

‘Where?’

‘Here,’ he said, nodding towards the apartments. ‘I meet you outside, on the road. You wait for me?’

‘Yes. I’ll wait.’

He hesitated for a moment as if he wanted to kiss her, then he turned and walked away.

Her mum was by the pool, on her own. There was no point avoiding her. ‘I went for a walk,’ Scarlett said, hoping they were both too hot to argue about it.

‘Haven’t you learned your lesson?’ Annie said, lowering her sunglasses to fix her daughter in a cold stare.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Having a lie-down. Luckily for you.’

Scarlett went to the room. Juliette was not there either. She must have been outside with their mother and Scarlett just hadn’t noticed.

Right at that moment Scarlett absolutely intended to run away. She spent the next two hours planning it, thinking it through in her head: what she was going to take with her, which clothes, her passport, whatever money she could find. She started to put things into her backpack, ready for the night ahead. She even managed to doze off for a while, in preparation for staying up late again.

When she woke, the room was still empty. The light in the room told her that the sun was setting, but in here it was still stifling. Scarlett opened the door and went outside on to the shaded patio. The pool area was almost deserted, just a couple of older girls in the shallow end, drinking from bottles of beer, which was against the rules, and laughing. There was no sign of her mum. But her dad was there; Juliette too. They were sitting side by side on one of the loungers, under a parasol, their backs to Scarlett. Juliette was hunched over, sitting stiffly, presumably trying to read her book. Their father had his arm around her.

The decision was made in an instant.

She couldn’t leave Juliette.

She would meet Nico later, tell him she was sorry, she would have to go back home with her family after all. She couldn’t run away. She would kiss him goodbye and it would hurt like hell. But it was the only thing to do.

They had been in the back of the minibus for hours, hours. Yelena had been fidgeting, grumbling something in her own language. The water had long gone. The grumbling got louder until she was shouting, and when that went ignored she struggled to her feet, pushing some of the bags and luggage out of the way, waving at the front of the vehicle.

Scarlett stayed huddled into the corner, afraid of the other girl’s agitation.

From the front of the bus, angry shouts. Eventually Yelena sat back down again, still shouting, thumping with the side of her fist against the back door.

‘What?’ Scarlett said, trying to make eye contact. ‘What’s the matter?’

But the girl ignored her; the tirade of unintelligible words continued, and, just at the point when Scarlett thought she couldn’t possibly stand another second of the racket and was going to have to kill her, the vehicle swerved off the straight path it had been taking and slowed right down. Moments later it stopped.

Yelena stopped banging and shouting. She sat back against the wall of the bus, breathing hard. The doors at the front opened and shut again, and Scarlett could hear muttered conversation in whatever foreign language it was they were speaking.

Then the back doors were unlocked, and opened. Outside, it was dark, and chilly. Scarlett held her arms folded across her chest.

Yelena started yammering at the men angrily in a language they seemed to understand. One of them did, at least, because he started arguing back.

Then he beckoned Yelena out.

‘Where are you going?’ Scarlett said, her voice rising in a wail. ‘Don’t leave me.’

The man wearing the woolly hat had pulled Yelena by the upper arm, out of sight. The second man raised his eyebrows and muttered something, then he beckoned to her. ‘Out, you get out.’

She stood on wobbly legs on the tarmac, a dark sky overhead turned orange by lights she could not see. They were in some sort of car park, or more accurately a lorry park. The van was parked between two articulated lorries, sandwiched between them with high canvas walls rising on either side of where she stood.

Scarlett shivered.

The man took hold of her upper arm, slammed the van doors shut with the other hand, and pulled her along in the direction Yelena had taken. When they reached the back of the lorries, the man held her back while he checked left and right.

Then pulled her quickly across a road towards some trees and bushes, dragging her through the undergrowth.

‘All right, all right,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to be so bloody rough.’

They had reached a dusty gap in the trees where Yelena was squatting, jeans around her ankles, while the man with the hat watched. It was darker here, but not too dark to see that Yelena was doing a shit.

‘I’m okay, thanks,’ Scarlett said.

‘You do,’ her companion said, pushing her roughly next to Yelena.

So she did it. She was desperate to go, in any case, though knowing that it was going to hurt. And it did. The concentrated urine burned, and tears squeezed from the corners of her tightly closed eyes. Her piss splattered noisily into the dust and she could smell her own body – the sweat, the dirt, the discomfort of it.

The men made Yelena and Scarlett wait in the trees, looking carefully at the road. Two strong beams of light swept through the trees. A lorry, or something, was coming. The man ahead of them held up his hand in warning.
Wait
.

They were in some sort of services, Scarlett realised. Across the other side of the car park – maybe three hundred metres or so – Scarlett could see a restaurant. It was well-lit. There were people inside, cleaning.

They could run.

Scarlett looked across at Yelena, tried to catch her eye. The dark-haired girl was staring ahead. They had broken her, she thought. They had killed her friend. They had stood by and watched while she defecated behind a bush. No wonder she looked so done-in.

Eventually she looked across at Scarlett. Scarlett tried to convey her thoughts just in the expression on her face. She looked across to the building, to the various vans and lorries parked, dark and silent, then back to meet Yelena’s eyes. They could run. If they both ran in opposite directions, using the lorries for cover, they would have a chance. If they got to the restaurant, they would be safe. There were people there. The men would not risk it, would not risk a scene.

Yelena followed all this unspoken communication, opened her eyes wider and, as the lights from the second lorry swept across their faces, she shook her head, slowly and deliberately.

No
.

Just as deliberately, Scarlett nodded, her eyebrows knitted in an insistent frown.

And then the man who was waiting by the road beckoned them forward.

Scarlett saw the chance slipping away. If she ran, Yelena would follow; she would have to. The only chance they had was if both of them ran, to create a diversion. The men would panic. There would be a few seconds of confusion: they would not know which one of them to chase. The old, fat one would not be able to run fast enough in any case. One of them might, then, be able to get away.

The man who was holding Scarlett’s upper arm stumbled in the dark undergrowth, released his grip on her as his arms flailed, trying to regain his balance.

That was it.

She ran.

A second later she burst through the trees and she was on the tarmac, running, running. It felt as if she was going so slowly it was almost backwards, like dream-running. She had no energy, her breath already coming in frantic, wheezy gasps, and the air was so cold…

Behind her a shout, and Yelena shouting too and then suddenly Yelena was beside her, faster than Scarlett, on longer legs, panicky, wobbly strides.

‘Don’t follow me!’ Scarlett shrieked, darting to her left. Behind them a lorry was coming, they could hear heavy footsteps above the noise of the grinding lorry gears and the lights swept across them as the lorry turned. It must be between them and the men.

They were going to make it. Yelena was ahead of her now, heading for the building, the lights making a halo of her flying hair, and she was screaming, yelling something in that language…

Scarlett’s legs were giving way. There was still two hundred metres or so between her and safety, and Yelena was a few paces ahead of her.

There was a sudden silence as the lorry parked somewhere and cut its engine. There was no shout, no warning, nothing. There was a fizzing noise as something whistled past Scarlett’s ear.

Then the side of Yelena’s head exploded and the girl dropped like a stone, the momentum of her running causing her to skid a few feet, face first, on the tarmac in front of Scarlett.

Scarlett stopped instantly. Stood still, waiting for the second shot. She felt as though she was screaming but no sound was coming out of her open mouth. She looked at the body in front of her, the dark puddle spreading out from what was left of Yelena’s head.

The man with the hat caught up with her, grabbing her arms, panting and muttering something angry and urgent at her that she didn’t understand, and it took a few seconds for her to realise that he was speaking broken English. ‘You stupid! You fucking girl!’

Then the minibus was next to them, braking sharply, cutting out the light from the building and separating her from Yelena’s body. She was pulled round to the back, the door was opened and she was thrown inside. The door slammed. Seconds later, the bus was moving and she hadn’t had time or the thought to hang on to something, so she rolled and tumbled around in the back, fell against the back doors heavily, knocking the last gasping breath out of her body.

And they were back on the road before Scarlett had had time to think.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god no, no
no
no
…
 

She couldn’t stop shaking. Her whole body, shaking, even though she pulled herself into a tight ball, trying to shut everything out. What she had seen. What they had done.

Yelena was dead, lying on the ground in the dark. They had left her. They had just left her where she fell, driven off again.

That could have been me
, Scarlett thought.
Should have been me
. She had been the one to run, Yelena had just followed. She hadn’t even wanted to do it, had she? She hadn’t wanted to. She had been afraid. Yelena had gone along with it because she had no choice. What could she do, let Scarlett run?

They might have shot her anyway.

But why shoot Yelena – why her? Because she was faster, because she’d overtaken Scarlett and they couldn’t catch her? Because she was nearly at the restaurant?

Scarlett closed her eyes again. Every time she shut them she could see the same thing, playing over and over again like a video on loop: the side of Yelena’s head bursting open, and no sound other than the fizzing of the bullet that went past Scarlett’s head.

Tears from between her lashes, sticky on her dirty face.
It’s my fault, that was
all my
fault. She died because I made her run. I made her do it
.

And now she knew something else, too: she couldn’t, wouldn’t do anything like that again. They would kill her, as quickly as they killed Yelena. And if they did it they would just pick up another girl from somewhere, to drive around in the back of the minibus. Girls, whatever they wanted them for, were expendable, disposable.

Above the sound of the engine and her own sobs, she could hear the two men in the front arguing. One of them was shouting, the other one nasal, placatory. It would stop for a while, as though the discussion had run its inevitable course, and then restart without warning.
Shut up, shut up!
Scarlett wanted to yell. She was afraid of their anger, wanted to silence it. She wanted them to stop, get out somewhere so they could have a reasonable discussion and negotiate whatever it was they wanted in order to let her go. Just leave her, by the side of the motorway in whatever country they were in by now – Eastern Europe somewhere, possibly, given the length of time they’d been driving and the sudden chill in the air. They were heading north.

And then, having thought herself out of the panic, suddenly it was there, again. Yelena was dead. They shot her. They blew the side of her head off. And she had dropped like a stone, not stumbled or tripped, not put her hands forward to stop herself but just BANG and face-down on the tarmac, the momentum of her running feet sending her body skidding and juddering for a second before it fell still.

And Scarlett had stopped.

She should have kept on running. Would they have shot her too? Yes, probably – and what of it? She would be no worse off dead than alive.

I wish it had been me. I wish they’d shot me instead of her.
 

First things first: Lou gritted her teeth and phoned Waterhouse again. Standing, in case she needed to get assertive with him.

‘Waterhouse.’

‘Hi, it’s Lou Smith.’

To her surprise, he seemed much more cheerful this morning. Maybe he was regretting being such an arse yesterday? ‘Oh, hi. How did you get on with our celebrity?’

‘All right, I think. With your permission I’d like to get my DS to see her. If anyone can get you a result, Sam can.’

‘Fill your boots,’ he said chirpily. ‘We won’t be able to hang on to the VVS for long, Estates are moaning about us using it as it is. I can’t see any of my team making progress with her. My guess is that she knows bugger all about the McDonnells, and if she did know something useful, she also knows it’s more than her life’s worth to share it with us.’

‘Something else – you know we were looking at Maitland for a job last year?’

‘The stable girl murder, wasn’t it?’

Lou bristled at having a young woman with a life, family and people who loved her reduced to such a diminutive. The ‘stable girl’ –
She was a person, you little shit.

‘Polly Leuchars, her name was. My exhibits officer is going down to the farm at some point to hand back some unused material. Just in case you’ve got a team on him, I wouldn’t want her to get in the way. Do I need to hold her off?’

‘I’ve only got one team so far and we’re sticking with Lewis McDonnell. So as long as she goes there in the next day or so, should be okay. I can’t see McDonnell going anywhere near the farm, but if he does I’ll give you a shout.’

‘Thanks,’ Lou said.

Her priority for today was going to be making some sort of progress with Op Trapeze: Carl McVey, the murdered bar owner, and Ian Palmer, still unconscious in hospital. Both of them needed her full attention.

Everything she read, though, seemed to be going over old ground. The further back she went, the less relevant it seemed to become. When she found herself reading about a neighbour dispute involving a yew hedge between Carl McVey’s house and the property next door, she gave up. Instead, she reached for the Op Diamond file – the historic case notes on Scarlett Rainsford’s disappearance. She would sort out the most relevant bits to hand over to Sam.

It was massive, of course, and before going to Special Branch yesterday she had only had the briefest of chances to reacquaint herself with the facts of the case. In reality, it didn’t take much to remind her of it, as the memories of her work on this case had stayed fresher than any other. Possibly because it had never been solved; possibly because of the resonance of its being a missing child, the most devastating of all crimes to work with.

But now, flicking through the file, Lou began to realise just what a small part she had played in the investigation. Here, for example, were the initial statements of Clive, Annie and – to her surprise – Juliette Rainsford. By the time Lou had been assigned to the team, a few days after Scarlett’s disappearance, all the initial interviews had been conducted under Greek jurisdiction. Everything done very differently.