Behind Closed Doors (28 page)

‘I think it’s very unlikely,’ Sam said, ‘but it’s your decision.’

He filled mugs from an ancient-looking filter machine on the counter and passed them across, then leaned back, arms folded, one leg crossed casually over the other. Relaxed, but closed. Sam wondered what his reaction had been to the news about Scarlett. She would have paid to see it. She could picture him in a pair of unfortunate Speedos on a sun-lounger by a pool, being approached by the rep and the hotel manager:
There’s a call for you, sir, I think it’s urgent
…

‘Annie and Juliette have gone out,’ Clive said. ‘Juliette’s not having a good day. Any upheaval throws her off balance, you know.’

‘I’d really like to meet her,’ Sam said. ‘What time will they be back?’

Clive frowned. ‘I couldn’t say,’ he said, ‘sorry.’

‘Oh, well,’ Caro began cheerfully, ‘at least we’ve got you, Clive. Shall we get comfy?’

She fixed him in a pointed stare until he finally took the hint and sat down opposite them. The interview, it seemed, had begun.

‘Has Scarlett been in touch?’ Caro asked. She had called them after Scarlett had walked out of the VVS, last night.

Clive thought about this for a moment before answering. Sam wondered if this was going to be one of
those
discussions, the ones that took forever and achieved no real result. She was itching to intervene already, but Caro had her own plan – and this job was hers more than Sam’s. So far, at least.

‘No,’ he said, at last.

He didn’t ask if there was any more news. He didn’t ask if Scarlett had contacted the police.

‘I wonder why you didn’t make contact with her when she was in our accommodation,’ Caro said. Her tone had changed.

Clive stared at her for a moment, as if he was thinking up a suitable response. ‘I thought you were here to discuss the burglary,’ he said.

‘Clive, I’m working on an investigation into trafficking operations here in the UK. Do you understand what trafficking is?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

‘In many cases,’ Caro continued, as if he hadn’t answered, ‘young women and girls – some of them not even teenagers – are taken from their families against their will and forced to work as prostitutes in countries across Europe – including Britain. They are abused, physically as well as sexually, and have little or no prospect of escape or rescue unless people like us can find them, get them to a place of safety, and then see their captors convicted. You can’t imagine how difficult this problem is to tackle. So, as I’m sure you appreciate, every bit of intelligence we can gather is vital.’

He couldn’t seem to maintain eye contact with her for more than a few seconds. Eventually he said, ‘The fact that Scarlett is in this country at all is no thanks to you lot. So I think it’s unfair to ask her – or us – for help, when you had none to give her ten years ago.’

Sam heard Caro take a sharp breath in.

‘Clive,’ Sam said, ‘I’m sure you appreciate that it was thanks to a police investigation into trafficking that Scarlett was found at all. Otherwise your daughter would still be missing.’

‘It might have escaped your attention, sergeant, but she
is
still missing. It has been as if we have lost her all over again.’

There was an emotion behind his words that Sam found strange: as though he was holding back a vast tide of something, unable or unwilling to express it.

‘I can appreciate this must be an incredibly difficult time for the whole family,’ Sam said. ‘Nevertheless, anything Scarlett can tell us that could help us find other victims of trafficking, and bring some of these offenders to justice, would be invaluable.’

Clive spread his hands on the table top, breathing deeply. For the first time, he managed a small smile. ‘I’m sure it would. And there are quite a few things I’d like to talk to her about myself. However, the fact remains, she has disappeared. Again.’

Caro cast a glance at Sam, the look that said
anything else?

‘I’d like to see Scarlett’s room,’ Sam said. ‘Would you mind?’

He looked taken aback by her request. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

The walls of the hallway and the staircase were lined with framed family pictures. A large canvas showing Annie and Clive’s wedding was opposite the front door: classic Seventies styling with Annie’s dead straight hair, and Clive’s wide lapels, flares and mullet. It wasn’t a flattering picture by any means; the parents flanking them both sides, two adult bridesmaids in mint green, and a laughing best man who looked drunk. Tiny Annie, looking impossibly young, Clive next to her, at least a foot and a half taller. The picture dominated the view when you entered the house.

And then there were pictures of Scarlett and Juliette as children; school photos, matching uniforms and gap-toothed smiles, alongside cheesy family studio shots, all white shirts and nylon-socked feet. And there were more of Annie and Clive, just the two of them. It was almost unnaturally narcissistic; this image of the perfect family on display.

There was another picture of Scarlett, aged about three, with a baby Juliette on her knee. Juliette with a quiff of black hair, Scarlett not so much smiling as baring her teeth. Sam caught sight of one final picture of Juliette at the top of the stairs – a smaller picture of an older teenager, on her own, a smile that didn’t seem genuine: clearly forced into a portrait-sitting that she was having to endure. Dark top, hair down, glasses, awkward in the shoulders, the expression in her eyes levelled at the photographer one of loathing.

‘Here you go,’ Clive said, opening a door at the top of the stairs.

‘Oh,’ said Sam.

She’d been expecting something of Scarlett to remain, but the room had nothing of the girl inside it. Magnolia walls, beige curtains across the window, and a single bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a mirror on it, an iron, a radio and a vase containing dusty fabric roses, all of which screamed ‘spare room’. The mattress was bare and on top of it was a pile of laundry. Propped against the wall was an ironing board. Sam walked over to the window, looked out at the back garden. The grass was overgrown, tussocky, but the garden was landscaped with a variety of shrubs and trees. At the end was a greenhouse and a vegetable patch. Next to it, a bare patch where some bush had obviously been removed and shredded, wood chippings in a wide, pale circle providing a sharp contrast with the dark earth. A wheelbarrow sat abandoned, full of dead leaves, a rake balanced across it.

‘You’re a keen gardener?’

‘I’m retired,’ Clive said, as if this answered the question.

Sam thought carefully for a polite way to phrase what she was thinking. After a moment she came up with, ‘How long has the room been like this?’

‘After a while it didn’t seem likely that she’d be coming back.’

‘What did you do with all her things?’

‘Annie dealt with all of that. Most of it went in the bin, I think… you know what teenage girls are like. It was a mess, no matter how many times we told her to clean it up.’

Sam nodded, as though she had teenagers herself and could empathise. Trying to keep her tone light, she asked, ‘Did you keep anything?’

Clive turned to go back downstairs. ‘As I said, you’ll have to ask Annie.’

‘When will she be back?’ Sam asked again.

Through an open door Sam caught a glimpse of the master bedroom, the neatly made bed with a satin quilt over it, suitcases open on the floor next to the bed, piles of clothes. All the other doors on the landing were firmly shut. Clive had stopped at the top of the stairs, frozen, one hand on the banister and the other on the wall as if to stop himself pitching forward. He made a small, strange sound.

‘Clive?’

Without answering her, he turned and walked past into the bedroom, lowered himself on to the edge of the bed slowly. Dropped his head into his hands. Then he took a deep breath in and sat up straight again, offered her a brief, tight smile through the open door.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just needed… a moment.’

‘What is it?’ Sam asked.

He shook his head slowly. ‘I… I can’t. I’m finding all this a bit… difficult…’

‘Difficult? You mean – the burglary?’

‘All of it. Annie is – she can’t cope with it very well. I’m worried about her all the time, with Scarlett being missing and then suddenly reappearing. She is very fragile. I think she’s – I don’t know. It feels as if she is… falling apart.’

On the last two words his voice cracked and broke and he lowered his head into his hands again.

‘Why don’t you come back downstairs?’ Sam asked. ‘Let’s have another coffee and talk it through, shall we?’

Downstairs, Caro was in the hallway with her coat on, examining the wedding portrait of Scarlett’s parents with a smile on her face, as though she was a family friend. When Sam came down she directed a raised eyebrow at Caro, and a quick nod to the kitchen, and they all filed in without another word.

‘Sit down,’ Sam said to Clive gently.

While Sam pulled up the chair next to Clive’s, Caro set about filling the kettle and rinsing out the mugs.

‘Annie needs counselling,’ Clive said, his voice an octave higher, ‘but she won’t go. She says nobody understands but I don’t see why she won’t even try. She’s been on so many different tablets from the doctor, I can’t keep track of them all. I don’t think they do any good. She wakes up crying every day. She doesn’t sleep. She comes downstairs in the middle of the night and sits here waiting for Scarlett to come home.’

He paused for breath, mouth open a little. Sam looked at the protruding lip, a pout like a little boy being told off.

‘You mean recently?’

Clive shook his head. ‘Every night. She hasn’t slept a whole night since Scarlett went, even with tablets. And she makes Juliette worse. They wind each other up. Juliette gets fretful and then Annie panics that something’s going to happen to Juliette. She hasn’t wanted to let Juliette out of her sight since she tried to take her own life, and that was – well, it was ten years ago. Ten years of this… hell. And now Scarlett’s back, and neither of them is able to cope with it! I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

‘It sounds as if you’re going through a lot, Clive,’ Caro said. The kettle was boiling and she had found teabags.

‘I’m so tired,’ he said, his voice trailing away. ‘So tired of it all.’

‘You’re the one that has to hold everything together, aren’t you,’ Caro was saying. ‘It’s a lot for one person to take on for all this time.’

That wasn’t what Sam thought at all, and quite probably it wasn’t what Caro was thinking either. What Sam actually thought amounted to something along the lines of
you selfish bastard, your daughter has been through ten years of hell and you’re feeling sad and sorry for yourself because you had to carry on with your life?

‘I worry that she’s going to do something,’ Clive said then.

‘Do something? You mean – harm herself?’

‘I don’t know. She just seems so unpredictable, so unstable. I don’t know which one of them’s worse.’

‘I’m sorry, Clive,’ Caro said, ‘you’ve lost me. Are you talking about Annie? Or Juliette?’

He gave a short grunt. ‘Both of them. They’re both as bad as each other. I’m walking on eggshells the whole time. Every single day.’

‘Sorry, but what did you mean, you worry that she’s going to do something? What sort of thing?’

‘Annie has panic attacks, spends most of the day crying. Juliette sometimes harms herself. Usually we don’t go out and leave her, not now.’

Sam looked at Caro, who pulled a face over Clive’s shoulder.

‘I just wish things had been different,’ Clive was saying. ‘I wish Scarlett had just listened to me, behaved herself. She was only fifteen. Just a girl.’

Just a girl.

‘We can run.’

Saying it into the darkness made it suddenly real. It brought back a memory, of standing in some trees in the early hours of a cold night, trying to make eye contact with a scared girl, trying to get her to summon up a bit of spirit and fight back. It hadn’t done Yelena any good, back then. It had cost her her life… and possibly saved Scarlett’s.

The same thing might happen again. Or, this time, it might be Scarlett’s turn to get the bullet through the head.

In the darkness there was a soft, sarcastic grunt. ‘You crazy.’

‘If we both run, when they open the door… they won’t expect it. It will take them seconds to react.’

‘Where we run to?’

Scarlett kept quiet. There was no answer to that, and besides, they had to run in different directions – that was the whole point. Outside, she could hear footsteps again, voices. They’d already been in this hell-hole for what felt like hours, it must be nearly morning, and it sounded as if the men were going to come for them any minute now. Whether the girl was in agreement or not – and it didn’t sound as if she was – there was no point discussing it further. Careful not to make a sound, Scarlett slipped off the stupid high-heeled shoes. The metal of the container was freezing against her bare feet. She stuck her nail under the rubber heel and twisted it off, feeling inside for the roll of notes. Her fingers were numb, trembling.

They were coming closer, she could hear them. She had seconds, maybe.

She tugged the money free, tearing it a little but not caring now. Then she had it. Shoved the notes into her bra, pushed the heel back together.

The men were outside now, laughing and joking with each other as if they were about to go out for a drink with a mate. Not watch two girls die, while they filmed it. Scarlett was shaking from head to foot. She wouldn’t be able to keep to her feet, never mind run.

The metal door scraped open and as the crate flooded with light – it was still dark outside but compared to the inside of the container it was broad daylight – Scarlett half-closed her eyes, screaming like a banshee and launching herself forward, stilettos in one hand, gripped and held overhead like a weapon.

The man grabbed at the sleeve of the woollen coat. Scarlett spun and slipped out of it, leaving him clutching the coat and not her.