Dark Place to Hide (22 page)

‘What about her fantasy world?’

‘In my experience, it’s normal for a seven year old to have invisible friends and to talk about stories as if they’re real and they’re actually in the narrative themselves. They give animals human characteristics, such as suggesting what a worm might be thinking, or that a ladybird has eyelashes.’ She’s looking at her feet the whole time she’s talking to me, sounding like she’s reading from a textbook. ‘Predictable routines are important sources of stability and security for children that age. I think she might have gone somewhere she knows.’

‘Have you come across this kind of behaviour before in other children?’

‘A fixation with certain stories, you mean?’

I nod.

‘No – I’ve heard about it.’ She laughs self-consciously. ‘I’m just a librarian, but you pick up a lot about kids’ development.’

‘Did she tell you about the incident at the castle?’

‘Yeah. It’s odd – but she seemed thrilled about it and was talking about going back.’

‘That’s what Marion said.’

‘Can you get me a copy of
Little Red Riding Hood
? The same version that Clara has? I don’t want to take hers.’ Helen says it’s the picture-book edition by Ron Holleson and she’ll drop it through my letterbox.

We reach the first location on our route: the allotments. There are about fifteen sheds in two rows.

‘Has Clara been here lately, do you think?’ I ask.

‘When we walked past on Saturday, she said she’d shaken hands with the scarecrow, over there, last time she came. She mentioned a couple of people she’s met here – I can’t remember their names, but a youngish chap with a beard waved at her that day.’

We approach a handful of gardeners and ask to look inside their sheds. Everyone is obliging, but most are locked and unattended. An elderly chap with a walking stick curtly informs us that officers and dogs have already covered this plot. This is where the police have powers I don’t – they can get permission to search inside each and every one, whereas I can only peer through the murky windows.

We check the paths for anything Clara might have dropped. Marion said she was wearing a pink headband the day she went missing, with a pink cheesecloth dress, a pink cardigan, bare legs and red jelly sandals. She thought she may have had some coloured bangles around her wrist and the key-ring I gave her was definitely attached to a loop in her pocket.

We move on to the old farm buildings to the right of the crossroads. We pull abandoned breeze blocks aside, check under tarpaulin, inside an old cupboard, chest freezer, under a door laid flat on bricks – upsetting a family of feral cats in the process. Again, we are following in the footsteps of the police – there’s nothing here. We go across the green where there’s the phone box with your face smiling out at me. I have to look away. There’s another poster on the wall at the garage on the far corner. Clara’s face will be joining these soon.

‘The bell tower is next,’ says Helen, as we skirt the green and head towards the church.

Just as Helen described, the place is dotted with
Keep Out
signs and cordoned off with yellow tape, but that wouldn’t stop an inquisitive child. We lift planks out of the heavy wooden door and squeeze through. Helen leads the way up the crumbling spiral staircase and we reach another door at the top. Inside is a wooden platform and chamber for the bell above us. The rope
is tied up out of reach and there are thin windows without glass and a ladder leading to a small door that gives access to the roof. A dirty blanket is screwed up in the corner and there are crisp packets, empty drinks cartons and cigarette butts. Clara hasn’t been the only one up here.

I climb the ladder and step out onto the roof. I can see why Clara was drawn to this place; there are expansive views of the entire village from up here and the ledge is warm in the sun. A tatty sofa cushion has been left out here. The slate tiles slide under my feet and I have to grab on to the crenelated wall that runs around the edge to break my fall. It’s a long way down the other side.

‘You okay?’ Helen calls from below. She must have heard the scuffle.

‘It’s really unsafe up here. A lot of the tiles are broken and falling away.’

Just as I’m about to retreat inside, my sandal catches on a lose piece of guttering and I end up on my backside. Several tiles have parted and I can see something glittering underneath. I reach into the gap and hold it up. All my thoughts swerve in a new direction. This isn’t what I was expecting. I feel an oppressive need for air, even though I am already outside. I sit clutching my knees and take deep breaths, my heart battering my ribcage.

‘Have you found something?’ Helen calls up, presumably confused by the sudden silence.

I crawl back to the hatch on my hands and knees and climb down the ladder. Vertigo is trying to spin me sideways. I hold out my palm and she picks it up.

Helen’s shoulders drop. ‘Ah – of course, it doesn’t mean much – we know Clara has been here – many times – she could have dropped it any time.’

‘It’s not hers,’ I whisper, my throat closing up. I re-examine the hair clip, stroking the familiar multi-coloured kingfisher design on one side. I’ve seen it so many times in your hair. ‘It belongs to my wife,’ I tell her.

Helen is silent. We make our way down the stone steps and my mind is running rings around itself.

‘She was here!’ I declare as we break out into the air at ground level. ‘That’s who Clara was talking about – the
lady
she saw in the bell tower.’ Helen stands, her hand over her mouth, staring at her sandals again, mystified.

‘She said she saw someone in the phone box – smiling…’ she says tentatively.

‘Yes – it must have been the poster of my missing wife.’

‘Oh – of course, I’m so sorry…Diane Penn – I didn’t make the connection with your surname.’ She bangs her palm into her forehead looking distraught. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry…I should have…’

I pull her hand away. ‘Please – it’s okay.’ Her body is rigid and I can see she doesn’t know where to put herself.

‘Can you remember what Clara said, exactly?’ I say, wishing I’d paid more attention when Clara told us about the bell tower.

‘She said the last time she was here – she didn’t say when – there was a woman, looking sad, crying – like a ghost. She didn’t speak, she said.’

‘Diane must have been ill – or injured…’ I’m thinking aloud; we’re on the move back to the green.

‘Oh, and Clara said she saw the woman at the church…’ Helen continues. ‘Of course – there’s another poster of your wife in the foyer – she and I both walked past it. That’s why she insisted I’d seen her too.’

‘Clara was telling the truth in her own way,’ I say absently. ‘Kids do that don’t they? They mix up what’s concrete and what’s reproduced.’

The enormity of this revelation hits me head on as the hairclip cuts into the skin of my palm. Until now, it’s as if I’ve been wandering along the hard shoulder. Now the time has come to step into the path of the truth.

You’re in trouble. I know now. You’ve been hurt and you need me.

I ring the police straight away and they send a team up to the bell tower to lift material for forensics, looking for evidence not only of Clara now, but also of you, Dee.

The television appeal for Clara on the evening news cranks the search operation up several more notches and at least a hundred members of the public are gathering to help with searches and putting up posters. All main routes from the hospital to Nettledon have been combed on foot with dogs or by car. I try not to feel bitter that none of this was activated for you; only now that I’ve found evidence that you were at the church are the police paying attention. It feels far too late. We can’t even ask Clara. We don’t know which day you were up in the tower, how you got there or where you went afterwards. What were you doing there? How does it link to Heathrow?

Sgt Howis tells me that they’ve looked into all your bank records now and you’ve not accessed your account, apart from the fifty pounds you withdrew more than ten days ago. Howis
claims, however, that you could have been hoarding cash beforehand to avoid suspicion and to avoid a trail of bank transactions.

‘That would imply a huge amount of forward planning, sergeant,’ I suggest testily.

‘Maybe she knew about the pregnancy a lot earlier than she admitted, Dr Penn.’

I grit my teeth and shake my fist at the mouthpiece, but my mouth can’t form any words in response. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t understand. You are still registered as a ‘missing person’, but he admits that you remain in the ‘low risk’ category, which I know translates into ‘low priority’ in terms of police action.

Howis is not the least bit convinced about my discovery in the bell tower, claiming that a seven-year-old child is not a reliable witness and that you could have lost the hairclip or given it to Clara weeks ago. Howis also tells me they have looked into Bruce’s loan company and have found no irregularities. I feel like I’m back to square one.

Marion is being looked after by her mother and friends, so I go back to our cottage. Frank is cross and barks at me; he’s been left too long. I don’t blame him. I take him out for a short, but energetic duty romp to pacify him. I want to get back and get things moving.

This new discovery has fired up my fears for you and I embark on another search, more detailed, more finely tuned, to find out
anything
about what could have happened. I drag everything out of wardrobes and drawers this time. I tip out all your bags and pockets, pull out sofa cushions, check behind bookshelves.

At the bottom of the pile of mounting laundry, next to a screwed-up handkerchief in the pocket of your dressing gown, I find something. It’s a folded scrap of paper with a few words scribbled on it:
Surgery, June 6
^th
, 1.15pm.

I call Tara straight away and ask her to check her diary.

‘Yeah…work as usual that day,’ she tells me. ‘It was the first week after the half-term break.’

‘I know it’s a while ago, but can you remember Diane going to her GP in the lunch break?’

She lets out an uncertain hum. ‘Hold on – I keep a school record of key events and stuff…’ There’s a gap filled by the rumble of traffic. ‘No – there’s nothing about Diane. I assume she was at school as usual. We often go for lunch together, but sometimes one of us has a meeting or is on playground duty, so…’

‘Can you remember that day at all – what she was like? Her mood?’

‘Sorry, Harper…I can’t.’

‘Yeah. Okay. Thanks.’ I tell her about finding the hairclip.

‘Oh, God – so what does that mean?’

‘It’s difficult to know. It means she was up there – and Clara saw her, recently.’

‘When, do you think?’

‘It’s hard to say – and Clara isn’t here to ask, but I’m certain it was sometime
after
she left the house that evening in the car. I remember she started wearing that clip again after the miscarriage. What worries me is that Clara said she wasn’t well. She said she wasn’t smiling like she was on the posters – that she was crying.’

‘Oh, Harper – it sounds awful – what are the police doing?’

‘Not a great deal, by the look of it. They’re checking out the bell tower to see if there’s any definitive evidence. I think they’re putting all their resources into finding Clara and hoping they might come across Dee on the way. The more I think about it, the more I can’t believe the police don’t see a link between the two disappearances.’

‘Maybe they do.’

I’m not convinced and let out a corresponding grunt. ‘Where are you now?’

‘With one of the search groups near the hospital, but the police are sending us away. There are too many volunteers and we’re messing things up, apparently.’

‘Speak soon, okay?’ I end the call and pace up and down, tearing skin off the side of my thumbnail. I ring Neil. I don’t care if I’m pestering him. He’s been co-ordinating the house to house in the village and is trying not to sound annoyed at my interruption.

I come straight out with it. ‘What’s happening with the search for my wife?’

‘It’s ongoing, mate.’

‘Howis still seems to think she’s taken off of her own accord. She hasn’t contacted any of us properly, she hasn’t accessed any bank accounts since that first Saturday, she was seen recently in a bad way at the top of a fucking bell tower – what are you guys doing about it?’

‘Harper – there’s not a lot I can do,’ he stresses. ‘Howis is the SIO on this one and he’s got forensics over at the tower now, checking it out. He’ll keep you posted.’ I know Neil is bursting to remind me that there’s a seven-year-old child who’s been missing for thirty hours, but he’s too much of a mate to do that to me. We leave it there.

I ring the surgery, but the receptionist is adamant she won’t let me have confidential information, so I hop on my bike and cycle over there.

I ask to see the surgery manager when I arrive and I’m told to take a seat. People are coughing and wheezing all around me and I wonder what nasty bugs I’m going to take home with me. Twenty minutes later the receptionist informs the remaining patients that the surgery is closing in ten minutes. I ask again about speaking to the manager and refuse to sit down this time, trying to fill up as much space at the desk as possible. A woman finally comes bustling round the corner and folds her arms at me.

‘Can I speak to you privately?’ I enquire.

She gives me a look that suggests I’ve asked her to remove her clothing. The words
inconvenient
and
nuisance
are etching their way into the skin around her eyes. She turns her back on me, which I take to be a sign to follow her. We go into an empty consulting room and she indicates the seat by the desk, while she continues to stand.

‘I need some information about an appointment my wife made in June,’ I state. I hold out the torn scrap, but she fails to register it.

‘I’m afraid that information is protected by patient confidentiality, Mr…’

‘Dr Penn. Harper Penn.’

‘I suggest you ask your wife directly about it.’

I get to my feet without meaning to. Blood is hurtling too fast past my ears and I feel like I’m inside a long tunnel. An image of Victor putting his hands around his girlfriend’s neck bursts into my mind. I shake my head in a bid to wipe it away and force my voice to be as neutral as I can manage. I spread the words out with exaggerated enunciation and end up sounding like I’m speaking to someone who is not only deaf, but also has learning difficulties. ‘My wife has been registered as missing with the police for two weeks and I don’t know if she’s alive or dead.’ I
take another breath, feeling it judder in my chest. ‘Any lead…’ I read her name pointedly from her name badge, ‘…Penelope Hodder, is extremely important. Do you understand?’