Frankie (9 page)

‘Could you put me through to Rosemary Gibson, please?'

‘Who may I say is calling?'

‘It's her brother.'

‘One moment, please.'

Carter whistled along tunelessly to the familiar holding music as he waited for Rosemary to come on the line. He was suddenly caught off guard when a man's voice answered, a deep Eastern European voice that spoke slowly and precisely. ‘I understand you wish to speak to Miss Gibson.'

‘That's right.'

‘May I ask who this is?'

‘As I told your receptionist, I'm her brother.'

‘I wasn't aware that she had a brother.'

Carter began to feel uneasy. ‘No,' he replied quickly, ‘I don't suppose she discusses her family much at work.' He cursed himself for sounding like a smart-arse.

‘Quite,' the voice said impassively. ‘Quite.'

‘May I ask who I'm talking to?'

‘I'm afraid Miss Gibson called in sick this morning.'

‘Shit,' Carter muttered silently to himself as he forced the car into an emergency stop to prevent himself from driving into the line of traffic in front of him. He coughed slightly to clear his voice. ‘I see. OK, well … I'll try her at home.' Carter wanted to end this conversation as quickly as possible. ‘Thanks for your help.' He hung up.

Something was wrong. He had specifically told Rosemary to go into work this morning, and she wouldn't have ignored his instruction without checking with him first. Carter quickly did a U-turn and screamed north over
the river, before dialling Rosemary's home number. He had to speak to her immediately.

Her phone rang four or five times, then the answering machine kicked in. ‘Hello, this is Rosemary.' She spoke the message precisely and, it seemed to Carter, interminably slowly. ‘I am unable to take your call at the moment, but do please leave me a message after the tone.'

‘Rosemary!' he said urgently after the beep had finished. ‘Are you there? Pick up, Rosemary. It's me. Answer the phone!'

But there was no reply. ‘Fuck!' Carter shouted as he desperately tried to negotiate his way around the jumble of cars clogging up the street. He dialled the number again, but there was still no answer.

It took him an hour to reach Rosemary's street, but it felt like half a day. Every light was red, every road seemed to have some sort of obstruction. He was sweating uncomfortably by the time he had pulled the car up outside the house for the second time in twenty-four hours. He jumped out and splashed his way up the slushy front path. He pounded his fist on the front door several times before crouching down and shouting through the letter box. ‘Rosemary!' he called. ‘Rosemary, are you there? It's Sean, come to the door.'

But the only reply was an uneasy silence.

‘Can I help?'

Carter turned, startled, to see a middle-aged woman peering at him from over the hedge. Her face was a picture of barely concealed curiosity. ‘I'm looking for Rosemary,' he told her abruptly. ‘Have you seen her this morning?'

‘Well, now –' the woman made a pretence of thinking
back – ‘I saw her last night, of course, when she forgot her keys and needed me to let her in …' She looked at him knowingly, one eyebrow raised.

Carter snapped. ‘I didn't bloody ask you if you saw her last night,' he shouted at her. ‘I asked you if you'd seen her this morning.'

The woman's lips tightened. ‘There's really no need to swear at me. No, as it happens I haven't seen her this morning. And might I ask who you are, in any case?'

But Carter had already turned his back on her and was trampling over the winter-flowering pansies as he approached the front window. The curtains were closed, but there was a small gap at the top, so he climbed up onto the window sill and looked through into the front room.

Inside was chaos. Drawers were overturned, papers sprawled all over the carpet. Carter felt a chill run through his body as he jumped down and looked again through the letter box. The corridor looked as empty and neat as he would have expected it to, with one exception. Alone in the middle of the floor was Rosemary's shoe that had been broken in the attack the night before.

Carter closed his eyes and breathed in deeply as he tried to calm himself. Then he stood up, breathed out, and kicked the front door with all the fury and frustration he felt bottled up inside him.

It was a futile gesture, and it didn't make him feel any better.

A succession of images flashed through Mary's head. Normally they came to her at night as she slept, but as she sat bolt upright in her hospital bed in the half-light
of the wintry dusk, she saw those scenes as clearly as if she was living them.

She saw herself under her bedclothes. They were coarse and uncomfortable, and they smelled – the stench of months without washing, although she had long since ceased to notice it. If she could cover herself completely, she told herself, and stop any light from getting in, maybe she could blank out the noise of the screaming in the next room. It was the closest she ever got to a game. And at least while her mum was shouting down the phone she wasn't shouting at her.

She heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. Mary froze, praying that those footsteps would not lead into her bedroom; but her prayers were not to be answered this time. ‘Where the fuck are you?' She heard the gravelly, cigarette-parched voice of her mother in the doorway rise an octave when she realized her daughter was hiding in bed. ‘Get out of there, you stupid little bitch,' she screamed, pulling the blanket away and hurling it to the floor. Her mother clutched her hair and pulled her up. Mary knew better than to scream, but she couldn't help letting a sob escape. Her big eyes looked up at the furious woman in front of her, and she recognized the hungry, desperate look in her face that she found so terrifying. ‘What were you doing under there?' Her voice was quieter now. More threatening.

Mary lowered her head and looked at the floor. ‘Nothing,' she mumbled.

Suddenly she felt a blow across the side of her face and she fell to the ground. ‘You don't fucking get it, do you?' her mother started screaming again as she kicked her hard in the ribs. Then she stormed out, leaving Mary
alone and in dreadful pain in that tiny room, with not a toy, book or object from which she could derive the slightest piece of comfort.

And then, as it so often did, the image in Mary's mind faded, and she saw the other side of her mother. She was still in that lonely bedroom, gazing out of the window at a series of featureless tower blocks, but when her mother entered this time there was a softness to her features. There had clearly been some money today – a giro cheque or cash from one of the other infrequent sources that Mary knew nothing about – which always meant a bottle. A bottle to stay her trembling hands and calm her frayed nerves. She sat beside Mary on the bed and took her in her arms, locking her in a long embrace that stung the bruising along her ribs. She heard her mother crying, and pathetically whispering, ‘I love you,' almost to herself. It was affection of a sort, and Mary clung desperately to it.

But a bottle and its effects would not last longer than a few hours, leaving behind it only the memory of Mary's momentary reprieve, and confusion in her young mind.

Mary was suddenly snapped back to reality by the sound of the officer who was guarding the room scraping his chair as he got up and walked down the corridor. She slipped out of bed and opened the door. Looking down the corridor she saw the door of the Gents slam shut; she started walking in the opposite direction.

She was a strange sight, barefoot in her hospital pyjamas, with her wild eyes and wild hair, but the hospital staff she passed were too busy to pay her much attention. She walked almost in a trance, not really knowing where she was going, but vaguely aware that she was heading for the exit.

‘Are you OK, dear?' A voice from behind stopped her in her tracks. She turned round to see an elderly porter looking at her with kindly eyes.

Mary nodded. ‘I'm just going to find my mum,' she said, before turning back and continuing on her way. Ahead of her was a fire exit. She knew there was no other way out – you needed a pass to get in and out of the wards as security was tight in a children's hospital. She opened the door and the shrill ring of the fire alarm going off made her jump. She ran down the escape route and away from the hospital.

Five minutes later she was on Westminster Bridge. Her feet were numb, but she didn't notice, and the hospital pyjamas offered her hardly any protection from the biting cold. Her teeth chattered, but she was barely aware of where she was, still less of being freezing. Even now no one approached her, too scared, embarrassed or busy to help. They just stared as she went past.

She gazed over the side, just as she had done only a few weeks before when Frankie had taken her under her wing. Frankie. She thought of what she had said to her last night: ‘Trust me, Mary. This guy has friends. When they find out what happened here, they'll be back. The safest place you can be is a police cell, and when they let you out, you must never come back here. If you can't go home, move to a different part of the country …'

She thought of Strut – the image of his horrifically broken body came into her head, not for the first time that day – and of what he had said to her last night when she had called for her mum: ‘Well, she doesn't want you, you little fucking bitch …' She knew he was right.

She thought of the policeman who interviewed her
earlier today. He didn't care what happened to her. His words echoed in her head: ‘Young offenders' institution. Nasty place. You get fucked over three times before breakfast. Think I'd rather be sniffing glue round Elephant and Castle …'

And she thought of her mother. She thought of her mother most of all. She wondered if she cared where her daughter was now, or were her worries swimming at the bottom of a vodka bottle? She heard her mother's voice too: ‘You don't fucking get it, do you? You just don't fucking get it.'

No, Mary thought, her mind suddenly clear. I don't get it.

Frankie had asked her when they had met on the bridge if she was going to do anything stupid. But now she knew with absolute clarity that what she had in mind was far from that. She had nowhere else to go. No other options. If she had done it weeks ago, Bob Strut would still be alive and Frankie would not have had to risk her freedom on account of such a useless little girl.

The swirling water below was inky – the tide was running fast. The lights of London glittered on its surface hypnotically. She climbed onto the deep wall and teetered on its edge. Suddenly she was vaguely aware of a crowd of people around her, calling out, imploring her not to jump. She looked over her shoulder. Thirty metres away she saw hospital security staff running up to her, closely followed by a couple of nurses she recognized, with panicked looks on their faces. She gazed back down at the Thames.

‘I'm sorry, Frankie,' she muttered to herself.

She looked down again and felt dizzy from the height.

‘I'm sorry, Mum,' she whispered, leaning forward.

And as she fell, she heard the scream of a woman on the bridge.

It was strangely fitting that it was the last sound she ever heard.

Mark Taylor was quiet as he sat in the back of the police van with Irvin and four members of the armed response unit he had requested. He couldn't shake off the feeling that he should have been party to Carter's information – what was he hiding? But Taylor was sensible enough to admit to himself that Carter's hunches often paid off. This woman
had
killed someone in the last twenty-four hours – even if that someone was a scumbag like Strut – and clearly there was more to her predicament than he knew about if Carter and the SFO were taking such a close interest in her. The gruesome image of Strut's dead body rose freshly in his mind, and he did his best to suppress a shudder. Even if she wasn't armed, she was willing to do whatever it took, and she was a violent little bitch. Truth was, he didn't know what the hell he was going to find – and if his time in the job had taught him one thing, it was that it was better to be over-prepared for the situation ahead. So in the circumstances, armed response seemed a reasonable course of action. He felt unprotected sitting beside the four men in their black jump suits, helmets and body armour.

The light was fading outside, which was making them all nervous. At times like this you wanted to see what you were doing, not fumble around in the dark; but he knew that the Mills girl would be unlikely to stay long in one
place, so they couldn't risk waiting till tomorrow. Chances were she'd have seen the newspapers or the TV, and would want to get as far away as possible from London where her picture was on every local news report. The mother had sworn her daughter hadn't been in touch with anybody in the area, but he thought that was unlikely to be true. People always go back to their roots at times of trauma – basic psychology, rookie stuff.

Their destination was the outskirts of a small village about three-quarters of an hour outside London. Taylor glanced at his watch – they should be there any minute. Why the hell was he so on edge? It had been only yesterday that he'd been stomping around the office complaining that all he ever seemed to do these days was paperwork. Now he was out and about, doing real police work like the old days. So why did he keep licking his lips nervously? Why was his stomach churning? He was only after some kid who'd gone off the rails. More than likely they would find her with a belt strapped round the top of her arm and a needle stuck into a protruding vein, too spaced out even to speak, let alone pull a gun on them. And even if she did, the armed officers would be there in front of him. All he had to do was bring her in.

The van slowed down as it turned a sharp corner into a private road that was in need of resurfacing, but the two squad cars that had been following them pulled up on the main road, keeping out of sight. The van shook as it bumped down the road before coming to a halt. The armed officers started tightening their straps and checking their weapons. ‘Right, lads.' Taylor felt that it was up to him to say something. ‘Remember, our suspect is unlikely
to be armed and is
very
likely to be fucking frightened. We don't want to find ourselves explaining our way out of an unarmed stiff, so take it easy, will you?'