Stranger Child (18 page)

‘No, nothing like that. It’s work, but I can’t go into it. Sorry.’

There was a brief silence – as if for a moment she hadn’t believed him. Tom felt an unexpected flash of irritation, although Leo’s next words betrayed nothing.

‘I wanted to know if I should put my limited skills to the test and make something for supper,’ she said. She was a fairly useless cook, but he didn’t want to undermine her completely.

‘I would love you to cook me supper, but it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to be home at all tonight. If I am, it’ll be the early hours.’

‘What’s up? I thought your current cases were all in hand.’

‘Hah. Unfortunately crime in Manchester is relentless. There is no such thing as clearing your caseload, I can promise you that. Some bastard is sure to do something that needs attention the minute you think you’re on top of things. But this is different. I need to stay and sort this. Sorry,’ he said again.

‘And you’re not going to tell me what it is?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Oh well, I’ve got loads of reading to do anyway. The question is, shall I stay here – I’m at yours – or should I go home?’

‘Let’s just say I hope and pray that
if
I get home, and it’s a big if, it will be to your warm, naked body in my bed. Is that okay?’

There was a soft chuckle down the line.
That’s better
, he thought.

‘Wake me when you get in, then. I wouldn’t mind some of
your
warm, naked body while we’re on the subject.’

For a moment, all thoughts of Jack and Ollie disappeared as his mind conjured up a picture of Leo, her long dark hair spread across the pillow and her beautiful slender body lying waiting for him.

‘You’ve gone quiet, Tom?’ she said, the laughter still evident in her voice. ‘Glad I’ve cheered you up. You sounded very grouchy when I called. Oh – before I go, you’ve got a message on your answerphone. Do you want me to play it to you?

His mind now firmly back on the job, Tom answered. ‘Yes please.’

He heard Leo’s footsteps on the bare wooden floorboards of his hall, going softer as she walked across the rug. Then a click.

‘This is a message for Mr Tom Douglas. My name is Raoul Charteris calling from Honegger, Wyss & Cie in Switzerland. We have received your request regarding the account beginning with the numbers and letters 53696C766. It appears you are the beneficiary named on the account. However, there are some irregularities regarding the account that we need to discuss with you before we can proceed further. Please give me a call on +41 43 733 5360 at your earliest convenience. I’m keen that we speak as soon as possible, Mr Douglas, so this number will get through to me at any time.’

30

The night was very still, and through the open curtains of Ollie’s bedroom window Emma could see a thin crescent moon and a sprinkling of stars. She wanted the window and the curtains to be open. She needed to see the sky and the moon that would be looking down on Ollie, smell the air that he would be breathing, wherever he was. Somehow, by closing the curtains it was as if she was creating a cocoon of comfort that excluded her son, so she had pushed them as far back as possible, feeling that she could reflect her thoughts and love from the stars down to her baby.

She had started the night lying next to David, hoping they could give each other some support, but that was harder than it seemed. How could she sympathise with his feelings for his daughter – the girl who had stolen Ollie? They seemed to be separated by a chasm a mile wide.

David had eventually fallen into a fitful sleep. She didn’t know how he could but she also knew he was exhausted, and she suspected from the smell of his breath that he had resorted to drinking brandy to numb his pain. Since they had known that ‘it’ was going to be tomorrow, there had been no reason for David to resist the lure of alcohol. She couldn’t drink, though. What if Ollie needed her?

She had to feel close to her baby. Ollie’s bedroom was where she wanted to be, and as soon as she was sure David was sleeping, she had escaped their bed and rushed to the place she felt closest to her son.

Emma wondered what was going through Natasha’s head now. It was so hard to reconcile the young, frail-looking girl with the kid standing before them, telling them that nothing they did would frighten her.

Then she reminded herself that children much younger than Natasha were fighting wars in the Middle East and being trained to kill, and she’d seen a documentary on the television that said as many as five hundred children in the UK under fourteen had been found guilty
and sentenced for violent crimes in the last twelve months. Much as it beggared belief, perhaps Natasha’s behaviour wasn’t as incredible as it seemed.

Emma pulled a blanket over her legs. She didn’t really know why she had got ready for bed at all. Even though she had hardly slept since Natasha had arrived days ago, she couldn’t bear the thought of closing her eyes. What if she missed something important? What if they brought Ollie back and couldn’t get in – left him outside crying – and she was asleep? Or what if he was ill and they panicked? She had to be awake, alert, ready for anything if it meant getting Ollie back.

Just one thin wall separated her from the cause of their problems. One wall. There was no doubt that Natasha would have barricaded herself into her room, but Emma formed thoughts like spears to penetrate the wall and get inside Natasha’s head.

‘How could you do this to your baby brother?’ she asked silently, directing the flow of her thoughts by imagining Natasha’s sleeping form. ‘What did this baby ever do to hurt you? What did any of us do to hurt you?’

Her focus was so intense that she almost missed it.

What was that?

It was a noise. Natasha was moving around in her bedroom. Emma lay still, focusing all of her strength on listening to the sounds from the next room. She could make out a hum that sounded as if it could be a voice, but it was so low that it was nothing more than a distant murmur.

Yes, it was definitely a voice and then Emma heard one word, louder than the rest, but with a distinct edge of despair. ‘
Why?
’ And then nothing. Just the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the holly tree outside the window.

Emma crept from the chair towards the door. Even though there was no Ollie, she had left his door ajar out of habit. Shutting it would have simply underlined what she already knew: Ollie wasn’t there. But now she was glad, because she thought she might hear better. She sat down on the floor beside the open door, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

The murmuring had stopped. There was silence for a few moments, then Emma heard a different sound – a drawer being slowly and carefully pulled out.

What was going on?

She sensed, rather than heard, movement in the next bedroom, the sounds so subtle that they were only recognisable because she was listening so intently. But then there was a noise that was clear. It was the sound of Natasha’s door opening.

Emma shuffled quickly back from the doorway into the shadow of the room as Natasha tiptoed along the landing, silently creeping down the stairs.

*

Emma waited behind the bedroom door, listening to the sounds of the house. She was certain that David hadn’t put the alarm on before going to bed. She’d asked him not to – in case somebody broke in to bring Ollie back.

It took Emma less than two seconds to decide: if Natasha was going somewhere, Emma was going after her. She didn’t know if Tom was wrong and the house was being watched, but right now she didn’t care. She wanted to know what Natasha was up to.

Where on earth could she be going? Emma heard the back door open and then close quietly. Please, Natasha, don’t take the key and lock the door from the outside, she prayed.

Glancing at her navy-blue pyjama bottoms and thinking they would have to do, she darted into their bedroom, grabbed a black jumper from where she had thrown it earlier and ran down the stairs, not bothering to mask the sound of her footsteps. David wouldn’t wake up. He seemed to have trained himself to sleep through anything – including Ollie’s occasional bad nights – and Natasha was already gone. Emma just hoped she could catch up with her.

Stopping to grab a pair of moccasin slippers with rubber soles that would make no sound on the road, she quietly opened the back door and slipped outside, pulling the door closed behind her. It was bitterly cold, but Emma barely noticed.

Keeping to the grass rather than the gravel of the drive, she ran to the gate and looked both ways. The moon wasn’t very bright, but she could see a moving shadow to her left, heading towards the very same wood where she had met Tom earlier. If she followed now, she would be exposed. She thought quickly. The other side of the road had a steep grass verge and a tall hedge. If she could make it over there, it wouldn’t be the obvious place to look if Natasha checked to see if she was being followed. Emma waited a couple of seconds and then risked the quick dash across the road and up the verge, standing still for a few seconds.

Natasha slowed down and glanced over her left shoulder to where Emma had been only moments before. Emma held her breath. Natasha turned back and carried on walking, and as she moved forwards Emma crept along the hedge, keeping her head low. Natasha took the first path into the wood.

Giving her prey a moment or two to get further away from the road, Emma waited until she thought it was safe, then ran back across the narrow strip of black tarmac to the edge of the pathway.

It was completely silent in the wood. There was no wind, and they were too far from town to hear any traffic noise. Emma could hear herself breathing, her breaths short and sharp with fear. The sky was clear with only a sliver of moon to give any light, and the leaves that had littered the paths since autumn were crisp with frost, certain to crunch as she walked. With no other sounds of the night to disguise her movement, she stood stock still.

Guessing that Natasha would be heading to the little clearing where Emma had met Tom, she took a chance and decided to skirt the wood, keeping to the field where the soft grass would absorb the sound of her footsteps, hoping to see and hear everything from the cover of the sparse trees.

Staying low, she crept into the field, keeping to the very edge of the trees. She could hear Natasha crunching along the path. Emma stopped as the sounds grew louder. The girl was heading her way. Suddenly Natasha was in view, not ten metres away, standing still and looking around her. Emma crouched even lower, dropping her head so the weak moonlight wouldn’t pick out her white face.

Natasha was on the move again, this time with purpose and direction. She was striding further into the wood and Emma knew she would have to follow. She could hear voices. One was unmistakably Natasha’s. The other voice was a man’s.

Emma crept closer, watching the ground to avoid the biggest patches of frozen leaves. The voices became clearer.

‘You’re a stupid bugger, Shelley,’ the man said, his voice tense with suppressed anger.

Emma peered around the trunk of the tree. She couldn’t see anybody apart from Natasha. Who was Shelley?

‘If we fuck this up, it’s not just you that’s going be screwed – it’s me too – and I don’t like being messed with. Are you hearing me? I need you to tell me you’ve got this. And I want to watch your face, because you’d better not be lying to me.’

Emma edged closer still. She could see the man now. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was stocky with a belly, wearing ill-fitting jeans and a brown leather jacket. She looked at his face. What moonlight there was illuminated his features; the man’s hair was slicked back and greasy, and his face looked oddly scarred until she realised that the disjointed reflections of light from his skin were due to pockmarking, probably from his teenage years. The scowl on his face said that Natasha – or Shelley as he called her – was in trouble.

Natasha bravely looked him in the eye, but Emma could see her hands, clenching and unclenching.

‘I told you yesterday, Rory – it’s not my fault the pigs came. I
told
David I wouldn’t speak to them. But they’d been to see him at work because of that girl who was found dead. They thought it was me.’

‘I bet he wishes it had been, now.’ The man gave a throaty laugh and spat on the floor.

‘Tell me it wasn’t Izzy. It wasn’t, was it?’ Emma heard a note of distress in Natasha’s voice.
Who’s Izzy
, she thought.

‘How the fuck do I know who it was?’

‘So you haven’t found her, then?’

‘I’m not here to talk about your stupid little friend, Shelley. She didn’t know when she was lucky, that one, and you shouldn’t have told her you were going to take the baby. I thought you knew better.’

‘She won’t tell anybody, I promise.’

‘Not if she’s dead, she won’t.’ He laughed. ‘Forget her. We’re here to sort out how you’re going to manage the filth if they come sniffing again, and I need to know why they came back.’

Emma had manoeuvred herself slowly into a position where she could see Natasha’s face, and she saw a momentary glimpse of fear on the girl’s face that she quickly tried to disguise. But not quickly enough.

‘Jesus, you silly bitch. Do you think we don’t know when they come calling? At least you’ve planted the bugs now so we can hear what they’re saying, but what did they want yesterday?’

Natasha looked at the ground and kicked some leaves backwards and forwards.

‘Same old,’ she said. ‘Just trying to get me to tell where I’d been – how I’d got back. Just having another go.’

She was lying. Emma couldn’t imagine why, but Natasha wasn’t telling him about the CCTV footage on the train.

The man reached out and grabbed Natasha’s upper arms. Emma heard a faint squeak of pain, quickly stifled. He shook Natasha hard and pushed his face right up to hers.

‘I need to know you’ve got this, Shelley. You wanted to do it – remember. We had options, but you said you would make it easy for us. What’s going on in that head of yours?’

Natasha looked at him, her face wiped of expression. ‘Nothing. It’s good to see the bastard suffer. It’s not Ollie’s fault, though. He’s a cute baby. Who’s looking after him?’