The Missing (31 page)

Smith opened the back door of the unmarked car that had drawn up on the road. He stood beside it, waiting for me to get in, a parody of a chauffeur. I didn’t look at him as I sat into it. The door slammed, and for the first time I felt like a prisoner. The driver was young, with red hair and a narrow fox’s face. DC Freeman, I assumed, and didn’t speak to him, even though he was openly assessing me. Waiting for Smith to get into the passenger seat, I stared past the young officer, towards my house. There were no signs of life over there, no hint from the outside of how my mother and I lived. I thought about asking them to let me tell her where I was being taken, but looking across at the house brooding in the sunshine, my heart sank. It was more than likely she had no idea what was going on. Then again, I couldn’t exactly criticise her for that. Neither of us seemed to have noticed much. How had I missed the abuse that had been visited on a vulnerable child yards from my front door?

I had an urge to jump out of the car, run up to the front door and bang on it until Mum answered, then hold on to her and not let go. She could defend me from the police and stand up for me, like a good mother should. God knows what would actually have happened if I’d tried, assuming she even bothered to open the door. I blinked away tears angrily. I was homesick for a place that didn’t exist, lonely for a mother I didn’t know at all. I was on my own.

As Smith shut his door with enough force to rock the car on its axles, Freeman turned to him.

‘She’s not what I was expecting.’

‘She doesn’t look the part,’ Smith agreed. ‘Doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.’

My face burned. ‘As it happens, I didn’t. This is a mistake.’

‘That’s what they all say.’ Smith clapped his colleague on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get a move on.’

The engine started and I sat back in my seat. I wasn’t actually surprised that the officers didn’t believe me. I couldn’t expect them to, when I had failed to convince Vickers and Blake, who knew me a whole lot better than they did.

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said as we turned on to the main road, for the sake of having the last word. But in spite of my bravado, I couldn’t deny that I was frightened. All I had to defend myself now was my innocence, and I had an awful feeling it wasn’t going to be enough.

‘All right, decision time. What kind of ice cream would you like?’

I pretend to think. ‘Hmm. I think perhaps … chocolate?’

‘Chocolate? How unusual,’ Dad says. ‘It’s unorthodox, but I think – yes, I’ll have the same. What a good idea.’

Both of us always have chocolate ice cream. It’s sort of the rule. Even if I wanted to have something else, I wouldn’t, because Dad would be so disappointed.

He gets the ice cream and we walk down to the seafront. It’s a bright, hot day in the middle of summer and the pier is packed with daytrippers like us. I spot a bench in the distance and run to sit on it before anyone else can nab it. Dad follows more slowly, licking his ice cream methodically, smoothing it into a point.

‘Hurry up,’ I call to him, nervous that someone will try to share the bench if I’m the only one
sitting
on it. If anything, it makes him slow down. He’s properly dawdling now and I look away, irritated. Sometimes it shocks me that Dad can be so childish at his age. Immature, that’s the word. It’s as if I’m the adult and he’s the kid.

‘Well done,’ Dad says, sitting down beside me at last. ‘This is perfect.’

It is. The sea is silver-blue, the pebbly beach white in the sunshine. Overhead, gulls wheel and shriek. People are all around us, but on our bench, with Dad’s arm around me, I feel as if we’re inside a bubble. No one can touch us. I lick my ice cream and feel happy again, nestling against Dad’s side. I love these trips that we take, just the two of us. I’d never say it to Dad, but I’m glad that Mum doesn’t come with us. She’d ruin it. She certainly wouldn’t sit on a bench eating ice cream and laughing at two fat, wet dogs playing in the surf.

We’ve been sitting there for a few minutes and I am eating the wafer part of my ice-cream cone when Dad shifts his arm from around my shoulders to the back of the bench and says, ‘Monkey … there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

‘What?’ I’m expecting it to be a stupid joke or something.

Dad sighs and rubs his hand over his face before he goes on. ‘Your mother and I – well,
we
haven’t been getting on for a while. And we’ve decided that the best thing to do is to split up.’

I stare at him. ‘Split up?’

‘We’re getting a divorce, Sarah.’

‘A divorce?’ I have to stop saying the last two words of his sentences, I think irrelevantly. But I can’t think what else to say.

‘It will be all right – really, it will. I’ll see you lots and lots. We can still have days out like this – I’ll come every weekend if I can. And you can come and see me. I’ve got a new job, in Bristol. It’s a great city. We’ll have loads of fun.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘In two weeks.’

Two weeks is too soon. ‘You’ve known about this for ages,’ I say accusingly.

‘We wanted to make sure we had worked everything out before we told you.’ Dad’s forehead is creased into about a hundred lines. He looks stressed out.

I’m processing all of this information as fast as I can, trying to understand. ‘So why can’t I come with you?’

Dad looks blank. ‘Well, there’s school for one thing.’

‘There are schools in Bristol.’

‘Wouldn’t you miss all your friends?’

I shrug. The answer to that is no, but I don’t want to upset Dad. He’s always asking me about my friends. I give him the impression that I’m
popular
enough, never admitting that I spend most lunchtimes in the school library, reading quietly. I’m not exactly unpopular – just off the radar. Where I prefer to be.

‘I could start somewhere new in September. It would be a good time to change.’

‘I see that, Sarah, but – well, I think it would be better for you to stay with your mother.’

‘You know what she’s like. How would it be better to stay with her?’

‘Sarah—’

‘You’re leaving me behind with her, aren’t you? You get to leave, and I have to stay.’

‘She needs you, Sarah. You might not see it, but she loves you very much. If you left with me – I just don’t think she’d make it. I don’t want to abandon her like that. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘So why are you going?’ I ask, and I’m starting to cry and my nose is running and I can hardly see my father through the tears. ‘If you’re so worried about her, why are you leaving?’

‘Because I have to,’ he says quietly, looking miserable. ‘Sarah, it’s not up to me. It’s not my idea to go.’

‘Stand up to her! Tell her if you don’t want to leave us. Don’t just go,’ I shout, and people are looking around, they’re nudging one another, but I don’t care. ‘Why do you do everything she says, Dad? Why do you let her walk all over you?’

He doesn’t have an answer, and I am crying too hard to ask the last question, the one I really want to ask.

Why don’t you care enough about me to say no?

FREEMAN TOOK A
roundabout route to the police station, heading down residential side streets and narrow lanes until we arrived at the back gate. Neither policeman said a word to me until the car sat idling at the barrier, waiting for the pole to go up. Smith cleared his throat.

‘If you’re wondering why the yard is so busy, it’s gone out over the radio that you’re coming in. Everyone wants to have a look. You’re going to be quite the celebrity.’

I hadn’t realised that the yard was crowded, but peering between the front seats, I could see that uniformed officers were standing around in little groups, their eyes on the car. There was a uniform expression on their faces too: disgust, principally, mixed with open curiosity and a hint of satisfaction. The job had been done. They’d got one. Mixed in with the uniforms were civilian workers who looked just as self-righteous. Marie Antoinette couldn’t have faced a tougher crowd on her last public appearance.

Freeman swore softly, and I could tell that he was nervous about driving into the yard with such a big audience. He revved the engine and swung into a space by the back of the station, hitting the brakes just a fraction too hard.

‘Steady,’ Smith growled, and turned to me. ‘All right back there? Ready for your close-up?’

I was failing to warm to the detective. Something about
the
fact that he was arresting me for something I hadn’t done – hadn’t dreamed of doing – stuck in my throat. I didn’t answer him; I just twisted my hands in my lap. I was cold and somehow detached, as if all of this was happening to someone else.

Freeman pointed. ‘Through that door is the custody sergeant. All you have to do is follow DC Smith and stand where he tells you to stand.’

I nodded mutely, and when Smith opened the door, I climbed out of the car as instructed and followed him up a ramp, through a door marked ‘Custody’. I didn’t dare look left or right, just fixed my eyes on his wide back and tried to match his pace. A whistle came from somewhere behind me, shrill and unexpected, and I jumped. It was like a signal to the near-silent crowd in the yard, and the door closed behind me on a swell of jeers and comments. I caught sight of my reflection in a glass inner door as we passed through it and felt vague pity for the young woman in a jaunty striped T-shirt and faded jeans, the young woman with a fall of blonde curls down her back that looked too heavy for her small head, and a frozen expression on her pale face, her eyes wide and dark with fear.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. The sweetish stink of vomit was overlaid by the scent of pine disinfectant. The floor was very slightly tacky and my sandals pulled against my feet as I walked. I was so nervous, I could hardly feel my legs. My stomach was in knots.

A large desk took up most of the space in the hallway we had reached. DC Smith swaggered up to it. A female sergeant stood behind it, a motherly type with a scrubbed,
fresh
complexion. She looked at me, then back at Smith. In a resigned tone of voice, she asked, ‘What have we got?’

‘All right, skip,’ Smith said with a nod, and stood up slightly straighter, like a child about to recite his catechism. ‘I’m DC Thomas Smith, the arresting officer, and this is Sarah Finch. She was arrested at 12.25 this afternoon at 7, Curzon Close on suspicion of the murder of Jennifer Shepherd, on the instructions of DCI Vickers.’

There was a scuffling sound from behind me and Vickers suddenly appeared at my elbow. I looked past him to see Blake standing against the wall, hands in his pockets, staring into space. Something told me that he knew very well that I was looking at him, and no power on earth would induce him to look back. I turned my attention to Vickers, who had been confirming the circumstances of the arrest. Of
my
arrest.

The custody sergeant leaned across the desk. ‘Just a few questions for you, madam.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, businesslike.

The questions were all to do with my welfare, and my replies when I answered were only just audible. No, I didn’t consider myself to be a vulnerable person. No, I didn’t have any special needs. No, I wasn’t on any medication, and I didn’t feel that I needed to see a doctor.

‘And do you want to see a lawyer?’ the sergeant said, with the air of someone getting to the end of a well-worn spiel.

I hesitated, then shook my head. Lawyers were for guilty people with something to hide. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I could explain my way out of this more
easily
– and more quickly, probably – if I didn’t have to deal with a lawyer.

‘That’s a no, then,’ she said, marking it on the form. ‘Initial the custody record for me, and sign in the box.’

I took the pen she handed me and signed where she had pointed. All done in accordance with the rules and regulations.

They emptied my pockets there and then, collecting an old faded receipt, some change and a button I had meant to sew on a shirt. My bag and my belt also disappeared. I had no shoelaces and nothing else that I could use to harm myself. Somehow, being stripped of my belongings was the worst moment of all. It was humiliating and degrading. I stood in front of them, my face burning, and wanted to cry.

The custody sergeant produced a bunch of keys and came out from behind her desk, humming to herself distractedly. ‘This way, please.’

I followed her through a battered door that led to a line of cells, some apparently occupied, some with the heavy doors standing open. The stench was unbearable – stale urine, vomit, and overlying all of it the heavy smell of human excrement. At the very end of the hallway, the sergeant stopped.

‘This is you,’ she said, pointing.

I looked through the open door at a completely bare cell, containing only a concrete block the size and shape of a bed and a toilet in the corner that I didn’t want to look at, let alone use. I walked in and stopped in the middle of the cell, looking around. Bare floor. Cream walls. High
window
. A whole lot of nothing. Behind me, the door thudded shut. The metallic sound of the key turning in the lock scraped across my overstretched nerves. I looked around to see the custody sergeant’s eyes peering through the wicket in the cell door. Evidently she was satisfied with whatever she saw, because without further comment she snapped the wicket shut, leaving me alone.

When they came back, hours later, I had made myself as comfortable as it was possible to be on a bare concrete slab, sitting against the wall with my knees drawn up to my chest. It had taken me a while to overcome my reluctance to touch anything in the cell. Even though it was superficially clean and smelled as if it had been thoroughly disinfected, I couldn’t help thinking about all of the previous inhabitants. There were no bodily functions, I suspected, that hadn’t occurred in that cell, with the possible exception of childbirth.

It had been a long wait. Every time the custody sergeant jangled her keys in the passage, my heart jumped painfully, and every time the fear and anticipation drained away slowly. With the exception of the offer of a cup of tea (declined) or a glass of water (accepted), I had been left alone since I was locked in my cell. The water had been tepid and slightly viscous, and came in a small paper cup. There hadn’t been anything like enough of it, but I didn’t dare ask for more.