The Missing Hours (33 page)

It took another moment, longer perhaps than it should have. It began as a vague unsteadiness, a creeping sense of wrongness.

Where was Selena?

She had only gone out to the car. The car was parked just outside. It shouldn’t take this long, should it?

Orla looked at the clock, studying it fiercely, trying to remember where the big hand had sat when Selena had walked out of the door. The pain in her stomach was fierce now, an air-raid siren, take cover, danger coming.

She strained, listening for Selena’s footsteps, for the sound of her voice, perhaps caught on the phone, perhaps talking to a neighbour. But no, her phone had been on the kitchen counter, hadn’t it? Orla cast about, the vague recollection of a vibration against the granite counter. When was that? She hadn’t been paying attention, had been too busy drowning in her own misery to really notice. But, yes, it was just before Selena had left, wasn’t it?

So that was it, then.

She would be outside, on the phone.

Everything was fine.

Orla sat there, her eyes fixed on the clock, watching. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. She couldn’t move. She shouldn’t move. Because when she did, it would be real. It would have happened again.

But stillness could not be bought, and the silence that came with the absence of an expected sound was no real silence at all. Orla pushed herself to her feet, hurried down the hall.

It would be nothing.

It would be fine.

Hadn’t Selena’s coat been on the peg when she first came in? Hadn’t her handbag been slung over the banister?

Her head was light now, and for a brief, unsteady moment, Orla wondered if she was asleep, if this was a nightmare and she would wake up alone, in a police cell. She pulled open the front door, stepped out on to the porch.

It had begun to rain again, a steady plock, plock, plock on the drive. She ventured out into it, wincing as cold drizzle snaked its way between her shoulder blades. And stood, her feet welded to the ground. The car was gone.

She looked wildly, left to right. It had to be … She’d been wrong. It must have been parked … She ran down the path, yanking open the small gate so that she was standing out in the street.

The rain washed over her.

There was no car. Selena had gone.

Full circle

DC Leah Mackay: Saturday, 9.58 a.m.

‘
WHY WOULD HE
lie?’

‘Because he’s a murderer?’

I look at Finn, pull a face. ‘Well, okay, but why lie about being in New York? The Cole Group work out of Colombia, it wouldn’t be weird. Why not just say he was there?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t there for work,’ suggests Finn. He leans forward in his office chair, getting into the swing of things now, just a boy, my little brother, playing at detectives. ‘Maybe the lie wasn’t for our benefit, but for Selena’s or Orla’s. They would both know where he was supposed to be, what cases they’ve got running.’

‘Okay.’ I turn, stare out of the window at the fog of rain. Think of Seth, a lover. Spurned, maybe? Or perhaps simply afraid that Dominic will not be discreet enough, that his secret will escape with this one miscalculation. And maybe he gets afraid, maybe he loses it, stabs him in a spurt of anger.

‘So why the hell is he carrying round a knife?’

Finn shrugs. ‘People have penknives. It’s not that weird. He’s ex-military.’ He blows out a breath. ‘I don’t know, Lee, maybe he was a boy scout and thought he’d need to make a fire. Or …’ he gives me a long look. ‘Maybe it wasn’t as spontaneous as we thought?’

It feels as if the answer is before me, that if I concentrate hard enough, I can line my thoughts up, get them to make sense. ‘He goes to meet Dom, armed, knowing he’s going to kill him, then, after doing it, he just dumps the car, dumps the knife, legs it, leaving all the evidence there for us?’

Finn shrugs, biting his nails. ‘We need to get his prints. It should have been done by now. We need DNA, fibres. We could have closed this down by now.’

I push myself up. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s head up there. Get Seth’s prints. Have a little chat with him.’

Finn is out of his chair before the sentence has time to grow cold. ‘Yes. I’ll drive.’

I smile, am grabbing for my phone when it begins to ring. I don’t recognise the number.

‘Hello, DC Mackay.’

There is a patch of silence. Then a hefty sigh. ‘It’s Orla. Orla Britten.’

I sink back down, pull my chair closer to my desk, gesture to Finn. ‘Orla. Hi.’

I haven’t spoken to her, not since I arrested her, and the weight of that sits between us. My insides have turned soft at the sound of her voice, as if somehow they know it will bring something with it that I have not accounted for.

‘I didn’t know who else to call.’

‘Okay.’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Who’s gone?’

‘Selena. Selena is gone. Again.’

I stare at Finn, trying to find my balance, the déjà vu shifting my foundations. ‘She’s …’

‘I know.’

‘Well, what …?’

‘She went to her car.’ Orla sounds like she has been crying, her voice thick, tired. ‘She said she was only going to grab the shopping. That she would be right back. But the car, it’s gone. She’s gone.’

It is like I expected this all along, that somewhere deep down I always knew that we would go in a full circle, ending up right back here, where we began.

‘Seth …’ I begin.

‘I don’t know where he is either. He had left by the time I got back from the station. I assume London, but I really don’t know. It’s just me now. Me and the girls.’

‘Okay.’ Possible futures shift before me, the cards shuffling fast. ‘I’m on my way. We’ll find them. I’ll be there soon.’

Finn is watching me as I hang up the phone, is still standing, his keys in his hand. ‘What?’

‘Selena is gone again.’

‘She’s …’

‘There’s something else going on here,’ I say. ‘She’s connected. Somehow, whatever has happened. She’s involved. Seth isn’t at the house. We need to put a wanted marker out on both of them.’

Finn already has the phone in his hand, is dialling. ‘So you think Selena …’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I think.’

‘The prints in the car weren’t a match for Selena’s. They didn’t find anything in the search of her home.’

‘I know.’ And yet it remains, the knowledge of being lied to.

I wait as Finn gets through to the SIO, briefs him, aware that it is now me who cannot stay still, that I am bouncing in place. She has gone again. It is turning into a farce. Has she walked? Was she kidnapped? The same questions, just a different day. Then I think of Beck Chambers outside the Cole house on the morning of her disappearance. Her first disappearance.

I hurry over to my computer, pull up Chambers’ file. Find the number. Dial.

I am expecting it to ring out. Do not think for a moment that he will answer.

‘Yeah.’

I stand there, stunned into silence. Then, ‘Beck?’

‘Yeah? Who’s this?’

I suck in a breath, aware that Finn is watching me. ‘Beck, this is DC Leah Mackay. Where are you?’

A long, stagnant silence. ‘What do you need, DC Mackay?’

I roll the dice. ‘I need to know where you are, Beck. And I need to know where Selena Cole is.’

I can hear him thinking, and for a foolish, optimistic moment, I think that he is going to talk, that the end is at hand.

‘This is none of your concern, Leah. You need to leave it.’

A click and he is gone.

I stand in the office, the phone limp in my hand, feel seasick.

‘What?’ asks Finn. ‘What did he say?’

‘Call the SIO back,’ I say. ‘He needs to put out an additional wanted marker on Beck. He’s with her.’

Everything changes

DS Finn Hale: Saturday, 10.20 a.m.

I TAKE THE
corner way too fast, the rim of the tyre bumping up over the kerb, back down the other side.

‘Whoa, cowboy,’ mutters Leah.

‘Sorry.’

I bust through lights as they are flicking to red, put my foot down. Heading out of Hereford, away from the crowds, the low-slung buildings, out into the countryside. Towards the Cole house. We head here because we have nowhere else to head to, and the thought of just sitting in the office and waiting is unbearable.

‘Maybe there’ll be something there – at the Cole house, I mean. Something that’ll give us a lead as to where she went.’

‘Yeah.’ Leah is staring ahead of us, her hands wrapped tight around the seat. ‘Maybe.’ She gives a little laugh that is covered in edges. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve done this before, you know.’

The Hereford traffic gives way to country calm. We are heading along a country lane now, bare branches scraping overhead. It occurs to me where we are, that the river, the place at which Selena Cole was found, is right there, its water a grey sheen glimpsed through the autumn remnants of trees.

‘It feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? That first day?’

‘Yes.’ Leah’s lips are sewn up tight, her pallor has sunk towards grey. She always was a terrible passenger, bringing the threat of sickness on any childhood journey we took. I ease my foot off the accelerator, take the next bend a little slower. Look down and can see her grip has loosened, just slightly.

‘I was a prick.’

She looks at me. ‘You weren’t a prick. What do you mean?’

I glance across. ‘I thought you were overidentifying. With Selena Cole. I thought it was, you know, a mother thing.’

‘A mother thing?’

‘You know, she has two girls, you have two girls.’

She gives me a look that I try studiously to avoid. ‘You know that Selena Cole and I are not the only people in the world ever to have kids, right?’

I snort. ‘Look, do you want me to apologise or not?’

‘Sure. Go for it.’

‘I’m sorry for not trusting you.’

Leah looks away out of the window, then back at me. ‘You know what? You
were
a prick. But I forgive you.’

‘Thanks.’ I grin. Then I sigh. ‘I didn’t think they were connected.’ My God, it’s like a confessional in here.

Leah smiles. ‘Neither did I. I just … I had to know. What happened in those missing hours.’

Strange how I now cannot disentangle these two cases, how they have come to form one in my mind.

‘Still,’ I say, resolutely determined to throw myself on my sword, ‘I should have listened to you.’

Leah doesn’t answer for a moment, is watching the river as it flashes by. Then she reaches over, pats my shoulder. ‘Ah well. You’ll know better next time.’

The airwave set beeps, sending a jolt of electricity through me. Leah grabs for it.

‘Leah Mackay.’

‘Yeah, we’ve had a result on your wanted marker. Mobile ANPR unit picked up Selena Cole’s Range Rover passing by Llanthony, heading into the Brecon Beacons National Park.’

I yank the car over to the side of the road, pulling it into an unrealistically tight turn, Leah’s hand flying up to grab the passenger-side handle, and head back the way we came, my foot flat now.

‘Got it. We’re en route.’

We are flying now, whipping by the trees so fast that even I feel sick. There are so many questions rising up. Unfortunately neither of us knows the answers. I turn in to another country lane, narrower now, the speed feeling painful. We have begun to climb, the landscape rearing up towards the sky.

Where the hell is Selena Cole going?

Music. For a dislocating moment I think we have stumbled on a countryside rave. But it is just Leah’s phone.

She answers without looking at it, hand still clutching the overhead handle.

‘Hello? Yes. Hi, Willa. No. No, I’m not. Okay. So, did you … Okay.’

I strain to listen, trying to find Willa’s voice against the sound of the engine, the whoomp, whoomp, whoomp of tyres on the uneven road.

‘You’re kidding.’

I look at Leah. Mouth ‘What?’ but she is ignoring me, is looking straight ahead.

‘So there’s no way … Okay, you’re sure? Yeah, well, you understand why I ask? I know. Right.’

I can’t sit on it any longer. ‘What? What is it?’

Leah waves me away. ‘I know. Okay, thanks, Willa. Yeah. That … that changes everything.’ She glances over at me, away again.

‘What?’

‘Yeah, thanks. Bye.’

We have burst through the trees, out on to an open mountain road, a precipitous drop one side, vertiginous climb the other. I really should be concentrating.

‘What is it?’

Leah releases her death grip on the handle, stares straight ahead. ‘I …’

‘Oh, sweet Jesus, if you don’t tell me right now, I’m calling Mum!’

In spite of herself, Leah laughs. ‘Um … right … The sweater. Selena Cole’s sweater. The results are in.’

‘Okay?’

‘It was blood.’

‘Dominic’s?’

Leah shakes her head slowly. ‘No, Finn. It wasn’t Dominic’s.’

Into the mountains

DC Leah Mackay: Saturday, 10.39 a.m.

THERE IS A
wildness here. The mountains etched green with scrub, climbing, their tips vanishing into the cloud that lies flat over them. Finn has slowed now, is driving carefully on the snaking road.

‘You got anything?’

I glance down at my phone, signal non-existent. ‘Nothing.’ Pick up the airwave set and fiddle with the buttons. ‘Airwave is down too.’

‘Awesome.’ Finn sighs.

‘Yes.’

I don’t know how long we’ve been driving, but it cannot be as long as it feels, because had it been, we would have pushed straight through the Beacons, right out the other side. But we have seen no cars, no lights, nothing to tell us that this is anything other than a wild-goose chase, Selena Cole at the centre of it. Again. The rain has begun to drive hard now, is bouncing off the windscreen, seems inevitable that it will eventually break through.

‘It’s getting worse,’ I offer.

Finn flips the wipers, the arms increasing their speed so that the water swashes across the surface of the screen. We are starting to drop down now, the road winding its way out from the clouds, into the valley below.

‘We’re nearly out of the Beacons,’ mutters Finn. ‘This road connects back to the main road.’