by C J Parsons
But she didn’t come out. And Carrie had been all around the playground, checked every piece of equipment and her daughter was not there. Not hiding in the space under the playhouse or in the shadow under the slide or behind one of the trees just beyond the zip wire, screening the chainmail fence that kept the children in . . . That was supposed to keep them in. She stared hard at the metal barrier, noticing something for the first time. A section of the fence had been sliced through and bent back, creating a gap big enough to admit even an adult. Her daughter must have gone out that way. Carrie had been standing right in front of the entry gate when Simon’s call came, so Sofia couldn’t have slipped past unnoticed. She hauled in a breath, feeling some of the tension leave her as she released it. Mystery solved.
The ‘children’s woods’ was a small slice of forest bisected by a trail. Sofia loved playing there, loved clambering over the fallen trees that interrupted the path, using the steps cut into their trunks, courtesy of the park keepers. So that was where she must be. It was the only possible explanation. Or at least, the only one Carrie’s mind was prepared to accept.
She dashed through the break in the fence, stopping on the other side to scan the woods: a little slice of countryside for London’s inner-city children. Sunlight angled through the trees, sending golden shafts across the trail. A boy was dragging a broken branch along it: material for a fort under construction at the base of an oak. Two little girls were building a lean-to against the back of the hut where the park keepers stored their equipment. But no sequinned heart. No flash of pink polka dots between the leaves.
She has to be here somewhere.
Carrie fended off the thought that she could hardly remember the last time Sofia had run off without saying anything. That it hadn’t happened since she was a toddler. She would see her in a moment. Any moment. Any moment now. She jogged along the trail, not seeing her, dread expanding inside her until it squeezed out everything else.
She broke into a run, shouting her daughter’s name, the calls growing louder as she neared the end of the trail. Her voice cut through the woods like an alarm siren, turning heads and drawing women – other mothers – her way. Five of them formed a rough circle around her as she reached the end of the path and stopped, breath coming in ragged gasps.
‘Are you all right?’ The speaker was younger than Carrie: late twenties or early thirties. Dark, wavy hair. Jeans and a running top.
‘No. I can’t find my daughter.’
Saying the words out loud set off a flash of white-hot panic. Carrie bent at the waist, palms braced against her knees, riding it out. The woman bent over too so that their faces were level.
‘It’s OK, love. I’ll help you find your daughter.’
Carrie straightened and nodded, flooded by gratitude.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Carrie.’
‘Mine’s Tara. This is a big park and there are loads of places for a child to hide. So how about we get some help?’
‘Help. Yes, of course. Should we call the police?’
Tara smiled. Her eyes were blue-green, like a holiday sea.
‘I think we can get help right here. It’ll be faster.’ She turned towards the other four women: a redhead, face swarming with freckles; a plump, dark-skinned woman in an orange headscarf; a pair of trim older mums, their matching blonde hair tied in loose knots, both sensibly dressed in jeans and T-shirts. They had similar features: sisters, presumably. Tara raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hello, ladies. As you’ve just heard, Carrie here can’t find her daughter. Which means that, somewhere in this park, there’s a little girl who has lost her mum and is probably starting to get scared.’ She looked slowly from face to face, before asking: ‘Any volunteers to help find her?’
The woman in the headscarf responded first, with ‘count me in.’ Then the redhead nodded and the two blondes said ‘absolutely’ in perfect unison.
Carrie focused on her breathing, telling herself that everything was going to be fine, just fine. These women would be her search party. They would find Sofia.
‘OK.’ Tara clapped her hands together, like a teacher addressing a class. ‘First off: someone needs to stay here and watch all the children while the rest of us are off searching.’
The redhead raised her hand. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘Great. And your name is . . .’
‘Emily.’
‘Thanks, Emily. Everyone: before you go anywhere, introduce your children to Emily and tell them to stay within sight of her. I’ve just dropped my son off at the fishpond with his dad, so that’s one less to keep an eye on.’ She placed a hand on Carrie’s shoulder. As a rule, Carrie disliked being touched by strangers. But right now, she found it oddly comforting. ‘Can you describe your daughter, tell us what’s she’s wearing?’
‘Five years old, almost six. Dark, curly hair. A pink polka-dot skirt and rainbow trainers. There’s a heart on her top. In sequins.’
‘I heard you calling her name. Sophie?’
‘Sofia.’
‘Where did you last see her?’
‘On the climbing frame. She’s not in the playground any more, though, so she must have gotten out through that hole.’ Carrie waved in the direction of the cut fence.
Tara patted her arm, then gestured towards the blonde sisters. ‘Can one of you search all through the children’s woods, see if she’s hiding behind a bush or a tree? The other one can check the tennis courts and the bronze turtle statues by the main entrance.’ She turned to the woman in the headscarf. ‘Why don’t you take the Japanese pond and the section of trees right beside it? Carrie and I will give the playground one last check. I think that covers everything. We can meet back here in twenty minutes.’
And before Carrie knew what was happening, Tara was towing her back along the path through the woods, pausing just long enough to ask a passing park keeper whether he’d seen a lost girl (he hadn’t) before ducking through the gap in the fence.
‘She’s not in the playground,’ Carrie objected. ‘I searched it already.’
‘Worth another try,’ Tara insisted. ‘My boy once squeezed into a space under the playhouse that I’d never noticed before. Hid there for ten minutes and frightened the life out of me.’
‘I know the space you mean. I checked it.’
‘Somewhere else, then. The cage with the ladder.’
‘No, I looked, I . . .’ But Tara was making Carrie doubt herself, the quality of her search, and they scoured the playground together, checking every inch. They finished up by the main entrance, where Tara stopped for one last scan before glancing at her watch.
‘OK, let’s head back to the woods. The others should have returned by now. I’m sure one of them will have found her.
Carrie didn’t understand how she could be sure. She was about to ask, then stopped herself. It must be one of those things people only said to make you feel better. Words without facts behind them. Meaningless.
Two members of the search party were already waiting on the other side of the gate to the woods: the blondes. Sofia wasn’t with them. Carrie felt her stomach twist, like cold hands wringing her insides.
‘Any luck?’ one of the sisters asked. Carrie didn’t respond, because it was blindingly obvious they hadn’t had any luck or she would be clasping a curly-haired child against her chest right now, smiling one of her rare, genuine smiles.
She shifted her attention beyond the wooden gate, to the path leading to the Japanese pond. All her hopes were now pinned on the one remaining searcher. She told herself that it was a good sign the woman hadn’t come back yet; it meant Sofia was with her, slowing her down by stopping to look at a squirrel or pick a buttercup or complain that there was something sharp in her shoe that needed to be taken out right now. Carrie pictured them together, moving closer, as she stared at the empty path.
Tara followed her ga
ze. ‘She probably went to look at the fish. That’s what my son did.’
Carrie nodded, because that was what you were supposed to do. But a question was gnawing at her, eating away at the hopeful image of her daughter skipping alongside the woman in the orange headscarf. What could possibly have induced Sofia to wander so far away without saying anything? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps she’d met a bossy older child who’d insisted on taking her there? But even that didn’t ring true. Sofia knew her own mind, set her own boundaries. Carrie had overheard her angrily scolding friends for playing on their iPads, saying they shouldn’t be giving all their attention to fake people when there were real ones standing right there.
Oh my little love, come back to me.
Her eyes locked onto the curving pathway to the pond. A magpie landed on it and pecked at the gravel. What was that saying about them? One for sorrow, two for joy. Carrie’s eyes darted to the surrounding trees, suddenly superstitious, hoping to see a second bird. But the magpie was alone. Her gaze returned to the curving path, willing it to bring two figures into view: one tall and one small.
Two for joy.
Tara looked at her watch. ‘It’s been half an hour,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should go to the pond and see if they’re there.’
Carrie opened her mouth to answer, to say yes, anything was better than standing here waiting, with fear tearing around her body in trapped circles, biting at her insides.
And then she saw her: a plump figure in an orange headscarf, moving into view. The last member of the search party, slowly returning.
Alone.
Everything suddenly became hyper real, as though outlines had been razored around the leaves, the branches, the creases that had suddenly appeared on Tara’s forehead. One of the sisters was saying something, but panic had short-circuited Carrie’s brain, so it was like listening to a foreign language. She was dimly aware of voices calling out names. The other mums, summoning their children. And instinctively, she knew why. Until now, they had assumed that the monster Carrie feared existed only in a mother’s love-addled imagination. But the failed search was making them think again. And she felt a flash of resentment towards these other children, these lesser children, these children who were not Sofia. Who didn’t crawl into her bed in the middle of the night, saying ‘Mummy, can I have a cuddle?’ Or blow goodbye kisses at the school gate. Who didn’t act out stories as Carrie read them, arms flapping furiously as a bird took flight. These children who were here, safe and accounted for, while her special girl, her beam of light, was missing.
Missing.
Then Tara took out her mobile and said: ‘I’m sure it’s nothing, but we might as well call for back up.’ And her thumb touched the same spot three times: 999. The number of disasters, of emergencies. Of lives blown apart. And as she watched Tara ask for the police, the spark of hope Carrie had been sheltering inside herself was snuffed out. The police were coming because her daughter had disappeared. This wasn’t a dream from which she would surface with a gasp, throwing back her duvet and padding down the hall to find Sofia asleep with Penguin Pete clutched against her chest. This was a nightmare from which there would be no waking. She tried to calm herself with deep breaths, but the air didn’t seem to contain enough oxygen. She was suffocating. The trees wheeled drunkenly around her before suddenly receding, as though she were falling down a well. She was aware of grabbing fingers. An echoey shout.
Then nothing.
Three
DCI Juliet Campbell trusted her instincts. They had, after all, been proven right time and again, turning around cases that had hit a dead end, leading them down pathways no one else could see. In fact, it was probably fair to say that her hunches had acquired near legendary status around the station, referred to variously as ‘Juliet’s super hunches’, ‘intuition on steroids’ and ‘DCI Campbell’s Caribbean voodoo’ (that last one from DI Greer, a racist tosser of the first order).
Years ago, Juliet had dated a psychologist who’d informed her that these flashes of insight were simply her unconscious picking up on something her conscious mind had overlooked. They’d had a huge row after he’d shared this theory, during which Juliet had accused him, first of treating her like a patient instead of a girlfriend, then of taking her apart like a car mechanic hunting for defects. But if she was being honest, what had really upset her was the way he’d reduced her gift to something mundane: not a finely-honed ability to tune into frequencies no one else could hear, but simply one part of her mind failing to communicate properly with the other. The relationship hadn’t lasted long after that.
Yes, Juliet Campbell trusted her instincts. And, right now, they were telling her that the missing girl’s mother was hiding something.
Juliet shifted against the curved chair-back as she considered the woman on the other side of the dining table, with her pale skin and unwashed hair, a mug of coffee trembling in her hand. Had she even gone to bed? Juliet was pretty sure that was the same blue T-shirt as yesterday.
She took out her pocket notebook and flipped it open.
‘How would you characterise Sofia’s father’s condition?’
‘Her father’s condition,’ she echoed, the r’s amplified by her Canadian accent. Juliet had established that Carrie Haversen came from a small town in Northern Alberta and had moved to Britain eight years ago, after being offered a job at a top London architecture firm. ‘I don’t understand the question.’ The grey eyes fluttered through a series of blinks. She took a sip of coffee. ‘Sorry.’
Juliet gritted her teeth in frustration.
‘Well, would you say Simon’s case is serious? Would a stranger be able to tell that he is . . . unwell?’
Carrie’s gaze pulled away, landing on the bronze-rimmed clock beside the kitchen fridge, now counting down the last few minutes before 11 a.m. Juliet could hear its ticks stacking up in the pause that followed and knew they had waded into another pool of silence. Her fingers tightened around her notebook as she fought against the impulse to shout at this woman to pick up the pace, for the sake of her child. But she knew that wouldn’t achieve anything; Sofia’s mother had been shocked into slow mo.
Tick-tick-tick. The house darkened then lit as a cloud passed across the sun. Then, just as she was about to give up and repeat the question, Carrie spoke.
‘If you want information about Simon’s condition, why don’t you ask his doctors?’
The coffee cup made another juddering upward journey. Juliet examined the shadows beneath the woman’s eyes, dark as bruises. It didn’t look as if she’d gotten any sleep. Perhaps Juliet should speak to the family liaison officer about getting a doctor to prescribe some sedatives? Carrie had checked herself out of hospital against medical advice less than two hours after regaining consciousness and insisted on spending the night at home, despite having no family support system. (Her only living relative was a father in an ‘assisted living centre’ back in Alberta. Juliet had overheard Carrie talking to him on the phone. She’d had to remind him three times that she lived in London now. And twice: who Sofia was.)
‘We did try to speak to his doctors, Carrie. But Clearbrook takes confidentiality very seriously. They refused to let my officers enter the premises or provide any information without a warrant. They won’t even confirm that he’s there.’
‘Oh.’ Another series of rapid blinks. Juliet had worked out that Carrie’s eyelids fluttered like that whenever her mind was processing something. ‘Confidentiality. I hadn’t thought about that.’ The pale features barely moved, but Juliet thought she detected the ghost of a frown. ‘You shouldn’t waste time on Simon. He has nothing to do with Sofia’s disappearance. As I’ve already told you, he was on the phone with me when she went missing, on his way to Clearbrook.’
Or so he claimed, Juliet thought.
But there was no point trying to force the issue. Alistair would be arriving at Clearbrook with a warrant any
minute now, so they could get hold of Ryder’s history that way.
Juliet removed a sheet of A4 paper from her leather satchel and slid it across the table’s teak surface. Carrie glanced down at the three handwritten rows of names and said: ‘Oh fuck, not this again.’ It was strange, the way her pitch never varied, even when she swore. ‘I already went over these lists once at the hospital and again at the police station.’
‘I know.’ Juliet flipped to a fresh page in her notebook. ‘And I’m sorry to make you keep answering the same questions. But the doctors say you could have suffered temporary memory loss when you fainted – your head hit that log pretty hard – so something you weren’t able to recall yesterday could suddenly come back to you today. Which is why I’d like to go through these names again, from the beginning. Are you happy to do that?’
Carrie opened her mouth as though about to object. Stopped. Took a deep breath.
‘Yes. I’m happy to do that.’ She plucked at the inside of her wrist with a thumb and forefinger, as though pinching herself. Then she looked down at the piece of paper in front of her and placed a hand (clipped nails, no polish) on the first row.
‘This is a list of all the people from the school I’ve ever spoken with: Sofia’s teacher, her teaching assistant and the school head, plus four mothers who have invited Sofia over for play-dates or birthday parties.’ She picked up the coffee mug again, raising it to her lips.
‘And you’re sure you haven’t overlooked anyone? Another parent or teacher you got chatting to about Sofia one day?’
Carrie swallowed coffee. ‘I’m positive. That’s ev—’
The sound of breaking glass severed the word, making Juliet jump to her feet, pulse spiking. Carrie and her daughter lived in a terrace house on a small, oak-lined cul-de-sac just south of Barnes. On the outside, it looked the same as its orange-bricked, Victorian neighbours. But on the inside, it was bright, modern and spacious. The dining table was near the back, beside the kitchen: a slice of black-and-white tiles bordered by a counter that stuck out from the wall like a peninsula, leaving a gap just wide enough to admit one person. The open-plan layout allowed Juliet to see right through to the bay-windowed living area at the front, with its burgundy Chesterfield and Japanese coffee table, the brushed-metal bookcase and the African statue of a woman’s torso struggling to escape from a block of unhewn rock. DS Ravi Hiranand was standing in front of the bookcase looking mortified. Juliet had instructed him to examine the photo collage pinned to a bulletin board on the wall, searching the most recent images for anyone who appeared in the background more than once, anything odd or out of place.
