Stranger Child

by Rachel Abbott

  Emma said nothing. That was so typical of David. Instead of giving his daughter a rational explanation for the change of bedroom, he would be worried about whether she resented it – resented him.

  Now wasn’t the time to argue, so she spoke to Natasha.

  ‘That’s Ollie’s room now, love. Go in and have a look if you like, but it’s a bit small for a teenager, so this will be your room. We can change it, of course, but it’s got a double bed and it’s a much bigger room. What do you think?’

  Natasha turned back towards them, her face expressionless, walked into her room and closed the bedroom door.

  *

  By bedtime, Natasha had still not reappeared. David had knocked on the door to tell her that they were having dinner if she would like some, but she hadn’t answered him. Emma had gone up herself ten minutes later. She had tried the door, worried that Natasha was in there alone and would undoubtedly be distressed by all that had happened. She was only thirteen after all. But something was pushed hard against the door and it wouldn’t budge.

  Emma imagined Tasha curled up on the bed, confused and upset, and felt her heart break for the girl.

  ‘Tasha, please let me in, or at least let me know you’re okay.’

  As she had expected, there was no response. What if Tasha had gone? Could she have climbed out of the window? Emma didn’t think so, but what if she had harmed herself in some way?

  ‘Natasha, if you don’t open this door or speak to me, I’m going to have to get your dad to force his way in – either through the door or if necessary through the window. Now, tell me that you’re okay.’

  ‘Go away,’ came the shout from inside.

  ‘Okay, sweetheart. I just wanted to know that you’re not ill or anything. I know this must be incredibly hard, Tasha – we want to help you. Shall I bring you some food if you don’t feel like coming down?’

  ‘I told you to go away.’ No longer a shout, there was a level of determination in the tone that brooked no argument.

  Emma had rested her forehead against the door. She had no idea what to do, and Tasha still hadn’t told them why she was prepared to run away again if they called the police.

  ‘Okay, I’m going to go downstairs. If you want to have some dinner, it’s steak pie and roast potatoes.’

  David had eaten his dinner in silence, disappointment that Tasha hadn’t joined them evident in his expression, and Emma could find no words to comfort him that didn’t sound like empty platitudes. How could she possibly understand how he was feeling? His ready smile had seemed like a distant memory tonight, and she wanted to share his pain, joy and confusion. But she couldn’t reach him. He was somewhere else – somewhere that excluded her.

  One thing she did know, though. Something was very wrong about all of this. Why wouldn’t Tasha tell them where she had been living? Why was she frightened of the police?

  Emma had no answers, and after they had finished dinner and cleared up she had taken a slice of chocolate cake and a large glass of milk and left them outside Tasha’s door.

  She wanted to tell David that tomorrow she was going to call the police, whether Tasha liked it or not. Somebody had kept her from her family for all this time, and there was no guarantee that she was the only one. What if there were other girls like her, hidden away from their families? And how had she got back? They were two miles from the nearest town, and there were no buses.

  Emma couldn’t help feeling they weren’t asking the right questions.

  ‘Let’s go up,’ Emma said quietly, reaching for David’s hand.

  He gently pulled away.

  ‘Do you mind if I stay downstairs for a while, Em? I’m going to pour a brandy and have a few moments. Is that okay?’

  Emma was sure that David needed time to think about Caroline too, and she couldn’t blame him for that, today of all days.

  ‘Of course. I’ll still be awake when you come to bed if you want to talk some more.’

  He kissed her gently on the lips and she turned to make her way upstairs.

  As she passed Tasha’s bedroom, she was disappointed to see that the cake and milk were still sitting on the small table on the landing, but to her surprise the door was slightly ajar. She knocked quietly.

  ‘Tasha,’ she said in little more than a whisper in case the girl was asleep. There was no response. She pushed the door a little wider to check that her new stepdaughter was okay. The room was empty.

  Emma spun round. The door to the bathroom stood wide open; she was clearly not in there. And there was something else. The door to Ollie’s room was closed. It was never closed.

  She flew along the landing and flung open the door to his room. The nightlight cast faint images of stars, bubbles and fish around the room, projecting a pale green light on the dark walls – and over the figure standing at the end of Ollie’s cot, leaning in towards him.

  10

  Day Two

  The sky outside Ollie’s bedroom window was bright with morning sunshine, although rainclouds were already gathering, their brooding darkness hovering malevolently on the horizon.

  Emma stared sightlessly at the garden. Today was going to be a better day, she decided, even though her body felt heavy and lethargic after little sleep. But she was going to have to fight that. Her family needed her.

  She had spent the night on a chair in Ollie’s room, terrified to leave him alone. At least she had started the night on the chair. In the end, though, she had stretched herself out on the rug in front of his cot. If she fell asleep, she didn’t want anybody getting past her, getting to her baby.

  When she had found Tasha leaning over his cot the night before she had screamed at the girl in her fear. ‘What are you doing? Why are you in here?’

  Natasha had stared at her without moving for a few moments – her eyes blank. Then she had pushed past Emma and walked calmly back to her own room, where she had barricaded herself in again. For the rest of the night, Emma had been alert to the slightest sound, but there had been no repetition of that terrifying moment, and her baby had slept peacefully until a few moments ago.

  Emma turned to pick up Ollie out of his cot and took him over to the window seat, cuddling his warm little body to her. She wrapped her arms a bit tighter around her son and kissed the top of his head. What would he be making of all this? Ollie was used to a life free from tension but now he could probably sense his mother’s anxiety, seeping from her pores. Emma felt tears starting to leak from her eyes again and shook herself crossly. Getting upset wasn’t going to help anyone.

  She forced her shoulders down, waggled her toes in an effort to relax the muscles in her legs and took some deep breaths.

  ‘Be positive,’ she whispered.

  Despite the events of the night before, she had to try to act as if nothing had happened. She was sure she had panicked unnecessarily. Probably the girl had simply wanted to look at her little brother. Emma needed to make things right – for everybody’s sake.

  She pushed herself off the window seat and carried Ollie in his pyjamas towards the stairs. ‘So what’s today going to bring, my little Ollie?’ she said, giving him her best smile.

  She paused outside Natasha’s door and knocked.

  ‘Tasha, Ollie and I are going downstairs for breakfast. Your dad’s in the shower. Do you want some scrambled eggs?’

  She waited in silence and was surprised when the door opened and Natasha came out. Seeing her wearing exactly what she had worn the day before reminded Emma that she needed to buy some clothes for the girl, and maybe a few things to brighten up her bedroom.

  Natasha’s face was blank, but her eyes were tired and bloodshot. Had she been crying?

  And it’s my fault. It’s because I shouted at her. Emma felt a rush of blood to her cheeks and turned towards Ollie to mask her guilty confusion.

  ‘Say good morning to Tasha, Ollie.’

  ‘Tassa, Tassa, ay, ay,’ Ollie said, beaming at his half-sister and waving his arms in the air. She looked
away.

  Emma felt her brows knitting together in a frown at the girl’s indifference and forced herself to act naturally as she led the way into the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry – he can’t make a sh sound yet. Okay – juice for Ollie, and I guess you would like some too,’ Emma said, deciding that for now the best policy was not to demand a response.

  She poured juice into Ollie’s beaker and some into a glass for Natasha.

  ‘Go and sit down at the table, Tasha. I’ll bring your breakfast over when it’s ready.’

  She turned to the fridge, took out some eggs and pushed two slices of bread into the toaster, working entirely on autopilot, her mind elsewhere.

  Emma had spoken to David about the police again, and she had finally managed to convince him to call them. When he had first woken up, David had asked where she’d been all night. She knew if she told him the truth about why she slept in Ollie’s room he would have said she was overreacting, so she told him she was worried about Ollie having a temperature, and it seemed easier than disturbing David every time she got up to check on their son.

  It was a lie. She had never lied to her husband before.

  She felt Tasha’s eyes on her and somehow got the feeling that the girl could read her every thought. Her eyes narrowed slightly as if she hated Emma with every cell in her body. Did she resent her for taking her mother’s place? Emma felt a shiver run down her spine. If she despised them so much, why was she here?

  David chose that moment to walk into the kitchen, trying his best to raise a cheery smile, and went straight to Natasha.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘It’s lovely to see you up and having breakfast. Did you sleep well?’ He put his arm round her shoulders, pulling her gently towards him so he could kiss the top of her head. Natasha resisted with all her strength, and when David released her the force of her resistance caused her to tumble slightly to the side, her arm sending her glass of juice flying.

  Natasha jumped up from the table.

  ‘Stop touching me,’ she said quietly, her eyes burning and her jaw clenched. ‘I don’t like it.’ Kicking the chair viciously to one side, she left the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

  Emma didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t bear to see the pain in David’s eyes. She knew that he was suffocating the girl, but could she blame him? She waited a few moments.

  ‘Shall I go and get her?’ she asked, keeping her voice low and even. ‘We promised not to contact the police without telling her, but it’s going to look really bad if we don’t. What do you want to do, love?’

  David shook his head.

  ‘You’re right, of course. I’ll go and tell her. But I’m going to lock the front door so if she decides to run she’ll have to come through here. And I’ll stop her. I don’t know what else to do, but I can’t lose her again now.’

  11

  The incident room was humming when Tom arrived. Becky appeared to have everything under control and the press had now been briefed about the discovery of the young girl’s body. Detective Superintendent Philippa Stanley had decided to be the spokesperson. Tom wasn’t surprised. Philippa was very keen on raising her public profile, and she was welcome to it as far as Tom was concerned.

  He knew what would happen now. All those children that hadn’t been reported missing would become top priority in their parents’ eyes, the belief that their daughter would come home ‘when she’s ready’ suddenly not being quite such a sure thing.

  Tom hadn’t slept well. Thoughts of Jack and the dead girl were enough to disturb his sleep, but on top of that he and Leo had discovered something in his brother’s papers the previous evening and he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that it might be significant.

  He hadn’t wanted to go through Jack’s documents last night, but when Leo had arrived home she had encouraged him to stop putting the task off indefinitely.

  ‘Procrastination, Tom.’

  ‘Yes – I know. It’s the thief of time.’

  Leo had given him a smug look. ‘I wasn’t going to say that – I was going to say makes easy things hard, hard things harder.’

  ‘Have you just made that up?’ he had asked with a smile.

  ‘No – but the threat of these documents is always there, hanging over you. Until you know if there’s anything worth finding – or any evidence that something’s already been taken – they’re going to grow into a bigger and bigger burden. Come on – I’ll help you. Let’s get the job done.’

  He had looked at Leo, dressed in one of her monochrome outfits of black jeans and a loose black-and-white striped shirt, and thought about what he would rather be doing. In the end, though, he had caved in.

  ‘Okay, you win. I’ll get the boxes.’

  It had seemed like a fairly mundane task to begin with – nothing more exciting than documents detailing Jack’s presentations to prospective clients. None of Tom’s fears of being assaulted by memories were realised until Leo had discovered an SD card, trapped under one of the cardboard flaps at the bottom of the box. She had wanted to load it onto her laptop there and then, but Tom had hesitated, fearing that it might be a video of Jack playing his guitar badly and singing along to Def Leppard. He hadn’t been sure he could cope with that, so he had suggested they had done enough for one night and put the card to one side.

  It was no good, though. The damned thing was burning a hole in his pocket. The best option by far would be to take a look now in the privacy of his office and just deal with whatever was on it. He pulled the card out and slotted into the side of his laptop.

  There was one file. SILVERSPHERE.xls. Tom stared at the screen. An Excel spreadsheet – and he recognised the moniker Silver Sphere only too well.

  It was Jack’s hacker alias. As a teenager Jack had started hacking for fun, to show that he could beat the system. He had truly believed that nothing could defeat him.

  Tom clicked on the file to open it. Nothing happened for a second. Then a box popped up.

  Please enter your password.

  Tom stared at the screen for a moment, and then with a disappointed sigh he ejected the card and put it back in his pocket.

  *

  Tom was on his second cup of coffee of the morning when he looked up and saw Becky hovering near the door. His spirits lifted slightly as, not for the first time, he was struck by how much she had changed. There was no comparison between the person in front of him now and the one who had arrived in Manchester a few months previously. Gone was the pale, almost haggard face of a young woman fighting to recover her confidence at the end of a doomed relationship. Now her cheeks were pink, and her eyes glittered with a genuine interest in life. She had regained all of her natural ebullience. Today her outfit matched her smart and sassy personality; her black trouser suit was well cut with a jacket that showed off her slim waist and under the jacket was an emerald-green shirt and a slim gold chain at her neck. She had grown her hair out of its neat bob, and it bounced shinily on her shoulders.

  ‘Okay if I come in?’ she asked. ‘Only you looked miles away. Ooh – I see you’ve found your pig.’

  Tom had to think for a moment. What pig? And then he followed Becky’s gaze to the doorstop.

  ‘Ah yes. The missing pig. Our good friend DC Tippetts had borrowed it.’

  ‘What the hell did Ryan want with your pig?’ Becky asked.

  ‘Don’t ask. I didn’t believe his excuse for a second. Anything of interest in the calls on the missing girl?

  Becky pulled a face as she sat down.

  ‘Not really. As you might expect we’ve got a stack of names to sort through because people are saying that their sixteen-year-old only looks twelve, or are we sure the girl was white, etcetera. But we’ve had some news from Jumbo. He’s writing the report now but wanted to give me the heads up.’

  Tom pushed the crime statistics that he had been studying with little interest to one side and leaned forwards.

  ‘What’s he got?’

&nb
sp; ‘They did a fingertip search in the pile of soggy leaves around where she was found and unearthed a syringe.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Tom said, his chest feeling heavy with sorrow for the child. ‘Do they think the poor kid did it to herself, or did some bastard take her there and give her too much of the stuff?’

  ‘They’re not sure. It may even be unrelated. We won’t know until we get her tox results, and even if we put a rush on, they’re going to be a couple of weeks. As you may have noticed, though, that lovely tunnel held all sorts of delights – including the odd syringe if I remember rightly. It could just be coincidence that there was one near the body. Anyway, Jumbo’s team are collecting evidence from the tunnel too.’

  Tom pulled a face.

  ‘They’re going to struggle to get any fingerprints from the body, but there are some on the syringe. No match to anybody as yet. They couldn’t find any footprints – but then they didn’t find the girl’s either. Everything had been blown about a bit in the weather for the last couple of days.’

  ‘Do they know what was in the syringe?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Ketamine.’

  ‘Ketamine? I wasn’t expecting that. What theories have we got, then? Some bastard knocked her out so that not only had he bagged himself a kid, but a comatose kid into the bargain?’

  Becky winced.

  ‘Ket’s an unusual choice, I agree. But even if she was injected, it might only have put her into a deep sleep. So she’s just as likely to have died from hypothermia. She had zero body fat from what I can see on the photos. You were away last week, but before we got all this wind and rain it was bloody freezing. They reckon it’s been the coldest March in Manchester since 1962, and the temperature dropped to minus six overnight.’

  There was a tap on the open door and Tom glanced up to see DC Ryan Tippetts standing in the door.

  ‘Boss,’ he said. ‘It’s Natasha Joseph.’

  Tom looked at Becky’s face as she grimaced at the thought of passing on the sad information to the girl’s father.

  ‘Thanks Ryan. That’s confirmed is it?’

  The detective looked confused for a moment, then his face cleared.