by Louise Voss
Helen tried to tell herself that this was just like going to any coffee shop to meet any friend for a latte, like she might have done on any normal day off work. When Frankie was back, she would make an effort to meet up with her friends more often – well, at least the ones who’d bothered to contact her with offers of sympathy and assistance. It rankled that she had only had calls from a few, even after the fiasco of the siege yesterday. But she didn’t want to think about that. The weight of disappointment that landed on her head when she realized that Frankie wasn’t there had been like a cartoon anvil, squashing her into a pancake. She felt exhausted, and foolish too, yelling at everyone in front of TV cameras and all. All those people on Facebook would think she was a maniac who deserved to lose her child.
Was she a maniac? Meeting this woman now, without telling anyone, was probably a mad thing to do. But that creepy Winkler hadn’t got back to her, so he was obviously discounting the messages too. She had to do something. She had tried to call Winkler but hadn’t been able to get hold of him, so had decided to take matters into her own hands.
Maybe this was why her friends weren’t in contact. They thought she was crazy. Several had emailed cautiously, the ‘if there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask’ sort of message, but not since yesterday. Helen had felt like emailing back: ‘Yes. How about actually phoning, or coming over to give me a hug?’ But she hadn’t. Stiff upper lip, and all. She didn’t have time for anyone else at the moment anyway. Marion from the gym had sent a few messages but even she had been quiet for the last couple of days.
She walked into the Marks and Spencer’s café. On autopilot she bought a large skinny latte, just like a normal person out for a normal coffee – although as if she cared whether she had skimmed milk or full fat! – but then had to bite her lip to stop herself crying when the rotund lady behind the counter carefully dropped the small round of shortbread onto the saucer next to it. Frankie loved those little shortbreads. It was the reason that Helen always came to M&S for her coffees.
It felt weird being here without Frankie. It felt weird being out of the house, with make-up on, in public, when the red-top newspapers on the stand not ten feet from her featured photographs of her missing daughter, and an announcement of a £100k reward.
Everything felt weird.
She sat down in the corner of the small café furthest away from the window, with her back to everything, keeping her large dark glasses on. She didn’t want anyone to recognize her – except Janet Friars, of course, who presumably already knew what she looked like. With every fibre of her being, she was thrumming with desperation that this meeting would lead to Frankie’s safe return. Anything. I’ll do anything, she whispered to her shortbread. She checked her iPhone – but it was switched off. Damn. She’d forgotten to charge it again. Janet Friars was four minutes late, and if she’d Facebooked to say she couldn’t make it, Helen wouldn’t be able to check. Please don’t blow me out.
She glanced behind her, and her heart lurched when she realized that a woman was approaching. The woman was older than her by maybe ten years, haggard and tired, with a wary look in her faded green eyes. Her ill-fitting baggy shift dress hung badly off her shoulders, and her blonde hair looked like it needed a wash. She wore massive 50’s-style film star sunglasses pushed up on top of her head.
‘Hello Helen,’ she said flatly.
Helen’s heart jumped into her throat and she tried hard to keep the desperation out of her own voice. ‘Are you Janet?’
The woman nodded.
‘Can you tell me what you know? Please?’
The woman sat down opposite and regarded her, her gaze cool and appraising, answering Helen’s question with another question. ‘Why did you choose this place to meet?’
Helen twitched one shoulder in a shrug. ‘Most normal place I could think of. Public, in case you’re a psycho. Please tell me where they are.’
Janet tipped her head to one side and said nothing.
‘Please. If it’s money you want, you’ll get the reward, you know. Why don’t you go to the police? Why did you want to talk to me instead?’ Helen had to sit on her hands, both to stop them shaking and to stop herself throttling it out of Janet, who was now pursing her lips at her.
‘So many questions,’ she stated. ‘Slow down. We got plenty of time.’
Her accent was odd, thought Helen. Not English – not entirely, anyway.
Janet dropped her big sunglasses back down over her eyes. Helen studied her face carefully, trying to commit it to memory in case she had anything to do with Frankie’s kidnapping, but the woman was fairly unremarkable in appearance. The most noticeable thing about her was her skin colour, a pasty white, as though she never went in the sun. She reminded Helen of a toad.
‘Why did you contact me?’ Helen repeated.
The woman smiled. ‘Cos I feel for you, darling.’
Something about the way she said it made Helen shudder. It was as if the woman was putting on a voice that wasn’t her own. Helen was starting to get a seriously bad feeling about Janet Friars. Her next utterance didn’t help, either:
‘How is your husband coping?’
Helen frowned at her. ‘My husband?’ She was about to say ‘None of your damn business’, until she remembered that Janet might, just might, be able to help her. ‘As well as can be expected.’
Janet leaned forwards across the table towards her and removed her shades, just for a moment, to squish a finger into the corner of one of her eyes, as if something had irritated it. Then she hastily put the glasses back on, perhaps realizing that she hadn’t intended to do that. Helen noticed that the whites of her eyes were yellow and sickly-looking. Perhaps she was jaundiced, or worse, suffering with liver cancer.
‘I hope you are still having relations,’ she said conversationally. ‘Very important for a man to feel cherished. I saw his photo in the papers. I think he’s a man who needs much intercourse, am I right?’
Helen jerked back in her chair and put up both her hands in an angry gesture of surrender. ‘That’s enough! If you have something to tell me, tell me now or I’m walking right out of here and going to the police.’ She wished her phone was switched on. She could have taken a surreptitious snap of her.
Janet Friars was almost certainly a nutter.
‘Chill out, sweetheart.’ Janet confirmed it, with a wide smile. ‘I don’t mean any harm, or disrespect. Just tryin’ to help.’
‘Then help me,’ Helen hissed. Inside her head she repeated a small mantra, over and over again: Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Do not cry. Don’t cry. ‘Where is Frankie?’
Even as she said it, Helen knew it was hopeless. This woman had no more idea of where Frankie was than that fat lady behind the counter did.
‘You don’t know, do you,’ she said flatly.
‘No darling. I’m sorry. I don’t know anything. I just wanted to see you in case I could help in any way.’
‘You can’t.’ Helen pushed her chair back and stood up, leaving most of her latte, and the little round shortbread. She turned to leave, then turned back.
‘Yes, actually, you can. Don’t break my heart by giving me false hope. Don’t waste my time by sending me stupid dramatic Facebook messages when you don’t know anything. I could report you to the police, you know, make an official complaint. They already know about you. I showed them your messages. You’ll get a caution, for harassment. For wasting police time.’
The effort of keeping her voice down in the public place made Helen speak in what was almost a squeak of outrage, and she couldn’t prevent tears plopping down from underneath her sunglasses. I am an idiot, she berated herself. Especially because she had thought Janet describing Frankie’s pyjamas had meant something. The truth was, the description of what Frankie was wearing had been in all the papers. Helen had known this really, but had been so desperate to believe this woman might know something.
Janet shrugged and smiled that infuriating smile again. ‘Don’t think so, d
arling, because we haven’t wasted any police time, have we? But I promise you, and I mean this most sincerely, I will watch out for your baby, and the others. I want to help, I really do. That’s why I contacted you. I knew you wouldn’t see me unless you thought I knew something. But, the thing about me, I can’t bear it when people make other people suffer. Whoever took your—’
Helen turned and ran out of the café without waiting for the woman to finish her sentence.
She wished she hadn’t bothered telling Winkler – her instincts had been right. It was a waste of time.
She was an idiot.
As soon as she got home she sat at the computer, deleting all the messages between her and Janet, erasing all trace of her stupidity so she would never have to be reminded of it. After that, she felt a little better.
Chapter 28
Patrick – Day 5 – Afternoon
Patrick strode through the corridors of the station aware that every person he passed was staring at him. He kept his head down. The last time he’d experienced anything like this was when Gill had tried to kill Bonnie, and everybody knew – not just what she’d done but that he’d arrested her – and he’d felt then like an alien who’d crash-landed on this planet, not understanding this peculiar place or its gawping inhabitants. This wasn’t as intense as that (he prayed nothing ever would be) but today he should have been walking the walk of triumph. Case solved, criminals caught, justice – of the roughest sort – done.
As he’d turned to walk out of the pub last night, Suzanne had caught his arm – her touch, even in moments like this, sent a little jolt through his body – and said, ‘You did well today, Pat. You should be proud.’
And it was true. Right now, the McConnells would be the happiest and most relieved parents in the world. That was down to him. Although Zoe McConnell would have some explaining to do to her husband over the fact that she had lied about locking the car, and Patrick was tempted to get her to do some explaining to the police. Maybe later. For now, while there was still one child missing, he needed to put all his energy into finding Frankie. He wouldn’t rest until Frankie Philips was back with her parents.
If she was still alive.
He entered Suzanne’s office and shut the door behind him. She had organized an urgent state-of-play review with the most senior members of the team plus, on Patrick’s insistence, Carmella.
Unfortunately the other senior detective on the team, who sat smirking at him now, was Winkler. Pat wondered if he’d spotted Suzanne and him in the pub last night.
‘Patrick, take a seat,’ Suzanne said.
He took the empty chair next to Carmella and waited for his boss to begin.
‘First,’ she said, ‘I want you to know that the Commissioner has spoken to me this morning. He backs us, he understands why we have pursued the investigation in the way we have, and he asked me to pass on his gratitude for finding Liam McConnell.’
Patrick nodded, trying to ignore Winkler. If he didn’t remove that smirk from his face soon …
Suzanne went on. ‘But the media are not congratulating us on the good news. They want to know why we have failed to find Frankie Philips, and how we can justify our officers shooting two people dead.’
‘Who can blame them?’ asked Winkler.
Carmella swivelled in her chair and glared at him. ‘I suppose you knew we were going down the wrong path with Frankie all along but chose not to say anything, huh?’
‘Well, if I’d been leading this investigation you can bet your beautiful ass I would have made damn sure the cases were connected. I wouldn’t have just assumed.’
Carmella’s mouth dropped open and she pointed a finger in Winkler’s smug face. ‘My beautiful ass? I can’t believe you—’
Suzanne banged her desk. ‘Enough! Adrian, lay off the sexist bullshit. And Carmella, I want you to calm down. This is not the time for us to start blaming one another.’
‘But we didn’t blame him,’ Carmella protested, her voice rising an octave. ‘There hasn’t been anything to blame him for because he’s done sweet FA in this investigation.’
‘That’s what you think,’ Winkler muttered.
‘Both of you – stop. Now.’
Patrick had never seen the DCI so angry. Her face was scarlet. They were all losing the plot, the whole team.
‘How can we be sure that Koppler and Fredericks didn’t take Frankie?’ Carmella asked. ‘Maybe they killed her and her body is somewhere else, like Isabel’s was?’
Sadness replaced the anger on Suzanne’s face. ‘Not unless they never took her to the house and didn’t use either of their cars. The SOCOs were working all night. They’ve been through the house and both cars. Fredericks’ house too. There’s no evidence at all that Frankie had any contact with them.’
‘Like I said,’ Winkler piped up. ‘You were barking up the wrong tree all along.’
Carmella visibly bristled but Suzanne said, ‘We were all barking up the wrong tree. We don’t have unlimited resources. We were absolutely right to follow the path we did.’
She looked at Patrick. He hadn’t spoken throughout this whole exchange. ‘Isn’t that right, Patrick?’ she said.
‘No,’ he replied.
The other three stared at him.
‘It’s my fault,’ he said, looking down so he couldn’t see what would no doubt be an expression of surprised delight on Winkler’s face.
‘What are you talking about?’ Suzanne asked.
He sat up straight. ‘Alice Philips and her boyfriend, Larry Gould. I interviewed Alice the morning after Frankie disappeared and we knew she was lying about something, including the question of whether Larry was there that night. We had a witness who said they saw a young man who matched his description near the house. Carmella and I went to interview Larry but he stonewalled us. I made the decision that it wasn’t worth pursuing that lead, that the two of them probably just didn’t want Alice’s parents to know that he was round the house, but nothing more.’
‘And what makes you think that isn’t actually the case?’ Suzanne asked.
‘He’s probably got a hunch,’ Winkler said.
Patrick ignored him. ‘Nothing. I mean, I don’t have any new evidence. But I made a mistake by not pursuing every lead. I was blinkered. A good detective always keeps every option open, explores every avenue. I wasn’t a good detective.’
‘Come on, sir, you’re being too hard on yourself,’ Carmella said. ‘It must be that crack on the head you took yesterday. We followed the path that seemed most likely. Anybody would have done the same. I completely agreed with you.’
Patrick was glad, now more than ever, that he didn’t have someone like Winkler as his partner. It would be easy for Carmella to stab him in the back, try to advance her career by claiming that she had pressed him to pursue the Larry lead. Because it was true, she had wanted to talk to him more. She was loyal, though. No matter how regretful he felt at this moment, he was grateful to her.
Suzanne sighed. ‘Alright, I’m not interested in self-torture and if onlys. All I care about is finding where Frankie Philips is. As far as I’m concerned this is a new investigation. Patrick, do you want to lead it?’
He might have said no, let someone else take it on, if he hadn’t seen Winkler almost bounce out of his chair. Did he really want someone like Winkler leading this case? Winkler didn’t really care about the victims of crime. He saw every investigation as a chance to accumulate points. This wasn’t mere speculation: Winkler had once told Patrick that himself, back in the days when they had got along reasonably well.
Plus, Patrick wanted the chance to make amends. He knew that he was still the best chance the Philips family had.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’
‘Good,’ Suzanne said.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Winkler hissed.
Suzanne gave him a look that would freeze oil. When she turned back to Patrick, her face was warmer, but businesslike. ‘Patrick, tell us everything we know so far.�
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He recounted the scant facts, his ears whistling as he went through the details. The stress was causing his tinnitus to go crazy. Last night when he’d got home he had dragged his quilt and a couple of cushions into Bonnie’s room and slept on the pink furry rug beside her bed, listening to her breathe and make little snuffling noises in her sleep. Gill used to do that too, though they were more snores than snuffles.
Lying on his daughter’s bedroom floor he had drifted back in time to the days when his wife was pregnant, during the second trimester, before the discomfort and constant urge to pee kicked in. He would lie behind her, his arm draped over her, resting lightly on her swollen belly, and they would talk about names and all the exciting things they would do with their daughter when she was born. Some days, when he allowed himself to think about it, he felt furious with Gill for robbing them of that life. Last night though, he had simply felt an ache in his chest, grief for those lost experiences.
Eventually, he’d fallen asleep and was awoken by his mum coming into the room, asking what on earth he was doing, Bonnie already sitting up in bed giggling at her silly daddy.
‘So we have the fact that Alice was almost certainly lying about Larry being there that night. We have the unlocked back door and the strange drawing of a face looking through a window – though that may be of no significance whatsoever.’
‘What’s your feeling about what happened, Pat?’ Suzanne asked.
‘I think there are three possibilities. Firstly, abduction by a stranger. It seems like a huge coincidence that we could have two sets of child abductors active in the same small area at the same time.’
‘Unless it’s a copycat,’ Carmella said.
Patrick nodded, although he had previously dismissed that option. ‘Someone who got the idea, or felt inspired by, what had already happened to Liam and Isabel. Or there’s the chance that we have a predator who knew we would assume that the children were all taken by the same person and saw an opportunity – a ready-made smokescreen.’
‘What are the other two possibilities?’ Suzanne asked.
