From the Cradle

by Louise Voss

  Patrick was momentarily distracted by the pigeon that had appeared on the windowsill behind her.

  ‘The second possibility is that Sean and/or Helen are involved. We need to look at them more closely. And the third, which to me is the hot favourite scenario, is this: Alice and Larry killed Frankie, maybe accidentally, and covered it up.’

  They fell silent as they contemplated that possibility. What could it have been? A prank that went wrong? Did they leave drugs lying around which Frankie had found and overdosed on? Maybe she fell down the stairs or out of an open window. Or did she wander out of the open back door while her sister and her sister’s boyfriend were having sex in her room? How far would a three-year-old go on her own? Patrick could picture it all too clearly: the accident, the desperation, the panic. And yet Alice, whilst obviously upset, hadn’t seemed utterly distraught when he’d interviewed her. She’d have to be a consummate actress to have pulled off that level of composure if she had just disposed of her little sister’s body.

  ‘What do you think Adrian?’ Suzanne asked. ‘Have you got any theories?’

  Winkler pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. I can’t see the teenagers having the bottle to cover it up.’ Patrick felt irrationally irritated that he’d echoed his own thoughts.

  ‘But you haven’t got any better ideas?’ Carmella said.

  ‘Don’t start,’ Suzanne warned. She turned her attention to Patrick. ‘I think your third scenario sounds plausible. Let’s get Alice and Larry in now.’ She glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled wryly. ‘We could have this wrapped up by teatime.’

  They agreed that Patrick would drive to pick up Alice while Carmella went to get Larry. They didn’t want to give either teenager the opportunity to warn the other.

  Thirty minutes later, Patrick pulled up outside the Philipses’ house. He felt better now they were moving again. Call me DI Shark, he thought, ironically. Keep moving or die. The Philips residence was silent and still, but Helen answered the door almost immediately.

  In a low voice, Patrick said, ‘I need to talk to Alice.’

  Helen Philips had been stripped of her sheen. Her skin was dull, her clothes rumpled, and her eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

  ‘So do I,’ she replied. ‘Alice has gone.’

  Chapter 29

  Alice – Day 5 – Late Afternoon

  Alice awoke, drenched in sweat inside her sleeping bag. She knew immediately where she was; her brain didn’t allow her a moment of respite from the truth, from the horror of her situation. She needed to get out of this disgusting, stinking sleeping bag. But her body wouldn’t obey her brain. Instead, she lay helplessly as scenes from earlier that day replayed inside her mind.

  The dual carriageway was empty as she’d trudged along it with her head down. Her backpack had felt as though it was full of paving slabs, even though it actually only contained a few clothes, her passport, phone and iPad and chargers. Tears of fury were dripping off her nose, mingling with the sweat on her face. She licked her top lip and tasted the salty drops. When she’d checked her watch she had seen that it was one thirty in the morning. Would they have noticed she’d gone yet? They wouldn’t care, even if they had. She hated them all: Helen, Eileen, her dad – they all blamed her! Her two best mates had deserted her: Larry by refusing to come with her, and as for Georgia, she’d tried to talk to her, but she was just being really selfish at the moment. How could Georgia be so worried about her folks cutting off her allowance, when her best friend’s little sister had been kidnapped? The tears of fury turned into tears of outrage.

  Alice thought of her squidgy little sister, her soft feet and tiny pearly teeth, the way she giggled in the bath and the smell of the back of her neck when Alice nuzzled her head into it, and it made her cry harder. Oh god … it was all bound to come out, what they’d done. She shivered in the evening warmth, thinking about the consequences. About what her dad and Helen would say when they found out.

  She’d walked for an hour towards Heathrow, thinking that she might have enough cash to jump on an Easyjet flight to Spain or somewhere, but hadn’t been convinced by that idea because that would leave a trail and make it easy for her dad to find her. But then she had an idea. There were loads of empty flats on the Kennedy Estate. As long as she kept well away from Jerome’s block of flats she should be OK.

  Alice had pulled out her phone and risked switching it on, ignoring all the alerts for missed calls, voicemails and texts from her family that immediately appeared. So they’d noticed she’d gone? Astonishing, she thought, sarcastically. She knew she needed to be quick – they’d be able to trace her by her phone if she left it on for long. If they’d even alerted the police, which they might not have done. Maybe they’d think she’d been kidnapped by the same person who stole Frankie. The thought gave her a guilty little thrill, as she imagined her face on the ten o’clock news, filling the screen. Hopefully they’d use a nice picture of her, maybe that one of her in her sarong on holiday in Tuscany last year sipping a mocktail, hopefully not a naff old school photo in blazer and tie with hardly any make-up on …

  She had speed-dialled Larry’s number with a sudden pang of anxiety that he wouldn’t speak to her. She’d been pretty brutal to him earlier when he refused to run away with her – she’d called him quite a few mean names. But he answered immediately. ‘Al! Are you OK?’

  ‘Hi Larry, I can’t talk long, don’t want them tracing my phone … soz for what I said earlier, babes, I didn’t mean it. I don’t really think you’re a spineless plank or a twat, honest, I was just upset. I need your help, right—’

  Larry interrupted her. ‘Where are you?’

  Alice laughed hollowly. ‘You think I’m telling you that?’

  ‘No, serious, you need to tell me right now, ’cos I’m coming with you. I’ve already left. Got all my stuff, straight up, sleeping bag and everything. Been trying to find you for the last three hours.’

  A wide smile spread across Alice’s dirty tear-stained face. ‘Babes! That’s awesome. What made you change your mind?’

  ‘You’re my bird, babes! I can’t leave you to handle all this on your own. If I’m honest, you’re right, I was being a total fucking wimp. Anyway I reckon the cops will be back, poking around with their questions and shit. Best we just take off, I reckon.’

  Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, gratitude and anxiety mingled. ‘But now we’re running away they’re definitely going to think we had something to do with it!’

  ‘I know, right. But we totally didn’t. Listen, you should get off of your phone. Where are you now?’

  ‘Walking down the A316, near Whitton. I was ringing to ask if you could help me break into a flat on the Kennedy. There’s tons of empty ones, on the far side of the estate, away from Jerome’s gaff.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll meet you at the Wayfarer pub in Whitton, round the back, in, like, twenty minutes? I’m not far from there either. Then we can figure out what we need to get into one of those flats.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Alice said, feeling much happier. ‘Whistle when you get there so I know it’s you.’

  Ten minutes after that she had dumped her bag on a picnic bench in the dark garden of the Wayfarer, the shadowy shapes of plastic playground equipment looming above her as she looked nervously around, rolling her shoulders to ease the stiffness from the heavy backpack. Climbing over the fixed seating part of the bench, she had a pang of guilt about her dad and how he might be feeling right then. But then she dismissed it – he knew that she was capable of looking after herself, unlike poor little Frankie. He’d understand. She would send him an email from an internet cafe as soon as she could.

  It was a clear, starry night, the sky a bluish-black beyond the edges of the sodium haze of the city behind her. The silence was eerily intense, and Alice began to long for Larry’s slightly malodorous but comforting presence. What if someone had stopped him? What if he wasn’t coming? She had only been away from home for three and a half hours, and already she was cr
aving her soft bed and a hot shower. Suddenly the Kennedy Estate didn’t seem like such a great idea. In fact, it seemed like a horrible idea – the prospect of a dirty, syringe-littered squat that stank of piss, when only four miles away was her lovely nest of a bedroom …

  A soft whistle broke into her thoughts. Larry was whistling Bruno Mars’s ‘I Think I Want to Marry You,’ and it made her smile.

  ‘Psssst,’ she said. ‘Over here!’

  There was a rustle and quiver in the bushes, then the thin silhouette of Larry emerged. He swore as he banged into the next table in the dark.

  ‘Ow! Shit!’

  Alice had jumped up and hugged him hard. He was so thin that her arms reached all the way around him and the army duffel bag on his back. Sticking out of the pocket of it she felt something small and furry and, puzzled, closed her fingers around it. Then she laughed.

  ‘No way have you brought Spesh the tiger!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Larry said, and she could feel the heat coming off his face. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t. It’s sweet. You’re awesome,’ she replied, finding his lips in the dark and kissing him as though it was the last kiss she would ever experience. Just as she was contemplating dragging him into the kids’ play area and shagging him on the bark-chipping carpet underneath the rope bridge, he pulled away.

  ‘Are you serious about hiding out in the Kennedy?’

  They sat down together, holding hands like an old married couple. ‘Yeah. No. I don’t know. What do you think?’

  Larry pondered. ‘I mean, we need somewhere inside to sleep, don’t we? Somewhere they won’t think to look for us. Have you got your sleeping bag?’

  ‘Yeah. And Helen’s yoga mat. And an inflatable travel pillow that my dad bought for long-haul flights.’ She couldn’t keep a note of pride out of her voice. Then she sniggered. ‘And you’ve got Spesh, so we’ve got a guard tiger. We’re all sorted.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ he replied, tickling her until she wriggled away, laughing.

  ‘We’ll need a crowbar or something, won’t we, to open the door?’ Larry said. ‘I can get one from that big B&Q when it opens at eight. But how will we know which flats are empty? I mean, I can’t exactly go round crowbarring open people’s gaffs. Jerome would be bound to find out and be on us like a ton of spuds.’

  They thought about this, and Alice couldn’t help but hear the words ‘mixed metaphor’, spoken in the voice of her creepy Drama teacher, drift through her head. In fact this whole escapade seemed more like a piece they’d have devised for their Expressive Arts GCSE rather than reality. The obvious thing to do would be to ask Jerome, as he seemed to know the business of everyone on that estate – but he was the last person they needed to know they were there.

  ‘A boarded-up one. That’s what we need. Remember when we went to see Jerome before? We passed loads on the way up to his flat. We should just go into another block, up to the highest floor we can, then wait to check no-one’s around and crowbar it open.’

  ‘You’re a fucking genius,’ Larry said, and they kissed again.

  They spent the night in the pub garden, zipping together their sleeping bags and putting Spesh the cuddly tiger – ironically, of course – in between them like a child. Alice wished it was Frankie. At five-thirty they woke, with bark chippings in their hair and dew on their sleeping bags.

  By eight twenty they were at the Kennedy, having gone via B&Q for a crowbar, a machine coffee, a quick wash in the toilets and a Snickers bar each for breakfast. They’d decided on the twelfth floor of Block G, fairly sure that it didn’t contain any other residents – all three flats at that level were boarded up. After an hour with no movement, even after they had knocked on each door as loudly as they dared, Larry set to work with the crowbar. The wooden planks splintered noisily but surrendered with ease, and to their delight, the door underneath hadn’t even been locked. It opened immediately and they grinned at each other as they stepped inside.

  Their smiles faded a bit as they took in their new home. The previous occupants had clearly left in a rush, and the flat stank of musty carpets and old takeaways. But it had an ancient sofa in it, and one saucepan in the kitchenette. The toilet was filthy but usable.

  ‘This is fine,’ said Alice doubtfully.

  ‘It’ll have to be,’ replied Larry, equally doubtfully.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ Alice moaned. The few hours’ sleep they’d managed had hardly been refreshing. Plus the situation made her feel exhausted, like all she wanted to do was lie down and retreat into dreams where everything was happy and normal. ‘I’m going to lie down for a bit.’

  Now here she was, marinating inside her sleeping bag, forcing her stupid brain not to go back in a loop, to replay the events of the day again. Larry was still asleep, lying on the floor by her feet like a faithful Labrador. Alice wanted to get up, to tell him to wake up too, but she still couldn’t move. Moving would mean facing reality. And she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

  She could hear a baby crying somewhere close by. The cry sounded familiar and for a delirious moment she thought it was Frankie. Before she could think about it further, exhaustion dragged her back down into sleep.

  Chapter 30

  Patrick – Day 5 – Late Afternoon

  Helen Philips wordlessly invited Patrick in, turning and drifting towards the living room, head drooping and shoulder blades sticking out. She reminded Patrick immediately of poor Fiona Hartley, who had answered his knock at her front door in exactly the same defeated manner. Not remotely alike physically, it was as if they had morphed into identical grief-stricken twins.

  Was it possible for someone to shed pounds in just a few days, he thought, looking at the bones in her skinny back showing through her T-shirt. Yes, of course. He himself had lost a stone and a half in the weeks that followed Gill’s attempted murder of Bonnie, but he pushed down the memory of his hollowed-out reflection the moment it bobbed up. He didn’t have space right now in his head to think about Gill and what her apparent improvement might mean. The problem lurked like an uninvited guest at a party. He would have to deal with it soon, but not today.

  Helen perched on the edge of her designer sofa and chewed her fingernails as she looked up at him. Here was a woman who was losing hold. The TV was tuned to Sky News, the volume turned down low.

  ‘When did you last see Alice?’ Patrick asked, his back to the TV.

  She gazed around the room as if the answer might lie behind the pot plant or beneath an armchair. ‘Yesterday evening. We had … we had a huge fight, and then Eileen came in and told us about the hostages.’

  Their eyes met and Patrick had to look away.

  ‘When we got back I was so upset I went straight to bed. Sean and Eileen stayed up. They were drinking – I found an empty bottle of gin in the bin this morning.’

  A man choosing to sit and get drunk with his mother rather than comfort his wife. Patrick wanted to note that down in his Moleskine but would have to do so later.

  ‘When I got up this morning I went to Alice’s room. I thought I should apologise, drain some of the poison from the air. She wasn’t there. Her bed looked like it had been slept in though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She never makes it. Sean and Eileen say they didn’t see her last night. Too busy getting pissed.’

  ‘You’ve tried ringing her?’

  A tiny nod. ‘Yes, several times. Her phone is going straight to voicemail, like it’s switched off.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Why do you want to talk to her? Oh my god, do you think she had something to do with Frankie?’

  Patrick dodged the question. ‘Where are Sean and Eileen now?’

  ‘Eileen’s gone out somewhere and Sean is in Alice’s room “looking for clues”.’ She made air quotation marks, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Patrick was about to ask Helen to fetch her husband when he heard footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Sean Philips appeared in the doorway. His sandy hair stuck up above his rou
nd, pale face in clumps. He blinked at Patrick.

  ‘Detective.’ Sean glanced at his wife who sat staring straight ahead. ‘Have you got news about Frankie?’

  ‘I’m afraid not yet. Would you mind taking a seat?’

  Sean sat beside Helen and tried to take her hand. She pulled hers away like his was covered in slime. He did look damp and sweaty, Patrick thought, his skin resembling wet putty. Patrick had also noticed that Sean had buttoned his shirt incorrectly so there was an extra inch of shirt at the bottom on one side. Like his wife, Sean Philips was falling apart, though the husband was making a doomed effort not to show it.

  Patrick cleared his throat. ‘Firstly, I wanted to assure you that we are still doing everything possible to find Frankie and in the light of what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours we’re going over everything again from the beginning. I need to ask you some more questions about the night she disappeared.’

  ‘We’ve told you everything we know already,’ Sean said.

  ‘I’m sure, but—’

  Patrick’s words were interrupted by a sharp intake of breath from Helen. Staring intently at the TV, she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume, as Patrick turned round to see what had made her gasp.

  Liam’s parents, Zoe and Keith McConnell, were on the news channel. There was a shot of them standing in their substantial front garden, the car from which Liam had been taken in the background, hugging their son tightly and beaming at the cameras. Neither of them looked like they would ever want to let go of him again, and Patrick could imagine Liam’s future – his parents never letting him out of their sight, hovering over him day and night, smothering him with love and concern. But he was safe; that was what mattered.

  Then the McConnells were being interviewed in their living room, a room very like this one: straight out of Home and Garden magazine, all that creamy, expensive furniture, a huge family portrait hanging behind the sofa.

  ‘I just can’t express how I feel,’ Zoe McConnell said. Her eyes met the camera lens. ‘I want to say an enormous thank you to the police for finding him for us, and—’ Her voice broke with emotion, and it sounded like she was there in the room with them – until Patrick realized that the crying noises were coming not from Zoe on the TV, but from Helen.