The Girl Who Came Back

by Kerry Wilkinson

  The shops and cafés of the High Street are on one side and there are houses on the other. Each has high walls that stop me from being able to see anything other than the triangular peak of the roofs. It’s even colder in the lane than it was on the road and I hug myself tightly as I continue to dodge around the scattering of bins.

  The only time I stop is when I realise I’m at the back of Via’s. The yard has been turned into a place to sit outside – but I can’t imagine anyone would choose to sip their cappuccino next to the dingy alley, rather than sit on the street in the sunshine, or inside the café itself. The gate is locked but I peer through the metal bars, wondering if the name will change now. Via’s was a memory of what had gone but Mum doesn’t need to be reminded of the ghosts from the past any longer. Perhaps I should suggest it to her?

  I continue around the next set of bins. With the back of the Black Horse in sight, I start fumbling for the keys. They’re not in my back pocket and the only ones I appear to have on me are the car keys. I pat down my clothes, trying to remember if I have some sort of concealed pocket anywhere but knowing I don’t.

  Damn.

  They’re in the car. All this and I’m going to have to go to the car park anyway. I should’ve told Rhys I wanted to stay with him.

  I could try knocking on the back door but Pete will be in bed and it’s really not fair to get him up at this time of the—

  I spin quickly, convinced there’s someone behind me.

  ‘Hello?’ My voice drifts along the alley, unanswered, but there were definitely footsteps behind.

  Unsure whether to go forward or back, I arch up onto the tips of my toes, trying to see if there’s someone there. The bins are so scattered that anyone could be crouching behind.

  ‘Hello?’

  No answer.

  It’s little comfort that, if I heard anything at all, it was probably a rat.

  I hurry past the back door of the pub, heading for the exit of the alley at the other end. It’s only five minutes to my car if I hurry, then five minutes back. I can be in bed soon enough.

  The fear has left me as I risk a quick glance over my shoulder. My mind’s playing tricks, still dulled by the alcohol from earlier. There’s nothing behind – but that’s when I turn and bump into something in front.

  Before I can react, there’s a hand over my mouth, someone clamping the back of my head into their chest as I’m spun around and held tightly. It takes me a second or two to realise what’s happening. Another arm is across my front, pinning my arms down with far more strength than I can battle against.

  I try to shout, to scream, but the hand is squeezing my jaw together and it’s only when I try to open my mouth that I realise it’s more than a hand. There’s a cloth, a wet rag, or—

  Thirty-Two

  It’s dark.

  There’s something grumbling in my right ear, some sort of rumble like an approaching earthquake. When I push up to try to get away from it, I wallop my head into something solid. It catches me a little over my left eye, leaving green stars swirling in the black.

  I slump back onto my side and try to figure out what’s going on. I’m lying somewhere tight and enclosed. There’s some sort of thick plastic underneath me, the type that’s found inside a box as packing for a new television. It’s glossy and smooth and I’m sliding back and forth as the growling continues.

  It’s definitely a car. I’m in the boot and can smell petrol or oil, something like that. The odour of a garage forecourt.

  The plastic sheeting can’t bode well. In an age of forensics and DNA, the only reason for plastic sheeting in a car boot along with a captive is if something awful is going to happen.

  I can still taste whatever it was my captor used to knock me out. It’s bitter and burns, like the cleaning fluid someone would use on paintbrushes – but worse. I can taste alcohol, too – but only faintly. The remnants of a night that’s almost forgotten.

  When I close my eyes, there are dancing purple and pink shapes on the inside of my eyelids. It’s tiredness and shock and whatever I was knocked out by – but the shapes offer a strange clarity, too. I’m in a car boot that’s travelling somewhere – the bumps and potholes in the road tell me that. No point in banging the boot, trying to get attention that won’t be there. I need to be smarter about things.

  Instead of trying to sit up and banging my head again, I roll onto my back and spread out, running my fingers across the sleekness of the sheeting. The top of the boot is only a short distance above my face but the space is wide and I can feel the shape of the wheel hubs on either side.

  There’s no obvious way out – but perhaps I could kick through what will likely be the back seats of the car. I press against them with my palms but there’s no obvious give. Kicking them with all my weight might help me get into the main part of the car but there could be a layer of metal between the boot and the seats. Even if there’s not, there’s no way I’ll get through without the thumping being noticed by whoever’s driving. If I’m going to escape, there’s no point in making so much noise that I’ll put myself in greater danger.

  If I can’t think of an easy way to escape for now, then I suppose I need to think of why I’m here.

  There can only be one reason… can’t there? Someone wants rid of me. Abducting and dumping someone in a plastic-lined car boot isn’t about scaring a person, it’s about making them disappear permanently.

  Olivia went missing once and now it’s time for round two.

  The only other question is who – and that seems obvious too. Since the time I arrived, it’s only Ashley who’s been outright hostile to my existence. Whether he genuinely thinks I’m after money seems irrelevant. He’s even got the fleet of taxis at his disposal.

  My only consolation – if it can be called that – is that I’m still alive. If Ashley was going to kill me, it would already have happened. That’s what I tell myself. It’s not like he messed around with Iain. He woke up without the use of his legs but at least I have that. I even wiggle my toes inside my trainers as if to make the point to myself.

  The tone of the engine dips with a gear change and it feels like we’re slowing. I slip across the plastic towards the front of the car and try to hold on as the car takes a bend. After that, the bumps become more severe. The first one bounces me up, my nose hitting the plastic that’s attached to the roof of the boot. As soon as I land, I’m sent skidding towards the rear of the car as the vehicle lurches to one side, in and out of a pothole.

  We must’ve been on road before but everything is juddery now, like the beginning of a rollercoaster when the train is being dragged to the top of a slope. My teeth chatter, my bones rattle and it’s so intense that I can’t think properly. It takes all my effort to avoid being hurled from one side of the boot to the other as the car darts across what must be a track or some sort of gravel road.

  Even after the worst of it is over, it takes me a few seconds to realise. My neck is sore from being bashed around, my vision as blurry as if I hadn’t stopped drinking. My whole body tingles, my fingertips itching from the ride.

  It’s only then that I notice we’ve stopped.

  I hear the clunk of a car door opening and closing and panic as I realise I must think of something. Do I bite and fight? Scratch and kick? I’m not tied in any way but everything’s such a fuzzy, bumpy mess.

  The boot pops open and a bright orb of light burns into my eyes. There’s a hand pulling at me and everything’s so mixed up that there’s nothing I can do. Before I realise what’s happening, I’m on the ground, feeling the dust and dirt beneath my palms.

  The white sears into my eyes once more and then zooms away, carving a wide pillar of light off into the darkness. It’s only then that I realise it’s a torch being held by someone.

  ‘Get up,’ a man’s voice says – and he pulls at me again, gripping my wrist and yanking me up like a child’s doll. I’m leaning on the side of the car and not entirely sure how I got there, trying to blink aw
ay the brutish glare of the torch.

  Something metallic hits the floor somewhere close to the car, but when I turn towards it, I realise the man, my captor, is directly in front of me.

  And it isn’t Ashley Pitman at all.

  2016: Lily, 19

  The door on the street is unmarked but the address definitely matches the note on my phone. It’s all very grimy and gritty, something from an old noir movie but with added mould on the walls. I head up a set of stairs onto a landing where there is a door marked ‘JAMES JOHNSON, PRI ATE INVE TIGATOR’.

  I should probably turn around, but it’s not as if I have a lot of choice. The best in the business costs far more money than I presently have, which leaves me with a ‘priate invetigator’.

  The ‘hang on’ comes almost immediately after I knock and there’s a shuffling from the other side of the door followed by what sounds like a chair falling over. It takes a good thirty seconds until the door swings inwards to reveal a scruffy man in a brown jacket with elbow patches. He looks like a university professor who’s hit bad times, with a thin peppering of obviously dyed brown hair that’s been combed aggressively forward in an attempt to hide the largest forehead I’ve ever seen.

  ‘Are you, um, Mr Johnson?’ I ask.

  ‘Call me Jimmy,’ he says, offering his hand.

  His grip is clammy and he wipes his palm on his jacket after ushering me into the office. I’m not sure what I expected from a private investigator’s office but it wasn’t such emptiness. There’s a tall pot plant in the corner of the room, a single desk with a computer and phone on top, plus chairs on either side, then two filing cabinets in the furthest corner. Nothing else. It’s like a photo from the cheapest page of the IKEA catalogue. The living room of Dad’s house… of my house… is bigger than this.

  Jimmy sits behind his desk and starts drumming his fingers on the surface. ‘How can I help you, Miss…’

  ‘Armitage. Lily Armitage. My dad died a month ago and I found this in his top drawer.’

  I slip the envelope across the desk and he removes the contents, scanning both pages before returning them.

  ‘You’re adopted,’ he says matter-of-factly.

  ‘Right. I didn’t know. I only found out after he died.’

  ‘Oh…’ The investigator is not good at hiding his surprise.

  ‘I’d like to know who I am. I’ve been online, but you have to register your details and hope the other person – hope your parents – haven’t opted out of contact. It took them more than a week to let me know that my mother has opted out. She doesn’t want to hear from me. I made a couple of phone calls but they say it’s impossible.’

  ‘You want me to find your real parents…?’

  It’s only a word, three letters – ‘yes’ – and yet it sticks in my throat.

  I want to know and yet I don’t. Every question answered only leaves another question. Why didn’t my dad tell me any of this? I know there was a time where I would have been too young to understand. Perhaps, when my mum died, they were getting ready to say something? Maybe it would’ve been later, like they had an idea I’d be ready at twelve, or thirteen? But then Mum died and it was only me and Dad.

  And the question of ‘why?’ is what I’ve been asking myself for the past few weeks. The thing is, deep down, I think I know the answer. With Mum gone, Dad had only me. If he’d said I had another family out there somewhere and I’d gone looking for them, where would that leave him? I understand and yet I don’t. What’s worse, I’ll never have the opportunity to ask him because he isn’t here any longer.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  Jimmy nods slowly, eyeing me closely and focusing on my chest for a moment too long. ‘You don’t sound so sure.’

  ‘I’m not sure but I want to know anyway.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’ I slide him over my driver’s licence – Lily Armitage – and he skims the front before passing it back. ‘I saw your rates online,’ I add, ‘but it was a bit unclear how much everything actually is with all the expenses included. I didn’t know if there was some sort of cap, or…?’

  ‘It’s eighty pounds per hour, plus expenses.’

  ‘What sort of expenses?’

  ‘It depends, but generally travel. Sometimes I might need to pay someone for information. I’d imagine this might take a little of that…’

  Which means he’ll likely bribe someone for the information. I’ve wondered that myself. Is there someone I can find that works with the adoption agency who I would be able to pay off? Even if there was, how would I find that out? And what if they say no and report me to the police? I’ve not looked into the laws either I or the person inside the agency might end up breaking. Could I go to prison?

  ‘If it’s eighty pounds an hour, do you know how long it might take?’ I ask.

  ‘How long’s a piece of string?’ he replies. ‘It might take an hour; it might take twenty or more. If you have a ceiling, I can always keep in touch and let you know if I’m close to the limit.’

  I suppose a part of me was hoping he’d go easy because I’m a teenager with a sob story. If I learnt anything from Zoe, it’s that manipulating men can be easy. Can be. It depends on the man.

  ‘I’m selling a house,’ I say. ‘I’ll have money but I don’t have a lot right now. Can I pay a certain amount and then the rest of the balance down the line…?’

  Jimmy shakes his head. ‘Sorry. I do take a deposit but that’s only to cover expenses. There are weekly payments due, depending on how long things might take. You’d get regular updates with that. It could be done in under a week, of course, but I’d require the full balance being cleared before handing over information.’

  For the moment, I have a little over five hundred quid in the bank – but that’s for everything: food, fuel for the car… I could spend all that and more with Jimmy but what then? The house will be up for sale, but not yet, mainly because it needs such a lot of work doing. Dad had no savings and what little he had in the bank is going through probate. At some point, when the house is sold, I’ll have hundreds of thousands of pounds – but not right now.

  The alternative is to wait, come back in however many months once a sale has gone through and ask again. Either that, or go somewhere else, find someone cheaper.

  But what do I do until then?

  I know I can’t let this hang for however many months it might take. My life is on hold, a trawler out in the middle of the ocean for which turning back would take too long.

  ‘I can pay a couple of hundred up front and show you the documents to prove I own a house. I’m hoping it’ll sell sooner rather than later.’

  Jimmy taps something on his keyboard and stares at the computer monitor for a moment. It’s obvious he isn’t really doing anything but then he pulls a calculator out from his top drawer and bashes some numbers into that as well.

  ‘Hmm…’

  He stands and rounds the table until he’s behind me and then it’s impossible not to wince as his fingers start massaging my shoulders.

  ‘Nineteen,’ he coos and I know what’s coming next. ‘I suppose the question is how much do you want to find your parents?’

  ‘I need to know who they are.’

  ‘Hmm…’ His fingers stop moving but they’ve tensed my muscles rather than relaxed them. ‘I suppose we could come to some sort of arrangement…’

  Thirty-Three

  It might not be Ashley Pitman but it’s close.

  Max has a torch in one hand and an enormous hunting dagger in the other. The blackness of his hair is almost blue in the moonlight but he seems thicker, stronger than I remember. He was probably always like that; it was when compared to his brother that he felt smaller.

  Behind him is the gravel of an empty car park. The moon is hidden by the height of the surrounding trees, leaving only a misty sapphire glow.

  He nods to the ground. ‘That’s for you.’

  It’s a spade, crusty and well used; somet
hing that might’ve been abandoned on a building site at some point.

  ‘What do I do with it?’

  He’s disconcertingly calm. ‘For now, carry it.’

  ‘What about after that?’

  ‘Dig. I thought you were smarter than everyone, remember?’

  I pick up the spade and am surprised by how heavy it is. The handle is thick and meaty, the end solid with square corners.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Max says.

  He’s right – he’s given me something that could be used as a weapon but only because he has both hands full with the torch and knife. There might be a time where I can use it – but it’s not now. Not while he’s on his guard.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  He uses the knife to point towards an opening between two large trees. ‘There’s a path through there. Keep walking until I say otherwise.’

  ‘What if I don’t?’

  I’m testing the waters, trying to stop my voice from wavering.

  He shrugs and twirls the knife between his fingers, in complete control. ‘Then don’t.’

  There’s a wicked glint in his eye and it’s clear he doesn’t mind which choice I make. One means a spade versus knife fight right here – and I don’t fancy my chances – the other means I might have time to think of something else.

  I turn to head towards the path, but the moment I do, there’s a rustle of… something off towards the other side of the car park. Max spins the torch around, shining the light out towards the noise, but the space is too far for the gloom to be penetrated. There’s a moment, only the fleeting glimpse of a thought, where I think this is my chance. I even raise the spade a little – but Max is thinking ahead of me. He’s taken enough of a step back so that he’s out of range and he turns from me to the noise and back again.