The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  ‘Maeve.’

  ‘Don’t leave, will you?’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised, meaning it. I would stay for as long as she needed me, until someone who loved her was able to take my place. It felt like the least I could do.

  *

  ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘There’s no pleasing you, is there? Dramatic hostage rescue, a woman saved from the edge of death, a simply disgusting corpse and the finest coffee this hospital can provide.’ Liv handed it over and I took a gulp even though I knew it would be too hot to drink.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Steady on, thrillseeker. At least blow on it.’

  ‘I need the caffeine. I’m starting to fall asleep.’ I put the cup down on the floor and fanned my mouth, then slumped down another couple of inches in the chair. ‘The only thing that’s keeping me going is taking bets on the next injury to come around the corner.’

  We were sitting in a corridor in a busy part of the A&E department and as ever I was amazed by the variety of ways people could find to damage themselves.

  ‘If you feel sleepy, go for a walk.’ Liv checked the time. ‘Godley should be here soon. And I doubt the doctors will be that much longer with Patricia. The paramedics seemed to think she was in reasonable nick.’

  ‘That’s why we were allowed to come here, isn’t it? Because it wasn’t an emergency. But I still think it might take them a while to run through all of the tests, given that she hasn’t seen a doctor for over a year.’ Godley had asked if Patricia could be brought to the casualty department of a specific hospital in North London – because, it transpired, Lee Bancroft was there already, and he wanted to keep tabs on both of them, rather than having to shuttle between two places.

  Liv sat down beside me and leaned her head back against the wall. ‘Just take advantage of the downtime, if you can. You should get some rest. Patricia is pretty intense.’

  ‘Do you blame her? We’re the first friendly faces she’s seen for a long time.’ I shivered. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what she’s been through. Just the fact that she survived is incredible.’

  She didn’t answer straightaway. She was poking at her cup, rolling the edge of the cardboard, and frowning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just – you don’t think she was in on it, do you?’

  ‘She was chained to a radiator, Liv. She’s skin and bone.’

  ‘We made a lot of noise when we got to the house. We rang the bell, broke a window – and she was asleep upstairs the whole time.’

  ‘In the attic. I didn’t hear the ambulance crew arrive. I only heard them when they were at the foot of the ladder.’

  ‘Okay, fair point. But she could have run up there, put the chain around her wrist and pretended she was asleep.’

  ‘Did you see her? Did you see her teeth? That’s not the sort of thing that happens to someone who’s a willing participant in whatever games the Bancrofts were playing.’

  ‘I just think it’s worth keeping in mind that she might not be completely innocent. We haven’t had anything like an explanation from her for the DNA on Cheyenne.’

  ‘And she didn’t want to talk about her,’ I admitted. ‘But I think that’s normal, really. Whatever happened, it wasn’t pleasant.’

  ‘Godley will get it out of her.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll charm her. Where is he, anyway?’

  She shrugged. ‘On his way? I suppose he might start off with Lee. He’s not doing too badly, by all accounts.’

  ‘Whose accounts? Who have you seen?’ If I sounded twitchy, it was because I felt twitchy. Liv and I had been sitting in the corridor for hours. I was desperate for something to happen, a new face to appear, a bit of interesting information to while away the time. I would not have done well in the attic, it occurred to me. I doubted I would have made it through eighteen days, let alone survived for months.

  ‘I met Maitland by the lifts. He was looking for the café too. I steered him in the right direction.’

  ‘That was nice of you.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ she said sedately. ‘It was worth my while, though. You’ll never believe what we missed by not going on the arrest.’

  Briefly, she told me what she’d found out from Maitland about the shoot-out, and Drew Bancroft’s horrible death. I shuddered.

  ‘I’ve seen enough tortured men in the past week to last me a lifetime. I’m just glad I missed that one.’

  ‘I bet Patricia is pleased about it too,’ Liv said slyly. ‘If you hadn’t gone to interview the uncle—’

  I interrupted, uncomfortable with the ifs and but-for-the-grace-of-Gods. ‘Who else is here?’

  ‘It’s strange you should ask that.’ She raised her eyebrows meaningfully, looking past me.

  When I turned, I saw Rob hurrying towards us, concern on his face. I stood up and went to meet him.

  ‘Hello. What’s up?’

  He put his hands on my shoulders, scanning my face. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Never better. Why?’

  ‘Miscommunication. Don’t worry about it.’ He gave me a lopsided smile.

  ‘You looked like it was the end of the world,’ I said, not unreasonably.

  ‘When you’re in hospital, it tends to be.’

  ‘Oh, ha ha.’

  ‘You know it’s true.’

  ‘I know nothing of the kind. Aren’t you supposed to be minding Lee? I take it that’s what you’re doing here.’

  ‘I left Maitland in charge of the shop. He should be able to cope. How about you?’

  ‘We found Patricia Farinelli.’ I couldn’t stop myself from beaming; I still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘She’s alive. She’s okay. More or less.’

  I described how we’d found her. When I’d finished, Rob said, very softly, ‘That bastard.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Godley asked Lee where Patricia was, just before they carted him off in the ambulance. He said there was no point in looking for her. He said she was dead.’

  ‘She would have been in a couple of days,’ Liv pointed out.

  ‘He’s looking at a whole-life sentence anyway. Patricia’s testimony won’t make any difference to that. Why would he want her to die?’

  Rob shrugged. ‘Because he’s evil. Because he doesn’t think she deserves her life. Because he thinks it’s funny to lie to us. Take your pick.’

  ‘All of the above, I’d have said.’

  ‘And you’re probably right at that.’

  ‘He wanted her to die slowly and painfully, for no reason.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s a shame Skinner’s boys didn’t get to finish the job.’

  ‘No faith in the criminal justice system to punish him enough?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  Rob and I were still standing in the middle of the corridor. He looked up and down it. ‘I should get back.’

  ‘Okay. See you later.’

  He waved at Liv and turned as if to go, then doubled back and took my face in his hands. ‘I’m very glad you’re not a patient this time.’

  ‘Me too.’ I said it with feeling.

  He leaned in and kissed me, a kiss that went on until Liv cleared her throat. ‘Guys …’

  I was expecting her to make some sort of quip, but when we looked around she was looking exceedingly uncomfortable. Rob moved away from me smartly and as I looked over my shoulder I realised that he had seen what I hadn’t: Superintendent Godley coming towards us, closing fast. He would have had to be blind and stupid to have failed to notice what we had been doing, and he was demonstrably neither. I braced myself for what he would say, miserably aware that there was nothing we could say in our defence.

  But it seemed that our dressing down was going to be deferred. All business, he asked, ‘What’s happening with Lee?’

  ‘Nothing much. He’s sleeping it off. They found he had a cracked bone in his arm, so that needs seeing to. I think it’ll be tomorrow before we get to talk to him.’
Rob sounded completely calm, as if he had nothing to be flustered about, and I wished for a tenth of his composure.

  Godley switched his attention to me. ‘And Patricia?’

  Before I had to answer, a nurse appeared at my elbow. ‘Are you Maeve? She’s asking for you.’

  ‘Can we speak to her now?’ Godley asked.

  ‘If she wants to talk to you, she can, but she might be a bit dopey. The doctor’s given her something to keep her calm, because she kept trying to take out the drip.’ The nurse looked around at us. ‘She’s in a bit of a state, isn’t she? What happened to her?’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Rob said pleasantly, but in a way that forbade any follow-up questions. The nurse shrugged and bustled away.

  Godley nodded to Rob. ‘You should probably get back to Harry. I’ll come up when we’re finished here. Maeve, do you want to go in first and see how Patricia is? Let her know we’re here and we’d like to talk to her, but leave it up to her. If she doesn’t want to be interviewed, I’m not going to force her.’

  ‘No problem.’ I headed for the door to her room, aware of Rob walking in the other direction. I would have given a lot to be able to talk to him at that moment. But, making a huge effort, I pushed it to the back of my mind, along with the demoralising thought that my career was once again in trouble. Or as Derwent might have put it, heading for the shitter. All the more reason to play a blinder with Patricia. I squared my shoulders and knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting for a response.

  She was sitting up in bed, looking smaller and frailer against the piled-up hospital pillows. They had given her a hospital gown to wear in place of her filthy clothes and it swam on her, emphasising her fragility. Her head seemed to be too big for her narrow shoulders. Her face was pale, her lips bloodless, and the Valium they had given her had made her eyelids sag behind her heavy glasses.

  I pinned a smile to my face. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘All right.’ There was a noticeable lag before she answered, as if thoughts were taking a long time to filter through the drug-induced fog. She lifted up one stick-like arm, the wrist bandaged where the chain had damaged it. ‘They’ve put a needle in me.’

  ‘They’re just giving you fluids because you were dehydrated.’

  ‘I don’t like being tied up.’ She shook her arm weakly, making the plastic tubing rattle against the bed frame. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of the way she had agitated the chain.

  ‘The drip is on a stand with wheels.’ I pulled it away from the bed a little and showed her. ‘When you feel better – when you’re strong enough – you can get up and walk around with it.’

  She leaned away from the pillows to see, then sat back against them with a heavy sigh.

  ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘A little.’ She ran her hands over the sheets. ‘This is strange.’

  ‘Hospitals always are.’ I knew that wasn’t what she’d meant, but I wanted her to feel that everything was normal – that she was normal. A matter-of-fact breeziness that was wholly unnatural seemed to be the only way I could talk to her. ‘Do you feel strong enough to have a chat with me and a couple of my colleagues, Patricia?’

  Her hands stilled. ‘What about?’

  ‘About the past eighteen months.’

  ‘Since they took me?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  She looked down, considering it. ‘Eighteen months. Is that how long it was?’

  ‘Give or take a few days.’

  ‘I tried to keep track, but it was hard. They wouldn’t let me make any marks on the wall or the floor. They checked, now and then. If they found anything …’ Her voice trailed away and she balled one hand into a fist, miming a punch.

  It was such a basic human desire to want to keep track of the passage of time, such a fundamental need to keep order. They had even taken that away from her.

  ‘So would that be all right? It’s just Liv, who you met earlier, and my boss, Charles Godley.’

  ‘Is he scary?’ She whispered it.

  ‘Not in the least.’ I crossed my fingers as I said it, but I meant it. He wouldn’t be scary as far as she was concerned. I must have convinced Patricia, because she nodded her agreement. I wasn’t feeling quite so sanguine as I went to the door to summon him and Liv. I was dreading seeing something unfamiliar in his eyes – judgement at the very least, disappointment if I was really unlucky. But as far as I could tell, he was exactly the same as normal as he followed Liv into the hospital room and stood at the end of the bed.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you at last, Patricia. I’m sorry that we have to bother you by asking questions at this stage, but it’s very helpful for us to know what happened before we speak to the gentleman we have in custody.’

  ‘The gentleman?’

  ‘Lee Bancroft.’

  ‘The bigger of the two brothers.’ To Godley, I explained, ‘Patricia didn’t know their names.’

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ She looked absolutely terrified, tranquillisers notwithstanding.

  Without hesitating, without fanfare, Godley said, ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I saw his body.’ He didn’t add anything else and I willed Patricia not to ask how, or when.

  Her face twisted and she gave a tiny wail that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. ‘He’s dead. He’s really dead.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  For the second time I saw her cry, but this time they were silent tears that slid down her cheeks from behind her glasses, dripping off her jawline. She didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Are you all right, Patricia?’

  ‘It’s just that I dreamed of him dying. I wanted him dead so badly. And now you’re telling me he’s gone, and I just … I hated him so much.’

  ‘Sometimes hate keeps you going when nothing else will,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Yes. You’re right. That was it. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking down.’

  ‘Why did you hate Drew so much?’ Godley asked.

  ‘Because he was the one who tricked me in the first place. He was the one who wrote the emails.’

  ‘On the dating website?’

  She nodded. ‘He made me believe he was someone else.’

  ‘Vincent,’ I said, and she nodded again.

  ‘He was so charming in his emails. So funny. I didn’t want to meet because I knew it would ruin everything.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I thought about that a lot. How I’d been right without knowing it.’

  ‘How did he persuade you?’

  ‘I told him I was too fat and ugly to date anyone. I sent him a picture of myself that was really unflattering – it was the only one I had. He told me I looked beautiful. He told me he could see the beauty inside, and that was what mattered.’ Two more tears slipped down. ‘I printed that email. I carried it around with me. I’d read it on the bus, or when no one was looking at work. It made me feel so special. It made me trust him.’

  ‘That’s what it was designed to do,’ Godley said quietly. ‘It wasn’t your fault you were taken in.’

  ‘Yes, but then – then he made me trust him again. He made a fool of me twice. But that was later.’

  ‘What happened when you met him?’

  ‘He was everything I’d hoped he would be,’ she said simply. ‘Totally attentive. A proper gentleman. We met in a bar and I thought people would stare at us because I was so fat and ugly and he was so beautiful. It was as if he knew I was uncomfortable. He’d arranged a table for us at the back, a booth, so I wasn’t on show. I assumed it was him being thoughtful, but later I realised it was so no one would remember seeing us together.’

  ‘Did you spend the evening together?’

  ‘No. Just two drinks. But the second one was spiked with something. He’d asked me if I’d told anyone about him, if I’d said to anyone where I was going. He checked, first, to make sure it was safe to kidnap me. And I made it so easy for him.’

  ‘You must
n’t blame yourself,’ I said quickly. ‘He knew what was going on – you didn’t.’

  ‘I should have known he was too good to be true.’ She gave a long, quivery sigh. ‘He said we should go for dinner. He said he knew a nice restaurant. I was too out of it to think about whether it was a good idea or not, but even if I’d been totally sober he would still have convinced me. I wanted to believe he was for real.’

  ‘Did you go to a restaurant?’ Godley asked.

  ‘No. He told me it was a drive and he wanted to take his van because he didn’t like leaving it parked on the street. He hadn’t been drinking because he was supposed to be driving home, he said, so I didn’t see anything wrong with letting him take me to the restaurant. But he didn’t. He said he had to get something out of the back of the van, and when he opened the doors, he pushed me in. The other one was waiting there and he hit me so hard, I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the house.’

  ‘In the attic?’ I asked.

  ‘In a bedroom. The one with the green wallpaper. I couldn’t think where I was.’

  ‘Were you tied up?’

  ‘No, but the door was locked. When it opened, it was the other twin who was there. He beat me again, and then he raped me.’ She said it dully, as if it was just routine. ‘That happened every couple of hours. No food. No water. I thought I was going to die. I wished I would. Over and over again. And then – then the other one didn’t come back for a while. The next time the door opened, it was Vincent. I remember it so clearly – I was lying there, on the floor, and he came in with a tray. He picked me up and sat me on the bed, he gave me water, he fed me and put disinfectant on my cuts. He was loving. I thought he was going to save me.’

  ‘More manipulation,’ Godley said.

  ‘Oh, definitely. I realised that a long time later. But at the time, I thought he was my guardian angel. He left the tray behind when he went – and I begged him not to leave me, you know, I really did – and when I recovered enough to look at it, there was my passport. I couldn’t understand how it had got there. I knew I hadn’t had it with me when I was at the bar. The next time, when Vincent did the same thing after – Lee, you said? – after he’d attacked me again, he left a little clock by the bed. It was my clock, from my nightstand at home. I worked it out, they’d been in my flat. They’d taken my things. I asked Lee about it when he came in again and he said it was his brother’s idea. Vin – Drew – said he thought it would be nice for me to have my things around me.’