Geraldine shook her head with a smile. ‘Don’t be silly.’ She reached out and touched her sister on the arm in an uncharacteristically tender gesture.
Putting her cup down, Geraldine cleared her throat. ‘I’ve decided to try to find my mother.’ She faltered at Celia’s startled expression. ‘My birth mother, that is,’ she added quickly, ‘not our mother.’ She fell silent, aware that she had spoken clumsily. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – I’m sorry...’
Celia shook her head, as though brushing away an annoying fly buzzing around her face.
‘That’s OK, you don’t need to apologise. You’re entitled to look for your mother. I would, if I were you. You ought to try and find her. One day it’s going to be too late so you should try to find her now, while you still can.’
‘It might already be too late,’ Geraldine said, with a return of her earlier misgivings. ‘I did manage to trace an address for her but, by the time I summoned up the courage to visit her, she’d already moved away.’
‘Surely it can’t be difficult for you to find out where she’s gone? You must have access to people’s addresses and stuff.’
Geraldine sighed. It wasn’t that easy. For a start, she wasn’t sure she wanted to face the mother who had steadfastly refused to meet her. Still, she was relieved that Celia had raised no objections to her plan. It felt as though she had overcome an unforeseen hurdle. Maybe Celia was right, and it wouldn’t be so very difficult after all.
24
Fighting to quell her panic, Caroline was relieved her voice sounded normal.
‘I don’t know what you’re getting yourself all worked up about. He’ll be back soon.’
‘He wouldn’t just go off like that without saying anything. Something’s happened to him, I know it has.’
Caroline was worried. Matthew was right. He might wander off thoughtlessly, but Ed was the responsible twin. He would never disappear like that without telling her where he was going. With a pang of grief she recalled their father complaining that Ed was too sensible.
‘Of the two of them, he’s the one that’ll go off the rails,’ Dave had predicted. ‘He’s repressed. I know Matt’s a pain in the arse, but there’s no turmoil under the surface with him.’
Caroline shook her mind free. She couldn’t be sidetracked by memories just now, not when one of her sons had vanished. Ed had gone out to Morrisons to buy sweets. Matthew had a stomach ache so he had stayed at home. The shop was only five minutes away. Ed knew he had to cross at the lights. He had been there by himself before. But this time he hadn’t come home. After an hour she had walked to the shops and back, looking for him. Another hour had passed, and he hadn’t returned. Matthew was on the verge of tears.
‘Did you two have a row?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Well then, he must be hiding.’
She did her best to inject a note of fun into her voice. ‘Come on, let’s go and find him. Where would he have gone, do you think?’
‘He might have gone to the park.’
‘Come on, then. Let’s look there first.’
‘Maybe he’s fallen over in the bushes and banged his head,’ Matthew suggested, brightening up as he began to appreciate the drama of the situation. ‘Or he’s lost his memory and wandered off and he doesn’t know who he is or where he lives. Or he might have been recruited.’
‘Recruited?’
Distracted by worry, she had forgotten Matthew’s obsession with children’s spy thrillers.
Reaching the park, she pushed her way between stout leafy rhododendron bushes, holding onto branches to prevent them snapping back and hitting Matthew in the face as he followed her.
‘Stay close to me,’ she called out to him over her shoulder. ‘I don’t want to lose you as well!’
Of the two boys, Matthew was the one who was always getting into trouble. Ed had never given her a moment’s worry – until now. As she struggled through the bushes to the perimeter fence, she studied the ground to left and right. There was no sign of her missing son. She wished she had brought Dobby along. He would have found Ed. She considered going home to fetch him.
It was hard going. Underfoot the earth was hidden beneath weeds and brambles, hard to traverse. Several times she stumbled over concealed roots and only managed to save herself from falling by grabbing onto protruding branches. Matthew had a point. It was perfectly possible that Ed had tripped and knocked himself out. They just had to find him. He couldn’t be badly hurt. Thick foliage would have broken his fall. Besides that, she refused to believe that anything terrible could have happened to her son, not so soon after his father was murdered. Life couldn’t be so cruel.
Painstakingly they traversed the overgrown terrain, calling Ed’s name and searching the ground, until the daylight began to fade.
‘Mum, I can’t see where I’m going. Ow!’
Desperately she pressed on until they were both stumbling around blindly. When an overhanging tree branch whacked her on the head, almost hitting her in the eye, she had to accept it was time to turn back.
‘What about Ed?’ Matthew wailed, reversing his opinion once he knew they were leaving.
As they made their way back home, Matthew began chattering excitedly about search parties. He wanted Caroline to call the police.
‘They’ll send a helicopter. They always do. And it’ll have a ginormous light on it so it looks like it’s day.’
Caroline hesitated. She tried to ignore the words floating in her head: ‘I’ll tell them what you made me do. They’ll think you’re not fit to be a mother. They’ll take your children away from you... if I don’t kill them. You know I can do it. I’ll kill them if you don’t do exactly what I want.’
She couldn’t risk it. ‘No police,’ she said firmly.
‘But mum, they’ll bring dogs, and we’ll be wrapped in silver. We’ll be on the TV. Please, mum.’
‘We’ll come back with Dobby,’ Caroline said firmly, ‘if Ed’s not found his way home by now. Come on, I expect we’ll find him there waiting for us.’
Trotting at first, they both broke into a run as they neared the house. But Ed wasn’t sitting on the doorstep and he didn’t open the door when Matthew rang the bell frantically, while Caroline rummaged in her bag for her keys.
There was an envelope on the door mat addressed to her by her maiden name. Her heart seemed to pulse in her throat as she reached down. Matthew ran into the kitchen calling Dobby. Caroline slit the envelope open and withdrew a single sheet of white paper. On it were two letters, written in small neat capitals. ‘ED’. That was all. It was enough. Caroline let out an involuntary sob. Brian must have been watching them. He had followed Ed to the shops. He had known Caroline wasn’t home yet when he posted the letter through the door. ‘I know all about you,’ had been no idle threat. Before she could gather her thoughts, Matthew emerged from the kitchen, dragging Dobby by the collar.
‘You’re a lazy lazy beast,’ he admonished the dog. ‘We’re going walkies.’
Dobby wagged his tail and gave a short bark.
Caroline clapped her hand to her head. ‘I totally forgot,’ she blurted out in a panic. ‘A friend of mine called, and I arranged for Ed to go home with her. And then I forgot all about it. Silly me.’ She forced a stupid laugh.
Matthew accepted the ridiculous story without question. Guilt at his absolute trust in her was swept aside by her terror about what was happening to Ed.
‘Why?’ Matthew demanded after a brief hiatus. He was kneeling down, scratching Dobby’s head. ‘Why?’ he repeated.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you let him go without me?’
‘You had a tummy upset. I thought you were better off staying at home.’
It was a stupid lie, as well as a desperate one, inviting an obvious response.
‘I’m better.’
She almost snapped and screamed at him to shut up and go to bed. She had to be left alone to think.
‘Go and put
the telly on,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us some supper. Ed’ll be home soon.’
She hoped that was true. The flimsy piece of paper trembled in her hand.
25
‘Here we are,’ Brian announced cheerily. ‘This is my house.’
His young passenger frowned. ‘I want to call my mum.’
‘That’s the last thing we want to do right now, start troubling her all over again at a time like this. I told you, she wants to be left alone for a while. She’s got a lot to sort out. Now come on, let’s go inside and have some tea.’
‘Then can I call my mum? ‘
‘Look, if you really want to bother your mother, you can call her, but I really think it would be kinder to leave it until tomorrow. Unless you’re too young to manage this?’ The boy shook his head uncertainly. ‘Come on, then. I’ve got chocolate biscuits.’
The boy followed him dutifully into the house. Brian settled him in the front room with the curtains drawn and a cartoon channel on the television that neither of them was really watching. It was just as well the boy was behaving sensibly. Brian was feeling so wired, he struggled to maintain an outward appearance of calm. He wasn’t sure he would be able to control his temper if the kid turned difficult. Besides, it would be easier to keep the boy out of sight if he was behaving himself. Having gone to all the trouble of capturing him, there was no way Brian was going to let him go. Not until Caroline had completed the job.
‘Where’s the chocolate biscuits? You said you had chocolate biscuits.’
Brian went to the kitchen and returned with a plate of Jaffa Cakes. After complaining his favourites were chocolate Swiss rolls, the boy tucked into the biscuits. ‘They’re my second favourite,’ he admitted solemnly, as though it mattered.
‘Have another one.’
He hesitated. ‘Mum never lets us have more than two.’
‘Your mother’s not here.’
With a grin, the boy reached across the table for another biscuit. It was the first time Brian had seen him smile. He watched him as he munched happily, wondering whether the boy trusted him. He seemed to like the Jaffa Cakes anyway.
‘When am I going home?’
It was an effort to keep his voice level. ‘That all depends on your mother. I told you, she needs to rest. But you don’t need to worry about her, she’s going to be fine and you can go home very soon. You’ll only be staying here for a few days, and your brother’s gone to another friend of your mother’s, just while she sorts herself out.’ He put on a sad face. ‘I wanted to put you both up here, but there’s not enough room. It won’t be for long anyway. Your mother just needs a little time to herself. I’m sure a clever boy like you understands that, don’t you? Go on, have another one. We won’t tell her.’
Looking thoughtful, the boy reached for another biscuit. ‘Is she cracking up?’
Brian forced a laugh. ‘No, of course not. She just needs to rest. It would really help her if you stayed here without making any fuss, just for a few days. I’ll take good care of you. Plenty of Jaffa Cakes and I’ll get you some chocolate Swiss rolls.’ He laughed again, far too heartily.
‘I’m thirsty.’
‘You haven’t drunk your juice.’
‘I don’t like it. The orange juice we have at home is nice but this is yucky.’
‘That’s because this is a healthy sort of orange juice. It’ll make you strong. I can put some sugar in if it’s not sweet enough?’
‘OK.’
Brian hurried to the kitchen. It was vital he settled the boy down soon. He wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to keep him hidden in the house. In some ways it would be easier just to get rid of him, but then there would be the problem of disposing of the body. Even though he was only ten, he was quite tall. It could be more trouble than it was worth to get rid of him. Still, there was that option if the boy started causing trouble.
A single bed was made up in the spare bedroom although no one ever slept there. He would take the boy up there as soon as he finished his juice. Scooping up a teaspoonful of sugar, he paused. The boy had already eaten nearly a whole packet of biscuits. If he was sick it might be impossible to remove obvious traces of his DNA. Besides, too much sugar could make a child go wild. He tipped most of the granules back in the packet and dropped a tiny amount into the glass of juice. It wouldn’t make much difference to the taste, but that was too bad. The boy would drink it if he was thirsty. He didn’t have to like it.
When he returned to the front room, the biscuit plate was empty. Brian hoped his young visitor wouldn’t be sick. He didn’t look ill, just worried.
‘Can I call mum now?’
‘I thought we’d already agreed you would call her tomorrow.’
First Brian needed to think what he was going to say to Caroline, if he was going to allow the boy to communicate with her at all. It would certainly convince her Ed was with him. That was, after all, the whole point of the kidnap. Then again, the boy might have seen a road name that would help his mother find him. If that was the case, Brian wasn’t confident the boy would keep his trap shut.
‘Why didn’t mum tell me I was coming here?’
He had been expecting that question, and trotted out a pat answer about it being a last minute decision.
‘This wasn’t her idea at all. When my friend and I suggested it, at first she didn’t want you and your brother to go away, but we persuaded her it was for the best, just for a day or two. It gives her a chance to have a good rest, and she agreed it might be a bit of an adventure for you and your brother to go somewhere new completely by yourselves!’
It wasn’t hard to inject some enthusiasm into his voice. In a funny way it was exciting to have a child in the house. He wondered whether he ought to offer the boy supper. He had eggs and bread in the fridge, but no sausages or burger or pizza or chips or anything like that. Boys were supposed to have huge appetites, but he had already eaten the best part of a packet of biscuits. Surely that was enough for anyone. Besides, Brian wanted to pack him off to bed before he could ask any more tiresome questions.
‘Come on, it must be past your bedtime. I’ll show you where you’re sleeping.’
‘I’m not tired.’
‘Well I am, so come on, and I’ll show you to your room.’
The boy stood up. ‘What about my teeth?’
‘What?’
‘What about my teeth? I haven’t got my toothbrush.’
‘Teeth cleaning is overrated.’
‘I don’t know what that means. Mum says I have to clean my teeth.’
The boy’s bottom lip trembled. Brian was afraid he was going to cry.
‘I checked with her and she said it was OK. It won’t matter for a few days.’
‘How long am I staying here?’
‘You’ll be going home soon enough. Now come on, I’m getting really sleepy.’
To his relief, the boy obediently followed him upstairs to the spare bedroom. The wallpaper had pale blue flowers and the bed cover and tiny hand basin were light blue too. The brown carpet didn’t quite go with the rest of the decor, but that didn’t matter.
‘This is your room.’
Brian was surprised when the boy grinned.
‘I’ve never ever had my own room before!’
His glee was infectious. For the first time in years, Brian felt happy.
26
Matthew sat glued to the television while Caroline fiddled around in the kitchen making his supper. She didn’t want to have to field any more of his questions about his brother. ‘Where is he? Why couldn’t I go? When’s he coming home? It’s not fair!’
She told herself she had put him in front of cartoons on the television to give herself time to think. In reality, she wasn’t thinking at all. Her brain didn’t seem to be functioning. Through a haze she watched her hands empty a tin of baked beans into a saucepan, then put two slices of bread in the toaster. She seemed to stir the beans forever to prevent them sticking to the bottom of the pan. Whe
n the toast popped up, she cried out, startled.
Brian had taken Ed. That much was certain. Equally certain was that Brian was a psychopath. Without going to the police, Caroline had no way of finding him. But if she went to the police, Brian would kill her son. He might already be dead.
‘Mum, mum, the toast’s burning. I don’t like toast when it’s all black and horrid.’
Caroline came to with a jolt. Matthew was shaking her arm. Delicate wisps of white smoke were rising from the toaster. She was still stirring the beans, but the sauce had thickened and was sticking to the bottom of the pan. She darted over to the toaster. The charred slices burned her fingers. She dropped them onto the work surface. Catching sight of Matthew’s stricken face, she hurried to reassure him.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll throw those away and put more on. You go back and watch telly.’
‘I’m hungry now.’
‘It’ll be ready soon.’
‘When’s Ed coming home?’
‘He’ll be back tomorrow.’
It was a desperate lie. She didn’t know what else to say. The next day she might have to think of something else to tell Matthew, but for now she couldn’t think how else to deal with the situation. It was tempting to hand the whole nightmare situation over to the police and let them deal with it. They had the resources to find Ed. Stifling a sob, she put some more toast on and tried to salvage the beans. The gooey sludge resisted the stirring motion of her spoon and a nasty charred smell rose from the pan. The beans would taste bitter. She chucked the whole lot away and started again. She would have to be careful not to incinerate the toast again. She was dimly aware how absurd she was, struggling to make beans on toast. She had chosen that supper precisely because it was so simple to prepare.
Stirring a second tin of beans, she tried to calm down. It was too risky, going to the police. Brian might be watching, and she knew he had no compunction about committing murder. He had already killed her husband. She wasn’t going to let him kill her son. Brian had terrorised her into a state of virtual paralysis. She didn’t have to take that. If she could track him down, she might be able to find a way to scare him off. It was better than sitting at home, doing nothing. First, she would have to try and get hold of a list of pupils who had been at school with her. As far as she could remember, there had only been one Brian in her class, but even if she managed to obtain a list of names of boys who were with her at school, she had no way of finding out where he lived. Only the police would have access to that kind of information. A couple of times she reached for the phone, then stopped. Brian had told her he would know if she went to the police. He might be watching the house. Even an unmarked police car might warn a suspicious observer that she had contacted the police. Knowing what he was capable of, she couldn’t risk provoking him.
Killer Plan Page 10
