by Ford,P. F.
‘There were no tracks in the snow,’ said Jolly, rushing her words. ‘No wood-burner working and no sign of the dog. She must have gone yesterday after we visited her. Oh God. If this is all my fault, I’m so sorry.’
‘Jane,’ said Slater. ‘Calm down. You’re not making any sense. Here, sit down.’
He ushered her on to the nearest chair.
‘You can’t blame yourself for this,’ he said, sitting down opposite her. ‘We’ll learn why she’s gone when we find her. She could have been moving on anyway for all you know. If we’re going to help her we need to stay focused on doing just that.’
‘I know you’re right,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help thinking it’s all my fault.’
‘Let’s start again. Tell me what happened, and what you found. Right from when you and Norm got there,’ asked Slater, determined to distract her.
‘Okay. I’ll try,’ said Jolly. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
‘So you found the framed print that’s missing from Mr Winter’s house, and what you think might be his back door key,’ Slater was repeating to Jolly as Norman came into the office.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And lots of Magic Roundabout stuff, and some photographs-’
‘Which I have here,’ interrupted Norman, placing two photos, side by side, on the desk. ‘Becksy reckons the MP3 player will be ready in an hour.’
‘So what have we got here, Norm?’ asked Slater, leaning forward to study the photos.
‘I’ll hazard a guess,’ said Norman, ‘that what we have here are a photograph of Mr Winter and his sister together, and then one of the sister on her own. I reckon these must have been taken before they became orphans.’
‘Pity they’re so old,’ observed Slater. ‘It would be impossible to say it’s them for sure.’
‘And then there’s this one,’ said Norman, placing the third photograph next to the other two.
Although he wasn’t averse to the odd curse and swear, Slater usually tended towards what you might call the milder swear words. However, when he saw the latest photograph Norman had placed on the table, he couldn’t stop himself.
‘Fuck,’ he said, pointing at the photo of the man with the girl. ‘I don’t like the look of that one.’
Then immediately he realised there was a lady present.
‘Sorry Jane,’ he said, his face reddening.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I thought when I saw that one.’
‘Yeah. It’s kinda scary,’ said Norman. ‘Gives me the creeps.’
‘So, tell me what you think this is all about, Norm.’
Norman let out a huge, heavy sigh.
‘Well,’ he said, miserably. ‘How many possibilities are there? We have this big secret, which someone is prepared to kill for. The murder victim spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. We have a missing sister, who it seems is not so much missing as hiding from something or someone. And now we have a photograph that seems to show a terrified young girl with an awful creepy looking guy. I really don’t wanna think it, but it wouldn’t be the first child abuse case to surface from way back then, would it?’
‘So what’s with all the Magic Roundabout stuff?’ asked Slater. ‘Where does all that fit in?’
‘I might be able to help you out with that,’ said Jolly. ‘I’ve read a bit about this stuff. It’s not unknown for abused kids to blank out things that happened in their past. Suppose Florence has mentally retreated to a time when she was happy, and she’s stayed there. Let’s say Florence was abused as a kid, but she associates The Magic Roundabout with a happy period of her childhood. By staying in that happy period, she blots out the unhappy period when she was abused.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard about that stuff, too,’ Norman said. ‘And if you think about it, even the names that are cropping up in relation to her fit the same pattern. She’s Florence, her brother’s Dylan, and she’s looking for Dougal. They’re all characters from the series. She even lives in a garden with a roundabout.’
‘I wondered who had been playing on those things,’ remembered Slater. ‘Alright. So we agree we think we know what’s behind all this, but if we don’t know who’s behind it, and we can’t find any evidence to back it up, we’re not really any further forward. We need to figure out the password for this bloody CD.’
Norman’s phone was ringing. He could see it was Ian Becks calling.
‘Yo. Norman Norman, style guru to the people, speaking. How can I help you?’
He listened hard.
‘You have? Wow! That was quick. Did you take a look to see what’s on it?’
He listened again.
‘Yeah, that’s right. It became a bit of a cult among a lot of adults too.’
He made a face at Jolly and Slater.
‘And there was nothing else?’
Norman chuckled as he listened.
‘Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell him. I think we both owe you big time. Thank you.’
‘That Becksy gets better and better,’ he said as he cut the call. ‘He’s already managed to get enough juice into the MP3 player to fire it up. All that’s on it is a load of episodes of The Magic Roundabout.’
‘That supports your theory about her staying in the past,’ said Slater. ‘But she had no electricity in that cabin. How the hell did she keep the bloody thing charged up?’
‘And how did she come to have an MP3 player in the first place?’ added Norman. ‘And how could she have downloaded those videos without a computer?’
‘Right. So someone must have done it for her,’ said Slater. ‘And she must have had somewhere to charge it up. How about the baker’s wife? She seems to have some sort of relationship with her.’
‘I spoke to her,’ said Jolly. ‘She says she never got further than saying hello to Florence, and she never, ever set foot inside the shop. Anyway, I think you’re missing a much simpler answer. She appears to have a back door key to Mr Winter’s house. The dog she has matched the description of his dog, and that dog is perfectly happy with her. He’s known her a long time. I reckon the reason we’ve only ever seen her early in the morning is because she’s been going back home to Hatton House. I think she used to visit her brother under cover of darkness.’
‘So you think he knew where she was all the time and he told everyone he didn’t know to keep her safe?’ asked Slater.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Jolly, confidently. ‘I think he created a home for her to hide in at Hatton House to protect her. He must have thought she was in some serious danger to go to all that trouble, but then if he was prepared to do all that, getting her an MP3 player and setting it up would have been nothing to him. He could have charged it up every time she came to visit.’
‘But the dog wasn’t there the day you found Mr Winter dead, was it? Do you think Florence was there that night? Maybe she saw who attacked him.’
While Slater and Jolly were talking, Norman was dialling a number on his phone. He turned his back on the other two as he spoke into it. Two minutes later, he turned back.
‘I just asked Becks to check the stuff they found at Mr Winter’s house. There’s a charger for the same model MP3 player, but they didn’t find a player. I think that adds a lot of weight to your theory, don’t you?’
‘I bet those female fingerprints they found at his house were hers,’ said Slater.
‘So you can forget about her breaking into his house, can’t you?’ Jolly said, looking purposefully at Norman.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Norman, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m happy to accept that looks very unlikely now, but you have to admit the evidence did make her a possible suspect.’
Slater was thinking.
‘So he changed his name to Dylan in 1994, and bought Hatton House in 1995, right?’
‘Yes,’ said Jolly.
‘Here’s an idea, then. Suppose he left the Army and came back to Tinton so he could look for his long-lost sister. He’s looking for Julia, but finds
someone who calls herself Florence living rough at Hatton House. He’s clever enough to figure out Florence is really Julia, but she’s locked into this Magic Roundabout thing and doesn’t want to know about anything else. So he buys Hatton House to make sure she never has to leave, and to keep her safe.’
‘But why change his name?’ asked Norman.
‘I don’t know,’ said Slater. ‘Maybe she was so scared of men he thought using the name of one of the characters would encourage her to accept him.’
‘But he was her brother?’ Norman argued.
‘Perhaps she didn’t recognise him as her brother,’ said Jolly. ‘Don’t forget – we think she may have been scarred by years of abuse, and he’s been away in the Army. She hasn’t seen him for thirty odd years.’
‘Good point. Yeah, that works for me,’ Norman nodded his head in agreement.
‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’ suggested Slater. Then he had another idea.
‘When was this Magic Roundabout on TV, Norm?’ he asked.
‘Mid-sixties to mid-seventies, I think.’
‘But Hatton House closed in 1964. If we believe she was abused in that orphanage, she couldn’t have seen it before it happened.’
‘I’m not with you,’ said Norman. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘This may sound a bit weird, and it could be complete rubbish,’ explained Slater. ‘But what if Florence didn’t see The Magic Roundabout until after she’d been abused, and because of that, she forgot she ever had a brother?’
Norman and Jolly both looked puzzled.
‘I’m not explaining this very well, am I?’ said Slater, frustrated with his inability to explain his point. ‘Look, we’re talking about kids focusing on a happy time before they were traumatised, right? What if Florence has locked into a happy time after she was traumatised? What if she discovered The Magic Roundabout after she escaped the abuse? What if she found it made her forget what had happened, and it helped make her life bearable? Maybe she locked into that so she could blot out everything before it.’
‘Which would include the time when she had a brother,’ finished Jolly, as she caught up with his thought process.
‘And that’s why she calls herself Florence, and not Julia,’ suggested Slater. ‘Maybe being Julia was full of painful memories. Florence was a good character, right?’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Norman. ‘I’m pretty sure Florence was usually in the garden. There were flowers and trees and the sun usually shone. Oh yeah, Florence had a nice, happy life. It sure would have been better than the horror of being an abused kid.’
He thought for a moment before adding one more observation.
‘Wow!’ said Norman. ‘That must have been really tough for the guy to deal with. How would you cope with that?’
‘How about by changing your name to become one of the characters in her fantasy?’ suggested Slater.
‘And selling all your property so you could buy a derelict house,’ added Jolly.
They sat in silent contemplation for a few moments. It was Slater who broke the silence.
‘Of course, you idiot,’ he said, aloud, to himself as moved across the room and sat down at his desk. ‘Why didn’t you think of that before? It’s been staring you in the face all the time.’
He tapped away at his keyboard.
‘What?’ said Norman. ‘What’s been staring you in the face?’
‘Dah-Dah!’ sang Slater, his face beaming. ‘Look. I’m in. The password is Magic Roundabout!’
Norman rushed over to Slater’s desk and they stared at the open folder on Slater’s computer screen.
‘This is all very well,’ said Jolly, as a gleeful Slater finally gained access to the CD. ‘But what about Florence? She could be an important witness and she’s gone missing. It could be she’s in a lot of danger. We can’t just ignore that, can we?’
‘Well, no,’ agreed Slater. ‘But this CD could tell us everything we need to know to sort this out.’
‘You’ve already had to wait this long,’ argued Jolly. ‘And you think this crime was committed years ago, so do you really think a few more hours is going to make that much difference? There could be a woman’s life at stake here.’
‘You’re right,’ agreed a chastened Slater. ‘I think we need to find Florence sooner rather than later. If we assume someone else has that hard disk, it’s possible they’ve joined up the dots like we have, and they’re looking for her too.’
‘Why don’t you stay here and check out that CD,’ suggested Norman. ‘I’ve already got everyone keeping an eye out for Florence. If she’s out on the streets, someone will spot her. Me and Jane can go back to Hatton House and take another look around. We’ll check out Mr Winter’s house in Canal Street on the way.’
‘Okay. I’ll call the people who sent the CD out, too. Maybe they can tell us something useful.’
Chapter Twenty-One
It was mid-afternoon by the time Jolly and Norman had checked out 17 Canal Street, and had a look around inside the derelict Hatton House, but there was no sign of the missing Florence. The sky was heavy with clouds threatening to bring more snow and the light was already beginning to fade by the time they got back to the log cabin, but still nothing had changed.
‘There would have been footprints in the snow if she’d come back,’ said Norman.
‘I’m tempted to light that wood-burner and stay out here all night,’ said Jolly, sadly. She had hoped that they would find Florence, safe and sound, with her little dog.
‘I think that would be a waste of time. I doubt it would make you feel any better, and the chances are if she sees you’re here she won’t come near anyway.’
‘But we have to do something,’ said Jolly, desperately.
‘If she hasn’t appeared by the morning, we’ll grab some more bodies and escalate this into a full search,’ said Norman. ‘For now, I think we need to head back.’
Jolly wasn’t at all happy about this, but she knew there was a limit to what they could do. Florence was an adult, and if she wanted to move on there was nothing to stop her. Unless they had evidence to suggest there was anything wrong, they had no reason to instigate a full alert just yet.
‘Come on, Jane,’ said Norman, gently. ‘Let’s head on back before it gets so dark we can’t see where we’re going.’
Reluctantly, Jolly followed Norman back through the woods towards the old towpath. Neither seemed to be in the mood to engage in their normal conversation and, with the blanket of snow that covered everything acting as a good sound muffler, a heavy silence settled around them as they walked. They had just turned left onto the old towpath to begin the trek into town when Jolly thought she heard something.
‘Did you hear something?’ she asked.
Norman stopped and turned to face her. He stood quietly and listened, but there was nothing.
‘I could have sworn I heard something,’ said Jolly, with a heavy sigh.
‘Shh!’ said Norman. ‘Listen.’
Jolly did as he said.
‘There,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘It’s coming from further along the towpath.’
‘Here, let me go first,’ he said as she began to head off. ‘It’s getting dark and we don’t know what’s out there.’
As he finished speaking the noise came again.
‘Shit. What is that? A wolf?’ asked Norman.
‘There aren’t any wolves in England, you fool,’ said Jolly. ‘It’s a dog. I’ll go first if you’re frightened.’
‘Of course I’m not frightened,’ said Norman, indignantly. ‘It’s just a weird sort of noise to hear, just as it’s getting dark. Now step aside and let me lead the way.’
Jolly stepped aside and allowed Norman to assert his authority. She reasoned that he was the boss, and if he wanted to lead the way that was okay with her. The light was fading fast and Norman took out his torch. In its powerful beam, they could make out a vague path to follow through the undergrowth. There was now no doubt the soun
d they were heading towards was a dog, but how far away was it? They followed the path for about thirty yards, and then suddenly they were in a small clearing. Someone had cleared the undergrowth right up to the bank of the canal. An old bench, which had obviously been there for many years, stood facing the water.
‘Wow,’ said Norman. ‘I wonder what this is all about?’
‘Maybe she liked to sit by the canal,’ guessed Jolly. ‘It must be a nice, peaceful spot here. Maybe she feeds bread to the ducks.’
There was no sign of the dog, but they could hear it whining on the other side of the clearing.
Jolly got to her knees.
‘Here, Dougie,’ she called. ‘Come here. Good boy.’
The little terrier suddenly ran from the undergrowth and bounded towards her. He jumped into her arms and frantically licked at her face, his tail wagging furiously.
‘What’s he doing out here on his own?’ asked Norman, sweeping his torch from side to side around the little clearing. ‘You’d think he’d stick with Florence.’
‘It doesn’t feel right, does it?’ said Jolly. ‘Something’s wrong for sure. This dog’s really stressed, like he’s been hiding or something.’
Norman had spotted something caught on a bramble close to where they had entered the clearing. He moved over and crouched down for a closer look, focusing his torch upon it.
‘It’s a bit of fabric,’ he told Jolly. ‘Sort of dirty white colour.’
‘From her coat?’ asked Jolly.
‘It could be,’ said Norman.
He stood up and headed towards the canal bank, sweeping the water with his torch. This part of the canal was hidden from what sparse sunlight there had been earlier in the day so the thin coating of ice that had formed overnight hadn’t thawed at all and was still intact. About three feet from the bank, just beneath the ice, the beam fell upon a dirty white object.
‘Oh My God,’ said Jolly, following the beam of his torch. ‘That’s her. Quick, we have to get her out. She might still be alive.’
She rushed to the edge of the canal, still clutching the dog in her arms.
