by Sarah Hilary
‘She lets Clancy sleep in here,’ Marnie said, as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
The room smelt of sugar and mushrooms, the aroma of teenage boy slogging it out with the sweeter scent of the children.
‘No duffle bag. That means he took it with him.’
‘That’s significant?’ Noah asked. ‘What’s in the bag?’
‘A change of clothes, money, an Oyster card. It’s a go-bag.’
‘And now he’s gone … Do you think he’s dangerous?’
‘To them?’ Marnie looked at the sleeping bag, the cot, the camp bed. ‘I don’t know. But he’s damaged, and he’s hurting. Put that together with the anger … He’s not safe. That’s assuming the kids went with him.’
No cupboards in the room, no hiding places.
Everything was in plain sight.
‘Beth trusts him with her kids.’ Noah followed Marnie’s gaze as it swept the room, seeing piles of unwashed clothes, the smear of fingerprints on the walls. Neglect.
It wasn’t like the house in Blackthorn Road, nor was Beth the same woman she’d been there. Something had broken between then and now, running like a crack across the heart of this family. What they’d witnessed in the garden, in the bunker … No wonder they were coming apart.
‘If you were Clancy,’ Marnie said, ‘would you trust a stranger? A woman.’
‘Esther Reid? You think she took them and Clancy?’
‘Beth saw Clancy with two women on the estate. Dressed as if they hadn’t bought new clothes in a long time. What if one of them was Esther Reid?’
‘With Clancy? Why?’
‘Because she knew where he lived. Maybe she wanted a way back into the house, or into the garden. She needed him to trust her …’
‘Why would he do that?’ Noah asked. ‘If she was a stranger?’
‘Teenage boys have their own criteria for trust. Beth says all three of them were smoking. Perhaps they gave him cigarettes. That might have been enough to swing it.’
Marnie looked at the sleeping bag kicked into the corner of the room. ‘He’s only fourteen. We have to treat this as three missing children, at risk of harm.’
‘If it’s Esther,’ Noah said, ‘and she’s taken them … what’s she going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to guess, either. We need to look at the evidence. Let’s get that photo of Esther, in case Beth recognises her as one of the women from the estate.’
A sound from downstairs made them move in that direction.
Terry was standing on the mat in his gardening clothes, a red jumper unravelling at one wrist, ancient jeans, blue socks. Seeing Noah and Marnie, he came to a standstill.
‘What’s happened?’ Fear wiped his face blank. ‘Where’s Beth?’
‘She’s in the kitchen.’ Marnie went down the stairs towards him. ‘Gill’s with her, and DC Tanner. If we could have a moment to talk, before you go through …’
Terry wiped at his face with the crook of his elbow. He smelt of earth and leaves, his hands caked and ruddy. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘Carmen and Tommy are missing. So’s Clancy, but—’
She wasn’t halfway through the sentence before he started moving.
Not in the direction of the kitchen; back out of the house.
Marnie and Noah followed, staying close.
In the porch, Terry was pulling on his wellingtons. His face was fierce, mouth thinned to nothing, shoulders shaking as he struggled with the boots.
Marnie wanted to hold him still. ‘We have a team looking for the children.’
‘Where?’ He stood with one boot on and the other in his hands, eyes haggard with hope as he searched their faces. ‘He’ll be on that housing estate … Christ!’
His feet were swollen from the day’s work. He couldn’t get the remaining boot on, nearly falling sideways until Noah’s hand stopped him, holding him upright until he’d got his balance back. ‘I know where he is. He’ll be on that estate. Arlington …’
‘We have a team on the way there. You should stay with your wife. She needs you.’
‘My kids need me. Tommy and Carmen,’ his eyes blazed with distress, ‘they need me. They’re just little kids. Little, little kids …’
‘We’ll find them.’ Marnie touched his arm, feeling the fizz of his shock through the sleeve of his jumper. ‘Come back into the house. Please.’
Terry wiped at his nose. ‘Clancy’s playing games. He wouldn’t hurt them.’ The words jerked out of him, defensively. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘That’s good. I’m sure you’re right. We’re doing everything we can to find them. Come back into the house and tell us where you think they might have gone.’
They took Terry to his wife. When his arms were tight around Beth, Marnie nodded at Debbie to stay with the couple.
Noah followed her out of the house, pausing to move the wellington boot that Terry had abandoned in the porch. ‘Will he be okay? He’s in a worse state than she is …’
‘I’m on it.’ Marnie had her phone to her ear.
Ed picked up on the third ring. ‘Hey.’
‘I need a victim care officer.’ She gave Ed the address. ‘Terry and Beth Doyle. Can you come?’
Ed didn’t waste time on questions. ‘I’m twenty minutes away.’ He rang off.
Marnie’s phone buzzed almost immediately. ‘Ron, what’ve you got?’
‘A crap picture of Esther Reid. You’re right, she’s got a new name. I’ll text what I’ve found. You’re going to want to talk with her psychiatrist, because it’s worse than we thought.’
‘DC Tanner’s here with the family,’ Marnie told him. ‘Victim Support’s on its way. You’re on house-to-house. I want all eyes on the Arlington estate. Someone must have seen those children, and Clancy. We can’t assume they’re together. Where can we find Esther’s psychiatrist?’
‘Lyn Birch. She’s in London for a conference at the Barbican. She treated Esther in Durham, out of Lawton Down Prison, but right now she’s in the Holiday Inn on Old Street.’
‘How is it worse than we thought?’ Marnie asked.
At her side, Noah tensed, watching her face.
‘Put it this way,’ Ron replied, ‘if I said they were off their rockers letting her out? I’d be making the understatement of the fucking century.’
3
Lyn Birch was wound like a spring, one heel tapping on the floor, her face tight enough to bounce pennies off. ‘Patient confidentiality …’
‘Doesn’t apply,’ Marnie said, ‘where there’s a breach of parole. Or a risk to the public. So please don’t waste our time, or yours. I’m sure you’re very busy. Tell us about Esther Reid.’
‘Alison Oliver,’ Lyn corrected.
As if they’d made a fundamental error. Got their facts back to front. Named the wrong suspect.
‘What?’
Lyn Birch repeated, ‘She’s Alison Oliver now.’
A beat, before Marnie said, ‘You mean she has a new identity.’
The woman’s lips pursed. ‘It’s rather more complicated than that.’
‘In what way is it more complicated?’
‘Alison stopped being Esther when she … faced up to what Esther had done.’
‘Stopped being Esther … How is that possible?’
‘You need to understand the psychology.’ Lyn smoothed her clothes with her hands. ‘But trust me, she’s Alison Oliver now. Esther is … someone else. Someone she’s not.’
Marnie looked at her, waiting. She was willing to bet that Esther Reid didn’t think she was Alison Oliver. Not if this woman had done even a fraction of her job properly. It wasn’t a job Marnie envied, waking women to the chaos wrought by their illness.
‘Esther was a very sick woman,’ Lyn said. ‘How much do you know about PPP?’
‘Enough to know that each case is unique. We’re not after a broad understanding of Esther’s condition. We need to know specifically how ill she was when she came to you. And how she w
as when she left.’
‘I hope you’re not suggesting I discharged a sick woman.’ A sharp voice, stark syllables, like listening to the pinging of a black box. Dressed in a dark suit that showcased her bones. Against the impersonal white of the hotel room, she was like an expensive X-ray.
Marnie said, ’You’ve seen the papers. You know what we’ve found in Snaresbrook.’
The woman moved a hand in protest. ‘You’re not saying … Those children …’
‘Were Fred and Archie Reid. DNA tests proved it. The timing’s odd, wouldn’t you say?’
The woman blinked, showing the taut lids of her eyes. ‘You think it’s significant? A risk to the public, you said. Surely you can’t mean …’
‘We think it’s a strange coincidence. You discharge Esther at the same time we discover she committed perjury. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?’
‘She was ready to be discharged. I wouldn’t have signed the paperwork otherwise.’
‘Esther was ready to go back into society. She was well enough for that.’
‘She’d made huge progress, yes?’
‘Are you telling me,’ Marnie said, ‘or asking me?’
‘What?’ The flush ran like water across the woman’s face.
‘You said “yes”, but it sounded like a question. Did she make huge progress?’
‘Yes, she did.’ Lyn opened both hands. ‘Huge progress. What you have to understand is that these women don’t know what they’re doing when they’re in the grip of PPP. They don’t realise how very ill they are, or how dangerous.’
‘We understand that,’ Noah said. ‘But when she did realise it, when you’d helped her to realise it … what happened then?’
‘She retreated, to begin with. That’s natural, yes? But as you say, we helped her to understand her illness and to see that in order to get well, she had to stop hiding.’
‘Hiding how? What were her symptoms?’
‘She hid behind Esther.’
Silence, underscored by the whine of the air-conditioning unit.
Noah said, ‘I don’t understand. She is Esther …’
‘She’s Alison,’ Lyn corrected. ‘That was an essential part of her rehabilitation. She was horrified, revolted really, by what she’d done as Esther. That’s normal. We worked to help her regroup,’ forming a circle with her hands, ‘as Alison. To see that she could move beyond what she did. Start over.’
Start over with what? She’d destroyed it all. Her family, her life, all of it. The Doyles’ family was different. Unless Esther didn’t see it that way.
‘She hid behind Esther,’ Marnie repeated. ‘You’re describing what, exactly? A split personality? Schizophrenia?’
Lyn’s face rippled with professional distaste. ‘Nothing as … clinical as that. It was a question of who she was, and who she could be. Surely you believe in second chances?’
‘Right now? I believe in plain speaking.’ Enunciating every word very clearly: ‘What do you mean when you say that she hid behind Esther?’
‘Alison would sometimes talk about Esther in the third person, as if she was someone else, apart from her. But she got past that stage, yes?’
Or she got better at hiding.
Marnie didn’t imagine it took a genius to trick Lyn Birch, with her rhetorical questions and her nervous energy that looked very much like professional insecurity.
A briefcase sat on the hotel desk under the window. Paperwork for the conference she was attending. Next to the briefcase, a lanyard was laid out like an expensive necklace.
‘Did she talk about where she would go,’ Marnie said, ‘when she was paroled?’
‘To her mother, Connie Pryce. That was agreed. The parole officer will have the address. It might not be conventional, but …’
‘In what way is it not conventional?’
‘Connie Pryce lives on a travellers’ ground in Slough.’
‘And that’s a stable environment for a woman like Esther?’
‘Alison,’ Lyn insisted, but with less conviction now. ‘It wasn’t ideal, but her mother wanted it. She wanted her daughter to have a second chance, a safe place to go.’
‘Connie had forgiven her?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘In all the time you spent with her,’ Marnie said, ‘all the sessions, Esther never once admitted what she really did to the boys? She never mentioned the bunkers?’
‘Never.’
‘But she demonstrated remorse. Enough for you to recommend her release.’
Lyn’s face thinned into a smile. ‘She was consumed by remorse. I don’t think I’ve ever treated anyone more completely filled with it. To the brim.’
‘And that’s … healthy. To be so consumed by remorse.’
Lyn bristled. ‘I do know my job. Without remorse, there can be no recovery.’
‘But remorse in itself isn’t a guarantee of recovery, is it?’
‘Of course not. There are no guarantees. But in Alison’s case, it was a first step. An extremely indicative first step.’
‘She stopped hiding behind Esther?’ Noah asked.
‘Yes she did.’ Lyn tided her face to a smooth sheet. ‘She put that part of her life behind her, and moved on.’
‘To Slough,’ Noah said.
Lyn nodded. ‘To her new life.’
‘Back to her mother. The grandmother of Archie and Fred, and Louisa.’
‘Forgiveness is a process, like everything else. Alison is extremely fortunate to have Connie in her life. If, as you believe, she’s breached the terms of her parole, then it’s a great shame. A very great shame. I had high hopes for her complete rehabilitation.’
‘She lied about the way in which her sons died. She lied to the police, and to the courts. She lied to you. That doesn’t give me much confidence in her rehabilitation.’
Or your skills as her psychiatrist, Marnie thought but didn’t add.
‘Do you consider her a danger,’ she said instead, ‘to young children?’
‘What? No. Absolutely not.’
Angry at the suggestion; her name on the paperwork.
‘Two young children are missing, in Snaresbrook. Children who were living in the house where Esther buried her sons.’
Lyn recoiled. ’That’s … It’s horrible. But why would you assume Alison is involved? Do you have any evidence that she is?’
‘Not yet. But we have reason to suspect that she’s been back to Blackthorn Road since her release. She gave no indication she was planning to do that?’
‘None whatsoever.’ Her heel tapping the hotel carpet. Nervous, or just impatient?
Marnie said, ‘I’m going to ask you again if you believe she’s a danger to small children.’
‘Of course not. I would hardly have supported her parole were that the case. Every sign pointed to her recovery. Every sign.’
The air conditioning in the hotel room was grey, like breathing through a hole in a tin can. Lyn Birch spent a lot of time in air-conditioned rooms. It showed in the lined skin of her face, nowhere for her age to hide. Did she prefer guest-speaking at conferences to spending time with patients? Marnie would put money on it.
‘Hypothetically speaking,’ she said, ‘if Alison wasn’t fully recovered, or if she was only pretending to be recovered … what then?’
‘Then,’ Lyn said tartly, ‘I don’t deserve to hold on to my job.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, but I had such high hopes of Alison. When you talk about her like this … it’s distressing.’
‘Hypothetically speaking. If her prognosis was different, if there was any room for doubt … would you consider her a risk to children?’
Lyn looked across the room, at the empty view from the window. Muddy sky, stuffed with clouds. Her face contorted, painfully. ‘Of course. If she wasn’t recovered, I would be seriously concerned for her welfare and that of others. As I said at the outset, PPP is a serious illness with severe consequences for everyone affected by it. I would take every possible precaution to
keep her away from young children.’
‘If she has taken these two missing children, what are we looking at? What sort of danger are they in?’
‘I can’t say. She was so full of remorse. I can’t picture the scenario you’re describing.’
‘Try. Two small children. Living in the same place where she buried the boys. Are we talking about a re-enactment? Penance of some kind? Sacrifice …’
Lyn shook her head. ‘She was better. None of what you’re imagining makes any sense. It’s all hypothetical, in any case.’
‘The missing children are real. We need to know how much danger they’re in.’
‘PPP is a serious illness,’ Lyn repeated. ‘I’d have taken every possible precaution to keep her away from young children. But that was implicit in the terms of her parole, wasn’t it?’
She made a movement with her hands as if she was wiping her patient away. File under Failure. This was Marnie’s problem now. Hers and Noah’s.
‘One last question. If we were talking about Esther Reid and not Alison Oliver. The Esther Reid who revolted Alison, horrified her, you said … If it was Esther and not Alison at large, with two small children missing, what would you be thinking?’
Lyn shook her head, flatlining her mouth.
‘I’d be praying that you find those children, and fast.’
4
Tommy was sleeping. He was always sleeping. Babies were boring.
Carmen kicked her feet on the floor, because it made a funny noise, thick. She wanted her pink carpet, in her own room. This floor was horrid and hard.
She picked up Baggy and hugged him, then turned him over in her lap and smacked him until the beans inside him rattled. ‘Naughty, Baggy, naughty. Go to your room.’
She threw him and he landed face down against the wall, his ears stretched out in front of him, his tail in the air. Tommy was sleeping like that, face-down, the way he did on the blow-up bed when they went on holiday. Mummy blew it up with a hairdryer. Carmen liked to bounce on the bed, but she got told off because it wasn’t safe.
Tommy had his red blanket and his thumb in his mouth. If she listened hard, Carmen could hear him snoring. She was in charge, his big sister, but she was bored. There was nothing to do here. They weren’t allowed to touch anything and she didn’t like it. It smelt funny. ‘What if I need a wee?’ she’d said. ‘What if Tommy wakes up?’
