The Secret Within: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Lucy Dawson

  I reach in, but I can’t find the edge of the implant. There’s nothing there. I fish around in empty space with the blades until I finally feel something. I clasp it and draw whatever it is towards me, and as it emerges through the incision, I realise to my horror it’s a tiny finger, on a baby’s hand… a small arm follows, flopping wetly through the cut only to lie limp on the table, the fingers slowly spreading open, looking for something to clasp… oh my God…

  The students are on their feet, talking, whispering, pointing. Someone cries out.

  ‘Get me a paediatric team!’ I shout, panicking. Now a shoulder is relentlessly emerging, in slow motion. I don’t know what to do. No one told me she was pregnant. I try to push it gently back, but how is this happening? How is?…

  I wake with a gasp, to find Ewan holding my arm, his hand on my shoulder, whispering my name. I am still in Al’s single bed: another horrible, horrible dream, or hallucination.

  ‘What’s happened? Is there news?’ I sit up immediately, dazed but already alert.

  ‘No, I just thought you’d be more comfortable in our bed. You were thrashing around. Come on, let’s take you through.’

  He helps me to my feet and leads me into our room. ‘Why don’t you get properly changed and under the covers?’ He watches me as I sit on the edge of the bed. ‘I can stay up by the phones. I’ll do tonight and we’ll swap first thing tomorrow morning. Come on, at least lie down.’

  ‘Ewan, everything that Nathan said to you about me and him—’

  ‘I know it wasn’t true. It was just the shock of seeing the picture for myself, that’s all. Get some rest now, please?’

  I do as I’m told, but when he leaves the room I stare up at the ceiling, unable to get that tiny, reaching hand out of my mind.

  Forty-One

  Nathan

  ‘I have to let my wife know what’s happened. For one, I need her to go and collect my car. Could someone call her for me? Is that allowed?’

  The police officer looks at me impassively, and I do my best to try and remove the acid from my voice, but this is ridiculous. I’m sober! I must go and get Alex!

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I try. ‘I don’t mean to be getting frustrated, but this is just a misunderstanding. I couldn’t explain why I didn’t want to give a breath test in front of my colleague outside her house – why the result would be inaccurately spiked – but now that she’s not here, I’m comfortable to disclose that I’m on antidepressants at the moment. I’ve not had a drink with them before now, but I can confirm I had ONE unit earlier on. It’s Christmas, after all, but yes, it was unwise. This particular type of medication does skew blood alcohol readings and would have given a false positive roadside result. I’m sorry that I wasn’t willing to explain that then and there, but there’s unfortunately still a huge stigma around doctors needing to take medication for mental illness, and it’s just not something I want this particular colleague knowing. Sadly, she wouldn’t hesitate to use that knowledge to professionally damage me. We were involved personally and it ended badly. Anyway, I just wanted to explain, ahead of Paul Gainsford, my solicitor, arriving. Unless you can just let me go now I’ve told you that, of course?’

  Disappointingly, there’s no reaction to my mentioning Paul’s name, despite him being a local bigwig and no comment on my being released either.

  ‘I’m really not trying to be difficult, and I completely understand why you had to arrest me and bring me in.’ I look around the small interview room I’m stuck in – damn Dominic! ‘But as I say, there really was a good reason for my needing to refuse the breath test. I’m not likely to be here very much longer once Mr Gainsford has arrived though, am I?’ I smile ingratiatingly.

  ‘We do have a few questions for you, Mr Sloan,’ the officer replies, ‘but we’ll do our best to conclude everything as quickly as we can. Obviously, you’ll be aware that things take a little longer at this time of night. We thank you for your patience.’

  My smile fades. A few questions? So she’s told them what I said about the letters and now they have to investigate it. Why, WHY did my mouth say that? It was a total spur of the moment overreaction on my part. This is what happens when you lose focus. I have to get to Fowles tonight! Alex must be walking in through the door tomorrow morning. That HAS to happen, or I really am in serious trouble. If I don’t turn up tonight, he’s almost certainly going to panic – I would, if I were him – and then what? Plus, Ben is going to start asking questions. There are too many loose threads now. They all need to be tied off. I really could kill Dominic for winding me up in here, the crapped-out waste of a man!

  ‘Can I contact my family so they don’t worry about me?’ I continue to smile.

  ‘If you give me your wife’s name and contact details, we’ll let her know that you’re here.’

  I think I might detect a slight thawing, which is a start. Frustratingly however, I realise I don’t actually know Storm’s number off by heart, which doesn’t look great.

  ‘Actually, can you call Hamish Wilson?’ I’m forced to request. ‘He’s a friend of mine and he’ll be able to reach my wife for me.’ This is not good either. Hamish is going to go nuts given his warning while we were at the search earlier. This is about as far from keeping the police away from him and his family as it’s possible to get. Although… couldn’t HE go to Lyme for me? My heart thumps with excitement. He already knows exactly where Alex is!

  The officer sighs. ‘I’ll allow you to contact this friend of yours if you’re sure you know his details?’

  ‘I do, I promise!’ I’m a little too eager in my response, but they let me go ahead anyway. For a terrible moment I don’t think Hamish is going to pick up, but just as I’m expecting his voicemail to kick in, he’s there with a terse but resigned ‘Hamish Wilson’. It must be the No Caller ID – he thinks it’s the hospital calling.

  ‘Ham! It’s me! Listen, I’m really sorry to disturb you with this, but I’ve been arrested and I’m just down at the station now.’

  There is a sharp intake of breath, and before he can say anything incriminating, I add quickly, ‘it’s all a misunderstanding over a breath test, but could I possibly ask you to call Storm for me and explain what’s happened? She’ll be worried because I popped out to do something important and never even made it there!’ I pray that he understands what I’m actually saying to him. ‘I’m so sorry to have to ask you to clean up my mess for me, but will you step in and sort it all out instead? Ham? Did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you – but no way. I’m not doing that.’

  ‘I understand it’s annoying, but I really do need your help.’

  He simply hangs up without another word. I smile at the officer. ‘There! That’s all done. Thank you very much.’

  Ham is angry, but when push comes to shove, twenty-five years of friendship will out. He’s more than family to me. He’s the only person I have ever been able to truly rely on. He won’t let me down.

  Forty-Two

  Hamish

  ‘You bastard!’ I yell in the darkness of my car, having been dispatched to Lyme in the middle of a freezing January night, the rain lashing so heavily at the window the wipers are barely achieving anything. I’m having to concentrate furiously just to stay on the damn road.

  I’ve come the back way, to avoid traffic cameras, cursing Nathan repeatedly as I swerve to avoid a small, fallen branch lying in the middle of the twisting and weaving Ware Lane, leading down into to Lyme. I didn’t have to come, of course, but I can hardly have a special kid like the Blythe boy crashing around Fowles, unaccompanied, doing God knows what, panicking and trying to break out when no one arrives to rescue him. He could burn the bloody place down, with him in it! A murder enquiry with a charred child’s body in situ. Wonderful, Nathan, you absolute cunt.

  Not only is Nathan not robust enough at the moment to withstand intensive police questioning – he’d probably tell them he discussed the abduction with me in the garden – everything else would c
ome out the second the police start their interviews. I shift in my seat as I think about Michelle. It wasn’t even worth it, a moment of lapsed judgement, but more importantly, with Nathan’s newly evangelical quest for the truth, I can’t rely on him to back me up and say that he was in the bedroom at the house before Christmas with us at all times and didn’t see me do anything. Michelle has said nothing so far, and obviously at this stage, there will be no forensic evidence to back up any allegations she might make. I’m not stupid: I removed her underwear, dress and tights after taking her back to her house and putting her to bed – disposing of them thoroughly once the taxi dropped me off at home – but there’s still too much risk of the floodgates opening should the police decide to question Michelle about Alex’s mother, Nathan or me – and I can’t have that.

  Why must it always fall to me to find solutions? Nathan never thinks! He’s made a catastrophic balls-up of all of this – losing his head completely over Julia bloody Blythe and leaving me no choice now but to clear up after him and attend to the boy.

  I glance at the passenger seat to make sure the Domosedan gel and oral plunger I swiped from the stables before I left is still there. I’m not scrabbling around in the pissing rain and wind, moving seats back trying to find them in the footwell when I get to Fowles.

  Glowering out of the windscreen, I try and formulate my thoughts. I’m going to need to just get on and do this once I’m there – not hang around making decisions on the spot. Shit – I did turn off my mobile and the car GPS, didn’t I? My heart seizes, but I know I did. Calm down, Hamish, calm down. So, it’s twenty to forty micrograms per kilogram of body weight to sedate a horse; it’s going to be next to nothing for a skinny thirteen-year-old kid. I just want him initially compliant enough not to mind getting in the boot of my car.

  From what else I gleaned when I hurriedly logged on to Cecily’s laptop – it takes about ten to fifteen minutes once the sedative has gone under the tongue of the horse to take effect. I should probably allow for that with him. The only bit I really don’t like about all of this is not knowing the half-life of detomidine. I could only find one study online, relating to the accidental poisoning of a farmer attempting to inject a bull with detomidine before paring its hooves. In that case, he barely got any of it in his system by mistake but was significantly drowsy. Much more and it could well have stopped his heart. It’s potent stuff. Would a toxicology report pick the gel up if they tested Julia’s son? But in reality, would they even order one? Full forensic post-mortems are horrendously expensive – it would be a huge chunk of someone’s budget, especially when I’m going to give them exactly what they are all expecting to find: a drowned boy with no tell-tale signs on his body.

  Of course, I’ve still got to get him out of the hotel, into the boot, drive him back past Beer and Branscombe and down to Westmare caravan park without anyone seeing me. At least by then he should be out cold. But am I really going to be able to carry his heavily sedated body down a pebbled beach and walk him into the sea? I mentally compare him to the build of my stepson Sam; try to imagine myself hoiking that ungrateful lug down a beach, although – I grit my teeth – I think I’d find a way. Sam is also built like the proverbial shithouse, whereas the Blythe boy is a lanky runt of a thing. He barely managed to run the length of the pitch on his Bambi legs at the rugby weekend. Mummy’s boys, the lot of them.

  Well, I’ve no choice anyway. I can hardly collect him and simply drop him at home in Exeter, or even at some point en route. Julia’s son knows who I am. He’d identify me. If I turn up in a balaclava, he’ll freak and try to leg it – every avenue leads to police questioning. I need to shut this whole thing down, for good; although it’s also worrying me that a corpse that’s been in the water for two nights will present differently to one that’s been in the water for one night… but again, that’s supposing the body washes up at all. Plenty don’t. I sat in on an inquest years ago – a former patient who had chucked herself into the sea in Cornwall – and only one limb was recovered. She was identified by a very helpful tattoo on her wrist. The coroner told me afterwards, it’s unfortunately all too common that only body parts are found. The conditions are also perfect tonight. The tides and winds will almost certainly carry the Blythe boy out to sea rather than take him east or west along the shore.

  Lyme itself is deserted as I drop noiselessly down the hill – sending an almost completely silent prayer of thanks to Cecily for insisting we get an electric car. Pulling into Fowles’ empty car park, I drive around the back to the goods entrance, before killing my lights. Reaching into my coat pocket, I slip on my gloves, check for my torch, then collect the gel and plunger. We are all systems go.

  Letting myself in via the kitchens, I reach for the lights instinctively as I shake the rain from my jacket, before catching myself just in time, feeling for the torch in my pocket instead. Closing the door quietly behind me, I shine the beam on the lock as I twist the key and try the handle to make sure it’s secure, just in case he appears and makes a sudden run for it. There’s no alarm to deal with after the last one went off so randomly and often the residents started complaining. Lyme is hardly a hotbed of crime, in any case. Not usually anyway.

  Turning round, I lift the beam and scan the shapes of the kitchen: hanging pots and pans; closed cupboards; large ovens. It’s spotless and silent. Now, where would I hide a thirteen-year-old boy? I push through the swing door into the main function room.

  ‘Alex?’ I call softly, the strike of my heels echoing as I walk slowly across the wooden floor, pointing the beam into the shadows cast by stacks of chairs and tables, before emerging into the dark reception area.

  ‘Hello? Master Blythe? Are you there?’ I gently push into the drawing room and jump as I see my own reflection in the mantelpiece mirror. Idiot. I shine the light across the rest of the room in a sweep, catching the gleam of the ship in its bottle, neatly stacked wood for the swept and laid fire. Side tables with fans of magazines, numerous fat sofas and chairs all plumped, ready to be sat on. He is not here.

  I draw back out and wander into the cold restaurant. The rain has started up again and is thwacking relentlessly against the conservatory windows. I think savagely of Nathan, back in Exeter, as I walk through to the bar area. I shine my torch over the rows of gleaming optics, tempted for a second to draw myself a measure of something, but lip marks on a glass? No.

  He must be upstairs, but in which room? I return to reception and move behind the desk, the metal hooks and keys glinting as the torchlight catches them. Every single one is hanging where it should be. I groan aloud. Christ, am I going to have to try all of them individually? I don’t have time for this! What if by hideous bad luck something has come into work, and because I’m on call the trauma team is contacting me right now? Didn’t think of that, did you, Nathan, you selfish prick. Suddenly furious again, I grab the first twelve keys and hurry off to rooms 1 to 12, the beam bouncing as I puff up the shallow stairs. Turning right at random and pushing through the door into the first long, dark corridor, I have to balance the torch on a small table to illuminate my hands as I feed through the keys looking for number 6. I’m itching to put the light on but I daren’t. It’s too risky. I drop the key on the carpet as I’m fumbling to get it in the lock and curse my sister for being too tight to invest in card systems like any other normal hotelier. The dark is creeping in around me. I don’t think many teenagers could spend a whole night and day here on their own. He must be really special.

  I finally get it open and burst in. Just the virgin gleam of a pristine expanse of white duvet as the moon shines in through the window on to the professionally made bed. No boy. I swear silently and lock it up again before moving on to number 7.

  This room tells a very different story. A mattress is missing from one of the single beds, the valance all rucked up as if it’s been dragged off. The duvet is gone and one pillow is on the floor. I shine my light on the en-suite bathroom door. Has he locked himself in there?


  ‘Alex?’ I call softly.

  No response. I cross the room swiftly to double-check, but it’s open and so small you couldn’t possibly get a mattress down anyway. He’s got to be somewhere where there’s a bigger floor space. I glance out of the window and the dark spire of the folly catches my eye. Nathan wouldn’t have put him in there, surely? It’d be bloody arctic for one and there’s not even a TV; he’d have nothing to do except wander around, and the whole thing is wall-to-wall windows. He’d be seen in a heartbeat. So bigger floor space and yet shut away from nosy neighbours. I close my eyes and run through the hotel floor plan in my mind – my face breaking into a wide smile as it dawns on me where Alex is. The secret cinema. Soundproofed, no windows, endless movies on tap. Of course.

  I rush back to reception and grab the keys, practically bursting into the mini foyer once I’ve unlocked the door – Nathan locked him in? – then into the screen room itself. Sure enough, there is the mattress on the floor, the duvet scrumpled up and empty bottles and chocolate wrappers littered around. The whole thing could be in the Tate Modern.

  ‘Alex?’ I raise my voice, peering among the seats as I click off my torch, struggling to see properly in the subdued lighting. ‘Don’t be frightened. Nathan sent me.’ I put my hand in my pocket and my fingers curl around the plunger. ‘Come out and I’ll take you back to Exeter.’

  Nothing. I frown and walk up to the mattress, bending over and placing the back of my hand on it. Very faintly warm. He’s been lying on this recently. He’s here.