by Michael Wood
‘It’s nice of you to come,’ Sally said.
‘My pleasure,’ Pat said, studying the frail-looking woman.
Sally Meagan was thirty-seven years old but looked much older. The stress and torment of losing her only child and not knowing what had happened to him had taken its toll. Her skin was dry, and, despite lathering her face in make-up, it couldn’t hide the bumps of acne she was so desperately trying to conceal. The lines under her eyes were dark and thick. She had the permanent expression of a woman on the verge of bursting into tears. Pat wondered if she had any more tears left to cry.
Pat had never met Sally Meagan. She had seen pictures of her in newspapers and the odd appearance on daytime television, but seeing her up close for the first time, Pat saw how fragile and on the brink of collapse the woman seemed to be.
Pat had two children of her own, both grown up, and she had grandchildren. She couldn’t imagine how she would continue with life if anything happened to any of them. Was it worse having a child killed or not knowing their fate? That was a question nobody should ever have to try and answer.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Sally asked. Her voice was quiet, hardly above a whisper.
‘I’ll have a coffee, please, it’s nippy out.’ Although, wrapped up in layers, Pat was warm.
‘Come on through to the kitchen.’
Sally led the way along the corridor and opened the door to the large kitchen. A golden Labrador came bounding across the tiled floor to greet Pat.
‘You don’t mind dogs, do you?’ Sally asked quickly.
‘No. I love them,’ she said, bending down to stroke the young dog.
‘This is Woody. Let him lick you and you’ll have a friend for life.’
Pat scratched behind his ears. This seemed to be all Woody needed to accept a stranger into the house. He dropped on the floor, rolled onto his back and assumed the position for Pat to scratch his belly.
‘I dread to think what would happen if we were burgled,’ Sally said. ‘He has a mean bark on him, but he’d just lick the burglars to death.’
Pat got on her knees and began fussing the dog who seemed to appreciate the attention. Sally went about making the coffee.
‘We got him for Carl for his sixth birthday. He always wanted a dog. They were inseparable. Sometimes, I can’t find him. I shout him and he doesn’t come. I go up to Carl’s bedroom and there Woody is, curled up on Carl’s bed. He misses him so much.’
Pat looked up from her position on the floor. She saw the sadness and faraway look in Sally’s eyes. She gave her a weak smile. There was nothing else she could do.
Once the coffee was made, Sally took Pat into the living room. Woody stuck close to his new friend and sat by her feet once she sat on the oversized sofa.
‘Will you apologize to Matilda for me, please?’
‘Apologize? What for?’ Pat looked up. Over Sally’s shoulder, on the mantelpiece, was a photograph of the smiling Carl Meagan. He looked straight at Pat. He looked about five or six years old, full of life, happy and content. A brief flicker of horror swept through Pat’s mind – what horrors had this boy witnessed when he was taken? She looked down into her coffee cup and took a sip of the strong liquid. She tried to avoid eye contact with the photograph, but it wasn’t easy.
‘I heard about what happened at Fulwood on the radio. Matilda’s got her hands full by the sound of it. She’s not going to want me hounding her with my problems. It’s just …’
‘Sally, Matilda is anxious to do all she can to find Carl. If she could, she’d be tearing the country apart day and night looking for him. That’s why she’s got me involved. I’m retired. I can devote more time.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I looked you up on the Internet.’
Pat smirked. ‘I doubt there’s much of me on there. Most of my successes came before the Internet. God, that makes me feel old.’
‘There’s a lot about you, actually. Most of it about the McFadden case.’
‘Ah.’
‘Is it true he sends you Christmas cards every year?’ Sally asked leaning forward, eager for any juicy details.
‘He used to,’ Pat said, looking away. It had been a long time since she’d heard the name McFadden. The case almost killed her and was the reason for her taking early retirement, not that she told people that. ‘So, Matilda tells me you’re thinking of going out to Sweden,’ she said, keen to change the topic of conversation back towards Sally.
‘There have been a few sightings out there. I’ve been sent blurred photographs of children who may or may not be Carl. I don’t know what to do. Do you think I should go?’
‘To be perfectly honest with you, Sally, no, I don’t. If you have something concrete, then fair enough, but don’t go on a whim. You’ll convince yourself you’ll find him, and when you don’t, it will hurt you all the more.’
‘I don’t think I can hurt anymore.’ She tried to smile but her bottom lip betrayed her and wobbled.
‘I’ve looked at the photographs.’ Pat placed her coffee cup carefully on the table and picked up the file she’d brought with her. She opened it and took out the photos of a young blond-haired blue-eyed boy playing in a school yard. ‘I don’t think this is Carl at all. There is a strong resemblance, I grant you, but I wouldn’t have even considered this as possibility.’
‘Matilda said she wasn’t sure. She thought it could be Carl. I think I wanted it to be him.’
Pat smiled. ‘That’s the thing. You and Matilda are too close to this. You need a fresh pair of eyes, someone objective. That’s where I come in. The bone structure of this little boy is all wrong compared with Carl. Yes, it’s been three years, so he will have changed, grown, but there are some things that don’t change. The thing is, the information you received from Ben is very generic. Personally, I’d throw it all in the bin.’
Sally let out the breath she’d been holding. A tear fell down her face. ‘But that would mean starting from square one. There must be something there.’
Pat shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. All of this information can be found on the Internet. There is no solid evidence to show that Carl was sold to traffickers or to a couple who couldn’t have kids. Towards the end of his life, Ben was a very sick man. He was fuelled by getting revenge on Matilda for his own failings. He would have loved to have found Carl and shown Matilda up. That’s what he was doing. Unfortunately, he had nothing.’
‘So, I’ve wasted all these months …’ Sally began to cry. Woody put his head up and tilted it to one side as he looked at her.
‘No, you haven’t. You’ve been productive. Also, Ben did go to visit child traffickers in prison. They didn’t tell him anything but, reading between the lines of the interviews, there was nothing to tell because they didn’t know anything. We can rule that out.’
‘Did Matilda tell you about the phone call?’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘I was going out of my mind yesterday,’ she said, running her fingers through her knotted hair. ‘I was hysterical by the time Phil came home. I wanted to dial 999. He said we should leave it to Matilda. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ Pat frowned. ‘What did Philip say?’
‘He hugged me. He hasn’t done that for a long time. He said to call you, well, Matilda, and see about tracing the number.’
‘We can do that. Sally, do you really think it was Carl calling you?’
‘Of course. Who else could it have been?’
‘I’m guessing you’ve had many people over the years claiming to know where he is, maybe try to extract money from you.’
Sally nodded as she wiped her nose. ‘I’ve had a couple of people saying they were clairvoyants who could possibly find Carl. For a fee, of course.’
‘I hope you told them where to go.’
‘I certainly did,’ she said with a hint of a smile.
She leaned over to the coffee table and tore a page from a pad, handing it to Pat with shaking fingers.
&nbs
p; ‘This is the number the call came from. I didn’t imagine it. I mean, that number is proof. And it was Carl’s voice. I know it was.’
‘Have you called it back?’
‘No. I wanted to. Philip said not to.’
‘Sally, I don’t want to raise your hopes. We need to remain realistic, here. Look, I’ll give you my number. If you get any more calls, let me know straight away.’
‘Thanks. Pat,’ Sally wiped her eyes and leaned forward, ‘can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
Sally took a quivering breath. ‘Do you think Carl is still alive?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she answered quickly.
Sally smiled. ‘Do you think he’s still in this country?’
‘Yes, I do,’ she repeated.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled through the tears. ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ Sally quickly got up from the sofa and left the room, wiping her eyes as she went.
Woody looked up at Pat and mewled.
‘Sometimes a lie is better than the truth,’ she said quietly to the dog.
Pat dug her mobile out of her bag and sent Matilda a text:
Sally is in a bad way. I need you to look up a number for me. I’ve had to lie to her to keep her from cracking up. Call me soon.
Chapter Sixteen
DC Kesinka Rani had decided to keep her own name once she’d married DC Ranjeet Deshwal. As she sat outside the hospital room where Rachel Mercer was sleeping, she twirled her wedding ring and smiled. So much had changed in the past year. She had lost her closest friend, DC Faith Easter, something she was still having trouble coming to terms with, she had married her boyfriend after a whirlwind romance, and she was now six months pregnant.
Ranjeet’s proposal had come from nowhere. They were sitting in her rented flat when a power cut plunged the whole street into darkness. It might have been the candle light, it could have been the four bottles of wine they’d shared, it might have been Kesinka still feeling the loss of her friend, but Ranjeet felt the romance of the occasion sweep over him and he went down on one knee and popped the question. Kesinka didn’t give herself time to think and said yes straight away. She truly did love him.
As house prices in Sheffield weren’t the most reasonable in the country, they decided on a basic honeymoon and to put a large chunk of money towards a deposit. So, instead of two weeks on a sun-kissed beach in Florida, they settled on a long weekend in the Lake District. Unfortunately, it rained for all four days. They left their rented cottage very little and spent most of their time in bed, hence the pregnancy.
When Kesinka first found out she was pregnant, she was mortified. She always knew she wanted to be a mother, but the plan was for kids to come along when she was further into her career, a sergeant at least. Here she was, a DC in HMET, a prestigious unit and she was about to go on maternity leave and take a year out. She was more anxious about her return to work than she was about giving birth.
‘Hello.’
Kesinka jumped out of her reverie and looked up to see her husband standing over her. A sandwich in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I thought you’d be hungry.’
‘Thanks.’ She smiled, taking the sandwich from him. ‘I’m starving, actually.’
He sat next to her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You looked deep in thought. What’s on your mind?’
‘Nothing. Just thinking about poor Rachel in there,’ she lied. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Slowly. It’s going to take ages to process the scene. In the meantime, all we’ve got to go on is what the neighbours are saying. Leah and Oliver are due back from Paris later this afternoon.’
‘I can’t begin to image what she’s going through. The wedding would have been the best day of her life and it turned into a nightmare so quickly.’
‘No chance of her getting pregnant on her honeymoon,’ Ranjeet said, patting his wife’s stomach.
‘You look very smug when you say that, like it’s some kind of testament to your masculinity that you hit the back of the net on our honeymoon.’
‘I hit the back of the net when you agreed to marry me.’
‘Smooth talker.’
Ranjeet leaned in for a kiss but his phone rang. He answered. He only said three words then hung up. ‘That was DCI Darke. I’m needed for the post mortems.’
Kesinka shivered. ‘Rather you than me. I’ve attended four and fainted at every one.’
‘I suppose I’d better go then,’ he said. His eyes had widened, and a sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead. ‘I’ll probably be late home.’
‘Liver and onions OK for tea?’ Kesinka smiled.
‘It’s funny how quickly you can go off people,’ he said before turning away and heading off down the corridor. At the doors, he turned back, waved at Kesinka and flashed that perfect smile she had fallen in love with.
Kesinka continued to eat her sandwich when the sound of screaming came from behind. She jumped up, threw the sandwich on the chair and burst into Rachel’s room.
The seven-year-old was sitting up in bed. Her face was red and tears were streaming down her face. She was looking at her hands, turning them over, studying them, as if there was something there that shouldn’t be. She screamed louder and called out for her daddy.
He wasn’t having much luck trying to get to London. He stood at the side of the road for an hour waiting for someone to stop before he decided to set off on foot. He supposed if he’d been a woman he wouldn’t have had any trouble trying to get a lift; some horny trucker on a long-distance trip would have pulled over the second he’d put his thumb out.
It was cold. The blast from passing high-sided vehicles at 70 miles per hour added to the chill. There was a fine rain and he was already soaking wet and frozen to the core. He could end up with flu or pneumonia at this rate. He was gasping for a fag, too. Even a scabby tab end would do right now.
Walking at the side of the motorway, he was taking his life into his own hands. He could easily have slipped on the wet embankment and fallen into the carriageway. Maybe it would be better if he did. Nobody would miss him if he was dead. He watched as a truck passed by at high speed. If he’d stepped in front of it, he would have been dead by now. That’s how easy it was. The thought shook him. He didn’t have the guts to step out into speeding traffic. He suddenly realized how tough Ruby had been after all these years.
Was this really his life? Twenty-seven years old and on the run. Very little money left, nowhere to go. Suddenly, all the advice given to him by his teachers and his sister telling him to knuckle down or he’d end up in prison was coming back to haunt him. Big deal. The country was going to hell anyway. So, you went to college and university, then what? Yes, you leave with good grades and knowledge, but you can’t get a job because there aren’t any. So those years in uni have been a waste of time because you don’t need a degree to be a barista in Costa. You’re on shit wages so you can’t pay off your student debt and you can’t get on the property ladder because you need a year’s salary for a deposit. Was there any wonder why he’d turned to crime? If educated people can’t get on in life, what hope did he have?
He tossed his soggy cardboard sign into a ditch and continued walking, head down, shoulders hunched, thumb out, hoping someone would take pity on him. Eventually, someone did. An articulated lorry pulled up on the hard shoulder in front of him. He picked up speed, pulled open the door and climbed inside.
‘Where you going?’ the driver asked.
‘London.’
‘Get in.’
‘Cheers, mate. I don’t think I could have walked any further.’
He slammed the door closed and the wagon set off. He pulled down the visor and opened the flap for the mirror. He looked a state. His blond hair was wet and plastered to his head. He was unshaven for three days and was beginning to get a designer stubble. He quite liked it. He’d never had a beard before.
‘You haven’t got a fag have you, mate?’
The driver nodded to the glove box. ‘Only roll-ups. Help yourself.’
He found the pouch of tobacco and a pack of papers. He rolled himself a fat cigarette with cold, shaking fingers.
‘Do one for me, will you?’ the driver asked.
They’d been travelling for an hour when the driver indicated and left the motorway, pulling into a deserted rest stop.
‘How come we’re stopping here?’
‘No choice. Law says you have to take regular stops, and I’ve not had a kip since Northumberland.’
They pulled up into the far corner, away from the main carriageway. The driver applied the brakes and turned off the engine. Silence descended. A distant hum from the faraway traffic was all that could be heard.
‘So, how long are we staying?’
The driver turned slowly to look at him. He ran a hand through his greased-back hair. There was a disturbing glint in his beady eyes as he licked his lips. ‘As long as it takes. Get in the back,’ he said, unbuttoning his trousers.
Suddenly, he wished he was still standing by the motorway getting wet.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Look, before you say anything, it’s got nothing to do with this case. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.’
As soon as Matilda arrived back at the station, she entered the HMET suite and asked Rory Fleming to join her in her office. He closed the door behind him and spoke before Matilda had the chance. She sat down behind her desk and looked up at the young man before her. Rory had changed over the past year or so. While investigating the Starling House murders he had been attacked by a teenage killer. Earlier last year, he watched his best friend and flatmate, Scott Andrews, suffer at the hands of a killer. Add into the mix the murder of DC Faith Easter and it was no surprise Rory had reached the decision to leave the force.
‘Rory, I don’t want to lose you from my team,’ Matilda pleaded. ‘You’re one of the best DCs I have.’
‘Only one of the best?’ he asked with his trademark smile.
