Losing You (14 page)

‘You mean it was delivered late?’

‘They sleep in late on Saturday, the young kids, don’t they? Once it was delivered with the Sunday paper.’

‘So it was late?’ I said.

‘Have you brought it?’ she said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘I thought you were bringing it,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Will you tell them at the shop?’

‘You mean the paper wasn’t delivered?’

‘No.’

‘You’re really sure. You’re absolutely sure?’

Mrs Benson seemed confused. ‘It makes a noise when it comes. I hear the flap of the letterbox. I get it from the mat here.’

‘You might have forgotten,’ I said.

‘Come on, Nina,’ Alix said.

I made myself thank Mrs Benson, say goodbye like a normal person, and we hastened back to the road. The ground felt unsteady under my feet. We got back into the car.

‘What now?’ asked Alix.

‘Now we know that the paper was delivered to Mr Wigmore but not to Mrs Benson.’

‘We should double-check, though. Who’s next on the list?’

A few hundred yards further on an Andrew Derrick was out at the front washing his sports car. No, his paper hadn’t arrived and he wasn’t at all pleased about it.

Alix and I stared at each other.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Got to think. Now we know something. Charlie started her paper round. She did the first – what? – twelve houses. She delivered the paper to Mr Wigmore back there. The next house on her route was Mrs Benson’s. She never delivered it.’ I could feel the blood pumping through my body, I could feel it along my arms and up in my head, the veins pulsing with it. I felt that, if I let myself, I would faint. But I couldn’t. I had to be calm and think clearly. It helped to talk. It helped to have cold, rational Alix there. ‘Now, if you’re fifteen years old and you’re going to run away from home on the day you’re meant to be going on holiday, you might skip your paper round, because that really is the least of your worries. Or, if you’re feeling some peculiar sense of obligation, you might do your paper round and then leave home. But what doesn’t make sense is to do half your paper round and run away.’

We stared at each other, thinking furiously.

‘Could she have had an accident?’ said Alix.

‘You checked the hospital.’

‘She might…’ She paused, not wanting to say the words. ‘She might still be there – between the houses.’

‘Quickly. Back to the Bensons,’ I said.

Once there, we got out of the car again and together we began to stumble along the road, looking carefully to either side. The road was black Tarmac. There were some patches of clay on it that had fallen off the wheels of farm vehicles
and tracks of car tyres across them but I saw no sign of bicycle tyres. On the left side of the road there was a ditch and some small, scrubby bushes, twisted by year after year of wind off the sea. Beyond them rough grass, like seaweed, dipped down and led towards the mud of the estuary. On the right-hand side there was a hedgerow and some trees marking the boundary of a large field that had just been ploughed so that it looked like a frozen brown stormy sea.

‘We’ll look as far as the Wigmores’ house and then –’

I stopped because I didn’t know what to say. And then what? I couldn’t bear that thought now. Leave it for later.

There are a lot of things on an empty road when you walk it slowly, staring at every inch. The remnants of damp leaves from the autumn, a cigarette packet, beer bottles, a torn shopping-bag, a soggy tissue, a sodden newspaper, a polystyrene container with some unrecognizable remnant of takeaway food stuck to it.

‘What are you looking for now? Lost something?’ said a voice.

It was Mr Wigmore, a strange tweed hat on his grey head.

I didn’t have time to explain properly. I waved a hand in his direction and said, ‘My daughter. She delivered the paper to you but not to the Bensons. I need to find her.’

‘She never delivered the paper to me.’

I straightened up. ‘What?’

‘She never delivered it,’ he repeated.

‘But you said –’

‘I collected it myself. I thought you understood. It didn’t arrive so in the end I had to go and get it. But it didn’t have the sports section.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us it hadn’t been delivered?’

‘You asked if I’d got my paper. I did get it. I got it myself.’

‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘My mistake.’

Mr Wigmore walked off, still muttering to himself about his paper.

‘Let me get this straight –’ started Alix, but I interrupted her.

‘It means we’re looking in the wrong place,’ I said. ‘It’s between Mr Wigmore’s house and the Dunnes’ that she disappeared.’

I took her by the sleeve and pulled her, half running, back to the car.

Once more, we retraced our route and stopped by the side of the road, just beyond Mr Wigmore’s shabby cottage with the Christmas lights twinkling under the winter sky. Once more, we trudged along the road, one of us on either side, not knowing what we were looking for. The day deepened. The light was changing and thickening. The tide was coming in.

Something caught my eye. A newspaper. I shouted at Alix, who was ahead of me and ran back. It was a copy of the
Daily Mail
, wet, spattered with mud, lying in the grass, half hidden. I picked it up. I opened it and a magazine wrapped in polythene fell to the ground, along with a clutch of cards advertising insurance and conservatories. I showed it to Alix.

‘That may explain it,’ she said. ‘Charlie must have dropped it without realizing. On a windy day like this, newspapers could easily have blown from under her arm or however she was carrying them.’

‘There’s only one here,’ I said. ‘She didn’t deliver the paper to the second house along either.’

Alix looked a little less sure of herself. ‘She may have dropped other papers too. They could have blown away.’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

I knelt down and looked closely at the ground. At the edge of the road where the Tarmac ended, it was muddy, messy. ‘Alix,’ I said, ‘does the ground look churned up here?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty muddy everywhere. There’s been a lot of rain.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘But this is all we’ve got. This spot. Before we move on, can we make a circle about twenty yards round it and look very carefully?’

There was just the tiniest hint of a pause. I was a person about whom Alix had mixed feelings – to put it mildly – and she was a busy doctor on a free day, but she was wandering along this road in the wind and cold, and there was probably no point in it, and there must have been a million things she would rather have been doing. I could see a silent internal sigh of resignation.

‘All right,’ she said.

Alix had walking-boots on so I pointed her into the thicker undergrowth.

‘How far shall I go?’ she asked.

‘Just look for twenty yards in that direction. I’ll do the same across the road.’

Alix had got the worst of the deal. I took slow steps across the road, just a few inches at a time, staring at it so closely that I was almost on my hands and knees. But Alix had to clamber across the ditch and although she was wearing boots, I saw that her jeans were dark with damp from the long grass.

I looked at every twig, every loose stalk, but there was nothing. I walked off the road on the coast side. Twenty yards through that long rough grass was quite a long way.
How was I going to search it? With my fingertips? Was there any point? Was it merely a form of neurotic activity? As I was pondering this I heard my name shouted. I turned but I couldn’t see Alix. She was on the other side of the hedge. I spotted a gap, which had allowed her through.

‘Are you all right?’ I cried.

‘Come here quickly.’

‘What is it?’

‘Just come. Now.’

I couldn’t move. My skin went hot. There was a heaving in my chest and stomach. I gulped and thought I might vomit. And then, slowly, like a dead person, I made myself walk, one foot in front of the other, as if I had never done it before. I had to step precariously over the ditch and through the gap, like a doorway, in the hedge and into the field. Alix was standing there, gesturing with both hands. At her feet, half leaning against the hedge and hidden from the road, was Charlie’s bicycle. On top of it was the bright orange bag in which she carried the newspapers. I ran forward but Alix stepped in my way so I couldn’t get at it. ‘You mustn’t touch it,’ she said. ‘We must call the police. Now.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Police.’

She took a mobile phone from her jacket pocket. She held it for a moment and then she dropped it. She picked it up. Her hands were trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s stupid. I can’t.’

‘That’s all right.’ I took the phone from her and punched in the three digits.

Alix wanted to wait in the car, but I couldn’t be inside. I stood on the road, paced up and down it, tipped my head back to see the sky. Sullen, heavy sky. Alix was beside me, her hands deep in her pockets, face raw with cold. ‘Nina,’ she began.

‘Don’t say anything.’

I turned away from her and faced out towards the expanse of grey, inhospitable water. The sea was spreading and the island was shrinking.

I saw the police car, with its glowing orange stripes, from half a mile away, trundling towards us like a toy. Alix and I stood awkwardly, almost embarrassed with each other, waiting for it to pull up. PC Mahoney was alone. There were no pleasantries when he got out. We had met too often today for that.

‘Where is it?’ he said.

I nodded at the gap in the hedge. He walked through but we didn’t follow. We knew without being told that we shouldn’t trample over the scene.

‘And in case you’re wondering,’ I said, ‘I’m absolutely sure that it’s Charlie’s bike, and that’s the bag she uses for delivering the papers.’

I could see Mahoney in the field, standing and staring. When he walked back he seemed almost puzzled. ‘Is there any possibility that she could have loaned the bicycle to somebody else? To a friend?’

At that moment I had to control my emotions. Getting angry, shouting at a policeman, would make a bad situation worse.

‘No,’ I said, with exaggerated calm. ‘We’re sure. We talked to the woman at the newsagent’s. Charlie arrived, collected the papers and set off.’

As briefly as I could, I described how we had followed her
route and what we had found out. He again seemed baffled as I told our story and I had to stop myself saying that we were only doing what he should have been doing. When I had finished he nodded. He told us to wait a moment, returned to his car and began to talk on his radio. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but it went on for several minutes and it was evident that much was said on both sides. At times he was silent, nodding. He said goodbye, or over and out, whatever people say on radios, then sat there for a few seconds before joining us.

‘I talked to the boss,’ he said. ‘This is more than I can handle. There’ll be people coming over from the mainland.’

‘But what do we do now?’

‘I’d like you to sit in your car. I’ve got to secure the scene.’

‘We’re all right where we are,’ I said.

‘Then I must ask you to stand back.’

‘Stand back from where?’

‘It’s important that nothing is disturbed.’

It was crazy but in the midst of all that I had the memory of once when I was a small child and we were going to a fair that had come to a nearby park. I had seen the ferris wheel, the roundabouts and the stalls being constructed on my way to and from school all that week. I was desperate to go, but before we left my mother suddenly announced that she needed to get changed and couldn’t decide on the right clothes, and she made me a sandwich to bring and she had to clear up, and I stood by the door hopping from one foot to the other, thinking of all the time that was being used up, all the fun that was being had, while my mother found things to potter about with.

That was the thing with Mahoney. When it hadn’t been
important, when he was sure that nothing had happened to Charlie, he could take notes, give bits of advice and tell me not to worry. But now that we were facing the sickening possibility that something
had
happened, it made him feel safe to fall back on a narrow form of procedure that would use up precious time.

He opened the boot of his police car and returned with a pile of traffic cones, stacked one on the other like paper cups for a children’s party. With a great show of solemnity he arranged them in a half-oval shape on the road adjacent to the gap in the hedge. Then he went back to the car and returned with what looked like a bundle of canes and a giant roll of tape. He stepped through the cones and the gap in the hedge. He detached the canes, one by one, and stuck them into the ground at intervals, then disappeared from sight. When he emerged into view we saw he was unwinding the tape and connecting the cones to form a symbolic barrier round the area where the bike and the bag were lying.

I walked over to Alix. ‘Do you think this is necessary?’ I hissed. ‘It’s not as if there’s a crowd of people likely to disturb the crime scene. Have we seen a single car all the time we’ve been here?’

She looked across at Mahoney, who was now sitting on the driving seat of his car with the door open and his feet resting on the road. He seemed to be filling in a form. ‘I’m sure it’s required,’ she said. ‘It shows how seriously they’re taking matters. The important thing is that people are coming who know how to deal with things like this. They’ll sort it out quickly, I’m sure of it.’

I didn’t share Alix’s faith in the authorities. I walked over to the car. He was scribbling busily in large, almost childlike
handwriting and didn’t notice me at first. When he saw me, he became self-conscious. Perhaps he was worried that I might be reading what he had written.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but nothing seems to be happening. Nothing!’ And I waved at the empty road and the empty sky. My voice was cracked.

‘I told you, Ms Landry, officers are on their way.’

‘But look at what we’ve found. Not only is my daughter gone but her bike had been hidden behind a hedge. Which suggests that somebody put it there. Which suggests that she is with someone against her will. In which case, the situation is terribly, terribly urgent. Do you agree with that?’