Warhol's Prophecy (2 page)

Dead!

She couldn’t see the little red coat that Becky was wearing

(
you nearly said
had been
wearing. You already half believe she’s dead, don’t you?
)

despite the fact that it normally stood out like a beacon, even in crowds.

Jesus, how far could Becky have gone?

Where could she have gone?

Hailey looked around the shop again, towards the games area, towards the T-shirt racks, and the cassettes. She hurried in that direction, pushing past a woman who was picking slowly through the bargain bins. The woman muttered something under her breath as Hailey shoved her aside, but Hailey didn’t hear her words. They didn’t matter; nothing did, other than finding her daughter.

Two men in their thirties were playing on one of the Playstation consoles, shouting and cheering their progress on a football game displayed. Hailey passed them. She passed two youths checking through the other games on the shelves, complaining about the prices of them.

No sign of Becky.

Hailey walked to the far end of the aisle, her pace hurried, eyes constantly darting from side to side.

Please God, let me see that red coat.

Past yet more computer games. Past the huge video screen that dominated one end of the store’s lower floor. Back through T-shirts and ‘Easy Listening’.

Becky might have gone upstairs.

Hailey made her way towards the escalator, which carried her up to the first floor containing the Video Department. She stood still on the moving stairway until it had reached halfway, then could stand it no longer, so began hurrying up its metal steps, the heels of her ankle boots clacking loudly as she climbed.

The Video Department wasn’t as crowded as the lower floor. So if Becky was up here, she should be relatively easy to spot, Hailey told herself, searching for any shred of comfort in her despair.

On three walls there were monitors showing the same selected video, but Hailey had no time to guess what it was. The images of Al Pacino flickered around her unnoticed.

On the screens he was shouting, but his rantings were silent, the film’s dialogue drowned by music drifting from other speakers.

Hailey hurried around the video racks.

Al Pacino continued to scream silently.

No sign of Becky.

Hailey hurried back towards the Down escalator, taking the steps practically two at a time.

She stood, panting, at the bottom.

Now what?

If Becky wasn’t inside the store, then she could truly be anywhere – hopelessly and irretrievably lost.

Dead?

Hailey tried to think. Tried to think where her daughter might have gone.

If Becky realized that she had become separated from her mother, which by now she must have, how would she react? After the initial panic, what would she do? Where would
she
search? Would she stand obediently outside the store, just waiting for Hailey? Would she ask someone to take her to the store manager, to convince the staff to put out a message over the tannoy for . . .

(
she’s five years old, for Christ’s sake! Get real. Get a fucking grip
)

Get a fucking grip.

Outside the HMV store the sight that confronted Hailey was even more daunting. The wide concourses separating the rows of shops were swarming with people. At least inside the store she had a chance of finding her daughter. If she could be sure that the little girl had stayed within the confines of HMV, Hailey could continue her relentless, desperate circuit of the display racks. Just walk and walk until she finally found Becky somewhere between Metallica and Texas. But if Becky had left the store, then it was hopeless.

Hopeless.

Pointless.

My child is dead.

Perhaps Becky had retraced their steps. Perhaps she had remembered which shops they’d been in before entering HMV, and was – even as Hailey stood helplessly outside the main entrance of the store – trailing vainly around Dorothy Perkins or Next or WHSmith.

Or not.

If you can’t think straight yourself, how do you expect your five-year-old to?

Hailey tried to remember what her instructions to Becky had been, should she ever become lost in a crowded shopping centre. Surely at some time, when the child was younger, she had been told what to do. That was what responsible parents did, wasn’t it? They took their offspring to one side, and calmly and clearly told them what to do and how to behave in any emergency.

Didn’t they
?

And while their kids were behaving calmly and collectedly, the parents sat around and waited for them to return safely. That was what happened, wasn’t it?

Hailey tried to swallow, but felt as if someone had filled her throat with chalk.

She scanned the mass of shoppers.

So many faces.

So many expressions.

Hailey wondered how many, passing her by, looked with puzzlement at her own tortured features. Not that she cared. She just wanted to scream Becky’s name. That if she bellowed her daughter’s name aloud, it would be heard in every corner of this vast shopping complex and that, as if by magic, the child would appear at her side.

Shout? Scream? Run back and forth? Retrace your steps?

She had no idea what to do.

Hailey felt like a child.

The thought of what Becky herself must be going through now only intensified that agony.

Please God, let me see that red coat.

Her voice cracking, Hailey spoke her daughter’s name.

She spoke it again, slightly louder this time.

Then again, with growing volume. She was close to shouting it now. And then, after that? Shrieking uncontrollably?

Hailey knew that she was close to breakdown. Tears of panic and fear were just seconds away. Becky was probably already sobbing somewhere else, running helplessly back and forth, calling for her mum, unable to find her in that vast amoebic flow of faceless shoppers.

My child is dead.

Hailey felt the first hot tear cut its way down her cheek, burning the skin as fiercely as if it was acid. She realized there was only one thing she could do now. And she had to do it before it was too late.

Then she saw the red coat.

T
HE CHILD WAS
standing alone, looking towards the entrance of a café.

She had her back to Hailey, who had already set off towards the little blonde figure, sometimes politely weaving in and out of knots of shoppers, sometimes barging straight through them in her haste to reach the child.

Red coat!

That was the one thing she saw: the beacon drawing her like a moth to a flame.

God, she loved that coat: that beautiful, incandescent piece of craftsmanship that was about to reunite her with her daughter. The daughter she had feared was dead! And how ridiculous that thought now seemed. How could she be dead? She’d been momentarily lost. For a moment of terror and extreme anxiety admittedly, but only a moment.

Hailey was mere feet away from the child now.

The child who was standing stock-still outside the café entrance.

That must have been the instructions Becky had been given. The instructions that Hailey herself, as a responsible parent, had at one time or another given her.

‘
If you ever get lost, stand outside a café and wait for Mum.
’

God, it was simple. So wonderfully, transparently simple.

And Becky was doing as she’d been told, and everything was all right in the whole twisted, stinking world, and there was nothing else now but to sweep her daughter up in her arms and hug her and kiss her, and they would both cry with relief and then they would laugh.

And then . . .

And then?

The child turned around.

The little girl was older than Becky by a year or two.

She stared with bewilderment at Hailey, who had already dropped to one knee close by, looking into her face – searching that alien face, that strange, unfamiliar visage.

The child took a step back, as if shocked by the sudden approach of this insane-looking woman. The kind of woman her
own
mother had always warned her to keep away from.

Hailey gazed into the child’s eyes.

Frightened eyes?

The little girl took another couple of paces back. Hailey straightened up and advanced towards her, as if reluctant to believe that this red-coated figure was not her daughter after all. The child suddenly turned and ran into the café, and Hailey could see her pushing her way through the maze of tables towards two women inside. The child was now pointing out towards Hailey, that one index finger fixing her almost accusingly. Hailey could see the women’s lips moving, could see their expressions darken as they stared angrily back at her. She turned and walked away from the café entrance, tears now flowing freely down her cheeks.

Becky . . .

The sight of that red coat had raised her hopes. The identity of its wearer had shattered them. And now she felt a sense of crushing despair unlike anything she had ever felt in her life before. Fear, anxiety, hopelessness and thousands of other emotions swirled around inside her mind, and that unthinkable, monstrous thought resurfaced with renewed venom.

My child is dead.

Hailey trudged robotically through the shopping centre, eyes occasionally flitting right or left, but there was no longer conviction in the thought that she might yet catch a glimpse of her missing daughter. And now other thoughts began to intrude with equally unwanted force.

Perhaps Becky hadn’t just wandered off on her own in the crowds. What if she had been snatched?

Whoever had taken her could have been trailing them all morning, waiting for a split second when they became separated. You couldn’t keep your eyes on your kid every second of the day, could you?

Justifying yourself now?

No one could – especially not in a crowded shopping centre. You could hold their hands, you could keep an arm around their shoulders if possible, but at some point there would be a break in contact, and in that split second it would happen. Once you were physically separated, the child could be snatched. Whisked away into the crowd, their screams muffled by a strong, determined hand across the mouth. And who else would interfere? Who would do anything more than look on with bemused or irate disinterest? And, while those blank looks registered their indifference, the child could be bundled effortlessly out of the centre and into a waiting car.

Jesus, it was all so easy. So clear.

Hailey had read about it – of parents whose children had been abducted

(
no, don’t even think about words like ‘abducted’. They carry the same terror as ‘malignant’ and ‘terminal’
)

from their very sides. Parents who, hours, days, weeks or months later, were called to the local police station or hospital to identify their dead child.

Hailey no longer bothered to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

Whoever had snatched Becky might not even have needed to wait until mother and daughter had reached the shopping centre. The kidnapper could have already been watching that morning as Hailey reversed the Astra out of the garage. He could have followed them the five or so miles to the mall, parked close by, then tailed them into the building, his eyes never leaving Becky. Just waiting for the right moment.

And now?

Was Becky already dead?

Hailey continued her trance-like journey through the shopping centre, every child she passed seemingly smiling as it clutched its parents’ hands. Laughing even.

All around her so much joy.

Inside her, pain such as she had never experienced.

But it could grow far, far worse, couldn’t it?

She passed another mother, Hailey guessed in her early twenties, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two: six or seven years younger than Hailey herself. The woman had two children with her, one in a buggy. The other was aged about three, and he was crying while his mother shouted angrily at him to stop, that he couldn’t have any sweets yet. That she’d break his toys if he didn’t shut up.

Something like that.

What did it matter what the words were?

Hailey wanted to grab that woman, to tell her she shouldn’t shout at her child, because she could lose him all too easily. Lose him for ever, as Hailey had done with her
own
child.

The thought that Becky was already dead or else in the clutches of some child-molesting psychopath was so strong now that Hailey had virtually accepted it as fact. She could imagine
no
other possibility.

All that was left was pain.