the faces of those who had beaten him to it for some clue as to how things stood.
If he was too late to change anything.
This time, pulling up hard outside Nina Collins’ flat, the prevalent expression was one of bemusement and Thorne felt relief wash over him as he sprinted up the path to be met at the door by Russell Brigstocke.
‘Nobody here,’ Brigstocke said.
The relief was short-lived. Had Garvey taken her? ‘Any signs of-?’
‘No blood. Nothing to indicate a struggle.’
‘That’s got to be good,’ Thorne said. ‘Do you think?’
Before Brigstocke could answer, there was a shout from the back of the house. A few seconds later, a plain- clothes officer wearing a stab vest came running down the hall.
‘You might want to take a look at the garden.’
While the officer was telling Brigstocke what he had found, Thorne moved quickly into the house and out through the open kitchen door. He saw it immediately. A white plastic garden chair had been taken from the end of a matching table on the patio and placed against the fence at the far end of the small garden. There were muddy footprints on the seat. Thorne bent down to take a closer look.
Three different sets.
Wary of destroying evidence, Thorne ran to grab another chair, climbed up and peered over the fence. He could see nothing but an area of scrubland backing on to a row of garages, the ground littered with shards of glass and twisted scraps of metal, an old mattress, the remains of several fires. In the far corner, a dilapidated cross-hatch fence curled around a corner and out of sight.
He jumped back down and tried to think, then reached for his phone.
When she eventually answered, Nina Collins sounded as though she was very busy, but she was still happy enough to let Thorne know what she thought of him.
He cut her off fast, while trying to keep his voice calm. He did not want to scare her, but he needed information quickly. ‘Debbie’s gone,’ he said.
‘Gone where?’
‘If you climb over the fence at the end of your garden, where do you come out?’
‘What?’
‘Where does it go, Nina?’
‘Fuck’s sake, she’s climbed over the fence?’
‘Where might Debbie go?’
There was silence for a few seconds, then Nina began to curse again. Thorne told her several times to be quiet, and when she had finished, he could hear a man’s voice in the background.
Thorne said, ‘Where would Debbie take Jason, Nina?’ He waited until he could hear her breathing and said it slowly. ‘If she was frightened. ’
‘I don’t know, Christ!’ The man was talking again, and Nina’s voice was muffled as she put her hand over the mouthpiece and told him to shut up. ‘The park, maybe.’
‘The park?’ The kid’s favourite place. ‘Are you sure?’
‘They go there all the time.’
When the man with Nina started to shout, Thorne hung up. As he turned, he saw a woman standing in the garden next door. She was cradling a child and staring at Thorne over the fence.
‘It’s like a madhouse here,’ she said.
‘Did you see anything?’
She shook her head, then nodded towards the phone in Thorne’s hand. ‘I was listening,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Thing is, there’s a quicker way.’
It had been so easy, there had seemed no other choice, as she had stumbled across the patch of wasteland beyond Nina’s garden, through the hole in the fence and out from the tangle of trees into the park. The thought of what might be behind her had driven her forward, compelled her to keep Jason moving, pulling him away from the old woman with the dog and across the football pitches towards the bridge. The certainty had been as total, as all- consuming, as the panic.
Now, though, looking down from the bridge, she was paralysed by a very different sort of terror.
Rigid with it and helpless.
In her head it had all been so simple, and so obvious. She had not chosen this way of doing it and if she’d been given any option, she would have gone about things very differently. Unable to sleep and listening for Nina’s key in the door, she’d imagined the final moments and settled on a long lie down, with crushed-up tablets and booze, and Jason pressed against her beneath the covers. Drifting away together with the radio on, or maybe the music from Jason’s video coming through from the next room. His long, warm body stretched out next to hers.
Knowing nothing. Unafraid.
Next to her now, Jason slapped his hands against the edge of the bridge, grunting with excitement. She opened her eyes and watched the broken snake of the train curl out, the tracks crackling beneath it as the final carriage rumbled on to the straight.
This would be quick, she knew that, but the drop was so terrible and for a few seconds, she was a little girl again, no older than Jason was now. Shivering, her toes curled around the edge of the high board as her father pushed her in the small of the back and told her not to be so stupid. Not to be a baby. She blinked away the tears, staring down at the black lines on the bottom of the pool, wavy beneath that solid block of blue. Leaning back against her father’s hand. Closing her eyes and swallowing back the sick feeling.
Was that what was stopping her now, pressing her down against the stone and shredding her heart like wet paper? Or, Christ… perhaps she was wrong. Was she being stupid and selfish? She had been thinking of nothing else since the police had first come to her door to warn her. Had been so sure that it was the right thing.
For both of them.
Jason could not survive without her, she’d always known that. He would have no sort of life with anyone else. Nobody but Debbie could truly understand him or make him happy. Nobody could ever love him as much as she did.
Now, though, with the bricks humming beneath her, the voice that screamed inside her head told her that she was thinking only of herself. How could she possibly know the way things would turn out for Jason? The sort of future that he might have? They were discovering stuff all the time, making medical advances and coming up with new ideas. Finding ways to get through to kids like him.
‘Puff, puff…’
Debbie dragged her head around, looked down at Jason, his lips moving, his eyes wide and bright. Fearless. Movement at the edge of her vision told her that the man who had brought them to this was no more than yards, no more than moments, away.
She could smell her own sour stink, feel the rush of wind slapping against a face she knew was blank and bloodless. Like someone who was dying.
Which, of course, she was.
It was then, as she sucked in the strength, that she heard Thorne’s voice, hoarse and desperate above the clack-and-grind of the train. He was calling her name every few seconds, first from the street and then from the path, up and away to her right.
His timing is as bad as his jokes, she thought, turning back.
Closing her eyes, her fingers reaching to adjust the tight, thin straps of a long-lost swimsuit.
Her father’s hand in the small of her back.
FORTY-THREE
Thorne had followed the instructions that the woman in the garden had given him. He had rushed back through the house and out of the front door, ignoring the looks of those he all but flattened and the questions as he legged it
