thought of the last few days. Rain, sleet, snow. There would have been water running down the walls. He would have been able to lick it like an animal. She thought of him again, that first sight, his emaciated, bruised body, the eyes open but unseeing, his mouth drawn back in fear. That was the worst. At first he hadn’t realized he was being rescued. He thought they were coming back for him. And there was something else to think about. Where was Kathy? Did she have a damp wall somewhere?
‘What he must have gone through,’ said Mr Faraday. He leaned towards Frieda. ‘Had he been – was he – you know?’
Frieda shook her head. ‘It’s been a terrible, terrible thing,’ she said. ‘But I think he thought of him as his child.’
‘Bastard,’ said Mr Faraday. ‘Have they caught the one who did it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Frieda.
‘He deserves to be buried alive, like my son was.’
A junior doctor came into the waiting room. She was young and very beautiful, with skin like a peach and blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail; her face glowed. And Frieda knew it was going to be good news.
They knelt on either side of the bed, under the brutal lights and among the hanging tubes. They held his bandaged hands and said his name and crooned nonsense words, as if he was a newborn baby. Poppet and sweetheart and muffin and Mattie-boy and pigeon. His eyes were still shut but his face had lost that deathly tinge, its clayey whiteness. The rigidity of his limbs had softened. Mrs Faraday was sobbing and talking at the same time. Her words of love came out in gulps. He was bleary and barely responsive, as if he had been woken in the middle of the night out of a deep sleep.
‘Matthew, Matthew,’ murmured Mrs Faraday, almost nuzzling him. He said something and she leaned in even closer. ‘What’s that?’ He said it again. She looked round, puzzled.
‘He said “Simon”. What does that mean?’
‘It’s their name for him,’ said Frieda. ‘I think they gave him a new name.’
‘What?’ Mrs Faraday started to cry.
DC Munster drew Mr Faraday aside, then leaned over the bed and started to talk to Matthew. He held a photograph of Kathy Ripon in front of the boy’s face. His eyes weren’t able to focus properly.
‘It’s not fair,’ said Mrs Faraday. ‘He’s terribly ill. He can’t do this. It’s bad for him.’
A nurse said that the child psychiatrist was on her way but she’d phoned to say she was stuck in traffic. Frieda heard DC Munster trying to explain that they’d got their son back but other parents were still missing their daughter and Mr Faraday said something angry in response and Mrs Faraday was crying harder than ever.
Frieda pressed her fingers to her temples. She tried to shut out the noise so she could think. Matthew had been snatched from his parents, hidden away, punished, starved, told that his mother was no longer his mother and his father no longer his father, told that he wasn’t himself but someone else – a boy called Simon – and then shut away, left to die, naked and alone. Now he lay blinking in an over-lit room, with strange faces looming at him out of his waking nightmare, shouting words he didn’t understand. He was a little boy, hardly more than a toddler still. But he had survived. When nobody could save him he had saved himself. What stories had he told himself as he lay in the dark?
She moved to the other side of the bed, across from Mrs Faraday.
‘May I?’ Frieda said.
Mrs Faraday looked at her numbly but she didn’t resist. Frieda moved her face close to Matthew’s, so she could talk in a whisper. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re home. You’ve been rescued.’ She saw a slight flicker of his eyes. ‘You’re safe. You’ve escaped from the witch’s house.’
He made a sound but she couldn’t decipher it.
‘Who was there with you?’ she said. ‘Who was with you in the witch’s house?’
Matthew’s eyes suddenly clicked open, like a doll’s.
‘Busybody,’ he said. ‘Poky-nose.’
Frieda felt as if Dean was in the room, as if Matthew was a ventriloquist’s dummy and he was speaking.
‘Where is she?’ she asked. ‘Where did they put her? The busybody?’
‘Took away,’ he said, in his husk of a voice. ‘In the dark.’
Then he started sobbing, twisting his body back and forward. Mrs Faraday gathered up her son and held him, twitching and retching, against her breast.
‘That’s all right,’ said Frieda.
‘What’s that mean?’ asked Munster.
‘It doesn’t sound good. Not at all.’
Frieda walked out through the waiting room into a corridor. She looked around. An orderly was pushing an old woman in a wheelchair. ‘Is there anywhere I can get some water?’ Frieda asked.
‘There’s a McDonald’s down by the main entrance,’ the orderly said.
She had only just started walking down the long corridor when there was a shout from behind her. It was Munster. He ran towards her. ‘I just got a call,’ he said. ‘The boss wants to see you.’
‘What for?’
‘They found the woman.’
‘Kathy?’ Relief tore through her, making her feel dizzy.
‘No. The wife,’ said Munster. ‘Terry Reeve. There’s a car for you downstairs.’
Chapter Forty-three
Yvette Long looked at Karlsson and frowned.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Your tie,’ she said. ‘It’s not straight.’ She leaned forward and adjusted it.
‘You need to look your best for the cameras,’ she said. ‘You’re a hero. And Commissioner Crawford’s going to be there. His assistant just phoned. He’s very pleased with you. The press conference is going to be a big one. They’ve got an overflow hall.’
His mobile vibrated on the table. His ex-wife had left several messages asking him when the hell he was going to collect his children, each one angrier than the one before.
‘We’ve got the little boy back,’ said Karlsson. ‘That’s all they really care about. Where’s Terry Reeve?’
‘She’s just arrived. They’ve put her downstairs.’
‘Has she said anything about Kathy Ripon?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I want two officers with her every second.’
He picked up his phone and wrote a text message:
Sorry. Call soon
pressed ‘Send’. Perhaps she would hear the news and understand, but he knew it didn’t work like that: there were other people’s children, and then there were your own. An officer put her head round the door and said that Dr Klein had arrived. Karlsson told the officer to send her straight in. When Frieda came in, he was startled by the fierce gleam in her eyes and recognized in it his own elated weariness, which made the idea of sleep impossible.
‘How is he?’ he said.
‘He’s alive,’ said Frieda. ‘He’s with his parents.’
‘I mean, will he recover?’
‘How do I know?’ said Frieda. ‘Young children are surprisingly resilient. That’s what the textbooks say.’
‘And you did it. You found him.’
‘I found one, and I gave one away,’ said Frieda. ‘Forgive me if I don’t dance with joy. You’ve got Terry Reeve.’
‘She’s downstairs.’
