Her legs felt weak suddenly. She balled her hands, pressing them against her mouth, sobbing hysterically. ‘Please find my daughter. I’ll admit to anything, I don’t care, just please find her.’
She looked imploringly at the black man, who had a sympathetic face, then at the cold carapace of the German woman, then at the Detective Superintendent.
‘She’s dying! Please, you have to understand! We have a ten-minute window to find her, or the hospital will give her liver to someone else. Don’t you understand? If she doesn’t get that liver today, she will die.’
‘Where have you looked?’ Marlene said stiffly.
‘Everywhere – all over.’
‘Outside, also?’
She shook her head. ‘No – I-’
‘I’ll call the helicopter,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Can you give me a description of your daughter? What is she wearing?’
Lynn told him, then he brought his radio to his ear. After a brief exchange, he lowered it.
‘They spotted a teenage girl who matches that description getting into a taxi about fifteen minutes ago.’
Lynn let out a shocked wail. ‘A taxi? Where? Where was – where was it going?’
‘It was a Brighton taxi – a Streamline,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘We should be able to find out, but it’s going to take more than ten minutes.’
Shaking her head in bewilderment, Lynn said, ‘Fifteen minutes ago, in a taxi?’
Branson nodded.
Lynn thought for a moment. ‘Look – look, she’s probably gone back to our house. Please let me go there. I’ll come back – I’ll come straight back, I promise.’
‘Mrs Beckett,’ Roy Grace said, ‘you are under arrest, and you are going to be taken from here to the Custody Centre at Brighton.’
‘My daughter is dying! She can’t survive. She will die if she doesn’t get to hospital today. I – have to be with her – I-’
‘If you like we’ll have someone go there and see how she is.’
‘It’s not that simple. She has got to go to hospital. Today.’
‘Is there anyone else who can take her?’ Grace asked.
‘My husband – my ex-husband.’
‘How can we contact him?’
‘He’s on a ship – at sea – a dredger. I – can’t remember – what his hours are – when they’re ashore.’
Grace nodded. ‘Can you give us his phone number? We’ll try him.’
‘Can’t I speak to him myself?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘Can’t I just make – I thought I could make – one phone call?’
‘After you are booked in.’
She looked at both men in despair. Grace looked back at her with compassion but remained firm. She gave them Mal’s mobile number. Glenn Branson wrote it on his pad, then immediately dialled it.
121
There were only two things to read in the room. One, pinned to a green door with a small window in it, said, NO MOBILE PHONES TO BE USED IN THE CUSTODY AREA. The other read, ALL DETAINED PERSONS WILL BE THOROUGHLY SEARCHED AS DIRECTED BY THE CUSTODY OFFICER. IF YOU HAVE ANY PROHIBITED ITEMS ON YOUR PERSON OR IN YOUR PROPERTY TELL THE CUSTODY OFFICER OR YOUR ARRESTING OFFICER NOW.
Lynn had read them both about a dozen times each. She had been in this grim room, with its bare white walls and bare brown floor, seated on the rock-hard bench that felt like it was made of stone for over an hour now, sustained by two small packets of sugar she had been given.
She had never felt so terrible in her life. None of the pain of her divorce came close to what she was experiencing inside her mind and her heart now.
Every few minutes the young police officer who had accompanied her here from Wiston Grange glanced at her and gave her a helpless smile. They had nothing to say to each other. She’d made her point over and over to him, and he understood it, but he could do nothing.
Suddenly his phone beeped. He answered it. After a few moments, during which he gave monosyllabic responses, he held the phone away from his ear and turned to Lynn. ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Branson – he was with you earlier, at Wiston?’
She nodded.
‘He’s with your ex-husband now, at your house. There’s no sign of your daughter.’
‘Where is she?’ Lynn said weakly. ‘Where?’
The officer looked at her helplessly.
‘Could I speak to Mal – my ex?’
‘I’m sorry, madam, I cannot permit that.’ Then he suddenly pulled his phone closer to his ear and raised a finger.
Turning to Lynn, he said, ‘They’ve got Streamline Taxis on the phone.’
He listened for some moments and then said, into the phone, ‘I will relay that, sir, if you hold a moment.’
He turned to Lynn again. ‘They’ve been in contact with the driver who picked up a young lady from Wiston Grange about two hours ago – answering to the description of your daughter. He said he was concerned about her state of health and wanted to take her to hospital, but she refused. He dropped her off at a farm in Woodmancote, near Henfield.’
Lynn frowned. ‘What was the address?’
‘Apparently it was just a track – that’s where she insisted on getting out.’
And then the penny dropped.
‘Oh Jesus!’ she said. ‘I know where she is. I know exactly where she is. Please tell Mal – he’ll understand.’ Fighting tears again, she sniffed, her voice jerky with sobs. ‘Tell him she’s gone home.’
122
Shortly after four o’clock, in the failing daylight, the sky was leaden with sleet and Mal needed to put the MG’s headlamps on. The deeply rutted track, which was mostly mud peppered with flint stones, had a heavy coating of leaves from its overhanging trees, and he drove slowly, not wanting to ground his exhaust, or kick up dirt at the police car following behind him.
He was trying to think how many years it had been since he’d last come up here. They’d sold when Lynn and he divorced, but two years later he’d seen it was on the market once more, and had brought Jane up here in the hope of buying it again. But she took one look at it and rejected the idea flat. It was far too isolated for her. She said she would be terrified on her own.
He had to agree that she was right. You either liked isolation or you didn’t.
They passed the main farmhouse, occupied by an elderly farmer and his wife, who had been their only neighbours, then drove on for another half-mile, past a cluster of tumble-down barns, a partially dismembered tractor and an old trailer, then wound on into the woods.
He was worried sick about Caitlin. What the hell mess had Lynn got into? Presumably it had to do with the liver she was trying to buy. He still had not told Jane about the money, but at this moment, that was a long way from his mind.
The police would not tell him anything, only that Caitlin had run off and her mother was desperately worried about her failing health – and the opportunity of a liver transplant, which had come up and she was in danger of missing.
A ghostly slab of white shone ahead, as they approached a clearing. It was Winter Cottage, once their dream home. And the end of the track.
He angled the car so that the lights were fully on the little house. In truth, behind the ivy cladding was an ugly building, a squat, square two-storey affair, cheaply built in the early 1950s out of breeze blocks to house a herdsman and his family. In the farming slump of the late 1990s they’d been made redundant and the farmer had put the place on the market to raise some cash, which was when he and Lynn had bought it.
It was the position that had appealed to them both. Utter tranquillity, with a glorious view of the Downs to the south, and yet it was only fifteen minutes’ drive to the centre of Brighton.
From the looks of it, the place was derelict now. He knew the couple of Londoners they’d sold to had big plans for the place, but they had then emigrated to Australia, which was why it had gone back on the market. It had clearly not been touched for years. Maybe no one else had come along with the cash or the vision. It certainly needed plenty of both.
He grabbed his torch off the passenger seat and climbed out, leaving the headlights on. The two police officers, DS Glenn Branson and DS Bella Moy, climbed out of their car too, each holding a switched-on torch, and walked up to him.
‘Don’t suppose you get many Jehovah’s Witnesses around here,’ joked Branson.
‘That’s for sure,’ Mal said.
Then he led the way, along the brick path he had laid himself, up to the front door and around the side of the house, under a holly archway that was so overgrown all three of them had to duck to avoid the prickles, and through into the back garden. The brick path continued past a rotting barbecue deck, and then on, along the side of a lawn that had once been his pride and joy and was now just a wilderness, through an almost-closed gap in a tall yew hedge, into what Caitlin used to call her Secret Garden.
‘I can understand why you needed to come with us, sir,’ Bella Moy said.
Malcolm smiled thinly. He felt a tightening in his gullet as the beam of his torch struck the wooden Wendy house. Then he stopped. Nervous suddenly.
In a way, he was surprised it was still there, and in another way, he wished it wasn’t. It was too much of a reminder, suddenly, of the pain of his split with Lynn.
The little house was made from logs and supported on stubby brick legs at each corner. He had rebuilt it himself as a labour of love for Caitlin. There was a door in the middle, with steps up to it, and a window either side. There was still glass in both of them, although the beam of his torch could barely penetrate the coating of dust through to the interior. He was pleased to see that the asphalt roof was still in place, although curling at the edges.
He tried to call her name, but his throat was too dry and nothing came out. Flanked by the two police officers, he walked forward, reached the steps, turned the wobbly handle and pushed open the door.
