Blink(85)

He throws his head back and screams and Harriet smashes the hammer into his face. He falls to the floor. She hits him again on the skull as he falls and then she turns to me, the hammer raised.

I cower, holding up my hand uselessly as protection.

‘Shall we have a cup of tea now the unpleasantness is out of the way, Toni?’ she asks, calmly. ‘Then I’ll show you where the smell is coming from.’





75





Present Day





Toni





I sit, dazed, on the couch, staring at the bodies of Tara and Phil. In films, people who look dead suddenly jump up and start throttling people again. But these two don’t look like they’re getting up any time soon.

Was Tara telling the truth? Is Evie still alive?

I breathe in and out. Harriet’s right, you get used to the smell.

I can hear Harriet pottering around in the kitchen. She really is making tea. Everything seems so ordinary, but I can’t move.

I hear the back kitchen door smash open, hear yelling, shouting. Suddenly, the room is flooded with uniforms and I feel myself being led away, outside into the fresh air.

I look up into the face of DI Manvers.

‘Toni, are you OK? Did she hurt you?’

‘You were right,’ I say quietly. ‘She’s harmless. Just mad as a box of frogs.’

‘I was wrong.’ He shakes his head. ‘She’s murdered Joanne Deacon. Suffocated her in her hospital bed.’

I receive the news, understand it. I don’t feel anything.

‘Toni, look at me.’

I do.

‘We have her. We have Evie.’

The world stops turning.

‘She’s fine,’ he says softly. ‘She’s not hurt, she knows she’s coming home.’

I begin to softly sob. ‘Have they hurt her, is she hurt?’

‘Evie has been well cared for.’

‘It’s true,’ I say faintly, feeling woozy.

‘We’re going to take you home now to pack an overnight bag and then you’re going to see your daughter.’

‘Thank you,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Wait, please!’ Harriet Watson shouts, breaking away from the police officers trying to restrain her and rushing into the room. ‘I want to show Toni the smell. I want you to see it’s not Evie. I would never hurt Evie.’

DI Manvers gives his grudging permission for Harriet to lead us upstairs. As we move upwards, the smell grows stronger.

‘Jeez, I’m gonna throw up,’ I hear one of the officers say. ‘I know this smell, it’s not going to be pretty.’

We wait at the bottom of the second flight of stairs while Harriet and DI Manvers climbed to the top.

‘I want her to see,’ Harriet says.

DI Manvers nods and I follow them up.

Harriet produces a key from her pocket and inserts it into the door. She pushes it open and we stagger back from the stench. Bluebottles buzz frantically at the window, more than I’ve ever seen in my life. The officers at the bottom of the stairs clutch their noses.

‘It’s Mother,’ Harriet says softly. ‘You see, she refuses to come downstairs when she’s nursing Darcy.’



* * *



Much later, on the way to the unit, DI Manvers explains a few things.

‘Darcy was Harriet’s sister, born before Harriet. She died from cot death when she was just six months old. The old woman kept the baby swaddled and wrapped in a bottom drawer all those years. Even when they moved, Darcy went with them.’

I shudder. Harriet’s rotting mother had been sitting in a rocking chair, nursing the skeleton of a baby. It’s a sight I’ll never forget.

‘She’d lost her mind, plagued Harriet to get the room prepared so she could nurse her baby. Then she refused to come out. One morning, Harriet found her dead in the chair and . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘Inexplicably, she just left her there.’

He also tells me that Dale Gregory has been in touch. He’d seen the newspaper reports about Jo Deacon. When she’d resigned and they cleared her filing cabinet, Dale had discovered my ‘lost’ purse buried in there.

‘Apparently he’d called at your house with flowers and to tell you about the purse because they’d all blamed you at the time, for being careless. But when you weren’t able to speak to him, he decided not to burden you with the knowledge, with everything else you were dealing with. It didn’t seem that important back then.’

I don’t know what to say. I remember Mum turning Dale away at the door during the weeks, even months, when I just felt incapable of facing anyone.

Jo must have taken the purse for the cash in there but also to make me look scatty and disorganised. As if that would count against me when Evie went missing.

But I swiftly push all thoughts of that from my mind. I can only think about one thing, and that’s the little girl I lost, who is inside the low concrete building in front of us.

‘I know all this is hard to take in. And I know Harriet Watson left Evie unattended and allowed her to be abducted, but I just wanted you to know something – she’s the reason Evie is back with us today.’

I look at him.