Local Gone Missing(91)

I had to be sure. I set up a new Yahoo! account—calling myself Addison1999—and contacted him anonymously. And he replied a couple of days later, asking for a meeting. And I knew. On the Sunday, I got the e-mail telling me to be in the car park. And I wasn’t sure at first. But I told myself it was in a public place where I’d be safe. And I wanted him to know he’d been found out.

That’s all. But he never came.





BEFORE





Seventy


SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1999



Twenty years earlier





Birdie


Birdie was laughing at how clever she’d been when she saw the child in the doorway. It made her scream. A spooky child. Just standing there looking at her.

“Christ, what are you doing here?” she shouted.

But a man suddenly appeared and ran past the child and into the room. It was all going to shit.

Birdie had been stealing from her dad for months. First it was the occasional tenner, a packet of cigarettes, a bottle of Scotch. It’d been a game, really. She’d loved seeing how easy it was to trick him. He didn’t know her—he pretended he did with all that “darling Birdie” stuff but he’d lied to her and Mum. He needed to know he couldn’t just buy his way back into her life. But she’d liked the lovely things in the cabinets. Loved the mistletoe necklace he’d given her. So she tried it. A small silver rabbit. He’d never miss that. And she’d taken more. One thing at a time.

Until she’d overheard her father talking to someone on the phone while she waited to be taken out for a meal.

“Is it set up for the Saturday before Christmas? I’ll sort out the alarms when I leave for the dinner. He’ll have time. Tell him not to take the pictures. Harder to shift without drawing attention. Don’t screw this up!”

She’d known he was planning a burglary. An insurance fraud. Still conning people.

So she’d decided to stage her own. She’d done her research—seen how easy it was to sell pretty things. She’d sold a small silver pillbox she’d already taken. It had taken only twenty-four hours to find a buyer—a man in Germany. She’d DHLed it with a receipt signed with a scrawled “C Williams.”

Her new boyfriend had been a bit worried about it but she told Adam it was a practical joke on her Dad—she’d take it all back in the morning. She hadn’t needed to use the codes she’d found in her father’s desk to open the cabinets. The alarms were already switched off. They took everything they could fit in their pockets. She’d already rented a locker at a corner shop down one of the backstreets to stash it.

She and her boyfriend had still been laughing when they got to the shop. It was he who’d suggested going back for more.

The last thing she remembered was the child’s face. The spooky child staring at her through the plastic bag. And reaching for her necklace.





NOW





Seventy-one


TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2019





Dee


We’ve caught an early coach to Truro. Cal thinks we’re going on holiday. He was excited when I told him, then went quiet. “What about Dad?” he whispered.

“Dad is going to try to come and join us later,” I said. One more lie among so many can’t hurt. We just need to get away.

He falls asleep after Stonehenge and I sit back and try to empty my head. But it’s all still there. Of course it is.

I can see myself slipping out of the house when I heard Liam leave. He’d whispered to see if I was awake. Whether I wanted to go and see the fire at the Old Vicarage.

I’d just pretended I was asleep. Couldn’t even speak to him, I was so furious. Running around the town, sightseeing other people’s misery, when our lives were falling to pieces in front of us. The landlord wanted to evict us—throw us out on the streets—because Charlie wouldn’t pay what he owed us. He was still ruining my life all these years later. And I hadn’t been able to tell him. Why hadn’t he come that night? He must have chickened out.

I don’t know how long I lay there after Liam had gone. But I suddenly got out of bed and started pulling on my clothes. If Charlie wouldn’t come to me, I’d go to him. I could be there and back before Liam got home.

I know who you are, Charlie. And where you are.

It was breathing I’d heard that Sunday when I looked through the letter box. Tall Trees wasn’t haunted. It’d been him hiding.



* * *



—

I drove halfway to the house, left the van outside a weekender’s place where I clean, and walked the rest. I didn’t want to alert Pauline—she might not have taken her sleeping pill that night. I’d got a key to the back door of the big house—it was on the key ring that Pauline had given me originally. I’m sure she didn’t even realize. It’d taken me a while to work out which door it fitted but I’d got to it eventually. But I didn’t need to use it. The door was on the latch. I pushed it open and used my mobile phone torch to light the way.

I can still hear the scuffling sound I heard that night, when I told myself it was only mice. You can do vermin. I decided to start at the top of the house—that’s where I would hide—and began picking my way up the wrecked stairs, listening to myself breathe.