The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(28)

She heard him shuffling into his jacket and the door closing behind him with a soft thud.

Sitting in the kitchen, listening to the rain, the light reflecting off the dark windows, she sipped her cold tea, wishing it was alcohol, and sifted through the file on the table. When all the pages were messed up again, she felt a little more comfortable. Just a little bit.

And she knew she needed help.





The Mid Seventies





The Child





With a shove to the small of my back, I am propelled into the small square room. The sound of the door being locked behind me causes my heart to leap in my quivering chest. A woman lies on the bed, bound in an off-white thing that looks like a sweater with the sleeves crossed over the chest and tied behind her back. Only it’s not a sweater.

With small steps, I shuffle forward, one foot at a time. Slowly. The shoulders of the woman on the bed twitch. When I am close enough to reach out and touch her, she screams and leaps up like a cat. I whimper and retreat.

‘So she didn’t take you! Ha! Figures. Who’d want a creature like you? No one. That’s who.’ She doubles over with laughter and falls from the bed to the ice-cold concrete floor.

I rear up against the door and cry out.

‘Let me out! Please!’

My tiny fists pound the door, but my voice reverberates off the stone walls and hangs in the air as if suspended by spider’s webs.

No one comes.

‘It was an accident,’ the woman says. ‘Oh, I know they’re saying I purposely set the house on fire. But why would I do that? I had the two of you. Tried to love you, I did, you ungrateful brat.’

She shuffles closer to me on her buttocks and snarls like a rabid dog. Like a desperate chained-up dog trying to escape. She is not like my mother at all. Though I know that is who she is.

I cry out once more. Turn my face towards the door to blot out the sight of the foam oozing from the side of her mouth.

‘I want to go back to my own bed. Please…’

‘I want to go back to my own bed,’ the woman mimics, before her voice convulses in a long cough. ‘Come here and help me, sweetie pie. Open the buckles. You know how to do that, don’t you? I showed you once, didn’t I? With the buckles on your shoes.’

My whimpers dissolve into choking sobs.

‘Please… I want to go home.’

‘This room is soundproofed. No one can hear you, my little baby. Only me.’

‘I w-want to g-go home.’

‘This is your home now. Maybe I will finish what I started, and this time I just might kill you.’

Another strangled laugh. More foam. A gurgle. Broken breaths.

I stare at the steel door without turning around.

I remain standing facing the door until someone comes and opens it.

Twenty-four hours later.





Day Three





Twenty-Four





The clock on the old whitewashed wall showed the men it was 5 a.m.

‘They’ll be here soon,’ the older man said.

‘I’m a bit nervous,’ replied the younger one. ‘Such an awkward time to have a meeting.’

‘Have a pull on this. I made it extra strong.’

‘I will. What’s the point if we can’t test the product?’

‘Now you’re sucking diesel.’

‘I hope no one found out.’ The young man took a long drag and let the familiar feeling float through his veins. He took two more drags, the taper desiccating between his bloodstained fingers. ‘We’ve done what we were asked. I don’t see the point of this meeting.’

‘Will you shut your gob?’

‘But the old woman. That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?’

‘I think it might’ve been part of the plan all along. Can’t bring her back to life, can we? She was old enough to kick the bucket so stop going on about it.’

The young man laughed nervously. Had he really signed up for all of this? Once you’re in, there’s no backing out; that was what his friend had told him. All the same, he had never been that violent before. It must be the drugs. Not him. Someone else had inhabited his body. An alien. Yeah, that was what it was. A big green alien.

‘What’re you laughing at, you eejit?’ the older man said.

The young man kept laughing. After a while, his companion joined in.

They were laughing so loudly they didn’t hear the door open, or see the figure in black clothing enter, a knife clutched tightly in one hand and a jerrycan of petrol in the other.





Twenty-Five





Emma couldn’t hear any rain. The house seemed to be resting in silence. She struggled to her knees and peered out through the slit in the curtains. A pall of smoke was rising far in the distance, a grey mist rooting it close to the earth.

She wished she could go out and walk, allow the softness of the morning to fog up her spectacles and her feet to splash in puddles. But she wasn’t five any more and she was stuck in Natasha’s house. Sitting back down on the bed, she dragged the duvet to her chin and remembered the rows she’d had with her mother. About her dad, and her granny. That woman could shout when she wanted. And the rows she’d overheard. The words that had been flung to the four walls. Words that had seeped through bricks and mortar and settled in her brain.