The Silent Ones: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller(4)

I stare at my phone screen again, at the missed calls that could be from school. But then that theory implodes as I remember with a jolt that Maddy’s not even at school, because they’re having yet another of those blasted staff training days.

I dropped her off at Mum’s this morning to spend the day with her cousin, Chloe’s daughter Brianna. It’s a measure of where my head is at the moment, that it slipped my mind at all.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

Someone is hammering on the side door of the unit that we always keep locked.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

They knock harder still.

‘Police! Open up,’ a deep male voice yells.

I rush out of the kitchenette to find Chloe already standing by the door, her hand pressed up against her throat. Our eyes meet, and in that single glance, the shadow of a thousand terrible scenarios flashes between us.

BANG, BANG, BANG.

The noise is deafening, urgent. It infuses my entire body with a primal sense of terror that sets every nerve ending on edge.

‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ I call, rushing over to the door. My hands shake as I fiddle clumsily with the latch. When the door flies open, I stagger back.

There are two uniformed officers there, both male and wearing grim expressions.

‘Mrs Juliet Fletcher?’

I nod, and they look at Chloe questioningly.

‘Chloe Voce,’ she offers faintly.

‘We need you both to come with us to the station,’ the taller one says, looking around the interior of the unit. ‘I take it you have the means to secure this place?’

‘Yes, but… what is it?’ I say. ‘What’s happened?’

‘There’s been a serious incident and we need you both to come with us right away.’ The other officer sounds as if he’s been rehearsing the line.

‘Why both of us?’ Chloe says, and I can hear the fear crackling through her words like a burning wire. ‘Is it our parents? Has something happened to Mum or Dad?’

‘Is it our girls?’ I say, my voice faltering.

‘It’s your daughters, ma’am,’ the taller officer confirms. ‘There’s been a serious incident and we need you to come with us to the station.’

‘Oh God!’

Chloe gasps and I press my back against the wall. An unwanted vision of Maddy running into the road, chasing a ball into the path of a racing vehicle, clouds my mind.

‘Are they… are the girls OK? Has there been a car accident?’ I don’t want to hear the answer, but I have to know.

‘It’s not a car accident,’ the shorter officer confirms.

‘So nobody’s hurt?’ Chloe blows out air. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘Your daughters aren’t injured, but as I’ve already said, there has been a serious incident. Rest assured you’ll be told everything when you get to the station.’ He coughs. ‘I’m afraid we can’t answer any more questions at this point in time.’

The officers glance at each other, and I feel a blistering heat settle over my chest. It creeps up into my neck and face and scorches my flesh from the inside.

Whatever has happened, it’s bad. I can feel the weight of it bearing down on us. Police officers aren’t usually this brusque or evasive. Especially where kids are concerned.

Chloe grips my forearm as I reach wordlessly for the key hanging on the wall hook. She’s blinking back tears of the same raw panic and dread that are currently forming a huge knot in the pit of my stomach.

But I can’t say anything to make her feel better, because as I grab my handbag, pull the door closed and check that it’s locked, I somehow instinctively know, deep in my bones, that once we leave the lock-up unit and go with them, things will never be the same again.





Two





The interior of the police car is stifling, and the pungent odour of hot plastic from the equipment-crowded dashboard irritates my throat as I try to take calming breaths.

The driver opens the two front windows slightly before driving out of the industrial park. Our lock-up unit is so close to home, I walk there and back every day. It takes me no more than fifteen minutes each way.

My throat and mouth feel bone dry and my head is thrumming with a thousand possibilities, none of which make any sense. It’s hard to reconcile what the officers are saying: that the girls aren’t hurt but they’ve both been involved in a serious incident.

Relief and panic squashed together in one sentence.

I text Tom rather than call him. It’s a big day for him, and I’m hoping this problem with Maddy can be resolved quickly.

On way to police station… Maddy ok but involved in some kind of incident. Will call when I know more but come if you can x

The car passes the familiar streets my sister and I used to play on during our own childhood. We move smoothly past the village library, staffed mainly by volunteers and open only three days a week, where I’d go to research my homework. Further down the road, the primary school sits neatly fenced and squat in its position set back from the street. It’s the safe place our girls would usually have been on a Monday afternoon.

The police radio crackles periodically with unfathomable voices, and each time it does so, Chloe squeezes my hand and I look at her and press my lips together.

‘It’ll be OK,’ she mouths, just like she’d reassure me when we were kids if Mum was on the warpath or I’d lost something I needed for school.