Where the Missing Go(86)

And of course there was Heath, all the time, pouring poison in my family’s ears.

That’s another thing that’s come out. After I’d overdosed, I’d given permission for him, as my GP, to liaise with my family. He’d said it was a good idea. And I’d never rescinded it, I had never even thought. So he’d been hiding behind a veil of concern, updating them on my mental health, encouraging them to check in with me and him – in case, say, I reacted badly to Mark’s new girlfriend, had they heard about that, actually? Not to alarm them, oh, not at all, but he did have a few worries …

He was finding out what I was up to and, later, laying the ground. So if something were ever to happen to me …

Everyone trusts a doctor, after all.

People have suggested, tactfully, that I might have been mistaken: that I could be reading too much into my dreams. And maybe I’ll never know for sure. That dark figure I’d dream about, leaning over my bed … The police said that it would have been very unlikely, that it was too big a risk for him to take, to enter my house more than once.

But I know. I remember that night I woke up to find that presence, waiting, breathing, on the other side of my bedroom door – expecting me to be asleep. He’d told me to keep taking the pills.

Heath used to park up in that back road behind Parklands, they think, to go and see Sophie, using that cut-through that Nicholls mentioned that time I saw him outside. And if anyone did see the doctor’s car parked in a road nearby, well, nothing to worry about, GPs do house calls at odd times.

They think he cut himself a copy of the keys to Parklands long ago. Perhaps even when Nancy lived there: a teenage boy lifting his mum or step-dad’s keys from the dish in the hall one quiet afternoon.

‘It was a strong cover,’ said Nicholls, bringing me back to the bright morning. ‘But when I learned that you’d reported another breakin, I kept going – I told you I’d look into it. Finally, we got the phone records. It takes weeks, you see.’

‘And?’

‘And the call was untraceable, as I expected. It was just a mobile number that called you at the helpline, at the time that you said. The phone wasn’t registered to anyone, but that’s not surprising, if it’s just pay as you go. It had been used fairly locally – the call had gone through a mobile phone tower not too far from here. But they cover a wide area.’

‘The coverage is bad out here,’ I added.

‘Still, something just felt wrong. You see, the phone had only ever been used that night: two calls, just a few moments apart.’

‘The test call, to check I was there—’

‘And then Sophie was on the line. I was thinking about it, actually, when your sister called me to say she couldn’t find you, and I came straight round. But I’m sorry. I was almost too late.’

‘I felt like you were always warning me off,’ I said.

‘A bit. It’s easier to investigate without …’ He trailed off. ‘But it wasn’t just that. I was uneasy about this one. It reminded me too much of the past. But I thought I was letting it distract me from the task at hand.’

I changed the subject. ‘And you hadn’t seen him – Heath – since school?’

‘No. Even then I could barely have told you his name, to be honest, let alone where he grew up. I didn’t know about him and Nancy. No one did.’

Other stuff has started to come out now, sometimes in the papers, sometimes the police let me know. After medical school Heath went abroad, then he’d moved around, losing his soft Cheshire accent in the process, it seems. There were complaints filed, suggestions of inappropriate relationships with a couple of young patients. Overly friendly. But then he’d move on, to another locum position. When he eventually settled back in Amberton, he had kept himself to himself. So no one at the surgery would have thought to check if one of the quiet young doctor’s elderly patients was his mother – and that was only an irregularity, anyway.

But then Heath learned that Nicholls was looking into Sophie: I’d told him myself. And I bet he remembered him. It must have felt like the threat of discovery was getting too close.

‘How is Mrs Green doing?’ Nicholls asked, breaking into my thoughts.

‘Lily’s OK, I think. It’s hard to tell, but she seems much brighter. Clearer.’

We don’t really know what Heath intended with the drugs he gave her. He’d said that whenever she felt a bit lost or forgetful, she should take a pill. They kept her confused, certainly. But perhaps she’d been harder to manage than Heath thought. Asking too many questions about the little boy, or maybe my friendship worried him – what might she let slip? How easy it would have been for her to get mixed up, and take too much of her powerful medicine.

Because he’d been putting out feelers, they say, about locum work outside Cheshire, they think he was going to start again somewhere, with Teddy. They searched his house, a neat semi on the edges of Amberton, and found some of the stuff from the attic: Teddy’s clothes and toys, in bags in the loft.

It took a while to find out who Lily thought Teddy actually was – I didn’t want to upset her.

‘Such a good boy,’ she’d said, a little wistfully. ‘A good boy, underneath.’ She was talking about Heath. He’d told her that Teddy’s mother was a vulnerable patient, who just needed a little extra help looking after him. But she couldn’t tell anyone. ‘The authorities, you know,’ she told me, her eyes owlish. ‘They might take him away.’