Dark Place to Hide (29 page)

‘It’s not just that. It’s…a personal matter.’

He steps out of the line of pedestrian traffic and beckons me to follow him. I don’t want to keep him – I know he’s busy.

He lowers his voice. ‘Is everything all right?’ I’m touched he’s taking the trouble.

‘Not exactly.’ I let out a noisy breath. ‘My wife has gone missing and – er, well, until she comes back there doesn’t seem much point in…you know.’

His mouth drops open. ‘
Missing
. No. I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘How did…how long…is she…?’ He doesn’t seem to know where to start.

‘It’s a police matter now. It’s all very distressing.’

‘I can imagine.’ He shakes his head and fiddles with the edge of the folders. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says again. He looks at me imploringly. ‘If there’s anything I can do…’ There’s an awkward silence. ‘And do consider continuing the treatment. If you don’t it will mean starting over again – and that would cause a further delay in…’

‘I know. Thank you. I’ll let you know.’

Tara joins me seconds after he’s gone.

‘Who was that?’

‘Dr Swann – my specialist.’

We watch as he’s almost mown down by a trolley piled high with towels. ‘Looks frazzled – you’ve definitely decided about the treatment?’

‘Yeah.’

She rubs my arm. ‘Do you think he’s any good? In case you change your mind, I mean.’

‘Seems to have a good track record – a lot of research behind him. I found an article he wrote in
The Lancet
before I had my original tests.’

‘Checking up on him?’

‘Sort of…just wanted to make sure I was in good hands.’ Swann scuttles into the distance. ‘I think he’s rushed off his feet, poor guy.’

‘Who isn’t, in a place like this?’

I reach into my bag. ‘Thanks again for dinner last night,’ I say, handing over the spoons. ‘It was my best meal in weeks.’

‘
Det var intet – en fornøjelse
,’ she replies in a mock snobbish tone. ‘A pleasure,’ she translates.

The security office, Paul has told me, is on the second floor. Tara pulls me in the direction of the stairs. ‘Got to make up for all the gym sessions you’re missing,’ she says.

We pass the lifts; one is out of order. It is stuck above us out of sight and there are bollards and tape across the gaping hole where the doors should be closed. I step over the criss-crossed tape and bypass the
keep out
sign, to take a closer look down.

‘You’re not very good at doing as you’re told, are you?’ says Tara.

‘Lifts intrigue me,’ I confess, ‘as do disused railway lines and abandoned sections of the London Underground.’

‘And you sit on train platforms in your anorak and copy down the numbers on the locomotives, I suppose?’ she says, pulling at my sleeve.

‘No – of course not.’ She tosses me a glance which implies she has given up attempting to understand men.

Clive, the guy on duty in the security office, is an inch or two shorter than me, but tough looking. He wears a white, short-sleeved shirt over his bulging biceps. The room is dark, hot and stuffy and I’m not surprised to see grey half-moons under his armpits. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring – not that this, in itself, indicates he’s not married, nevertheless there’s something about him that makes me think he’s a bachelor. There’s a can of deodorant and a tube of toothpaste on a shelf behind his desk and a shirt and tie on a coat hanger on the back of the door. Maybe he sleeps here sometimes.

He fixes up the footage for the day in question from 10.45am.

‘The little girl appears in the foyer just before eleven,’ he explains. He runs the film forward to that spot, but I ask him to take it back a few minutes. I want to see what was going on before Clara reached this point. ‘There’s congestion,’ he says, ‘because of the fire alarm. False alarm, thankfully – just an electrical fault, but no one was allowed in for a while.’

A group of around thirty people have congregated outside the main doors with about the same number inside, between the main doors and the reception desk. We watch as the film jolts forward in slow motion. ‘The bell has stopped, but no one is quite sure whether the public are allowed in,’ he tells me.

For a split second I see Clara. I recognise her dress and the thin Alice band holding back her hair. The crowd closes around her and she is lost again. I remember the local officers telling me that there’s no visual record of Clara after that and she doesn’t reappear in the footage in any of the car parks. I look at the people milling around in the foyer. There’s a man on crutches, two women in wheelchairs, an ambulance trolley being pushed by a paramedic, patients sitting, standing or leaning against the walls, hanging around until they’re told they can go through to their appointments.

Because of the poor quality of the black and white camera it’s hard to distinguish faces; it’s largely what people are wearing that makes them stand out. There’s the white coat of a doctor and I recognise several nurses’ tunics. A man in a security uniform opens the main doors just after 11am and the crowd outside surges into the building. I try to watch the path of people leaving as everyone weaves through. There’s a point at which the footage is truncated. Everyone disappears off the edge of the screen.

‘That’s where the next camera should take over,’ Clive says when I ask. ‘Two cameras are down at this point, the last one on the inside and the first one outside, covering the main entrance.’

The two cameras that would hold vital shots of Clara leaving the building.

Tara lifts her hand like a schoolgirl. ‘How come those particular cameras stopped working?’

‘The police asked me about that. I said the managers told us not to worry about them too much, because the system is being upgraded. It should have been finished by now. The technical guys have taken a look, though, and it seems like there was dodgy wiring on both of them.’

I go back to the mass of people in the foyer.

‘Have you spotted anything?’ I ask Tara.

‘There’s that one glimpse of Clara,’ she says, ‘but then she disappears. I can’t tell whether she doubles back or carries straight on to the main exit.’

‘Me neither…’

I follow the trail of several male figures near the spot where Clara stood to see what happens. One joins a woman and baby, another heads towards the café, another has his hands in his pockets. When he takes his hands out of his pockets, I ask Clive to stop the footage.

‘Can we go back – see that bit again?’ I point on the screen to alert Tara. ‘Keep your eye on him, okay?’

The man repeats his steps, first with his hands in his pockets; we watch closely as he takes them out. His face is turned away – his hair looks…normal, unremarkable – he could be any one of thousands of men who visit the hospital, especially as the quality of the film is poor and makes almost everything look like a fuzzy grey blob.

‘Look…there – what’s that?’ I can only see one side of his jacket – the left side.

‘It could be a tennis ball…’ says Tara, squinting at the screen, ‘an orange, or an apple…’

‘The Wizard of Oz…’ I say to myself. ‘Do we know who this guy is?’ I ask Clive.

‘Him?’ He taps his knuckle on the screen. ‘No – the officers asked me that. We haven’t been able to identify him. Looks like a patient rather than a member of staff.’

‘Because he’s not in uniform?’

‘I guess so.’

The size of the man is hard to judge too, his jacket is open, so it’s difficult to see whether he’s thin or well built. Unhelpfully, he also appears to be of average height, perhaps a bit on the
short side. His shoes look commonplace, but they don’t look like trainers, he has nothing in his hands.

‘Didn’t you say Clara took an apple from someone in the hospital?’ Tara wants to know.

‘Yeah, but that was the day she was rescued from the castle pit – over a month before this.’

‘Maybe the guy makes a habit of offering fruit to kids,’ Clive suggests.

‘You think this guy could have taken her?’ Tara reasons.

I crouch closer to the screen. ‘After the doors open, those who have been waiting around suddenly become more purposeful.’ I ask Clive to rewind again. ‘See – this is 11.01am – people are being allowed in and out. Now watch the paths of the men on their own.’

The three of us are glued to the footage. ‘See,
this
guy still looks like he’s waiting.’

‘He could be waiting for anyone,’ says Tara.

‘He’s scanning faces, he’s not just waiting for someone.’ I straighten up.

‘You don’t think Clara has gone off on her own somewhere and got locked in – like she did at the castle?’ Tara asks, hopefully.

‘For five days?’ Clive adds with a sigh.

None of us say anything. We can all imagine a worst-case scenario. We watch the rest of the footage until the man disappears and the crowd thins out. Clara is nowhere to be seen and the timer on the edge of the screen reads 11.10am. I sit back, my arms folded.

‘We watched every screen in the hospital,’ Clive says wearily. ‘Right through until the end of the day.’ He shrugs. ‘Nothing.’

It’s time to go. As I take my jacket from the chair I notice a photograph of a group of school kids on a filing cabinet.

‘You have kids?’ I ask.

‘No.’ Clive turns the word down at the end with finality, sending a clear message that my question is off limits.

‘Thanks,’ I say dismally, as Tara and I leave.

‘So what do we do now?’ asks Tara as we retrace our steps to the stairs.

‘I don’t know. But I’ve just remembered the last words Clara said to me, a couple of days before she went missing.’

She stops and grabs my wrist. ‘What?’

‘She said “He’s not a wizard at all – he’s a wolf and a very bad one.”’

Tara looks disappointed. ‘And that means…?’

I huff. ‘Who knows?

Tara pulls a face. ‘I see…’

‘I’m going to take another look around,’ I tell her.

She has to go to teach a dance class at the community centre and leaves me on my own.

I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m staying here largely because I don’t know what else to do and I can convince myself I’m being useful. I find Dr Pike’s office and consider knocking, but I hear a child’s voice inside and retreat. She wouldn’t tell a complete stranger anything anyway.

I change my mind and decide to go; I could wander around here aimlessly for hours. One thing is certain, however: it’s too much of a coincidence that Clara went missing when there happened to be a fire alarm causing havoc and crucial cameras were down. Someone
knew
about those cameras – maybe even engineered the alarm.

But there’s one thing I’m
not
certain of.

Am I closing in on the truth about Clara – or you, Dee?

I’m back where I was. So much for the breakout. He flung the door open, slapped me hard and threw me back against the wall like I was a sack of flour. He must have given me something to knock me out and while I was comatose, he screwed thick planks of wood across the bottom of the double doors. It’s as strong as Fort Knox now.

I snap fully awake as another memory clicks into place. It’s like a dream, but I’m way up high on a roof somewhere. I’m in dreadful pain, coming in and out of consciousness. Where was I? I close my eyes and try to picture what I can see. It’s bright, I’m outdoors, my feet are in a gutter. But there’s no chimney – in fact I’m looking down on chimneys, cottage roofs – familiar roofs. Yes – Nettledon, I’m sure of it! The village green, the pub. I’m looking down from the church tower, the old bell tower that’s been sealed up, because it’s collapsing.

How did I get up there? When was it? It was after I fell in the woods – I’m sure – I remember seeing the cuts and bruises on my arms. I can feel my legs being dragged across the floor, then I’m lifted over a shoulder, fireman’s style and carried up stone steps. I must have been sedated or I’d have fought back. There’s a huge bell inside the roof; it catches the light and I ache to find a stone to throw at it, so it will ring out and people will come running to find me. The next moment I’m outside, on the ledge. Oh my God – it’s him – and he’s trying to push me off. I hold on, clutching at the iron grips, digging my heels against the exposed battens with all the strength I have left.

Then Clara is right there in front of me. Did I dream that? She is on the ledge and there is no one else around. I am lying on the tiles. She crouches beside me and strokes my hair as she
tells me she comes there often: to play, to read, to look at the sky, to see the whole village in one. ‘It’s the only place where you can look down on birds,’ she says. ‘You can be higher than them, for a change.’

She tells me her father used to fly out of aeroplanes – I remember her mother telling me her husband had died during a skydiving stunt. I want to speak to her, but I’m too weak and drowsy. I can’t even be sure she is really there. She appeared out of nowhere like a guardian angel.

After that – there is white space in my recollections. I am no longer in the bell tower. Clara has gone and I am in a stable lying amongst the bales of straw.

17 August – 18
^th
day missing

Saturday breaks with splinters of white light across my pillow. It wakes me, like someone is shining a torch into my eyes, and I take Frank on his best romp yet, across the far side of the village, through dense undergrowth, over stiles, along the edges of swollen wheat fields ready for harvest. I throw sticks for him, we wrestle with long branches, race over the beck. I don’t want it to end. It is our final time together. I am going to have to say goodbye.

Mark arrives, tanned and rugged from his escapades in the jungle. His hair is long and matted; he has a beard and coffee-coloured skin that’s been creased by the elements. Frank is beside himself with joy. I am glad. Two souls are reunited. Mark tells me snippets from his tales in Peru, but I find it hard to take in. He sees my eyes drifting away and asks where you are. When I tell him, he jumps to his feet and paces around shaking his head, his breathing heavy, unable to say a word at first. Then he does the same as everyone else – what more can people offer? – and says ‘get in touch anytime, if you need anything’. I assure him I will. Then, they are both gone.