From the Cradle (4 page)

‘This place smells worse than Chris Davis’s breath,’ Carmella whispered.

‘It smells like a Glastonbury toilet.’

They stepped into the first floor hallway, the torchlight illuminating a row of doorways, a few of which stood open or lacked doors entirely. In the deep silence, Patrick’s ears whistled faintly, his tinnitus a war wound from attending too many gigs when he was younger. Nowadays, the silence reminded him of those loud, sweaty, exciting nights, and his older self wished he’d worn ear plugs or not stood so close to the amps.

‘I can’t believe that whoever took Izzy and Liam would bring them here. It has to be—’

Something shot out of a doorway and Carmella gasped, grabbing Patrick’s arm.

‘It’s just a rat,’ he reassured her.

The rodent paused on the path before them and sniffed the air before sauntering back into the flat.

Carmella laughed. ‘That scared the—’

Patrick grabbed her upper arm and put his finger to his lips. ‘Hear that?’

‘If you’re going to make some wisecrack . . .’

‘No, listen.’

They stood in the silence and Carmella cocked her head and stilled her breathing.

‘I can’t hear—’

‘There.’

She stared at him. ‘Oh my god.’

From somewhere above them, so faint it was barely audible, came a child’s cry. They paused for another few seconds, and it came again.
Waaah.

‘It’s coming from one floor up,’ Carmella said. She took out her phone, the screen glowing in the darkness.

‘No. Let’s check it out first.’ He took a few slow steps back towards the stairwell, his partner just behind him.

‘It didn’t sound like a toddler,’ she said. ‘More like a baby. A newborn.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘What do you reckon?’ she whispered. ‘Some junkie mother who’s squatting here with a baby?’

‘We’ll know in a minute.’

They crept up the concrete steps to the next floor. The smell was even stronger up here, a blend of urine and damp and rotting food. A dog barked in the distance, but when it fell quiet the sound of the baby crying returned, closer this time.

Patrick pushed open the door, which squeaked like a squeezed mouse, and stepped through, shining the torch along the row of doors. They were all shut, except the third one along, which was slightly ajar. He took a deep breath, through his mouth, and trod as lightly as he could towards the door.

From within, he heard someone cough.

He looked back at Carmella, who had her phone out, ready to call for back-up at a moment’s notice.

Patrick went through the door, into a pitch-black entrance hall. There was a large hole in one wall. Something crunched beneath his feet and he shone the torch at the floor. A syringe. He gestured for Carmella to be careful.

The door to what must be the living room was shut. From the other side of this door he heard it again: the cough, and then the faint crying sound of a baby. He couldn’t figure out why it was so faint. It sounded like it was locked in a box.

He held up three fingers, then counted them down: three, tw
o, one.

He went in, calling, ‘Police.’

He swept the room with his torch. A figure sat slumped in the corner, cloaked in darkness, not moving. Beside the figure, a pram – the old-fashioned sort. And from within the pram came the muted baby’s cry.

He thought the figure in the corner was unconscious from the way the head drooped – until it jumped up and screamed at them.

Words leapt over one another, barely legible, but two words stood out from the jumble:
My baby. My baby.

He shone the light into the face of a woman, an old woman with lines clawed in her face by decades of rough living, crooked yellow teeth, the witch from Hansel and Gretel brought to life. ‘Not my baby!’ she screamed, pulling the plastic doll from the pram and clutching it against her.

Patrick had figured it out almost as soon as he’d entered t
he roo
m.

‘Hello, Martha,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt your baby.’

Five minutes later, Patrick and Carmella were back in the car.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Carmella said. ‘But when she jumped up and started screaming at us, I almost sprang a leak.’

Martha – no-one knew her surname, or if Martha was even her real first name – was well known in the area. The locals sometimes called her Mother Hubbard or just the Crazy Baby Lady. She could often be seen pushing her ancient pram, mostly in and around the cemetery, a pram that contained many dolls plus one particularly life-like one that Martha treated as if it was a real baby. Her child. She had been around for all of Patrick’s career – a decade and a half. Despite appearing to be insane, and to fully believe that the doll was real, she had been replacing its batteries for years, so it continued to cry and occasionally say ‘Mama.’

‘Any idea why she’s like that?’ Carmella asked.

Patrick switched on the car lights. It was beginning to rain, a light summer drizzle come to gently wash the streets. ‘There are lots of rumours. That she lost her baby in a house fire, or that she accidentally let her own child drown in the bath. Who knows? Maybe she never had a real baby of her own.’

‘So sad.’

Patrick nodded. ‘I really need to sleep,’ he said, as much to himself as Carmella.

Which was when his phone rang again. The moment he answered it and heard the words ‘Another child’s gone missing’ he knew he wasn’t going to be getting any sleep that night – or, indeed, for days to come.

Chapter 3
Helen – Day 1

Helen sank to the floor, landing on the fluffy pink and yellow rug by Frankie’s bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, trapping her tears.

The police. This was real. It was actually happening to her, the worst thing that could ever happen to a parent. The very worst thing. In the papers, they talked about child abduction as ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’, a cliché so well-used it had lost its power. But here it was.

For a moment, as she’d charged into Frankie’s room after she and Sean got home, she had thought that her initial fear was unfounded. She wished she could return to that moment now. Freeze it, live in it . . .

She often found Frankie asleep on the carpet when she climbed out of bed at night, and there was a dark shape on the floor on the far side of Frankie’s toddler bed. Blaming the alcohol, she cursed herself for being so melodramatic and bent to lift her up, but as she walked around the bed she saw immediately that it wasn’t Frankie at all, but her huge Tigger soft toy, the one her godmother had given her. There was a blanket over him – presumably Alice and Frankie had tucked him in down there as part of Frankie’s bedtime routine.

The smile had fallen off her face and Helen had flung aside the toy, as if Frankie might have been hiding underneath. Her panic was back, stronger than ever. She’d lunged for the overhead light switch and the room had flared into harsh white light, diluting the magic lantern’s lazy whirls down to nothing.

‘Frankie?’ she’d called, not loudly, not yet, part of her still thinking how foolish she’d feel when she threw open the wardrobe door and there she was, or how scared Frankie would be to hear her yelling . . . but she wasn’t there. Helen had run along the landing, looking in the bathroom and the two other bedrooms on the first floor, then pounding up the narrow twisty attic stairs to Alice’s room in case she’d sneaked into her bed.

‘Frankie!
’ Louder this time, loud enough that Sean had heard her from the living room.

‘What’s the matter?’ His voice had sounded faint – and irritated, which upset Helen. Obviously there was a problem, if she was shouting for their daughter at almost midnight!

‘She’s not here! Sean, she’s not here!’

Helen took both flights of stairs two at a time, almost slipping on the bottom one as she’d swung around the newel post and pushed past her husband. Sean tried to grab her but she slipped out of his reach and ran over to where Alice was still fast asleep on th
e sofa.

‘Alice – Alice! Where’s Frankie? She’s not in her bed, I can’t find her. Where is she? Wake up!’ She shook her stepdaughter’s shoulder but even though Helen was yelling in her ear, Alice had just groaned and buried her face in the sofa cushions.

‘Wake
up
, you stupid, irresponsible little—’

‘Helen!’ Sean barked. ‘That’s not helping. Alice – wake up sweetheart. We need you to wake up.’ He too had shaken the girl’s shoulder, softly at first but then with more urgency as she still didn’t open her eyes.

‘Hel, she looks really poorly,’ Sean said, rolling her over onto her back. ‘Why won’t she wake up?’ He had patted her cheek gently and bent over her, sniffing, presumably for alcohol or drugs. Helen had to clench her fists behind her back to prevent herself actually slapping Alice awake.

‘Oh Sean, what if she went outside? Alice was passed out, she could’ve just wandered out into the street, anything could have happened. What do we
do
?’

The last word rose on a wail of increasing panic. Helen’s head was full of images of people carrying away children; the grainy hooded figure caught on CCTV unstrapping Liam from his car seat and running; the faceless thief who had taken Izzy from her house . . .

‘It’s him!’ she had gasped, unable to breathe at all. ‘The same person who took Izzy and Liam, I know it. I
knew
something bad was going to happen, I felt it, and now look – ALICE, WAKE UP!’

She had bawled into her ear, and Alice moaned and thrashed on the sofa. It was true, she did not look at all well, but at that moment Helen felt nothing but frustration and irritation. Every moment spent trying to get her to wake up was a moment when Frankie could be further away. She dashed through the open plan living room into the kitchen, filled a glass of water and ran back, throwing it right into Alice’s face, the water rushing through Sean’s fingers as he instinctively raised a hand to stop it.

The girl had finally opened her eyes and squinted up at them, water streaming off her cheeks and eyelids. She spluttered as some went in her mouth. ‘Wha . . . wha?’

‘Talk to her, Sean,’ barked Helen. ‘I’m going to check the garden and the garage.’ Later she would be glad that Alice had been sufficiently out of it not to have been aware of the tone of her voice. She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh.

She left Sean tenderly wiping the water off his daughter’s face with his sleeve, and tore towards the garden. The patio doors were locked, so she ran to the kitchen door – despite her explicit instructions, it was unlocked. Flicking on the deck lights, she flung open the door and ran in mad circles around the garden, searching every dark bush and flowerbed, even up the old pear tree, in the shed, the garage, under the table tennis table, calling Frankie’s name so loudly that lights began to pop on in the bedrooms of the
neighbouring houses.

She’d run back inside, where Alice was now sitting up on the sofa, rubbing her face, dazed.

She could hear Sean’s footsteps upstairs, as if he was repeating her search, like he wouldn’t believe Frankie was gone until he’d seen it for himself.

Helen had stopped still for a moment, as if the enormity of the situation had landed on her like an anvil, pinning her to the spot. Then nausea had begun to erupt without warning from the pit of her stomach, and she turned to run for the downstairs loo. She didn’t make it – her hand was on the door handle about to pull it but the force of the explosion made any further movement
impossible
. Vomit had gushed all over the patterned carpet
runner
on the hall floor, filling up the gaps between the floorboards and
splattering
all over the loo door, a dark red despairing stain of
c
oq a
u vin
,
crème
br
û
l
é
e
,
champagne, red wine, a reverse celebration, a mockery of the joy she had felt just an hour earlier now dripping down the walls.

Sean hadn’t paused to rub her back or coo blandishments, the way he normally did when she was sick – but that was fine. She’d have screamed at him if he’d tried. He was on his mobile and out of the front door, shouting Frankie’s name amongst the dark shapes of parked cars, behind front fences and up driveways.

Helen staggered into the kitchen, not even thinking of clearing up the mess she had just made. She wiped her face with kitchen towel, panting with terror and nausea, then made herself sip some water straight from the tap. When she bent her head to drink, her pulse pounded so hard in her temples that she had to hold onto the sink to keep herself standing upright.

‘Don’t panic, don’t panic, she’ll be fine,’ she muttered in the direction of the fridge door, decorated with Frankie’s daubings. ‘She has to be. She’s just wandered off. Not taken, no. Not taken.’

She gave an involuntarily whimper. When the dizziness had subsided enough for her to stand almost straight again, she realized she hadn’t searched the kitchen, and ran around flinging open every single door – utility room, airing cupboard, washing machine, kitchen units – even the smallest one on top of the oven’s extractor fan, as though she might find Frankie curled up in there with the Tupperware and spare light bulbs. She left them all gaping, her kitchen on display like the contents of her stomach, and climbed wearily back up the stairs to Frankie’s room where she stood in the doorway, high on some terrible drug that she couldn’t escape from, unmoored.

She heard Sean come charging back into the house, his footsteps steady and hard until a pause when he circumnavigated the puke in the hall, then up the stairs to find her.

‘Nothing,’ he said. He put his arms around her tightly. ‘The police are on their way.’

Helen just gaped at him. Then she slumped against the doorframe and slid to the floor, sobs racking her body.

And she was still there now, on the fluffy little rug, unable to gather the strength to move. Waiting for the police. Waiting for someone to come and help them, to make it all better.

‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Sean said, bending to take her arm and help her up.

‘This rug needs cleaning,’ Helen said.

He blinked at her.

‘Look at it!’ She was aware that her voice was loud, that she sounded on the verge of hysteria. ‘All these little clumps . . . Look. Frankie knows she’s not allowed to eat sweets in her room. I bet Alice sneaks them to her.’

‘Helen, come on . . .’

The doorbell rang.

Helen leapt to her feet. Someone bringing Frankie home? Good news? Hope swelled inside her as she ran down the stairs, two at a time, almost falling. Sean was a step behind her.

She yanked open the door to find two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, and as the female officer opened her mouth to speak Helen felt a chill go through her, a premonition. She was never, ever going to see her beautiful little girl again.

The policewoman led her, sobbing, back inside her house.