From the Cradle (6 page)

There were a few sheets of paper in the centre of the desk, pens left next to them with their lids off. With everything else in the room so neat and tidy, Patrick wondered if Frankie had done these drawings since her mum and dad went out.

He picked up the top picture, holding it between gloved forefinger and thumb. A picture of what he thought was supposed to be a cat, drawn in orange. The very cat that was miaowing outside the back door now.

The picture beneath this one, though, was more intriguing. He crouched down to look at it better. A large square, with a cross through it – the universal child’s rendition of a window. In one corner of the window, an imperfect circle. A circle with two more circles inside it, a line and a curve.

Eyes, a nose and a mouth.

It was, Patrick realised, a picture of a face looking through a window.

But looking out – or in?

Chapter 5
Helen – Day 1

‘What was your name again?’

Helen squinted at the detective as though she’d never seen him before, even though he had been in her house not half an hour earlier. She had automatically asked his name – cooperative, polite, the well–brought up girl who knew her manners . . . as if good manners would make any difference! Fuck it, she would have shattered every pane of glass in the building with her screaming, if screaming was the way to return her daughter to her.

What was she doing here, at 1
A.M.
, in this weird lemon-painted room, when she should have been sated and snug in bed with Sean, in the deep sleep of the wine-tipsy post-orgasm? She longed to be able to rewind time to that moment before she’d stepped into Frankie’s room, back when everything had been alright. Further than that, to the moment when she and Sean had gone out. She would rewrite the script, change the future. But this was real life, and time could not be rewound, reality could not be altered. At that second, she felt in every cell of her body that if any harm had come to her baby girl, she would kill herself. Continuing to live just wouldn’t be an option.

‘DI Lennon,’ he said, lighting up one of those water-vapour fake cigarettes.

‘Can I call you Helen? Sorry for the inhospitable time of night.’

‘Helen’s fine,’ she muttered, watching the end of the plastic fag glow green as DI Lennon sucked hard on it. She had to sit on her hands to try and stop them from shaking, and she could feel the imprint of the diamond from her engagement ring digging into the underside of her left thigh.

She pressed harder, welcoming the pain.

‘I’m sure you appreciate that the sooner we can build a complete picture of what we’re dealing with here, the greater the chances are of finding Frankie quickly.’

The sound of her daughter’s name spoken by this man sent a current through her body. He had a nice voice, deep and kind, with a softening trace of a West Country accent in there somewhere.
Patrick
seemed to notice the tiny little involuntary jerk she gave, and she saw the sympathy in his face.

Under normal circumstances, she thought, he would make her feel flustered. A woman in uniform walked in and handed her a coffee that she didn’t recall asking for, and as she sipped it, she worried irrationally that he looked more like the bass player in a rock band than a detective: hard-bodied, if slightly slope-shouldered. She focused on his face instead and saw that, under the handsomeness, it was still boyish, and kind – the sort of man you can visualize in a school portrait, aged about five, looking exactly the same but with more hair, softer skin and smaller teeth.

‘Do you have kids?’ she blurted, leaning forwards, willing him to reply in the affirmative. He paused before nodding his head, and her aching eyes filled with fresh tears.

‘But even if I didn’t, I would still do everything possible to get Frankie back for you, Helen,’ he said, and the kindness and urgency in his voice made her tears spill in two straight lines down her cheeks and drip off her chin. ‘Let’s make a start, shall we?’ He clicked on a voice recording machine.

‘Could you run through your movements again for me this evening, Helen? I know we talked about it at the house, but we need to get it down on record. Have a particular think about whether anything unusual happened – if you’ve spotted anyone hanging around, or coming to the house . . .’

Helen wiped her face and took a deep breath. She recounted the events of the evening, although had to stop several times to compose herself. The thought of her and Sean enjoying wine, celebrating, kissing and laughing, while Frankie was . . . Frankie was . . .

Nobody knew where Frankie was.

‘What did Alice say when you got in?’ Patrick asked her casually, and she felt irritated.

‘As I told you already, she was fast asleep. We had to chuck water at her to wake her up, she was so out of it.’ Seeing DI
Lennon’s
eyebrows ascend, she began to gabble. ‘But she’s very tired at the moment, she’s just finishing her GCSEs and she had a dance class today too, so she was bound to be tired. Plus, we were about an hour later than we’d said we’d be.’ Helen looked away.

‘Oh? How come?’

Helen’s lip trembled. ‘We were celebrating. Sean said he was ready for us to have another baby, and I was so happy – it’s what I’ve wanted for ages.’

DI Lennon smiled, but with his lips pressed together so it looked more like a grimace than a congratulatory expression.

‘How long have you been married?’

Helen sat harder on her diamond, remembering Sean sliding it onto her fourth finger on that white hot beach in the Seychelles, a strange, tender, fierce look in his dark green eyes. ‘Four and a half years. I was three months pregnant with Frankie. But we always wanted to get married anyway. We’d been together for two years before that. You know I’m not Alice’s mother? Sean was married before.’

‘I didn’t know. She looks like you. So, Alice was how old . . . ?’

‘Ten, when we married. She was a flower girl at our wedding. Eight, when we met.’

‘Awkward age for a girl to accept her dad wanting to marry someone other than her mother,’ Lennon said casually. ‘Is she close to her own mother, Sean’s first wife – assuming they were married?’

Helen wanted to scream at him: ‘
How is this relevant? Just FIND FRANKIE!’
She bit her lip. ‘Sean’s first wife died in a car crash when Alice was three.’

Lennon wrote something in his notebook. ‘Did Sean date other women before you met him?’

Helen shrugged. Tears sprang into her eyes again – with every question he asked, Frankie could be quarter of a mile further away from her. ‘I know you need to ask these questions, DI Lennon, but can’t they wait till tomorrow? Surely the most important thing for now is to be out on the streets trying to find Frankie?’

Lennon patted her hand, but without condescension. ‘I can see how you think that, Helen, but please know that we have a lot of bodies out doing just that, plus more officers scouring CCTV footage from around your house. My job is to build up a picture of your lives together, and I assure you that it’s just as important.’

He handed her a tissue and she blew her nose.

‘Sean had a couple of girlfriends, I think. He did a bit of internet dating. But when Alice was about six she started to object to him going out and leaving her with babysitters. So he didn’t see anyone for a couple of years, then he met me. We met at Alice’s school summer fair. I was there with my friend Samantha whose daughter Celia is my god-daughter. They’d roped me into helping her on the face-painting stall. Sean and Alice came along and we got chatting when I was painting Alice as a tiger. He checked that I wasn’t married, then asked me out for a drink.’

Helen remembered that first look at Alice’s pretty little face then, back when it had been a blank canvas, no tiger whiskers or stripes of hidden resentment and secret fury. How she’d been so attracted to this sexy dad that she could barely paint the orange marks on Alice’s cheeks in straight lines.

‘And how did Alice cope with you going out with her dad?’

Helen sighed. ‘Not brilliantly. Tantrums and so on. It wasn’t easy, and if I hadn’t been so in love with Sean I might have given up. But we persevered, and now Alice and I are basically fine.’

‘Basically?’

‘She’s fifteen. Everything’s a drama. She’s not afraid of having a go at me – or at Sean. But she adores Frankie, and would never do anything to hurt her. She’ll be devastated that she’s missing. How long will you need to keep her here?’

‘Just till we’ve got her statement too. She’s what we call a Significant Witness. Your neighbours, Mr and Mrs—’ He consulted his notes. ‘—Jameson, have kindly offered to put you all up when we take you back. Your place is a crime scene for the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘Pete and Sally. Oh. That’s so kind of them. But OK.’

‘So, tell me, Helen, has Frankie ever wandered off before?’

Helen sat up straight, gritting her teeth with sudden fury. ‘Before? What do you mean,
before
? She’s never wandered off, full-stop, and certainly wouldn’t have done tonight! Once she’s asleep she rarely wakes up till dawn. There’s a stairgate at the top of the stairs that she can’t open, she can’t reach the front door Yale lock, and even if the back door had been left unlocked, she couldn’t have got out through the garden gate.’

Lennon’s reaction was calm, unruffled. He wrote a note in his black notebook, in such small squiggly writing that Helen couldn’t make out what it was. Then he gazed into her eyes again.

‘I didn’t mean anything. Some kids are wanderers, some aren’t. We just need to know that Frankie isn’t.’

‘She’s not,’ said Helen, visualizing Frankie fast asleep in her toddler bed, her cheeks hot and red in slumber, a snail trail of contented drool linking the corner of her mouth to her flannelette sheet, clutching Red Ted under one arm. The pain was like a knife in her stomach; she felt eviscerated by it.

Lennon stood up, walked across to a small table in the corner of the interview room and opened a cardboard folder.

‘When did Frankie draw this?’ he asked, removing a slightly crumpled piece of paper with one of Frankie’s crayoned efforts on it. Helen took it and frowned.

‘I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Really? It was on the desk in her room when we searched it, under a drawing of a cat.’

Helen looked more closely at it, and her hand flew to her mouth when she realized what it was. ‘Someone looking through a window at her? Oh my God!’

‘It might not mean anything sinister,’ Patrick reassured her. ‘Frankie’s bedroom window was still locked – we’re certain no-one came in that way.’

‘What if they put a ladder up, to look in?’

‘Well, there isn’t one there now. It’s probably nothing relevant, but we just need to document everything.’

‘I tidied up her room before we went out. There were definitely no drawings on the table then – she must have done them after her bath. When Alice was meant to be looking after her . . .’

‘What makes you think she wasn’t?’

Helen’s hand shook as she held the drawing. ‘Because Alice loves drawing too. She
always
helps Frankie with her drawings, adds background, does the bodies around the faces she draws, that sort of thing. They draw maps together too – funny little maps that Frankie calls ‘naps’. She dictates the landmarks and Alice draws them. They look so sweet when they get stuck into an art session, their heads together, tongues sticking out . . . She didn’t really like drawing without Alice there.’

Her voice trailed away.

‘Maybe Larry did come over after all,’ she said eventually.

Lennon looked up from his pad. ‘Larry?’

‘Alice’s boyfriend. She’s not supposed to have him round when we’re not there.’

The detective arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t approve?’

‘Oh, no, it’s not that. But . . . well, I knew that if he was there Alice would be . . . distracted. When she was supposed to be keeping an eye and ear out for Frankie.’

Helen clenched her jaw as she watched Lennon scribble more lines in his fancy notebook. Why had she ever entrusted the care of her precious daughter to Alice? And what was all this about the drawing? Someone looking through the window . . . A wave of nausea hit her and it took all her strength to stop herself b
eing sick.

She swallowed and looked up at the detective. When she spoke her words came out strangled. ‘Please find her. You have to find her.’

His expression as he returned her gaze was understanding and his words heartfelt: ‘Rest assured, Helen, I will move heaven and earth to get your little girl back safely.’

But it didn’t make Helen feel any better.

She keeps staring at me, shrinking away like she’s going to catch something. It’s irritating me, as are the flies buzzing around the van, three big fat buggers that keep bouncing off the windows and evading me. This morning I woke up to find one of them sucking on my arm, which almost made me vomit. I guess I smell like shit, being stuck in this van for the past 24 hours, sticky from the heat and the excitement and fear. I keep fantasizing about showers, but I’m going to have to wait. Patience is something I’m good at, after all.

‘Come on,’ I say, offering her a bottle of Fruit Shoot. ‘Have a drink.’

She screws up her pretty face and shakes her head.

‘How about something to eat? Look, I bought you some chocolate.’

It’s so hot in the van that when I unwrap the Freddo Frog, half of it squidges onto my fingers, the irritation this causes making my eardrums pulse.

‘Drink,’ I said, my voice firmer, pushing the purple bottle towards her. ‘Drink, or I’ll get cross.’

She looks at me with her big eyes, those beautiful lashes taking my breath away, just like they did the first time I ever saw her, and reluctantly takes the bottle, sucks from it.

‘That’s a good girl.’

I bought the sugary drinks and the chocolate and all the other fo
od –
the crisps and Haribo and fairy cakes – at the supermarket, scanning it all through the self-service machine, one of those wonderful inventions that makes it so easy to live without attracting attention. Okay, I had a brief moment of anxiety when there was an unexpected item in the bagging area, but the member of staff zoomed over and swiped her staff card without even looking at me.

It’s growing dark outside now. Shadows creep into the van. I can hear music thumping somewhere in the distance, probably a party somewhere out there in someone’s garden. You expect the countryside to be silent, just the hoots and scuffling of animals. But even out here, you can’t get away from everyone. I need to keep moving, but I can feel London pulling me back, like I’m attached to it by a piece of elastic.

The Fruit Shoot has given her a burst of energy that makes her tremble. She asks me for a piece of paper and a pencil so she can do a drawing. She draws a house with stick people smiling from the
windows
.