No Longer Safe (14 page)

‘You must have heard about the boy who’s been taken,’ said
Malcolm.

I cleared my throat. ‘Yes.’

‘We’re going out again tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I forgot to tell
Nina.’

‘When?’ I said. ‘I’d like to come.’

‘Early – as soon as it’s light. We’re all meeting at The
Cart and Horses at 8.30. Shall we pick you up?’

‘Yes, please.’

We drove up the track and the lights of our cottage came
into view. It was the last place on earth I wanted to be.

Malcolm came to a halt behind Karen’s car. ‘Great – we’ll
see you tomorrow. Come to the end of the track – we’ll pick you up there. We’ve
already been over the local fields with dogs and drawn a blank, but we have to
keep looking. He might have been moved. We’ve had the police round to our place
several times,’ he said, his hands still on the steering wheel. ‘They have a
good idea who they’re looking for.’

‘They know who did it?’

‘Not exactly, but they’ve got a decent description. Nina
thinks she saw who took him – didn’t she tell you?’

‘Stop the bus!’ came Jodie’s voice from the sitting
room.

‘Nah – you’re cheating,’ Mark retorted, laughing.

They were back, playing cards by the sound of it. I envied
them, with nothing more serious to worry about other than getting a score of
thirty-one.

I couldn’t face their high spirits just yet, so I went
straight upstairs. I hesitated outside my bedroom, still carrying visions in my
head of what had been lying so recently on the floor.
He’s gone
, I told myself. 

I eased the door open. I could smell nothing but residual
air-freshener. The carpet was unstained and felt dry under my palm. The rug was
probably still wet in the lean-to, but we had a reasonable excuse for that.
Everything had the pretence of being back to normal.

I tapped on Karen’s door. She answered, dragging the belt of
her bathrobe around her middle. The curtains were closed and she looked
bedraggled and annoyed.

‘What is it?’ she snapped.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was going to make hot drinks. I didn’t
know you were asleep.’

‘Well, I am. I was.’

‘I saw a police car – they didn’t call back did they?’

‘No.’ She dragged me inside. ‘Look – you’re going to have to
stop asking questions and looking so bloody guilty all the time. Just be
normal, for fuck’s sake.’

I bit my lip, ready to leave. She’d never sworn at me
before.

‘Sorry, Alice…’ She let go of my sleeve. ‘I’m just tired.’
She beckoned with her head towards the cot.

‘How’s she doing?’

‘She’s crying a lot,’ Karen said, sinking her fingers into
her hair and pulling at it. ‘I had to ring the doctor, but she said there’s
nothing to worry about. Mel’s teething and not used to being outside the ward.
The doctor said it’s just a matter of time before she settles down.’

Mel was fast asleep, a cute frilly mop cap framing her face.
I watched her body rise and fall in the dim light, envious of her oblivion.

‘And how are you?’ I asked. We’d both been pushed to the
brink emotionally in the last few days. ‘It’s been tough.’ I took a step
forward for a comforting hug, but she lifted up her arm like a barrier.

‘Yep – look, I need some sleep. I’ll catch you later.’ She
hustled me back out of the door and shut it, without looking up.

Jodie was alone in the kitchen when I went down.

‘Good time at the Gleneagles Centre?’ I asked.

‘Brill,’ she said. ‘Well – Mark went snowboarding and I
bought these.’ She carefully tipped a bag of trinkets on to the kitchen table.
A glittering collection of diamanté brooches and pendants.

‘They’re for my stall – aren’t they lovely? I found them at
a place in Fort William. Managed to haggle the guy down to a fiver for the
lot.’

They weren’t my thing – too bling for me – but I could
imagine plenty of women would pay a good price for them. I picked up a hairclip
in the shape of a swan. Jodie certainly had a good eye. ‘You’ve got your heart
set on getting this market stall up and running, haven’t you?’ I said.

She nodded seriously and sat down, resting her chin in her
palm. ‘Mark is always having a go at me for having “crazy” dreams, but this is
what I want. The stall is only the first step. He thinks I should stay in the
department store because it’s a steady income. He says we shouldn’t both be
self-employed. But I
really
want this.
He doesn’t know, but I’ve got it all worked out. I’ve got a five-year business
plan, a loan arranged, a financial advisor – the whole thing mapped out.’

‘You haven’t told Mark all this?’

She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think he doesn’t want me to do
well. I’ve carried on being the dizzy, hapless, silly young thing he knew at
Leeds. He wants me that way, but I’m not that person anymore.’

For a moment, I almost liked her. ‘Go on.’

‘I play along…that’s all. But it’s not me.’ She threw me a
shamefaced look, keeping her voice down. ‘Don’t say anything, will you?’

‘Of course not.’ Jodie had never confided in me before. I was
touched. ‘How would he react if you got your act together and you really
started to shine?’

‘He’d hate it. I know he would. Every time I suggest
something, he pooh-poohs it.’

‘Why do you think that is?’ I was thrown by their
relationship; I couldn’t get a handle on it.

She trailed her index finger idly through a pile of spilt
sugar. ‘I’m not sure. It’s like he doesn’t want me to have much say in things.
He wants to be in charge the whole time.’

I knew so little about the dynamics of relationships, but this
felt like some kind of oppression. They were all lovey-dovey with each other
and clearly had an active sex-life, yet he was so mean to her. Why did she put
up with it? He constantly stepped in to make decisions for her, snuffing out
her plans before they were even fully formed. I couldn’t understand why she
didn’t fight back.

‘And are you happy with that?’ I said.

‘I used to be. I loved having this all-powerful macho guy
protecting me, leading the way, but…’ She sat back. ‘I’ve grown up a bit – like
you.’ She dropped her voice even further. ‘Thing is, I’m scared of losing him.
If I change and start making decisions on my own, he’ll dump me. I know he
will. I couldn’t bear that.’

So, Mark was only interested if Jodie was under his thumb.
She wanted to grow and Mark didn’t seem to want to let her. She was keeping up
a pretence all the time; playing the part of a brainless piece of arm-candy.

She was about to say something else when Mark strode in.

‘Where’s my beer?’ He saw me and lifted his hand. ‘Hey, Candyfloss
– what’ve ya been up to?’ He swung a chair around and sat on it backwards. He
seemed to be a different person each time I saw him – chummy one minute, cold,
distant or playful the next. Was it the cannabis? I remembered he’d offered me
some at a party once at Uni and I’d politely declined. He’d never offered
again.

‘I took a walk down to Loch Tierney and met a couple staying
over in a cottage on the other side,’ I said. Jodie was whispering something to
Mark and I realised halfway through my sentence that they clearly weren’t
listening to me. I carried on, anyway. ‘We’re going out tomorrow to join the
search for that missing baby. Did you want to come?’

‘What?’ said Mark.

‘How about it? Help find the little boy?’

‘Um. Nah. We’re probably going off somewhere,’ he muttered,
pulling a packet of tobacco from his pocket and rolling up his next
joint. 

‘That’s news to me,’ said Jodie. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said, leaning over and giving her a
sloppy French kiss.

I looked away.

‘Want any help with supper?’ I offered, getting up. Anything
to take my mind off things. It was Mark’s turn, but I knew Jodie would end up
doing it. She and I went into the larder to see what was left. There were
sprouts, parsnips and a swede on the shelf. I remembered there was a piece of
pork shoulder, defrosting, in the fridge.

‘What can I make with these?’ she said, faltering.

‘A hotpot?’ I suggested.

‘You’ll have to show me,’ she said.

I patted her arm. I knew she was struggling with the rustic
farmhouse food; it certainly wasn’t what she was used to. She probably lived
off a macrobiotic diet at home – from the size of her, it certainly wasn’t meat
and two veg.

An hour later, Karen joined us and Mark sloped in,
reluctantly slapping the cutlery on the table. Karen’s skin tone had drained to
grey and her hair hung like sprigs of parched wheatgrass on her shoulders.

She didn’t even try being jovial. She chuckled once, but her
laughter was flat and she kept squeezing her eyes shut as if she was in pain.
Jodie and Mark probably put it down to Mel being a handful and were undemanding
as a result.

Not engaging in the usual throwaway conversation made me
uncomfortable, but I couldn’t think of anything light-hearted to say.
Eventually, Jodie broke the oppressive silence, pointing to my neck with a
smile. ‘You kept that chain we got you years ago, Alice.’

I reached inside my collar and pulled out the locket.

‘Of course. That was in our first year. I don’t know how you
knew it was what I wanted. It was perfect.’

Karen looked up and let out a soft murmur of recognition.

I wrapped my fingers around the warm oval shape, remembering
my glee and amazement when I’d peeled open the tissue paper and found it
inside.

The very next day, of course, I’d done something for them I
wasn’t exactly proud of, but it felt like it was for a good cause at the time.
I sighed at the memory of our time at Leeds. What I wouldn’t have given to be
back there, instead of here.

As I went over to the sink for a glass of water, I screwed
my face up at the irony involved. Back then, having someone like Karen in my
life meant everything to me. And for Karen and me to actually share something –
just the two of us – I would have seen it as the ultimate triumph.

Well, I’d finally got my wish. It just happened that in the
end, all we shared was a vile secret.

Shit! A massive spanner in the works has
knocked me sideways. I’m trying to keep up a calm front, but underneath I’m
frantic as hell. I’ve got to block it out of my mind and carry on. There’s so
much to sort out. I must keep focusing on one step at a time and ride the
storm.

I’m going to have to keep an eye on Alice – I hope
she’s not going to ruin everything.

Over supper, she reminded us of the time we got her a
silver locket for her birthday at Leeds. What she didn’t know was that Jodie
had been snooping around in her room and had got hold of Alice’s diary. There
wasn’t much there of any interest, apparently – just a lot of rubbish about how
hard she was finding the course, but how brilliant it was to have ‘real’
friends.

Jodie did, however, hit on something useful. Alice had
written down what she would have loved to get for her birthday – some
jewellery. What she’d wanted more than anything was a silver necklace. Jodie
decided straight away that we could use it as a bribe to win her over for our
next little task.

The day after we gave it to her, Alice did exactly
what we agreed and got hold of the fashion design paper for the end of term
exams. Frankly, how was Jodie going to get into her second year without it? It
was too big a job to hack into the computer system, so we had to wait until the
papers had been printed out. We knew they’d be in the locked filing cabinet in
the main office, but Jodie managed to ‘borrow’ the keys from Freddie while she
entertained him.

All Alice had to do was get in, find the right paper,
copy it, put it back and get out – without being seen.

Thinking about it, it was a pretty tall order. Alice
isn’t a natural when it comes to breaking the rules, but we got her to agree
that if anything went wrong she’d never mention our names – ever.

Somehow, I can’t see that kind of tactic working with
Alice, anymore. She seems to have developed a mind of her own in the last few
years and I get the feeling she won’t be so easy to buy off. Pity. I’m going to
have to tread very carefully.

After supper, Stuart turned up at the door – all
grins and good humour.

‘Fancy a drink?’ he said.

I almost fell into his arms. I needed to get away for a
while; Karen’s oppressive mood was dragging me further and further down just
when we needed to be strong for each other.

The Cart and Horses was extra busy and we didn’t manage to
sit near the fire. We settled for a bronze table with a hammered top in a
cramped corner by the Gents’ loo. The couple behind us were playing backgammon
and a few feet away there was a rowdy group celebrating someone’s birthday. A
woman kept taking unsteady steps backwards and I held my elbow out to make sure
she didn’t end up sitting on our table.

‘So – feeling better?’ Stuart asked. He was casually sitting
astride a stool, his thick hair tossed charmingly askew by the wind. He was at
the opposite end of the stress spectrum compared with how I felt.

My hand trembled as I reached for my glass. ‘Feeling
better?’

‘Karen said you’d banged your head the day you got here and
you’d been having headaches.’

‘Did she?’ I felt my forehead crumple into a frown. ‘When
did she tell you that?’

‘When I popped over.’ He saw the bewildered look on my face.
‘Yesterday morning. She said you weren’t feeling too well, so I didn’t disturb
you.’

‘Oh…’ I backtracked to the hours when we were waiting for
the police. Someone had come to the door, but Karen said it was Mrs Ellington.
Had I got things mixed up?

He dismissed it with a shake of his head. ‘Anyway, what else
have you been up to, apart from recovering?’

What
had
I been doing
since we last met? I ran the words through in my mind in answer to his
question;
Well, Stuart, only hours ago, I
helped move a dead body from my bedroom to the byre…and before that, I woke up
in the middle of the night with a knife in my hand. I might have killed the
guy. Not sure. Anyway, how about you?

I felt the skin under my eye twitch and hoped he hadn’t
noticed. I had to hold my nerve. I told him about meeting Nina near the loch. I
told him she’d seen who the abductor was.

‘Really? Did she give you a description?’

‘No – not yet. Her husband mentioned it.’ Another thought –
a question – presented itself. ‘By the way – where’s the landline in your
cottage  – you said you had one?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the sitting room.’ He studied his beer,
swilled it around. ‘What’s troubling you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said too sharply.

I’d been considering the fact that if there’d been a phone
in our cottage, the police would have found out all about Charlie minutes after
we’d found him. They’d have taken him away shortly afterwards. And perhaps
taken me away too, by now.

‘Heard any more about the boy?’ I asked, not wanting to
dwell on what might have been.

He shook his head. ‘The police wanted to speak to me again –
I don’t have an alibi for the time the boy went missing – but everything’s
fine. They’re not about to arrest me.’ He laughed and I did too, but the noise
I made sounded forced.

‘That poor little boy. I’m joining the search tomorrow
morning. I should have thought of it before. Did you want to come?’

‘I’m already booked in for the 8.30 start.’ He reached down
to pull up his sock. ‘We went out yesterday afternoon. I warn you – it’s not
very pleasant. Every time you see a little mound of snow against a wall or
catch sight of a fragment of loose rag or sack, you think:
This is it.
’

‘Are they assuming he’s dead by now?’

‘The police are double-checking sheds, outhouses, cellars –
but it’s so cold and the snow is doing a great job of smothering everything and
hindering the operation. It really depends on the reasons for the abduction. He
could already be miles from here. Might even have left the country.’

‘It sounds well-planned doesn’t it? Someone waits outside a
cottage where they know there are children and then swoops. It’s not like Brody
got lost in a shopping mall or wandered off on his own.’

He stroked the side of his glass. ‘I don’t know if that
makes it better or worse.’ He had a line of froth on his top lip and I had
visions of leaning over and kissing him. ‘The friends you’re staying with – do
you know them well?’

‘Yes and no. I know them from University – especially Karen,
but I’ve not seen them since. Karen was in LA for about five years, looking
after rich people’s kids. It’s been a bit of a U-turn for her to be honest. I
can’t believe she’s not working in medicine – it was more or less set in stone,
but…’

I was thinking back to when I’d looked Karen up online after
she’d contacted me. I’d found no trace of her on Facebook, Twitter or any other
online network. It seemed incongruous that someone who was so outgoing with
friends galore wouldn’t have a presence on social media. Perhaps I hadn’t
looked hard enough. I arched my hand up to my hairline, rubbing my forehead.

‘Head injuries can be a serious business, you know,’ he said
firmly. ‘Had any blurred vision?’

I shook my head. Now he mentioned it, there had been one or
two times when I’d moved quickly and seen two of everything. Is that what he
meant?

‘You should get it checked out – you mustn’t be flippant.’

‘I know. I will.’ I smiled at his concern. ‘As soon as I get
back to London.’

There was a moment when he looked like he was going to say
something else, but he smiled at me instead.

‘You look lovely, by the way. I should have said earlier.
That turquoise skirt really suits you.’ He let his eyes trail from my chin
right down to my boots. He’d noticed.

He ran his fingers across his jaw and I wondered how prickly
his stubble would be against my skin. ‘I’m glad I came across you in the snow,’
he said.

I grinned, daring to let my gaze linger on his cheeky,
probing, mother-of-pearl eyes and silently thanked him from the bottom of my
heart. I’d felt barely human, never mind feminine, these past few months.

The next couple of hours rolled by more easily than I could
have imagined. As long as we talked about the past or future, I could think in
a straight line.

I listened to the thick velvety tones of his voice, let his
words sink into me along with the brandy. For a few minutes at a time I managed
to shift Charlie’s body from centre-stage in my mind and move him to the wings.
It was as if Stuart switched a light on inside me whenever I was with him. I
liked him. I really did. But our time was running out. I didn’t want to do
anything rash to spoil it, but if something didn’t happen soon, I’d be waving
goodbye to him and would never see him again.

It was late and he got up to find my anorak. I was wide
awake now and didn’t want our cosy connection to come to an end, but I could
hardly ask him back to the cottage. I couldn’t invite him into my bedroom – I
just couldn’t, after what had happened there – and trying to engage in intimate
conversation downstairs with Mark and Jodie popping in all the time, was out of
the question. We’d probably all end up playing Monopoly. It didn’t seem right,
either, to invite myself over ‘for coffee’ to his.

I got up at the last minute to go to the loo and on the way
back, I saw him standing in the corridor, my coat slung over his arm. He had
his back to me and was hunched over his mobile as if he was finding it hard to
hear the caller. I was about to tap him on the shoulder to let him know I was
there when he spoke into the phone.

‘No – not yet,’ he said, ‘but I’m certain it’s him.’

I turned quickly and hurried back to the bar area, hoping he
hadn’t been aware of me behind him.

On the journey back, we chatted about food we liked, films we’d
seen, places we wanted to visit, but I was distracted by the tiny snippet of
phone call I’d overheard.

He’d told me he didn’t know anyone in this area, but it
sounded like he was looking for someone. I opened my mouth to ask, but stopped
myself. I was getting paranoid. He could have been talking about something on
TV, or been referring to a friend or neighbour at home – anything.

‘See you tomorrow, first thing,’ he said, bobbing down to
let me out of the Land Rover. I was disappointed he hadn’t walked me to the
door this time. Perhaps I’d misjudged his interest. I waved and watched the
Land Rover disappear into the lane, wondering if I was wasting my time hoping
for anything more.

I was surprised to find the kettle on the stove had
already boiled early the following morning. Karen was outside when I set off to
meet Malcolm at the end of the track. She had a fire going in a metal cage not
far from the byre. As I came towards her, she had her hands on her hips and
didn’t look particularly welcoming.

‘Is everything alright?’ I asked, looking from the fire up
to the byre door and back.

‘Yeah.’ She said it curtly in a way that suggested,
Why wouldn’t it be?

‘Where’s Mel?’ I asked, looking around for the buggy.

‘She’s fast asleep.’

I hoped nothing was wrong, but Karen didn’t look concerned,
so I left it. She was heaping flattened cardboard boxes onto the fire and I
caught a glimpse of what was underneath them.

‘A stool?’ I said, crouching down. ‘You’re burning a stool?’

‘It was broken and getting on my nerves.’

I remembered the one – it was small and three-legged, like
an old milking stool. It had been in the corner on the landing. ‘But you can’t
just burn it – it belongs to the cottage, to the landlady.’

‘She’s not going to miss it.’ She rocked on to one hip,
staring at me. ‘And you’re not going to tell her, are you?’

I shook my head, waiting for her to smile and cut through
the bogus animosity, but it didn’t happen.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, rubbing my arms, wanting to
be on the move. ‘I’m going out to help look for the boy.’

She was prodding the burning pyre with a garden fork. ‘Good
luck,’ she said, without looking up.

Just as Stuart warned, the search was demoralising.
We started in the field next to Nina’s cottage and combed everywhere for the
next two hours, checking sheep pens, drinking troughs, sheds, lean-tos –
everything – on the way. We found a dead sheep, a man’s slipper and a rabbit
that looked like it had been savaged by a fox. No little boy.

Stuart said hello, but when he saw I’d arrived with other
people, he joined up with a police officer, telling me he’d see me later.

The police thanked us and a new team of volunteers gathered
by the next gate, ready to trawl through the adjacent hamlet for the next
two-hour search. Nina invited me back to the cottage for a warm by the fire and
a hot chocolate.

‘Malcolm said you might have seen the person who took him,’
I said.

‘Yes – a man – mid to late twenties, I’d say – I should have
mentioned it, yesterday.’ She invited me to look out from the kitchen window.
‘It was getting dark and I was shutting the curtains at the back. He fled
across that patch of land – there – and stopped to get over the stile. He was a
rough-looking chap.’

What she said next sent a dribble of sweat down my spine.
She’d seen something quite specific.

‘He was wearing what looked like a brown bomber jacket. He
seemed to be holding something against his stomach. Of course, it was only
afterwards that I realised it was probably Brody he was carrying.’

I was inwardly buzzing over the words
brown bomber jacket
.

She was speaking again. ‘He had a blue or black woolly hat
with a white stripe around the rim.’

‘It sounds like you got a really good look at him,’ I said
huskily.

‘He went over the brow of the hill after that and I lost
him. The police have been over the whole area to try and find out where he came
from – and where he went – but that’s all I saw of him’.

Malcolm appeared in the doorway. ‘It’s okay,’ he said,
touching her cheek. ‘You did your best.’

I found it hard to keep my attention on the conversation
after that. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man Nina had described. Could it
have been Charlie? The bomber jacket sounded a bit too much of a coincidence.

I was keen to leave after that and, thankfully, Malcolm
saved me the long trek back and gave me a lift. There was something urgent I
needed to check – then I’d know for certain.