The Trophy Child Read online

  Appallingly, Brontë was still not home.

  When the police had left the previous evening, Noel hadn’t allowed himself to consider the possibility that Brontë would be away for the night. The four of them – Noel, Karen, Verity and Ewan – had sat in front of the TV, watching the presenter on Border News inform them that police were becoming increasingly worried about a missing ten-year-old from Windermere. Anyone with information was encouraged to get in touch. The presenter then adjusted her concerned, mournful expression before moving on to one of the many human-interest stories Border News was so fond of: a charity bike ride to raise funds to renovate a kids’ playground; a dog who’d run over a cliff edge on the way up Great Gable found unharmed but dehydrated by a park warden. Nobody spoke as they watched the rest of the bulletin, each one of them thinking: That’s it? That’s all you have to say on the matter?

  Ewan and Verity had taken themselves off to bed when they realized that there was nothing now to do except wait around for morning to come, and this had left Karen and Noel in what felt like an eerily empty house. Neither one of them wanted to speculate on where their daughter might be.

  Noel had thought things would move faster than they did. He had expected that the detective would coordinate a search of some kind, but she’d said no, that would be done in the morning. She would be coordinating it. Karen was made to understand that DS Aspinall would be leading this case, whatever Karen might feel about it. And so Noel had gone out again. He had woken Ewan and taken him with him as Ewan insisted he accompany Noel when he searched. This time, they followed the beck, the stream that ran alongside the recreation ground, which in winter swelled so much it was dangerous for kids to play near but which now, after the spell of dry weather they’d had, was no more than a gentle trickle.

  They walked alongside the beck all the way through Sheriff’s Wood until it flowed into the lake, casting the beams of their torches along the banks, across the water. Noel’s heart stuttered inside his chest whenever he came across a plastic bag, a McDonald’s shake container, anything that could be mistaken for his daughter’s pale, pale skin.

  On their way home, they took a different route. They picked their way through the woodland, shining their torches across the bracken, through the saplings, up high to the branches of the oaks and the ancient elms. Noel felt guilty if he missed even a patch, guilty that he wasn’t covering the whole damned area. But mostly he felt guilty that he’d been unable to keep his younger daughter safe.

  One of the few roles he felt he had as a father was protector. And he’d not even managed to do that.

  After checking the rec one last time, they returned home, beaten. Noel knew the sensible thing to do would be to get some rest so he could do a better job tomorrow, but he hated himself all the same for coming home having found nothing.

  Helpless. That’s the word parents used when their children were gravely ill. We feel so helpless, they’d say, and up until that moment Noel thought he’d understood what it meant to feel that way. Now, he realized he’d been way off. Helpless felt like a chasm had opened up inside him and all the usual buoyant feelings had been sucked out, replaced by a great big shitload of nothingness.

  Hopeless was a more apt description.

  He reached out and touched his wife’s head; the dream seemed to have passed and she looked more peaceful. He wondered how long she’d stay like this. Karen didn’t sleep well at the best of times. And he was uncertain whether it would be better to remain here, next to her, ready to try to soothe her when she woke, or if he should go downstairs and straighten up the house for the invasion of people that was scheduled for a few hours’ time.

  The detective would be back and, not for the first time in his life, Noel hated himself for allowing his dick to get him into trouble. (It hadn’t happened often – two or three times at the most, but the repercussions of sleeping with Karen, in particular, seemed considerable.) Consummate professional that DS Aspinall was, though, she had not shown a flicker of recognition in front of Karen. And Noel had found himself a little in awe of how she conducted herself, putting together the beginnings of an investigation. Particularly when Karen was – well, particularly when Karen was being Karen.

  Karen’s parents would be arriving from Macclesfield. Bruce and Mary Rigby. Bruce was ex-army. He was discharged when he was in his mid-forties and had the idea of using the skills he’d acquired managing soldiers to managing civilians. Within a few years, he’d started and then bankrupted a number of businesses: buying and selling used cars, manufacturing and selling low-fat ice cream. And yet he still saw fit to advise Noel on the financial side of the GP practice he worked in, something that Noel tolerated because, if he didn’t, Karen became defensive, accusing him of mocking her father. Which, in a way, he supposed he would be.

  Noel didn’t enjoy their visits. Bruce was a doer, a man who couldn’t sit still, a man who stripped down to his vest to work in their garden and would give Noel chores to do if he caught him standing still. He cut his own hair – number six all over, and would bring his clippers with him and threaten to cut Ewan’s, sometimes even Noel’s. Noel thought he spoke like a football pundit: At the end of the day…You must give it one hundred and ten per cent…In no way, shape or form…

  Mary was easier. She was a passive, quiet woman with rolls of soft flesh which her husband would poke as he passed, and legs marbled with blue veins – like Stilton. Mary doted on her grandchildren, and Noel often thought that if he could only pack Brontë off to Mary’s for a week, where she could make jam, crochet and watch kids’ TV while stuffing her face with marshmallows and chocolate fingers, she would be all the better for it. But that couldn’t happen. One, because Bruce would be there, being constructive, repeating the mantra he’d passed down to Karen: We do the things we have to do so we can do the things we want to do. Two, because Brontë was gone.

  Karen’s eyelids flickered, and she scratched the tip of her nose without waking up. Asleep, she was so different. She looked like the type of woman he could have fallen in love with.

  At around five years into their relationship, that was a lie he used to tell himself: She’s the woman I fell in love with.

  As though this was a greater love than he’d had the first time around, with Jennifer. As though, with Jennifer, he’d sleepwalked into the relationship but, this time, it was real. Other men fell prey to this same self-deception, Noel had noticed, when they’d been caught playing away from home. Once they were in a new relationship, they professed to experiencing a deeper, never-felt-before connection, as if to prove to the world that they hadn’t made a mistake, they’d not made a total fuck-up but instead it had all unfolded exactly the way it had been supposed to.

  Noel worried that, on some level, he was just repeating the failings of his father, a likable, womanizing drunk who was great fun at a party but dead by fifty-five.

  Karen murmured in her sleep. He would never leave her. He knew that. In the past few years, they’d reached the stage of leading emotionally separate lives, and the unfortunate strangling episode by Verity had pushed them apart further still, but he had seen the effects of a broken marriage on Verity, and had vowed he would never inflict that sort of pain on another child. And Brontë wasn’t as tough as Verity. Or as tough as Verity pretended to be, anyway.

  Karen murmured again, her eyelids half lifting, and there was a moment, a tragic moment, when she looked at Noel lazily, almost sexily, when he knew she had forgotten. He tried to smile, to prolong the illusion of normality for a few more seconds, but failed. Her eyes rounded with fear and she sat bolt upright, saying, ‘She’s not back? She’s still not back?’ and Noel shook his head, sadly.

  ‘No, love, she’s not. I’m sorry.’

  Karen was out of bed in an instant, flitting around the room, tidying up as she went. ‘I can’t believe I slept. I can’t believe I slept,’ she said, before disappearing into the en suite to shower and clean her teeth. She emerged minutes later, telling Noel that he s
hould have his shower now. ‘It’s going to be a long day,’ she said, and he did as instructed, knowing that to disagree at this point would be counterproductive, if not actually cruel.

  As they dressed, Karen didn’t mention Verity. But he knew she wanted to. She wanted to unpick the circumstances of Brontë’s disappearance, blaming his daughter, as she had yesterday, and he could see it was taking all her restraint not to. She kept taking sharp breaths before letting the words die in her chest. She cast Noel a black look, rolling the words around inside her head, he imagined.

  Noel considered telling Karen just to come out with it. To say what she had to say. But he didn’t. He took the coward’s way out and pretended he couldn’t read his wife’s thoughts because, in the end, what good would it do, letting her have her say?

  A few hours later, when he and Mary arrived, Bruce showed no such restraint, asking Karen immediately, with Noel well within earshot, ‘What were you doing, letting that unstable girl be in charge of Brontë?’ He’d been in the house for less than thirty seconds, and he’d cut right to the chase. Noel had been on his way to his home office. He’d greeted his in-laws but had drifted out of the kitchen, unnoticed, as soon as he was able. Noel paused in the doorway, craning his ear to catch Karen’s response to Bruce’s question, but heard nothing. Karen would be mouthing her words, knowing he was listening.

  ‘I hate to say it, Karen,’ Bruce went on, his booming, drillsergeant voice echoing along the hallway, ‘but has anyone actually asked the girl if she hurt Brontë? No? Well, why the hell not? She wasn’t shy about putting her hands around your neck, was she? So why has nobody interrogated her?’

  Noel sat down at his desk and rubbed his face with his hands. He could make out the sound of someone trying to shush Bruce. Probably Mary.

  ‘Shut up, woman,’ he snapped. ‘A child’s life is at stake. I will not pander to people’s feelings. That girl needs to be questioned. Did you tell the police about her history of mental illness? Did you? Bloody hell, Karen, what’s the matter with you?’

  Noel’s eyes rested on the photograph of Verity. Her eyes seemed sad. How long had she been sad? Probably the whole time she’d lived with Noel and Karen. A girl shouldn’t be without her mother, he thought. Fucking MS.

  He heard footsteps coming from the room above. Verity’s room. She was up. Noel thought he’d better head back to the kitchen and face Bruce himself rather than letting him interrogate Verity alone. That would be carnage. She had not hurt Brontë. You only needed to take one look at her to know that. But Bruce, with his black-and-bloody-white view of the world, would not see it that way. He dealt in facts, as he would proudly declare. I’m a facts man myself. It was Bruce’s way of dismissing anything anyone had to say that he didn’t agree with.

  Noel entered the kitchen. Karen and Bruce stood next to one another and Mary was over by the toaster, buttering a plate of crumpets. Mary cast Noel a guilty glance when he came in, but the other two flat-out ignored him, as if he were inconsequential, not part of the discussion.

  ‘Bruce,’ Noel said, ‘you need to lower your voice. Verity’s on her way downstairs.’

  Bruce shot Noel an incredulous look.

  ‘She did not hurt Brontë and you know it,’ Noel said.

  ‘At the end of the day, I’m afraid I know no such thing,’ replied Bruce. ‘What I know for certain is that daughter of yours tried to kill my daughter. My only daughter. And in my eyes, that makes her more of a suspect than anyone. Now if you want to bury your head in the sand, that’s your business, but this is my family, too, Noel. And I won’t have you sabotaging—’

  ‘Dad,’ Karen said, and she nodded her head towards the doorway where Noel was standing.

  Noel turned around and there was Verity, looking worse, if that was possible, than she had the night before. The shadows beneath her eyes were blue bruises and the skin around her cheeks and temples had a greenish hue. She looked ill.

  ‘Morning,’ Verity said quietly, and she moved past Noel towards the fridge. ‘Hi, Bruce. Hi, Mary.’

  Mary smiled. ‘Hot crumpets here, if you’re hungry, sweetheart,’ she said, but Verity shook her head, saying, ‘Maybe later, thank you.’ She poured herself a glass of milk and drank it standing up, looking out of the window.

  Nobody spoke. Noel glared at Bruce, warning him not to start. And Bruce glared back, harder, letting Noel know who had the upper hand here.

  ‘There’s no news?’ Verity asked, turning to address the room.

  Still there was silence.

  Fear crept into Verity’s dead eyes. ‘Has something happened?’ she whispered. ‘Have you heard something bad?’

  ‘No,’ replied Noel.

  Bruce cleared his throat.

  ‘Actually, Verity, we were just discussing something.’ And he let the words hang momentarily.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, looking uneasy. Then, as if something had dawned on her, she said, ‘Do you need some privacy? I can leave, if you all need to—’

  Bruce held up his palm to silence her. ‘It’s not that. Stay as you are…After some consultation between the four of us, we’ve decided it might be wise to let the police question you again, Verity.’

  ‘Hang on, Bruce, that’s not what we decided,’ said Noel.

  Verity looked at Noel. ‘Dad?’ she said weakly.

  ‘In view of what happened,’ Bruce went on, ‘in view of what happened between Karen and yourself, and since you were hospitalized, we think it would be prudent to let the police dig a little deeper into your relationship with Brontë. We really must leave no stone unturn—’

  ‘You think I hurt her?’ Verity asked, mouth gaping.

  ‘We’re not saying that,’ Bruce said.

  ‘You think I could hurt Brontë?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ he said. ‘It’s getting to the bottom of what actually happened between the two of you that I’m interested in.’

  Verity looked at Noel. ‘Is he serious?’

  Noel sighed, tried to find the right words, but Karen jumped in before he could answer.

  ‘Verity, you need to understand that we’re just thinking of all the possibilities. Everything and anything to help the police. I think my dad has a point. We need to be fully transparent so the police have every possible chance of finding her.’

  Verity swallowed. Not meeting Karen’s eye, she asked, ‘What do you think happened to her?’

  But Karen wouldn’t answer.

  14

  JOANNE MADE HER way into work. There was a meeting scheduled for six thirty with the acting DI – Detective Inspector Patricia Gilmore – to discuss the Brontë Bloom case. And Joanne was to meet Ron Quigley’s replacement – her new partner. She’d been working the Sonny O’Riordan case alone, as there was a period of four weeks between Ron’s enforced retirement and when his replacement could start. Joanne assumed she would be pulled from the Sonny case this morning and moved to work on the Brontë Bloom one instead. She’d implied as much to the Bloom family last night, after losing patience with Karen. The woman’s persistent questioning of Joanne’s abilities and her demand for someone else to be in charge of the case had eventually got the better of Joanne.

  Joanne knew she was being unfair in thinking it, given the circumstances, but watching that woman in action she could totally understand why Noel Bloom might need to seek solace elsewhere.

  ‘Joanne, this is DS Oliver Black. Oliver, meet DS Joanne Aspinall.’

  DI Gilmore informed Oliver Black that Joanne had experience with missing children and that she would be heading the investigation. Then she told Joanne that Oliver was from Glasgow and had experience in just about everything, and left them to get acquainted.

  ‘Fancied a change of pace?’ Joanne asked Oliver, and he smiled, mildly, saying, ‘No. The wife’s from around here,’ he explained. ‘We have a baby, and she wanted to be near her mother.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Welcome, then. It’s good to have you here.’

  Oliver Black was
around six foot six, thin as a whippet, with dark hair, dark eyes and thick, Parker-from-Thunderbirds eyebrows. If she had to guess, she’d say he was an Italian Scot – not simply from his build and features but from the cut of his suit and the way his tie fitted snugly up against the collar of his shirt. Joanne’s Aunt Jackie maintained that all Italian men knew how to wear a collar and tie (as did Prince Charles, incidentally).

  Joanne took a seat, waiting for the meeting to start, and decided then and there that she liked Oliver Black. She’d felt some trepidation about having a new partner, as she and Ron had rubbed along together nicely for years, but then he had announced that his knees were beyond shot and that he felt he was becoming a liability. But as she glanced across to Oliver, watching as he smiled pleasantly at his fellow professionals – no swinging his dick about, trying to compensate because he’d transferred to a position with less prestige than his previous one – she knew they’d get along.

  ‘So, you’re aware we have a missing ten-year-old,’ DI Gilmore began. ‘Joanne was at the house last night. Anything jump out at you straight away, Joanne?’

  She shook her head.

  DI Pat Gilmore was mid-fifties, with auburn, frizzy curls that she kept secured at the nape of her neck with a large, tortoiseshell clip. It was the type of wild, untamable hair that Joanne reckoned the average girl would have done a fair amount of crying over back in her youth.

  ‘Nothing as yet, ma’am,’ Joanne said. ‘The girls who were with Brontë Bloom just before she disappeared have been questioned. They all said the same thing. Brontë left the group without saying where she was going and made her way across the recreation ground to the gate on Park Road. After that, they didn’t see her.’

  ‘She give a reason for leaving?’

  ‘Just said she was off.’

  ‘Can you see anything beyond this gate from the recreation ground?’ DI Gilmore asked.

  ‘No. There’s a privet hedge that runs the length of the rec. Once you go through the gate, the road is out of sight.’