‘You ready to tell us who you really are?’
‘No.’ Ebony’s voice was barely audible.
‘Do you want to stay in this tank?’
‘No.’
‘You want us to take you home?’ He started to replace the lid of the tank.
Ebony found herself starting to scream. ‘Yes! Yes!’
‘Answer me truthfully and you can go – what’s your name?’
She paused. ‘Ebony Wilson.’
Ebony was dropped off at her home along with her shopping bags. She limped inside the house feeling like she was about to vomit. Her muscles ached from the confinement and cramp. Her stomach hurt. She stood in the hallway and listened. The house was quiet, everyone was at work. She left her food in the kitchen and then walked quickly up the stairs to her bedroom on the top floor. She threw the H&M bags down and drew the curtains and went back to lock the door. Then she got undressed quickly and got into bed, pulling the duvet over her head.
Robbo received the phone call from the undercover training team.
‘The two main attributes needed to make a good UC are acting ability and arrogance. I don’t see either of those in your candidate but… Willis passed, just, but there were several issues that, if we had more time, we would have worked on. This part of the course is normally three days. We had eight hours altogether.’
‘Is there one aspect we need to be particularly worried about? asked Robbo.
‘Yes. She can cope with physical and verbal abuse. She can handle pain. What she can’t handle is abandonment and there are some issues buried – she experienced something nasty in the isolation tank. Whatever she’s been through in her life it’s not finished with her yet. I can tell you, if we’d had longer, she would have cracked, definitely. And the biggest problem I can see is that she cannot read people’s personalities, can’t read the signs. She didn’t try and talk her way out of it. She stood there and took it. She waited for it to be over.’
Robbo called Carter.
‘She’s not ready.’
‘In what way?’
‘She stood there and took it without trying to talk her way out of it.’
‘If she were too slick, it wouldn’t work.’
‘We’re not talking about slick. She is not good at judging character, the team report says.’
‘As if we needed to be told that,’ scoffed Carter. ‘You know as well as I do that she has a lot to learn as a detective.’
‘Yes but she is likely to make fundamental misjudgement of character under stress.’ Robbo paused to see if Carter wanted to interrupt again but he didn’t. He continued: ‘She handled some things better than expected: pain, isolation. But we knew she would. Ebony has no trouble spending time on her own. She has a high pain threshold. She’s used to being hurt mentally and emotionally.’ He paused again. ‘You listening, Carter? I don’t want her put at risk like this. She was brought up to know only the barest affection from strangers, to know how to manage the mind of a madwoman like her mother.’
‘Yeah. I hear you. But when and if the time comes, when she meets Hawk, she won’t be with someone normal or balanced. She will be facing someone like her mother and she will be just the right person to be doing that.’
Carter gave Ebony a call.
‘You did well.’ She was coming around from her sleep. She took the phone from the side table and took it under the duvet with her. She smiled to herself. She knew he would lie.
‘I didn’t realize how hard it would be. I could have easily blown it. I forgot some key facts they asked me. My mind went blank when they asked me all about my grandparents, all about my Jamaican home, where Archie was born.’
‘Bound to, Ebb. You’re on a crash course here. You did fine. The boys on the undercover team said you nailed it.’ Ebony rolled her eyes, smiled. She was tempted to say ‘bullshit’ but resisted. ‘It starts tomorrow, then, Ebb. You won’t be able to come back into Fletcher house until it’s over. Everyone thinks you’ve gone off on a course to become a FLO.’
Ebony pushed the duvet away and lay on her back looking at the stained ceiling rose. She thought for a few seconds.
‘Ebb? I think you can do this.’
‘I hope so, Guv.’
‘You can still back out, Ebb.’
Ebony breathed in loudly through her nose, shut her eyes and rested the phone on her cheek.
‘No. I’m not backing out, Guv.’
When the phone rang that night Tracy heard it in her sleep. She had put it just outside the bedroom door. She leapt out of bed and ran for it, breathless, stumbling in the darkness. She saw it glow as it vibrated on the floor.
‘Hello?’ Tracy could not stop herself from shaking violently. She stood in the darkness of the lounge, listening. ‘Hello?’ she repeated.
‘TRACEEEEEE.’ She gasped as his voice boomed in her ear. ‘This is all your fault. You betrayed me today, Tracy… I thought we had a deal… an understanding.’ His voice, liquid and deep, was distorted by his breathing. He was breathing hard. She had to listen hard to understand what he was saying. ‘Danielle’s told me how you abandoned her.’
‘What? I didn’t. I had to give her up. I didn’t want to. Please let her go. She has her little boy Jackson.’
‘You make sure I don’t regret leaving him alive, Tracy. You make sure he forgets his mum fast. Now you tried to make a fool of me; you’re as guilty as I am for the killings. I want to play a game with you, Tracy. It’s called tighten the noose. How tight is up to you.’
Tracy shook her head; she clutched the phone tight. She wanted to throw it down but she couldn’t.
‘You abandoned your child and then you married Steve. How did that work out for you, Tracy? I’ve stood outside your house. I know where you work.’
Tracy gasped. Her heart raced. She thought she would pass out. She leant on the wall for support.
‘You fascinate me. You epitomize everything I hate. You plaster yourself in make-up and spend all your time talking nonsense about this and that product. It’s all lies. You wear a mask to trap men. You’re just a blow-up doll, Tracy – worthless. The one job you had in life – motherhood – you ran away from. The one thing nature made you for you turned your back on; not even the vilest of nature’s creatures do that. You abandoned your child and created a false life for yourself. You’re ugly inside. You’re festering under your skin. You should strip it off, all of it, get down to the muscle and bone and see what lies inside you. Skin and bone and bare flesh. Just liars, all of you.’
Tracy could hear him wheezing. She could hear him masturbating. She wanted to put the phone down but she had to keep him talking. She had to play along with him and give the team a chance to trace him.
In the background she thought she heard the sound of squealing.
‘Ahhh. There she goes. She’s turning blue now. It’s all your fault. Shall I describe her to you? Her eyes are starting to bulge. Her face is swelling. Her tongue is protruding. I think she’s ready for me.’ Tracy looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Twenty more seconds to three minutes. ‘Are you ready, Tracy?’
The line went dead.
Robbo shuddered as he watched the line go dead on his screen. He had listened to the call. It came from a mile radius of the Angel Islington. A mile was a lot of ground in the middle of London. Now he knew that the press conference hadn’t worked and that Ebony was their only hope.
Chapter 31
When Jeanie arrived the next morning Tracy looked like she was desperate for her to get there. Jackson hadn’t been washed or dressed.
‘He phoned again – did they trace it?’ she asked, hanging on to her emotions by a thread.