She is in Nelson’s car and hurtling towards Blackpool at the speed of light before she manages to take a proper breath. Her ribs ache and she feels as if she’s about to pass out.
‘It’ll be OK,’ Nelson is saying. ‘I’ve seen this hundreds of times. Kids wander away, parents panic, ten minutes later they’re back together again. Lots of tears and wasted police time. No harm done.’
Ruth glances at his set profile and wonders why she isn’t more reassured. Because there’s a muscle going in Nelson’s cheek and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel? Because Cathbad hasn’t rung back to say it’s all a terrible mistake and he and Kate are enjoying complimentary Krabby Patties in Sponge Bob’s Snack Shop? Because deep down she has always known that they will get her – the shadowy figures who killed Dan and goaded Pendragon to his death. And how better to get her than to attack the most precious thing in her life? Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Oh why hadn’t she flown back home as soon as she received those texts? Why is she still here, in this nightmare world where people are thrown into the air for pleasure and cartoon animals guard a land where children can disappear forever? She starts to cry.
‘It’ll be OK,’ says Nelson again. ‘We’ll find her. She’ll have just wandered off to see Dora.’
‘She loves Dora.’
‘I know. I saw the book by your bed.’
Will she ever read to Kate again? She would give everything – everything – to be lying beside her sleepy child, ploughing through Dora’s interminable adventures. Please God, she prays fiercely, I’ve never believed in you but, please, prove me wrong. Please find my darling daughter.
Nelson screeches to a halt on double yellow lines outside the Pleasure Beach. They run through a hall full of people queuing for tickets, and out again to more queues and a row of turnstiles.
‘Have you got day passes sir?’ asks a polite doorman. Nelson waves his police badge and pushes Ruth past the outraged pleasure seekers. Ruth rings Cathbad as she runs. He says he’s waiting for them outside Nickelodeon Land.
‘Have you found Kate?’ asks Ruth though she knows that, if he had, it would have been the first thing he’d said.
‘No.’
They run past ghost trains and carousels and people hanging upside down in the air. A vast skull in a Viking helmet guards the entrance to something called Valhalla. The giant raven of the Raven Falls spreads his baleful wings, as black as night. For Ruth, the place could not seem more hellish if there were actual devils manning the rides. The visitors to the Pleasure Beach resemble not happy families in search of an innocent thrill, but sinister misshapen creatures, their features smeared with face paints, ghastly smiles enhanced by comedy hats and T-shirts saying ‘I’m with Stupid’. Some of these monsters are clutching the furry corpses of stuffed animals won in arcades, others are swilling lurid drinks from oversized plastic glasses. Many of them are wearing the Simon Cowell masks Ruth first saw on the pier. The effect is of hundreds of dark-haired, icy-toothed showbiz supremos on the rampage. It’s as if Cowell has been cloned by some evil pharmaceutical lab intent on taking over the world. Ruth rushes past these abominations, head down, phone clasped to her heart. She hates everyone for not being Kate.
A white-faced middle-aged man is standing by a ride featuring demonic cartoon children with oversized teeth and knowing leers. Screams and splashes fill the air. A giant sign exhorts riders to ‘Hold on to your nappies’. ‘By the Rug Rats log flume,’ Cathbad had said, otherwise Ruth might genuinely not have recognised him. He seems to have aged twenty years since this morning.
‘Ruth,’ he takes a step forward.
Ruth backs away. ‘You lost Kate.’
Nelson takes hold of Ruth’s arm. ‘OK, OK. Let’s all be calm. Cathbad, who’s in charge here?’
A young woman in a high visibility vest steps out from behind one of the cartoon children.
‘Hi, I’m Holly. I’m the Duty Manager. Are you Kate’s mum and dad?’
Ruth is about to deny this when she realises that actually – yes – they are Kate’s mum and dad. She nods mutely.
‘Try not to worry too much,’ says Holly. ‘I’m sure we’ll find her. I’ve taken a full description of Kate and I’ve radioed it to all our staff. We’ve got a specialised lost child unit and I’m checking in with them every few minutes. I’ve also sent out messages on the tannoy. Would she recognise her name if she heard it on the tannoy?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘No. I don’t know.’ Kate is a bright little girl – a wonderful, clever, adorable little girl – but would she pick out her name from the cacophony of fairground music, screaming children and current pop hits? Ruth doubts it.
‘Have you got CCTV?’ asks Nelson brusquely.
‘Yes,’ says Holly. ‘We’ve got cameras at every exit. It’s impossible for her to leave without our staff knowing.’
‘Why is it impossible?’ asks Nelson. ‘There must be thousands of people here. Your staff can’t check everyone.’
‘She’ll have her bracelet on. The staff at the gates all have Kate’s details. If anyone … if anyone tried to take her out of the park, the staff would check her bracelet.’
Bracelet? Kate wasn’t wearing a bracelet. But then Ruth sees that Cathbad has a white paper band round his wrist, stamped with an orange ‘Pleasure Beach’ exclamation mark.
‘The bracelet will record the time Kate entered the park, which rides she went on and so on,’ says Holly. ‘And it would show the time she leaves. I mean … it’s impossible for her to leave.’
Holly is being kind, Ruth knows, but her words have conjured a new spectre. A sinister figure leading Kate out of the park to … Where?
She knows that Nelson is thinking the same thing because he cuts in, saying, ‘Have you called the police?’
Holly looks slightly defensive. ‘We’ve got a community officer on the beat and she’s looking at the CCTV now. As I say, though, the child usually turns up within ten minutes.’
‘Meanwhile a pervert’s halfway to London with my child in the boot of his car,’ says Nelson brutally. Ruth gasps and Cathbad makes a choking noise. Holly looks shocked, ‘I know you’re upset but …’
Nelson thrusts his warrant card in her face. ‘I am the police,’ he says. ‘And I want all units here now.’
He has hardly finished speaking when the wail of sirens is heard in the distance. Ruth knows that Nelson called Sandy on the way to the Pleasure Beach, but to Holly this must seem proof of immense, almost supernatural, influence. She stares at Nelson in awe.
‘I want police at every exit,’ he says. ‘And I want to see the CCTV footage now.’
Holly is about to speak when her walkie-talkie crackles. Ruth’s heart contracts. Please, please let them have found Kate. She wishes it so hard that she can almost hear Holly’s soft Lancastrian voice saying, ‘She’s been found and she’s fine. She just wants her mum.’ She even feels her face relaxing into a relieved smile. But Holly’s actual words are very different.
‘There’s been a development,’ she says.
*
The CCTV cameras are in a room above the booking hall. From the window they can see the startled faces of punters on the Ice Blast, an infernal machine that shoots its occupants two hundred feet in the air and then back down again. But the shock and horror on the faces of the Ice Blastees are nothing to the expression on Ruth’s face as she enters the room. She knows that the news cannot be good.
A young man is sitting at a frozen TV screen. The picture is blurred and indistinct but Ruth can just make out a tiny figure in a Hello Kitty hat.
‘That’s her!’ she screams.
Nelson and Cathbad surge forward. Over Nelson’s shoulder Ruth sees that the tiny figure is holding someone’s hand, a woman with blonde hair, wearing a long coat. It’s such an everyday image, a child holding a woman’s hand, that Ruth can hardly take in the horrific implications of what she is seeing.