Pinkie slid down the wall in the dark of the closet and folded his arms around his knees, pulling them into his chest. He hated it when he remembered like this. It was something he tried to bury, to hide away, but it always came back to him in the dark. He tried to stop himself sobbing, but still he felt the tears hot on his cheeks. He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to leave this dream behind and slip gently back into that parallel world where every night, when it came time for bed, his mother still kissed him gently on the forehead and whispered, sleep tight, little man.
When finally he had gathered himself enough to control his breathing and wipe his face dry, he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He slid back up the wall and took a deep breath. This would be the perfect time, while she was in the shower.
Slowly, he eased the door open and slipped out on to the landing. The bathroom door was ajar, and he could see steam rising in the cold electric light, like fog at dawn on a winter’s morning. He crossed the hall and paused at the door, leaning slowly into the gap so that he could see inside.
She had some kind of contraption to support her in the shower, almost standing. And through the steam, and the water streaming down the glass, he could see that she was quite naked, skin blushing pink under the hot jets of water. He saw the pink-brown circles of her areolae, the black triangle between her legs, and he turned quickly away in embarrassment. He had seen his mother naked once in the shower. He had wandered into the bathroom by accident, and stood unseen for almost a minute, watching her. Until she had caught sight of him and screamed at him for peeping. For being a dirty-minded little boy. It was one of the few times she had ever raised her voice to him, and he had never been able to look at a naked woman since without guilt.
He turned and hurried back across the landing and up the stairs in quick, careful steps. Up into the roof. At the top of the steps he ran his eyes rapidly around the huge attic living room until they fell upon her computer. A screen saver faded from one photograph to another, scenes in cool blue and green of some tropical rainforest, misty and damp. He sat himself at her desk and moved the mouse. The screen saver vanished and revealed the window of dialogue between Amy and Sam. The blinking cursor, Amy’s final appeals. Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me! Pinkie smiled to himself and spotted the address book icon on the dock at the foot of the screen. He clicked on it, and Amy’s address book opened up in front of him. He typed in BENNET. And there, instantly, it appeared. Tom Bennet, Flat 13A, 1 Parfrey Street, Fulham. Lucky for some. But not for Tom. Or Harry.
Pinkie closed down the address book and left the screen the way he had found it, triggering the screen saver so that Amy would never know he’d been.
And then he saw her, watching him from the far side of the room, and all the hairs on his neck stood on end. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered. It was just like her. Uncannily so. Her mouth, repulsive, just as it had been in life. How could they know what she had looked like just from her skull?
For a moment he forgot where he was, and crossed the room to take a closer look. He shook his head, full of new-found admiration for the Chinese dentist in the shower. It couldn’t have been more like the child if she had been working from a photograph. There was only one thing that Amy had got wrong. And it irked him.
She had towelled herself dry in the shower and now wheeled herself through to the bedroom. She debated whether just to slip on her dressing gown, or whether to dress in fresh clothes. She decided on the latter, and lay on the bed to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt over clean underwear. Then she manoeuvred herself into a sitting position and leaned over to slip her feet into her sneakers. Dressing was such an effort, but the doctors had said it was good exercise, vital to keep her body functioning.
As the stair lift carried her smoothly up to the attic, she closed her eyes and for the first time felt sleepy. She knew that if she lay down on the settee she would be gone in minutes. As she emerged from the stairwell into the roof space, she had the first premonition of something wrong. It would be hard to say what it was that alerted her. The slightest foreign scent lingering in the air at the top of the house, perhaps. Or just a presence, or the sense of there having been a presence, like a ghost or a spirit. Impossible to know what hidden senses might be at work in the subconscious. Whatever it was, she immediately felt uneasy.
She transferred to her wheelchair and crossed to her desk. Was there a message from Sam? She moved the mouse to banish the screen saver and saw her dialogue window with Sam just as she had left it. Sam, are you still there? Hello? Sam? Talk to me!
She was halfway across the attic when she saw the head, and her scream was quite involuntary. Fear stabbed at her, tiny invisible spears, and she looked around the room in a panic. There was no one there. She sat perfectly still, listening. Not a sound. Then she forced herself to look again at the child’s head. The hair of the wig had been cut short, in uneven spiky clumps, just as she had imagined it earlier. She forced herself to grab the controller and move towards it.
The table was littered with fist-sized wads of black hair. A pair of scissors lay discarded amongst the cuttings.
Lyn stared back at her, her face changed quite radically by the altered hair. For a moment she wondered if it was possible that she had done it herself, and somehow forgotten. But even as she entertained the thought she dismissed it. And she knew with an absolute certainty that while she had been in the shower, someone had come into the house and cut the hair on the child’s head.
No matter how insane that seemed, the evidence was there before her eyes. And it scared her to death. There was a chance that whoever had done it was still there. She was shaking uncontrollably as she reached for the phone, and dropped it on the floor. She retrieved it with difficulty and with trembling fingers dialled MacNeil’s mobile. She heard it ring. And ring. And ring. And then his voicemail kicked in. She was about to hang up in despair, when she decided that she should leave a message anyway.
Her own voice sounded strange to her as she spoke, trying to control her hysteria. ‘Jack, there’s someone here in the house. Please, come quickly. I’m scared.’ And she hung up and clutched the phone to her chest, and thought she had never been so frightened in her life.
Chapter Nineteen
I
MacNeil waited as the switchboard patched his call through. Then he heard Dawson’s voice. ‘DS Dawson.’
‘Rufus, it’s Jack.’
‘Hi, Jack. How’s it going out there?’
‘I think I’ve found where the kid was living. A house in Routh Road in Wandsworth. A rental property. According to the neighbour it was occupied for the last six months by a family, possibly French, called Smith.’
‘A likely story.’
‘They had a little Chinese kid with a cleft lip. I’m sure it’s our girl. But the parents were European. We need to find out who owns the house. The neighbour thinks it’s let by an agency. Find out who the agent is and get them out of bed. I want to know who’s currently renting the house, or who had it last.’
‘I’m right on it.’