She was about to pick up the brick to begin her assault on the door, when her eyes alighted on one of the many pieces of paper that now littered the ground around her. On it was a drawing – crudely done in felt-tip pen – of a green tree decorated with baubles.
Curiosity now got the better of her and Ruby read the contents of the home-made card. It was an Xmas card to her mother from a girl called Roisin. In it, she wrote about how much she missed her family, how they were not to worry about her sudden disappearance and how much she was looking forward to the day when she could put this card in their hands herself. The latter section of the text was stained with tears and the card was dated a little over two and a half years ago.
Ruby dropped it like a stone and sank to the floor. In an instant, the full desperation of her situation became clear. She was not the first girl to have been abducted and held down here.
Which begged the question: what had happened to them? And where was this ‘Roisin’ now?
48
‘You’re not in trouble, Lianne. But you will be, if you don’t start talking.’
Helen was already in a dark mood and the teenage girl’s refusal to talk was only exacerbating her bad humour. When she had burst into the room to confront Nathan Price, she had found him manhandling a teenage girl. A teenage girl who was definitely not Ruby Sprackling.
‘You’re telling us that Nathan Price is a friend of the family.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And do friends of the family usually pop round when you’re home alone?’
Nothing in response.
‘We’ll find out either way. Your parents are coming in – if they can confirm that Nathan Price is a friend of the family -’
‘You haven’t told them, have you? About him?’ Lianne interrupted.
There was real alarm in her face now. Helen felt bad about lying, but needs must.
‘I didn’t have much choice, did I, Lianne? If you won’t talk to me…’
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘So talk to me. I know you’re scared. I know that he hurt you.’
A livid bruise covered the girl’s right cheek.
‘But he can’t touch you here. Tell me what’s been going on and I swear he won’t come near you ever again.’
Helen held her hand out to the young girl. Lianne looked at it, then dropping her gaze to her lap, muttered.
‘I met him on Friday night.’
‘Where?’
‘Revolution.’
Sanderson shot a look at Helen, but was ignored.
‘And?’
‘He bought me drinks you know. Asked me stuff.’
‘He took an interest in you.’
‘He was nice. He had money too. So we chatted until midnight, then went off.’
‘Where, Lianne? It’s really important you tell me -’
‘We went to his van, ok?’
‘You slept with him?’
‘What do you think?’
‘How old are you, Lianne?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘How old are you?’ Helen repeated more forcefully.
‘Sixteen.’
‘Lianne…’
‘Fourteen, ok, I’m fourteen.’
The girl started to cry. Helen reached out to take her hand and this time the girl didn’t resist.
‘How long did you stay with him?’
‘A few hours.’
‘He was with you the whole time?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then what?’
‘He dropped me home.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Just after four o’clock.’
‘Just after four a.m. Are you absolutely sure?’
‘I saw the clock as I came in. I was pleased – my folks are dead to the world at that time.’
Helen concluded the interview shortly afterwards, the young girl having agreed to make a formal statement about the events of Friday night. There was some comfort in the fact that Nathan Price would face criminal proceedings – sex with a minor was a serious offence that would land him on the Sex Offenders Register – but it was of little solace to Helen. Lianne Sumner had just cleared Nathan Price of any involvement in Ruby Sprackling’s disappearance.
Like it or not, they were back to square one.
49
He tried to focus, wrenching his mind back to the tasks in hand, but still he couldn’t settle. His unpleasant exchange with Summer had left him unsettled and disturbed – it was hard to concentrate on work today. Clients came and went as usual and he dealt with them in his usual professional manner, but he was on auto-pilot, getting the job done with the minimum of effort and interaction. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why was she hostile to him? It didn’t make any sense. Why was she so… ungrateful? Didn’t she understand what he’d had to go through? The risks he’d taken?
News of the discovery of a body at Carsholt beach had knocked him for six. He’d watched the local news repeatedly since, bought every edition of the local paper, scouring the reports for details. Images of a large police forensics team on site had unnerved him, as had the confirmation that local hero DI Grace would be leading the investigation. Ever since he’d seen the news, he’d been on edge, half expecting a knock on the door. He knew that this was unlikely – he’d been so careful, so meticulous in his work – but it just served to underline the lengths he’d gone to – the sacrifices he’d made – to do right by her.
Why wouldn’t she give him the love he craved? The love he was owed? For the first time, anger flared in him. It could all be so perfect. It was so perfect. So why did she insist on denying him? She was an ungrateful little b-
As fast as his fury rose, he forced it back down again, striving to gain control of his raging emotions. She had behaved badly – very badly – but now was not a time to lose faith. He must be patient – there was no rush. She would come round. After all, time was on his side, not hers. One way or another, she would learn to love him again.
50
Ruby’s hands shook as she rifled through the pile of papers, digesting every horrifying word. She had read cards, letters, confessions from three women now – Roisin, a Pippa somebody and another girl who simply signed herself ‘I’. Three women who had been torn from their loved ones and dragged away to this strange Hell.
Roisin’s birthday card to her four-year-old son had made Ruby cry. She didn’t know this woman – had never met her – and yet even in spite of her own suffocating sense of terror, she had been moved by Roisin’s plight. It must have been horrific for her, lying down here alone, imagining her little boy calling for a mother who didn’t come. Did the boy think that his mother didn’t love him any more? That she had abandoned him? It was clear that Roisin had begged to be given a pen and paper, so she could write to her young son and explain her continued absence. But the cards and letters that she’d written had never reached the intended recipient. The cruelty of her captor’s actions in keeping Roisin here took Ruby’s breath away.
‘Pippa’’s testimony was in diary form. She had less to say, she was just marking the passage of time, trying to keep herself sane by detailing the different phases of her life down here with her captor. There had been arguments, abuse and, worse still, rapprochements. Pippa had clearly hated herself for what she had to do down here, what she had become, and Ruby could see why. In the end, she had had to put Pippa’s diary down – it presented a vision of her future which she wasn’t strong enough to contemplate.
Grim curiosity drove her on to ‘I’’s writings, but they turned out to be the worst of the lot. They were dated a little over a year ago and were obviously written after she had discovered Roisin and Pippa’s hidden letters and cards. This discovery had been a sledgehammer blow for ‘I’’s morale, robbing her of any resistance or hope. Her letters thereafter were a mixture of apologies to people she’d loved and wronged in her old life and long, rambling descriptions of her suffering and incarceration – records which she hoped would be found one day.