‘Can I have a word, mate?’ the man says, his breath frosting in the air as he moves off from where he has been leaning against his car. It is a beaten-up navy blue Volkswagen and the man is tall, big around his middle, wearing a fur cap with flaps that dangle over his ears.
Max has retreated outside the hotel for a cigarette, trying to calm down after the drama of the attack on Hazel in the hotel restaurant. His heart is thumping painfully in his chest as he replays the scene and there is a lump in his throat as he acknowledges his own culpability in the matter. They should have been much more discreet. He should have spoken to DC Hillier by himself first and then she could have interviewed Hazel privately in her bedroom, instead of publicly where anyone could overhear and stir up trouble. Everything that Hazel feared has come to pass and, ultimately, this is a huge distraction from the bigger issue of where little Georgie is. The search is continuing, down on the beach and on the cliff tops. Above him, the coastguard’s helicopter circles, peering down through the clouds like a telescopic eye. The hotel guests remain trapped inside the grounds on police instruction, waiting for the news that they can either get on with their holiday or go home.
Max exhales smoke and grinds out the butt in the snow at his feet. He can’t help but admire the beauty of the landscape in front of him. The ice storm has frozen the countryside in time. Mini mountains of snow are dotted around the car park, covering the vehicles parked there overnight. Handlebars from a bicycle poke up from one mound. The trees look like crystalline scarecrows, reaching up to the white and heavy sky.
Now Max studies the stranger suspiciously as he approaches and first impressions are not good. The man has a squashed red nose, broken veins in his cheeks, and his eyes are beady, rich with greed. ‘Yes, what is it?’ Max asks in a neutral tone.
‘Are you a guest here at Balcombe?’
Max shoves his hands in his pockets and sets his mouth.
The other man shoots him a brief smile. ‘Let’s assume you are,’ he says. ‘Look, pal. I don’t want to cause any trouble. But there’s a few of us up here now.’
Max looks over and sees the distant huddle of grey shapes, indistinct in the frosty air. Journalist vultures, he thinks with disdain, knowing from experience that they will have heard about the search for Georgie from scanning police radios. Then his pulse quickens as he realises it’s imperative to keep the fact of Hazel being here completely hidden from the press. What he holds in his hand isn’t so much carrion as dynamite and if the descending hordes discover that one of the Flower Girls is staying in the hotel where another young girl has gone missing, he’ll lose this story. And it’s his.
Hazel is his.
‘We just want to help, is all. Get the information out there so that people can pitch in, provide information. That’s all.’ The man splays his gloved hands as if to reassure Max. ‘If we get the story out by close of play today, the communication lines will be up and running. We can start asking the public what they know.’
‘And what can they know?’ Max asks. ‘I mean, what is someone in, let’s say, Hull, going to know about what’s taken place here in the hotel over the last twenty-four hours?’
The journalist shrugs. ‘People might recognise a guest. They might know about their backgrounds. You know . . . have something to contribute in that sense.’
‘Label someone a risk, you mean?’ Max tries to level his voice, to look normal.
‘Well, maybe.’ The man exhales a long glacial breath into the air. ‘Look, pal. Where a child is concerned, you’ll do anything, right? Isn’t it better that we know about the guests here? Work out if anyone is a risk? Someone who might potentially have a reason for harming the poor child? If we find out who they are, we can start putting pressure on them to say where she is. What they’ve done with her.’
‘What about me?’ Max asks.
The other man looks confused. ‘What about you?’
‘Well, couldn’t I be the person you’re concerned about? Why are you so sure that I’m not the sinister paedophile you’re referring to?’
The journalist frowns. ‘You don’t look the type, mate.’
‘What does the type look like?’
‘Point taken,’ the man sighs. He looks over at the hotel entrance, longing in his eyes. ‘I see that you’re wasting my time.’
‘No,’ Max says as he turns to leave. ‘You’re wasting mine.’
He walks briskly away, his heart still hammering, but now he doesn’t know if that’s from the adrenaline of the fight inside the hotel, the visceral fear that someone else will work out Hazel’s identity before he has a chance to do anything about it, or his anger with the so-called journalist. Bloody predators, he thinks. How dare they?
He walks back into the warmth of the hotel, shutting the door behind him with relief. Through an archway, he can see Hillier talking intently to two men in suits. In the reception area are huddles of suitcases and weekend bags. People must be asking to leave, he thinks. To be released by the police and allowed to go back to their homes. Even though there is no Georgie. Dead or alive.
Max turns the other way and heads to the lounge, glancing at his watch and wondering if it’s too early for a whisky. Sod it, he thinks. It is New Year’s Day. He orders one at the bar and sinks into a chair by the fire in the blessedly empty lounge, resting his head on the cushion behind him. Heartburn rears its acidic head up his gullet but he tries to ignore it. The hotel still has the feeling of a party halted before it began. Tension hangs in every room, thick as the ice clouds outside. There is an ever-present hum of sound, tight, clipped voices issuing instructions, trying to quell the panic which creeps along underneath it all.
That poor woman, Max thinks, sipping at his drink. He isn’t sure if he means Jane Greenstreet or Hazel Archer. Both of them, down there in the dining room, had seemed so bewildered, so at sea. Their faces were pale and exhausted, from fear and from trying to control a situation that was rapidly slipping away from them. He inhales deeply, the smell of woodsmoke from the fire and recently polished furniture incongruous against the awful thoughts that converge in his head.
Rosie Bowman.
How can she be here? Max thinks. Of all places when such a terrible thing has occurred. But not since he first realised who Hazel Archer really was, has he considered that she might be responsible for Georgie’s disappearance. Aside from the fact that Max can’t comprehend why anyone would want to take and harm a child, it seems such an outlandish act for a woman to undertake, on New Year’s Eve, with her boyfriend and his daughter in tow – on her birthday, for Christ’s sake. Regardless of any of this, it would also be beyond stupid as the whole episode has served only to bring her to the attention of the police and potentially the press. The last thing she must have wanted. And look how terrified she is about those emails she’s been receiving. Max is confident in his assessment that Hazel is innocent of any wrongdoing towards Georgie.
But this doesn’t explain what has happened to the child. As time ticks on, it seems the likely solution is that she wandered off into the night and fell down the cliffs and has been swept out to sea. It is the logical conclusion and one Max is fairly sure will be reached soon.
He stares into the flames, glancing at his now empty glass, thinking about Hazel. The whisky sits hot in his chest, burning through him, fuelling the sharp indignation he also feels. That the poor woman should never be able to escape her past is appalling; that she should be tried by the media for a crime she has had absolutely nothing to do with is equally so. That she is getting these emails from someone who wants to torment her, try and make her insane with worry; that these so-called journalists are leeching information from the hotel like blood-sucking vampires.
He leaps up, galvanised, and exits the lounge abruptly, leaving his empty glass behind him, determined to do something to help Hazel. He will go and find her and Jonny, talk to them about a strategy to protect them from the press. That idiot outside – all of those blood-suckers – would give their eye teeth to be where he is right now.
But as he climbs the stairs, an earlier, guilty thought resurfaces. It keeps returning, like a barrel bobbing on the waves, refusing to sink.
This story will make his career.
This story will change his life.