By one in the morning, Cupidi had called in the news of her missing daughter to the officer on duty, in case anybody heard anything. The woman on the phone was sympathetic, but said there were so few officers on roster on a night like this, and there wouldn’t be much she could do except keep an ear out for any information.
‘I know how it is,’ said Cupidi.
‘We’ll do what we can.’
She and Helen sat up in the living room as her mother dealt out patience cards on a coffee table. She watched her picking up columns and shifting them, but she wasn’t really concentrating at all.
Be methodical, she thought. What is the best thing to do? ‘I should go out again and look.’
‘Look where?’ her mother said.
They both jumped up when the doorbell rang.
David and Cathy stood at the door; beside them was Zoë, her hands and face covered in dark oil.
‘Oh, Zoë.’ Helen rushed forward and grabbed the girl, throwing her arms around her. Cupidi watched them: granddaughter and grandmother hugging each other tight.
‘You have to help me,’ said Zoë, pushing herself free of Helen’s grasp. Her face was black, her eyes red. Cupidi noticed blood on her knee.
‘What happened?’
‘We found her walking on the road outside our house,’ said David.
‘She said she had an accident on her bike,’ said Cathy. ‘She abandoned it somewhere a couple of miles away.’
‘Help me,’ said Zoë. She was crying. ‘Please.’
‘She was really distressed.’
‘Come in,’ said Cupidi. It was her turn to put her arms around her shivering daughter.
‘I’ll stick a kettle on,’ said her mother. Cupidi noticed her wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and realised she had never seen her mother cry before; never once.
‘You have to believe me,’ Zoë was wailing.
‘Believe what?’
There were streaks in the dirt on her face. ‘I promised I’d go back for her. But then your bike broke and I didn’t have a phone and I waved at cars and nobody would stop and I had to walk all the way back on my own. I promised her I’d come back for her and now I’ve left her alone. We have to go.’
‘Back for who?’
‘The girl!’ Zoë shouted. ‘I told them but they wouldn’t go with me.’
‘She kept talking about this girl,’ said David.
She was sobbing hard now, juddering in Cupidi’s embrace.
Cathy said, ‘Obviously we told her she had to come back here first.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cupidi. ‘I’m very grateful.’
‘It’s OK. We were awake anyway. We had a few things to discuss,’ said Cathy, unsmiling.
Arms still around her daughter, Cupidi looked at her and said, ‘I want to say sorry…’
Cathy nodded curtly as Zoë unwound herself from her mother, tugging at her hand. ‘We have to go and get the girl.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I was cycling out Walland Marsh way and met a girl. She was just running along the road. On her own. I promised to go back.’ Zoë was practically screaming now.
‘Shh, darling,’ said Cupidi. ‘Take a breath. How old was the girl?’
‘My age. I think. Bit older.’
‘Sixteen? Seventeen? What was she doing out at night?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. Except she was scared.’
‘Do you think she had been sexually assaulted?’
‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘I’ll show you,’ she tugged. ‘She’s waiting for me. I promised to be back ages ago. She was so frightened, Mum. You have to come.’
‘She was like this with us too. Wanted us to go with her,’ said David.
‘I’m going to call the police and tell them what you saw,’ Cupidi said to her daughter. ‘Then I’ll drive there, OK? We’ll go and look for her now.’
‘And you should go with them,’ Cathy said to her husband.
‘It’s all right,’ replied Cupidi. ‘I can manage.’
‘It’s not that. I don’t really want him around right now,’ said Cathy.
Cupidi said, ‘I didn’t ask your husband to come here. I don’t want anything to do with him, I promise.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
Cupidi and Cathy looked at David, then turned to meet each other’s eyes.
‘So you lied to both of us?’ said Cupidi.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ David answered.
‘Really?’
‘Mum. Not now. Please,’ said Zoë.
‘Maybe you’ll need some help,’ suggested David.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Helen.
‘She may be. But I may kill him if I spend another hour in his company,’ said Cathy.
There was an awkward second in which nobody spoke. ‘OK. Come with us,’ said Cupidi. ‘You’re a policeman, after all.’
‘Come on!’ Zoë was screaming. ‘Now.’
‘What do you think, Zoë? Is it OK if David comes with us?’
‘I don’t care. Let’s go. Please. She’s waiting.’
‘My car’s round the back,’ said Cupidi. ‘Wait for me there.’ Before she left, she called up the officer on duty again, repeated what her daughter said, then followed David and Zoë out of the back door to where the car was parked.
David folded himself into the back seat while Zoë fumbled with her belt.
‘Go,’ said Zoë. ‘Hurry.’
They passed the black house, lights still on.
The roads were empty at this time of night. Zoë led them through Lydd and past the church.
‘Right here, right here.’ Zoë pointed. ‘Now left.’
They turned off Midley Wall, heading into the middle of the marsh.
‘You cycled all the way out here?’
‘It’s easy. It’s flat.’
‘And then walked all the way back?’
‘I had to. Your bike was broken. I hit a ditch in the dark and it bust the wheel.’
In the headlights, the small trees leaned to the right across the road, shaped by the winds that blew across the flatland. The lane curved one way and the other, following the ancient pattern of dykes.
‘Left… left.’
Caught in the full-beam headlamps, a black telephone cable looped rhythmically from pole to pole. They drove through a small hamlet; a children’s swing in a bare garden; then passed the narrow bridge that led over White Kemp Sewer and veered off to the right, passing under the huge electricity pylons.
‘Look. There’s the bike.’
Cupidi’s bicycle, front wheel bent, was abandoned in the grass at the side of the road.
‘Leave it. We’ll pick it up later. Why did you come all this way?’
‘I don’t know. To get away.’
‘Because David turned up?’
‘You promised you weren’t getting back together with him.’
‘We’re not. Swear to God.’
David said nothing, just huddled in the back of the car as they swung round corners. These roads could be treacherous at night.
They crossed the railway line, then Zoë shouted, ‘Here! Stop.’
By the side of the narrow hedgeless road, Cupidi pulled the car over, switched off the lights. The night was still. Zoë got out and looked around.
‘It’s me,’ she said to the blackness beyond them. ‘I’m back. Sorry it took so long.’
Nobody answered. Nothing moved.
‘Don’t worry. This is my mum.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ asked David.
‘The girl.’
There was silence. ‘I can’t see anyone,’ he said.
‘Quiet,’ said Cupidi. Further up the road, the street lights of Snargate shone orange, but as far as she could see in this darkness the flat fields around were empty.
Zoë stood there twitching her head from one direction to the next, looking.
Then her daughter started up the road, first walking, then breaking into a trot.
‘Where are you going?’
‘She came from over there,’ said Zoë. ‘She was running over the fields when I saw her. Maybe she’s gone back there.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Cupidi said.
Zoë stopped. ‘What if she’s scared, still? It was me she talked to.’
‘I thought you said she didn’t speak English?’ said David.
‘She didn’t. I mean, she was trying. Something had happened and she was frightened. That’s why she was running away.’
The teenager looked anxiously out over the marshes.
‘Where exactly was it you saw her?’
‘Right here,’ she said, agitated. ‘I think. She was coming from that direction –’ she pointed into the field – ‘and I almost cycled straight into her. Let me go. I’ll find her on my own.’
Cupidi walked up to her and handed her the torch. ‘Don’t go too far.’
The girl had found a small plank footbridge across the dyke and was walking northwards, into the stubbled field, into the darkness. ‘Tell me, David. What were you trying to do, coming back here?’
‘I miss you, that’s all. I wanted to be with you.’
‘Hello?’ Zoë’s voice came from the field. ‘I’m here. Where are you?’
‘Cathy knows about us, doesn’t she?’
‘Well, she does now,’ he said.
‘She knew before. The first time she looked at me in the beach house tonight, I could tell she knew.’
‘I swear. She never knew. I had kept it from her, I promise.’
But she did know, thought Cupidi. From the look on her face, she had known for some time. It had been her keeping that knowledge from him, not the other way around. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she said.
They watched the torch beam flickering in the distance.
‘But you made the first move. You got back in touch,’ he said. ‘It was you who called me.’
‘I was asking for your help with a case, that’s all.’
‘That’s not what it sounded like to me.’
‘You’re vain, David. You think it’s all about you. That’s all it was. A case I wanted you to help me with.’
‘Jesus. Where are we, anyway?’
‘Near a place called Fairfield,’ said Cupidi. Somewhere to the south-west was the church of St Thomas à Becket, marooned in the middle of marshland. Which meant that they were close to Salt Lane.
The torch was getting further and further away.
‘It didn’t really end, did it? You just went away.’
She looked at him unbelievingly. ‘Yes, it did. I went away. I protected you, David. I moved out of London for your reputation. It finished.’
‘But I still have feelings for you,’ said David.
Cupidi cupped her hands round her mouth: ‘Zoë? Are you OK?’
No answer, but they could still see the torch moving.
‘Do you think this girl – the one Zoë says she saw – is even real?’ David asked.
A brief hesitation before she answered, ‘Of course she is.’
‘Mum?’ came a shout.
‘Wait here,’ said Cupidi. She made her way across the plank bridge into the empty field, towards the torchlight.
‘She’s gone,’ said Zoë miserably. ‘She was there by the road, and then… she was pulling me over here. I said I’d get help, but I took too long and now she’s gone.’
Cupidi looked back at the silhouette of David. ‘What nationality do you think she was?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t understand what she was saying.’
‘What colour was her skin?’
‘I don’t know. It’s dark.’
‘Darker than yours?’
‘No. Yes. A bit.’
‘Asian.’
‘Maybe. She had black hair.’
It was three in the morning. She would have to be up early. The night was turning cold.
‘Do you think that’s where she came from?’
‘That direction… there. I think something awful had happened to her. You should have seen her, Mum. She was so frightened.’
She put her arms around her daughter. ‘What do you think was going on?’
‘I think someone had attacked her. She was doing this.’ Zoë pulled away from her and mimed a fist descending, like someone being beaten. Cupidi peered at it. Zoë brought her hand down again onto her shoulder.
The clenched fingers could have been wrapped around something. ‘Was that a knife she was miming?’
‘I suppose it could have been.’
‘Was she hurt?’
‘I didn’t see. It was dark. I didn’t have a phone or anything, neither did she.’
‘Did you see any blood? Or bruising?’
Zoë hesitated. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘You asked her where she was from?’
‘She was pointing over there.’ Zoë gestured to the north. ‘Oh. And I remember now. She was miming this kind of biting action.’ Zoë lifted her hand to her mouth and bit into air.
‘You think she was trying to tell you something?’
‘You never listen!’ Zoë screamed. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you. She was trying to tell me something really important. Only I couldn’t understand.’ And fresh tears shone down her face in the torchlight.
Cupidi put her arms around the girl. ‘Come on. We’ll drive around a bit more then.’
Zoë nodded glumly. She took a breath from between her crying and asked, ‘Are you sleeping with David again?’
‘Jesus, no. I’m not. I promise. He just turned up. It’s over between us.’
They walked back across the uneven ground, hand in hand. ‘He was calling you on the phone. Only, if I picked up he wouldn’t talk. It was him, wasn’t it? He’s a creep.’
‘No. He’s not. He’s just…’
‘Stupid,’ said Zoë, snot bubbling at her nose. She wiped it on her sleeve.
When they got to the car David asked Zoë, ‘Are you OK?’
She didn’t answer.
Cupidi said, ‘We’re going to drive around a little more… take a look. Zoë said there was a girl out here in trouble. We’re going to see if we can find her anywhere.’
‘Right.’
She set off towards the small hamlet of Snargate, but Zoë said, ‘She wasn’t pointing over here. She was pointing over there.’
‘How can you tell with these roads?’ said David.
Cupidi turned around, drove back down the lane until she found a right turn, heading more directly east. She was aware of the significance of the land she was driving through. Just to the south lay Salt Lane, and the ditch where they had found Hilary Keen.
‘She could be anywhere,’ said Cupidi.
‘Come on. That way. That’s the way she pointed.’
‘How can you tell? It’s dark.’
‘She pointed this way.’
Cupidi tried to picture the area in her head and realised they must be heading north-east. Pretty much the direction Zoë had indicated earlier. It was so easy to get lost around here, but Zoë seemed to understand the landscape better than any of them. Whatever turns they took, she was consistently leading them in the same direction, northwards. Cupidi put the car into a low gear and drove up the small lane. All this area was new to her. The land was changing; there was a slight slope to the road now; they were at the edge of the marsh.
In half a mile, they came to a T-junction. ‘Where now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zoë said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She was rocking backwards and forwards in the seat, distressed.
They sat there for a minute, engine running.
‘Call it in again,’ said David. It’ll be light soon. The logical thing would be to organise a proper search in the morning.’
Cupidi wanted very much to believe the girl existed; but he was right. There was nothing useful they could do now. Most of all, Zoë needed a bath and to sleep.
A faint light was filling the horizon to the east.
‘I was thinking,’ Cupidi said. ‘Do you want me to call a doctor in the morning?’
‘Cross my heart, I saw her. I promise.’ She was about to start crying again.
‘I believe you. I do. Just… I don’t think you’re happy, that’s all.’
‘So what? Everybody doesn’t have to be happy, do they?’
‘No. It’s true, they don’t.’
She swung into the junction and began a U-turn. That’s when the headlights caught the sign: Sheepfold Orchard. Cherries. Apples. Plums.
Her daughter holding something to her mouth and taking a bite.
The girl had been miming eating fruit. She was real. She existed.