Into the dark, p.2
Into the Dark, page 2
‘The police will find them.’
Mila lifted her tear-streaked face to Julianne, her expression like a stunned animal. ‘But what if something has happened?’ Her voice shrank. ‘Here, in England, they are my family.’
A part of Julianne wanted to shake some sense into the young woman, who was now tearing cellophane from a cigarette packet, despite Piper’s strict policy of no smoking in the house. Of course something had happened. A family didn’t just disappear, mid-breakfast, phones still plugged into chargers, school bag by the front door.
But she forced herself to keep the lid on her own fear, which was threatening to bubble over. Two panicked women would help no one.
A thought struck her and she abruptly left the kitchen, half running down the hallway, through the front door and outside, down the steps, not to Gray’s car on the driveway, but around the corner to the property’s triple garage.
The doors were open, in preparation for the mobile car valeting service that visited fortnightly, but their other cars – a top-of-the-range Lexus RX, a BMW and a vintage Jaguar – were parked side by side, shiny jewels in the morning grey.
If the Holdens had left by choice, they’d have taken a car, wouldn’t they?
Mila was wearing rubber gloves and brandishing disinfectant spray when Julianne walked back into the kitchen. Her defensive half-shrug made her look too young. ‘I’m paid to clean.’
Julianne rested a hand on Mila’s arm. She was still trembling – shock, Julianne supposed, and she guided the woman back to the table. A wisp of smoke rose from one of Piper’s prized olive bowls, a second cigarette already lit and resting next to a small pyramid of ash.
‘I don’t think cleaning is a good idea. The police might need to take fingerprints or something.’
Mila took another drag on her cigarette, a rubber-gloved hand rising to her lips. ‘But I need money for food. Who is going to pay me?’
‘Let’s worry about that later, shall we?’ said Julianne with the air of one who didn’t need to concern herself over such things. After a moment’s hesitation, she retrieved a £20 note she kept folded inside her running belt for emergencies. ‘Take this. But it’s best we don’t touch anything for now.’
The women settled into silence again. Neither knew what to say to the other, their shared concern over the Holdens not enough to bridge their differences. Julianne wanted to tell Mila to stop smoking, that Piper would hate it if she knew, but she lacked the appetite for confrontation.
‘I wonder how long the police will be?’ she said, trying to lighten the awkwardness between them.
‘Why? You have somewhere more important to be?’ Judging by the edge to her tone, Mila was not afraid to articulate her disapproval.
Her over-confidence irritated Julianne. Piper had complained before that Mila was too sure of herself. Now she could understand why. ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I’m supposed to be at a funeral in a couple of hours.’
The cleaner’s demeanour visibly altered. ‘Oh, bože. I am sorry to hear that.’ She peeled off her gloves, her bright blue eyes settling on Julianne. ‘It was someone you loved?’
Julianne lowered her gaze, not able to find the words to explain.
‘I am sorry,’ said Mila again, with the stilted formality of one who’d learned almost all her English from black-and-white films of the 1940s. She crossed herself and patted Julianne’s hand. Her skin was cool and dry.
As they waited for the police to arrive, each lost to her thoughts, Julianne struggled to ignore the tightening band across her chest, a straitjacket of anxiety. The spray of blood on the chandelier had disturbed her more than she was letting on.
An urge to be sick – to physically expel the sense of foreboding from her body – gripped her until she half rose from the chair, certain she was about to lose control of herself. Several deep breaths later, the sensation had passed, and she watched the hands crawl around the clock, counting the minutes until the authorities knocked on the door.
She didn’t tell Mila what Piper Holden had whispered down the telephone last night, that frantic call, mouth close to the receiver, the pull of fear tugging at her words.
‘I’m frightened, Julianne. Gray said he’s going to kill me.’
4
Thursday afternoon
Five days before the Holdens disappeared
Piper Holden snipped off the thread and admired her handiwork. Her fingers ached – five hundred sequins was a lot to sew by hand – but the dress looked stunning. She could have bought something similar in any one of Midtown’s designer boutiques, but Riva had particular ideas about colour and cut, and if there was one thing Piper excelled at, it was making clothes.
She slipped the finished dress carefully onto a padded hanger, silver sequins flickering in the lamplight like fish scales. Her daughter – blessed with the fresh complexion and angular limbs of youth – would cause accidents in that dress. Men had been looking at her with hunger in their eyes since she was twelve.
Piper tidied up her box of cotton reels, needles and buttons. Seawings was quiet this afternoon. Riva and her brother Artie were staying late at school for rehearsals and rugby practice, and Gray was still at the office, putting the finishing touches to a deal he was insistent he had to pull off.
She rose from the chaise longue – a French antique shipped in by Gray and upholstered in pale pink silk for her forty-third birthday – and contemplated the decanter of sherry she’d refilled in preparation for the weekend. A mental headshake. No, too early. She wasn’t an alcoholic, for heaven’s sake.
The place was spotless. Mila may be over-familiar at times but she did a wonderful job of keeping their home clean and tidy. So what if she was young and beautiful? So what if she made Piper feel like a spare part? Gray frequently entertained clients at Seawings – keen to show off the abundant fruits of his labour – and with only a few hours’ notice, it was important their house always looked its best.
Piper’s manicured fingers drifted across the laptop Artie had left on the coffee table. She opened up the slim metallic lid and logged on to one of her favourite sites – a high-end brand famous across the world for its luxury clothing, perfumes and jewellery.
The watch she coveted – black ceramic and steel, and set with fifty-two brilliant-cut diamonds – cost £8,800. Gray had always said she could spend what she liked and although it had taken her years to feel comfortable with his generosity – the lean years of her childhood had instilled in her a sense of frugality – she’d grown used to it. But even she hesitated at this extravagance. Christmas was only a few weeks away. Gray would buy it for her then if she asked.
She gazed at the image and held out her wrist, admiring the elegant nub of bone, imagining the glossy strap encircling it. They were attending a black-tie event at the children’s private school in two weeks’ time to mark its centenary year, two tickets already bought and paid for. A perfect accessory to the scarlet sheath she was planning to wear. With a decisive nod of her head, she reached for the telephone receiver and punched in a number.
The saleswoman was well spoken and charming. Piper was a returning customer and although the glee in the woman’s voice at the prospect of a decent-sized commission was masked, she could not conceal it completely.
‘Usual credit card, Mrs Holden?’
‘Please.’
A pause for the transaction to go through. Music. Puccini’s ‘O mio babbino caro’. She examined her nails. One of them had chipped and would need to be redone. She ought to get a hair appointment in the diary too. Her grey roots were pushing through her blonde bob faster than she’d like. The music stopped. A whisper of sharply held breath and then a cooler, more impersonal tone.
‘I’m afraid your card has been declined.’
Piper sat upright in the chair, the receiver tucked beneath her chin. A vision of her mother, face blanched a shade paler than the flour coating her hands, popped into her memory. Even twenty-eight years later, she could still see the finely ground dust drifting through the air and settling on the hall carpet as her mother wiped her palms on her apron and took the phone from Piper while the head of the clinic – Is Mrs Marisa Sharp in? It’s urgent – broke the news that her youngest daughter, Piper’s sister Clodagh, had been found dead in her bed. In all the years that followed, Piper had never heard a scream like it, that note of anguish plucked from a shadowy hiding place, distilling the sensation of grief into the purest of sounds. The knee-weakening shock of it all.
The saleswoman cleared her throat. Piper remembered herself and gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘That must be a mistake.’
A brief silence followed in which Piper sensed her dubiety.
‘Please don’t worry, Mrs Holden,’ said the saleswoman eventually, her words polished with professionalism. Then, still hopeful: ‘Do you wish to continue this transaction with another card?’
Piper’s cheeks were warm, heart racing. ‘Let me get to the bottom of this and then I’ll be in touch. I’m so sorry for wasting your time.’
In the study, Piper rifled through the drawer containing bank statements. Gray had wanted to go paperless but she liked the heft of pages in her hand, even if it didn’t exactly help the planet.
She ran her finger down last month’s transactions on their joint credit card, but there was nothing untoward or unexpected, nothing to suggest they’d tipped over their limit or had got into difficulties. The bill had been paid on time, as it was every month. Apart from their mortgage, Piper had never been in debt. She saw it as a weakness. In her eyes, money was the route to security. And security meant never having to depend on anyone else. Her mother had not taught her much but she had shown her the error in doing that. That last week with Clodagh. Skin and bone. Cold even in the fierceness of high summer, the sips of water, the downy hair on her arms and cheeks. Marisa Sharp begging the bank to extend her overdraft, knowing it wouldn’t cover the thousands they’d need to pay for private medical care but focused only on getting her daughter in front of a specialist as soon as possible, worrying about the details later. The empty cupboards. The bedsheets worn thin in places. The too-small shoes and free school meals. Piper had promised herself a life as far away from that as possible. And she had succeeded. With flying colours.
But still she felt the need to be certain – a compulsion to officialize it – so she returned to the sitting room and picked up the telephone again, her hand tightening around the receiver until her knuckles became whitened rocks.
This call is being recorded for training and quality purposes. Why did automated voices sound so bored? She pressed a series of buttons until she was put through to a human instead of a computer.
The man listened to her rushed explanation. Can’t remember my online banking passwords. (A light laugh.) My husband deals with all that and he’s stuck in an important meeting that can’t be interrupted. Could you be a sweetheart and possibly check the most up-to-date transactions for this card and the rest of our joint accounts? (A well-timed pause.) I’d be so grateful.
His fingers made a tapping sound against his keyboard, then silence, the all-consuming kind that comes from being muted. Piper sat very still, waiting. She mentally logged the time: 4.54 p.m. At last, the catch of his breath against the mouth of the receiver, that background chorus of call centre voices.
The Man on the End of the Phone cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, he was hesitant, almost apologetic. ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Holden, but I’ve checked and rechecked, and I don’t think it’s a mistake.’
Piper sucked in air. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There was a period of unusual activity on one of your accounts several months ago – a series of regular large withdrawals – but I can’t see anything untoward since then. Until now.’
‘And what’s happened now?’
‘It’s clear you have no idea, so I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but every one of your accounts has been emptied and closed.’
5
Tuesday morning
The day the Holdens disappeared
Saul followed the cliff path into town. The trees swayed in the wind, last night’s storm still making its presence felt. His lungs filled with sea air. For a moment, he was drowning in the past, the coastal brine rinsing the grime of the city from his nostrils and the dark fault-lines from his heart.
The police station was on the main drag into Midtown-on-Sea, sandwiched between a row of exclusive restaurants on one side and a run of expensive boutiques on the other. The pavement was full of women with smart prams and matching nappy bags, striped scarves and thick, stylish coats, reeking of money. A shining bubble of affluence, a world away from the grim reaches of his childhood.
His mother had worn handmade skirts and cheap T-shirts from the market. Gloria: meaning immortal glory. He hoped she’d found it somewhere between the rubbish sacks slumped outside the pub, disguising the shape of her body as the end-of-March snow had fallen, and the treacherous vomit had filled her lungs and choked her.
Her sobriety had been short-lived. Money – Saul’s reward money, to be accurate – had meant she’d graduated from separating the alcohol in bottles of mouthwash and hand sanitizer to buying vodka from the off-licence. He’d wanted her to eat nutritious meals, to afford the electricity bill without having to choose between rent or heat, to not barter the secret parts of herself in exchange for dirty notes, touched by lustful fingers. But while she had sometimes attempted to do what he’d asked of her, she’d been unable to resist the siren song of liquid oblivion.
‘I don’t want it, Saul.’ She’d pushed the bank book across the table, the blurred edges of Saturday afternoon darkening her kitchen as rain streamed down the windows and the sea was a coloured-in storm, but he’d paid money into her account every month anyway. Much later, on that vicious April night, while Saul had been on secondment to the traffic division, a fatherly colleague had broken the news of her death to him. The officer had tracked him down to the scene of an RTA where a young driver had wrapped his car round a tree. As sleet was stippling Saul’s face, the spring flowers pushing through a bloodied patch of frozen earth, he’d remembered that book. He’d found it a comfort to discover she’d used small amounts of his money here and there while at the same time blaming himself for facilitating her addiction.
Her death – officially recorded as arterial hypoxemia caused by pulmonary aspiration of vomit – was the end of everything. She was the only person who knew the truth about his father. He had no brothers or sisters. No relationship with a woman that had lasted more than a few weeks. He didn’t know how to let them in and lost interest when they began to ask intimate questions about his past, pushing against a door he didn’t want to open. In the end, he would close and lock it, shutting them out without a backward glance. He would not have called it loneliness exactly. But without his mother to anchor him, his place in the world felt insubstantial. As the sole surviving member of his family, he was adrift, alone – and that feeling had carried him along the estuary to Midtown-on-Sea.
Saul was due to report to Detective Inspector Angus O’Neill at 10.30 a.m. sharp. The word sharp had been typed in bold in the email and underlined. He tried, without success, not to hate him. He wanted this job more than anything he’d wanted for a long time. Expectations would have to be met, simple as that.
But first, coffee.
The shop was too warm and too busy, the queue snaking almost to the door. He was tempted to leave but he craved the caffeine hit. Saul glanced at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes to go. Just enough time.
When he was third from the front, the rich smell of coffee beans intensifying with every step, a man with rimless glasses, a forgettable face and carrying a takeaway cardboard cup bumped shoulders with him. The lid was not properly secured and hot liquid spilled over the man’s smart jacket.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, glaring at Saul.
The fine hairs at the back of Saul’s neck lifted along with his temper. ‘You should look where you’re going. Could have caused a nasty accident.’
The man took a step towards Saul, staring at him in a way that was designed to intimidate. He was not particularly tall but he carried himself with a hardened ranginess more powerful than height or bulk. But it didn’t bother Saul. He squared up to the stranger, shoulders back, palms facing skywards, fingers curving into a ‘Come on, then’ gesture. The atmosphere bristled with aggression, although not another word had been spoken.
The man held his gaze for a couple of seconds before shaking his head, as if convincing himself not to squander any more of his time on a waste of space like Saul. But Saul recognized that expression, even if the man didn’t know it himself: surrender.
The police station was the kind of Tuesday-morning quiet only affluent suburbs at the edge of the Essex coast understood. Saul waited for the desk sergeant to sign him in.
‘What kind of a name is Anguish?’ the officer asked with a smirk. ‘Oh, wait. You’re the kid who nailed that psycho.’
Saul refused to bite. He leaned forward and made a show of reading the sergeant’s name badge. ‘Everhard.’ He raised an eyebrow. The sergeant coloured and shut up.
For all his determination to become a detective, Saul was not comfortable in police stations. He’d had more experience than most.
At the age of eleven, he was caught stealing a can of Shandy Bass, and the corner shop owner had dragged him all the way to Elm Road by his ear. The officer manning the desk had threatened arrest to ‘teach him a lesson’ and given him a stern talking to, but there had been no formal punishment. The council mowers had been trimming the cliff gardens that afternoon and a drunk had vomited in the stairwell. Even now, the smell of freshly cut grass and the scent of pine disinfectant and parmesan could throw him back to that memory.
When he was fifteen, he’d accompanied his mother to file a missing person’s report following the disappearance of his father, even though they’d both known he was lost to the dark embrace of the estuary.
