From the Cradle (26 page)

Chapter 30
Patrick – Day 5 – Late Afternoon

Helen Philips wordlessly invited Patrick in, turning and drifting towards the living room, head drooping and shoulder blades sticking out. She reminded Patrick immediately of poor Fiona Hartley, who had answered his knock at her front door in exactly the same defeated manner. Not remotely alike physically, it was as if they had morphed into identical grief-stricken twins.

Was it possible for someone to shed pounds in just a few days, he thought, looking at the bones in her skinny back showing through her T-shirt. Yes, of course. He himself had lost a stone and a half in the weeks that followed Gill’s attempted murder of Bonnie, but he pushed down the memory of his hollowed-out reflection the moment it bobbed up. He didn’t have space right now in his head to think about Gill and what her apparent improvement might mean. The problem lurked like an uninvited guest at a party. He would have to deal with it soon, but not today.

Helen perched on the edge of her designer sofa and chewed her fingernails as she looked up at him. Here was a woman who was losing hold. The TV was tuned to Sky News, the volume turned down low.

‘When did you last see Alice?’ Patrick asked, his back to the TV.

She gazed around the room as if the answer might lie behind the pot plant or beneath an armchair. ‘Yesterday evening. We had . . . we had a huge fight, and then Eileen came in and told us about the hostages.’

Their eyes met and Patrick had to look away.

‘When we got back I was so upset I went straight to bed. Sean and Eileen stayed up. They were drinking – I found an empty bottle of gin in the bin this morning.’

A man choosing to sit and get drunk with his mother rather than comfort his wife. Patrick wanted to note that down in his Moleskine but would have to do so later.

‘When I got up this morning I went to Alice’s room. I thought I should apologise, drain some of the poison from the air. She wasn’t there. Her bed looked like it had been slept in though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She never makes it. Sean and Eileen say they didn’t see her last night. Too busy getting pissed.’

‘You’ve tried ringing her?’

A tiny nod. ‘Yes, several times. Her phone is going straight to voicemail, like it’s switched off.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Why do you want to talk to her? Oh my god, do you think she had something to do with Frankie?’

Patrick dodged the question. ‘Where are Sean and Eileen now?’

‘Eileen’s gone out somewhere and Sean is in Alice’s room “looking for clues”.’ She made air quotation marks, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Patrick was about to ask Helen to fetch her husband when he heard footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Sean Philips appeared in the doorway. His sandy hair stuck up above his round, pale face in clumps. He blinked at Patrick.

‘Detective.’ Sean glanced at his wife who sat staring straight ahead. ‘Have you got news about Frankie?’

‘I’m afraid not yet. Would you mind taking a seat?’

Sean sat beside Helen and tried to take her hand. She pulled hers away like his was covered in slime. He
did
look damp and sweaty, Patrick thought, his skin resembling wet putty. Patrick had also noticed that Sean had buttoned his shirt incorrectly so there was an extra inch of shirt at the bottom on one side. Like his wife, Sean Philips was falling apart, though the husband was making a doomed effort not to show it.

Patrick cleared his throat. ‘Firstly, I wanted to assure you that we are still doing everything possible to find Frankie and in the light of what’s happened in the last twenty-four hours we’re going over everything again from the beginning. I need to ask you some more questions about the night she disappeared.’

‘We’ve told you everything we know already,’ Sean said.

‘I’m sure, but—’

Patrick’s words were interrupted by a sharp intake of breath from Helen. Staring intently at the TV, she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume, as Patrick turned round to see what had made her gasp.

Liam’s parents, Zoe and Keith McConnell, were on the news channel. There was a shot of them standing in their substantial front garden, the car from which Liam had been taken in the background, hugging their son tightly and beaming at the cameras. Neither of them looked like they would ever want to let go of him again, and Patrick could imagine Liam’s future – his parents never letting him out of their sight, hovering over him day and night, smothering him with love and concern. But he was safe; that was what mattered.

Then the McConnells were being interviewed in their living room, a room very like this one: straight out of
Home and Garden
magazine, all that creamy, expensive furniture, a huge family portrait hanging behind the sofa.

‘I just can’t express how I feel,’ Zoe McConnell said. Her eyes met the camera lens. ‘I want to say an enormous thank you to the police for finding him for us, and—’ Her voice broke with emotion, and it sounded like she was there in the room with them – until Patrick realized that the crying noises were coming not from Zoe on the TV, but from Helen.

She sobbed, her entire body trembling with distress, her fingers clawing at the upholstery, grabbing a cushion and pulling it to her, hugging it against her belly. A terrible keening noise came from her and she stamped her foot on the carpet, her face pink and streaming with tears.

‘Frankie, oh Frankie,’ she cried, a tsunami of grief making her body buck. She kept uttering her daughter’s name over and over. Sean tried to take hold of her but she shrank away and he hovered at the edge of her, stricken and useless.

‘We’re never going to find her.’ Her words trembled in her throat. ‘She’s gone, gone forever.’ She sounded like someone was shaking her.

She lifted her face and looked directly at Patrick. Behind him, the McConnells continued with their public display of joy. Helen pointed a finger and said, ‘You said you’d find her. You’ve failed us. You’ve failed Frankie.’

‘Helen, that’s not fair,’ Sean said weakly.

‘Fuck you,’ Helen spat.

Patrick stood there and took it. Her words made him go cold, but he couldn’t blame her.

‘We will find her,’ he said. Not adding
or what happened to her
.

A fresh wave of tears broke and, finally, she let her husband pull her into an embrace. He stroked her hair and whispered to her as she continued to cry, clutching the back of his badly buttoned shirt.

Patrick had never felt so awkward.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he said.

While he waited for the kettle to boil, his phone rang. It was Carmella.

‘Guess what,’ she said.

‘Larry’s done a runner?’

‘Alice too, eh? I got there and his mum was being all “leave my poor little boy alone” on the doorstep for about five minutes until I eventually persuaded her to let me in. Larry’s nowhere to be seen. His mum admitted she thought he was just having a lie-in, but she hadn’t actually clapped eyes on him since last night. She said his backpack was gone, along with a toy tiger he’s had since he w
as little.’

‘Bad man, huh?’

‘I know, right? Bless. She said it never leaves his pillow. The last time he took it out was on a camping trip with the Scouts when he was twelve.’

Patrick couldn’t help but laugh.

‘They’re
bambinos
,’ Carmella said. ‘Him and Alice. They think they’re all grown up but they’re just children.’

When Patrick returned to the living room a few minutes later, holding two steaming cups of tea, each containing three spoonfuls of sugar, Helen was wiping her face with a tissue, the TV was off and the couple sat with their hips touching, facing forward. There was a large wet patch on Sean’s chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ Helen said in a raw voice.

Patrick put the mugs of tea on the coffee table and sat in the armchair opposite. He put his hands on his knees and leaned
forward
.

‘I’m going to need to ask you those questions. We may have covered some of this before but it’s important now we’re looking at everything from a different angle.’ He deliberately avoided using cold words like ‘case’ and ‘investigation’.

Both Philipses nodded.

He paused for a moment before deciding how to begin. He didn’t want Sean to leap to his daughter’s defence from the first moment. ‘How often did you go out leaving Alice looking after Frankie?’

Sean answered. ‘Once in a blue moon. We hardly ever get out.’

‘I’m never going out and leaving her again,’ Helen said quietly.

‘So it was an unusual event? You didn’t have a regular night that somebody else might know about?’

‘God. No, not at all,’ said Sean.

Patrick had his notebook out. These were warm-up questions whose answers he didn’t expect to be illuminating, but he made a show of noting them anyway.

‘Who knew you were going out?’

Sean said, ‘I don’t know. I think I told a couple of people at work, made a comment about how we were actually going to go out for a change.’

‘What about Facebook or Twitter? Did you announce it o
n there?’

Helen and Sean looked at each other questioningly. Sean said, ‘I hardly ever update my Facebook. I don’t think I put anything on there. And I only use Twitter for business.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t either,’ Helen said.

‘So the only people who knew you were going out were yo
u –
the family – plus a couple of friends and colleagues? Did you pre-book the restaurant? Go there in a cab?’

‘Yes to the booking. No to the cab – we walked. It’s only ten
minutes
’ walk. It was a nice evening. We gave you those details before.’

‘Of course. But bear with me.’ Patrick knew that they had already spoken to the restaurant, checked out the employees, and that no-one else was under suspicion.

‘So the only other people who would have known would be those who Alice told,’ Patrick stated. ‘Which could be any number of her friends.’

‘I guess so,’ Sean said. ‘But we can’t ask her at the moment, c
an we?’

Patrick scrawled a line in his pad. ‘Let’s come back to that. Alice told me that her boyfriend, Larry Gould, didn’t come round that evening. Do you believe her?’

Sean said, ‘Yes,’ and Helen said, ‘No.’

‘A difference of opinion.’

Sean said, ‘She was told not to invite Larry round that evening. Why should we disbelieve her when she says she didn’t?’

‘Why did you tell her not to invite him? Don’t you like him?’

Sean laughed humourlessly. ‘I like him as much as any father likes his teenage daughter’s boyfriend.’

Patrick waited for him to say the obvious, and Sean didn’t disappoint. ‘I know what boys are like at that age.’

‘He’s actually a nice kid,’ Helen said. ‘He’s a bit rough round the edges, very “street.” But he’s always very polite and quite funny. I can understand what Alice sees in him. She’s at the age where boys who seem a little bit dangerous and different to what their parents approve of are very appealing.’

Patrick was impressed by how quickly Helen had pulled herself together. She was in that calm state of mind that people often go into after a big emotional episode.

‘So why didn’t you want him coming round while you w
ere out?’

‘Because,’ Helen said, ‘I know what boys
and
girls are like at that age. I didn’t want them making loads of noise and disturbing Frankie. Maybe it’s because I’m not Alice’s natural mother, but I’m not that bothered about the thought of them having sex in her room. I mean, they’re obviously doing it anyway.’

‘
What?
’ Sean said, appalled.

‘Oh, come off it, Sean,’ Helen said. ‘They’ve been together
six m
onths. Of course they’re sleeping together.’

Sean looked sick and Patrick had a horrible vision of himself in thirteen years’ time, going through the same with Bonnie.

‘But despite your warning, you think Larry did come round that night?’ Patrick asked Helen.

‘I’d be amazed if they could resist. And I bet that’s what they were doing when Frankie . . . was taken.’ Her face darkened again. ‘Alice was too busy screwing her boyfriend to look after her sister.’

Sean stood up and pointed a finger at his wife. ‘Don’t talk about Alice like that. None of this is her fault.’ His face shifted from white to pink to purple before Patrick’s eyes. The truce between the Philipses was over.

‘Please,’ Patrick said. ‘Mr Philips, sit down.’ He waited till Sean had taken his seat, at the very edge of the sofa, before asking, ‘Do you know if Larry and Alice are into drugs?’

He expected the ‘yes’/’no’ conflict again, but while Helen thought about it, Sean said, ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Like you said about the . . . sex thing, they’re teenagers, aren’t they? I’m sure they smoke a bit of dope.’

Patrick hadn’t heard it called that for years. Feeling old, he said, ‘What about harder stuff?’

Sean sighed. ‘I don’t know. No parent really knows what their kids get up to, do they? But I
do
know that Alice didn’t have anything to do with Frankie’s disappearance. She would tell us if she knew anything. She loves her sister more than
anything
.’

‘So why has she run off?’ Helen asked.

‘Because,’ he said in an exasperated tone, ‘she’s sick and tired of everyone blaming her. As am I.’

Silence settled over the room. Patrick thought hard. All this speculation wasn’t getting them anywhere. Helen and Sean didn’t know a thing. Alice was a teenager; it was like having an alien living in their house, a being they would never fully know or understand. The police had to focus on finding her.

‘OK . . . Any idea where she might have gone? Does she have access to any other properties? Any distant friends or relatives she might have gone to stay with? Anywhere at all that you can th
ink of?’

The answers were negative.

‘What about her phone?’ Sean asked. ‘Can’t you trace it?’ Before Patrick could reply, he added, ‘I’ve tried ringing her a dozen times, and her phone is going straight to voicemail, as if it’s turned off. But can’t you trace phones even if they are switched off?’