She picked up her favourite rosary. It had been a present from Michael on their wedding day – it was not expensive, it was very plain, made from olive wood, but it meant the world to her.
She kissed the Cross of Christ, and blessed herself quickly. Then she walked from her bedroom into her large sitting room. There she knelt down before the crucifix that dominated the room, and she began the first decade of the rosary. She normally enjoyed the Joyful Mysteries but, since Jessie’s disappearance, she was now concentrating on the Sorrowful Mysteries. She could feel the despair that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, must have felt when her son had been taken from her. All she wanted, all she was praying for, was a phone call. Just something to let her know her daughter was safe.
‘Is he fucking sure? How are we supposed to plot his daughter’s last movements? I mean, in all honesty, where would we start? She could have been literally anywhere.’ Marcus Dewer was genuinely perplexed. He was also feeling worried – like many of Michael’s workforce, he was guilty of having known Jessie Flynn in a biblical sense. If he was honest, on more than one occasion. Now she was on the missing list, and he was terrified that Michael would find that out. Like most people, he believed she was on the nest somewhere, drugged out of her brains and oblivious to all the aggro she was causing.
Jamie Gore shrugged. ‘It is what it is, Marcus. She likes this part of Brixton because she can score here. So let’s get parked, and start asking round.’
Marcus sighed, and parked the BMW neatly. He looked at the photo of Jessie; she was a pretty girl, there was no doubt about that.
‘This is fucking stupid! Everyone knows there’s a price for information on her. The whole of the Metropolitan Police are scouring the Smoke. So what we are supposed to find out I don’t know.’
Jamie Gore secretly agreed with his friend, but he was too shrewd to say that. ‘Marcus, do me a favour, will you? Shut the fuck up, and do what the man is paying us for. Who knows – we might stumble on to something accidentally. In fact, I think we should poke our heads into a few skag houses. You know what junkies are like – the fucking Third World War could erupt and they wouldn’t even notice until they ran out of heroin. So there’s a chance, albeit a very slim one, that they might not know about her being missing. And don’t forget, Marcus, if we find out something important, we will be greatly rewarded.’
Marcus nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. He was more worried that they would be the ones to find her, overdosed and dead as a doornail. That wasn’t the kind of news he would relish giving Michael. It was what the majority of people believed had happened to Jessie Flynn – they were waiting for her body to turn up, and no one wanted to be the one who found it.
Jessie was weak. The man who was holding her only gave her the minimum of water; she was always thirsty, although the hunger wasn’t so acute any more. She couldn’t work out how long she had been down here in the darkness. She seemed to sleep a lot, so she guessed that he was putting something in the water to keep her sedated. At least he had untied her hands although she was still manacled around her ankles, and the chain was attached to an iron hoop on the wall behind the mattress. She was still in darkness – the only time there was any light was when he brought her water. He had a torch, but it blinded her, so she covered her eyes. She had a feeling he wasn’t interested in her seeing him anyway. She played the game – that was all she could do.
He had still not spoken to her, and that frightened her more than anything else. She had threatened him, abused him, told him that her father would be searching for her, and he had not reacted in any way. He had shone the torch and shown her an old chamber pot where he expected her to do her business. She had railed at him, cursed him, but there had been no reaction.