‘What about the house-to-house?’
‘It’s been intensive around the area she lived in – her school, local swimming pool and the last sighting. We have CCTV footage from some of the local businesses, quite a lot down from where she waved goodbye to her friend. Checkpoints monitoring movements around the area have been constant since she was first reported missing. Teachers, friends and family members have all been interviewed. The parents and family are finding it tough, needless to say, but at the moment the girl’s father seems to be the one with the cool head. Shelley Canter has been working with both the parents, and the girl’s only sibling, a sister.’
‘Right,’ O’Connor said, taking charge, ‘assuming it is Caroline down there, I want a complete list of everyone who’s been interviewed. I presume you have pulled listings from everywhere.’
‘Of course, and cross-checked with the names we have from the house-to-house.’
‘Anything on known paedophiles close by?’
‘Nothing yet, but I got a call just before I headed up here. We might have a possible sighting of someone interesting from a checkpoint set up the day after she went missing. I’ll know more soon.’
O’Connor looked at his watch. ‘I’ll want it for our first briefing at 10.30. Nolan’s been in touch again. He says you’re to stay involved. As of now, you are the man with most of the information, so stay close.’
Frank Gunning raised an eyebrow, but O’Connor couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Probably delighted to be considered important, arrogant bastard.
‘Don’t worry, O’Connor, I’ve no intention of going anywhere.’
Ellie
I WATCH THE SUN CREEP THROUGH THE SMALL window in my room. There’s just a hint of it now, catching the bottom of the sill. It enters the darkness as it does every day, climbing grey walls and pink chipped window frames; revealing itself discreetly, like some virginal bride. It has a confidence in the unveiling, a confidence that, day after day, says it can be renewed. If it could be amazed, it would be amazed by its own wonder, the determination to come back again and again, with little in the day changed from what went before.
Soon the sunshine will reflect on objects that through the night had no life at all. The twelve-inch square mirror I use when washing my face is alight with sun spots and dust particles drifting in and out of its delicate world. The light blasts against the metal door lock, shooting rays across the room so vibrantly it’s as if they could break open a hole in the opposite wall. I, too, feel amazed; amazed that the sun is here again, touching, reaching all parts of everything that is dull or half-deadened, bringing its teasing presence to rest and slide along the floor beneath my bed.
It moves as it does most mornings, tentatively at first, testing and finding resting places in all that was once in darkness. Today the sky is cloudless, so the sun is free to dazzle my face with a white brilliance that should please me. If I was another person, a person out in the real world, someone filled with hopes and dreams, it would be enough to make me wake and rise and go visit the sunlight and explore all its wondrous temptations. But I am not out in the real world, and I have little desire for its teasing. It belongs to memory, a time long past. Now the darkness suits me better.
This afternoon I am to visit Dr Ebbs again. What will he ask me today? What will I answer? Being sunny, he will probably be even chirpier than he was yesterday, more enthused. He thinks he can help, but what is there to help? I have nothing left. He will ask about the fire, of course, that is usually where they start. As if the fire has answers, as if unravelling the truth about it will give them some magical key that will open doors. But the answers are not in the fire, they never were. When I think about it now, I see it like an ending in a film. Sometimes I can even hear music while I see it played out in my mind’s eye. Another confirmation that my time spent in a lunatic asylum has worked well. The melody is slow, sounding like waves drifting in and out, taking stories out to the vast oceans. The music takes my life with it, or rather, what was once my life.
When I think of the fire, the first thing I see is the dark, dirty, grey smoke rising, bellowing like angry clouds cascading into one another. At first there is silence, then the crackling, the fire exploding within itself as if on a wild and dangerous dance. I hear glass smashing, things falling, plates coming off shelves, furniture crumbling and then nothing. A black silence. I remember being dragged out. I remember the smell. I had not expected that. I had surely not expected that.