DETECTIVE O’CONNOR IS TELLING SINEAD THAT under no circumstances is she to leave the car, assuring her that he will stay close to me. Another police officer gets in beside her. I can tell young Sinead is out of her depth.
I hear O’Connor issue instructions into his walkie-talkie. ‘Everyone is to take it nice and easy. We don’t want him knowing we’re here.’
There are police dressed in SWAT gear, dogs, German shepherds, and men who I assume are plain-clothes detectives. I feel the breeze coming in from the sea. I shiver. O’Connor puts his jacket around me and for the first time, I can see his gun.
The shutters on the amusement arcade are all down, but I can hear the whiz of the slot machines, the ping of the pinball, see the silver coins moving back and forth on trays, everyone trying to win a prize.
I walk down the pathway I went down with Amy.
‘Try to remember everything,’ O’Connor says.
I want to turn back time. To be with her again, instead of stopping the way I did all those years before, not doing as she asked. I want to follow her this time.
‘Are you sure this is the way, Ellie?’
‘I’m sure.’
I taste the wet salt air, sand blows into my eyes from the sand dunes, the fields to my left are flat. I can see Amy; she is running ahead of me. She turns and smiles, pulling some wild grasses from the side of the dirt track, making a pretend fan. I hear the sounds of strangers, families playing on the beach, ghosts in her world. The road narrows ahead of me, and I see the elderberry trees. Their berries are dark red, shrivelled, limp. Out of season.
O’Connor is telling his people to spread out. They move like silent whippets, quieter than the creaking trees. We reach the point where the ground drops down into the woodland. I can no longer see the sand dunes.
‘Where did you go next, Ellie?’
I can hear Amy’s voice, begging me to follow her. I look all around me.
‘Where Ellie, you have to remember? Where did you go next?’
I wish I could turn back the clock, change everything, take Amy by the hand, go with her.
‘Ellie?’ His voice rises for the first time.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Ellie, you need to remember. Where did you go next?’
I look at him, wanting to give him the answer. I hate myself all over again.
‘I didn’t go any farther with Amy.’ I shake my head from side to side. ‘I told her we needed to go back.’
The Hideout
KATE WAITED FOR HIM TO ASK HIS QUESTION, ALL THE time wondering how she should handle her next move. He still had the knife in his right hand. Somehow, she had to persuade him to put it down. If she had the knife, she and Charlie had a chance, however small. She needed him to relax more. She had to encourage his belief that she could give him everything he wanted – trust, loyalty, friendship. If she could do that, it was her best chance of getting that knife away from him.
‘Yes, Kate. It’s a rather difficult question to ask.’
The words ‘trust, loyalty, friendship’ repeated in her head. He had to believe her.
‘I don’t mind, William. Go right ahead. We’re all friends here.’
He smiled back at her, but Kate could tell he still wasn’t sure if he should believe her just yet.
‘I do hope so, Kate. I value friendship enormously.’
‘I know you do, and so do I.’
‘Kate, I know about the attack. The one when you were twelve. I read the report.’
She was furious at herself. She should have worked this out. He had been in her apartment, had waited for her, but he could have been there before, taken her earring then. He had noticed her out running, admired her determination. The investigation had brought her directly into his focus. If he had read the report, he knew all about her vulnerability, had already likened it to his own – a common bond.
‘These things make us who we are, William.’
‘I know they do, Kate. But the report, it wasn’t specific. It lacked detail. The truth of everything is in the detail, don’t you agree?’
Kate thought before answering. She needed this man to trust her fully, even if he was the last person on earth she wanted to share her fears with. She had no choice. Trusting someone with a secret, sharing a piece of yourself, was the quickest way to establish a higher level of friendship, parting with information normally given to those you cared about, people you believed would understand.
‘I feel I can trust you, William.’
‘You can, Kate.’
She sensed him softening, his shoulders relaxing. The grip on the knife, was it less tight? Was she imagining it?
‘I was very frightened.’ She wrapped her right arm tighter around Charlie, holding his hands in her left hand.
‘Go on, Kate.’
‘I’d gone out with friends. We got separated. I could still hear them talking up ahead, but I knew someone was following me.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I’d seen him earlier, out of the corner of my eye. It was just a fleeting movement. I’d forgotten about it instantly. But then I knew something wasn’t right. I got a kind of sense.’