Gone

74

Outside the MCIU offices it was raining. The side turning that led from the main street to the car park was packed with vehicles. There were people on the pavement, men in suits, uniformed officers. There was an armoured Sprinter van with the back doors open. Cold blue lights turned on vehicle roofs.

Janice already knew that MCIU had figured out about Prody: at the same time as she’d been with the families, Caffery had been putting it together. But as the four of them – Janice, Nick, Cory and Rose Bradley – pulled up in the Audi, she could tell from the seriousness in the men’s faces that something more had happened. There was something terrible about the way the officers were concentrating, talking in neat, nipped sentences. Urgent. That serious intent was the worst thing for Janice. It meant it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it meant they’d got him. Found the girls.

Nick saw it too. She unclipped her belt, her face fixed. ‘Wait here.’ She got out and walked fast in the direction of the offices.

Janice hesitated, then unbuckled her seatbelt and got out. She set off across the street after Nick, her shoulders hunched in the rain, her coat half hitched up over her head. Past the vehicles, through the gates that stood wide open and into the car park. She had almost passed a long black car parked against the wall when something about it caught her eye. She came to an abrupt halt. She stood, facing ahead for a moment, motionless.

Someone was sitting in the back seat of the car. A woman. A woman with pale hair and a sorrowful, drawn-down face. Clare Prody.

Janice turned very slowly. Clare stared back at her from behind the rain-spattered window. She had a blanket around her shoulders as if she’d been rescued from a fire, and there was pure horror in her eyes – to be face to face suddenly with Cory’s wife. With Emily’s mother.

Janice couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn away, couldn’t go forward. All she could do was stare back. Her eyes were dry – dry and sore as if they’d never close. There was nothing to say. Nothing adequate to express how it felt to be standing there wretchedly in the rain. Hopeless. Watched by the woman who was sleeping with Cory and whose husband had stolen Emily. She’d never felt so transparently weak and miserable in her life.

Her head dropped forward. She didn’t have it in her any more – even standing was too much effort. She turned to trudge back to the Audi. Behind her the window of the black car opened with a shushing sound. ‘Janice?’

She stopped. She couldn’t take another step, couldn’t turn back. Dog-tired.

‘Janice?’

Painfully she lifted her chin and twisted her head. In the car Clare’s face was so white it was almost luminous. There were black tracks on her cheeks where she’d cried her mascara off. Her expression was pinched and cloudy with guilt. She half leaned out of the window and checked quickly around the car park that no one was watching her. Then she leaned further towards Janice and whispered, ‘They know where he is.’

Janice’s mouth opened numbly. She shook her head. Not getting it. ‘What?’

‘They know where he is. They’re taking me now. I’m not supposed to be saying anything, but I know.’

Janice took a step back towards the car. ‘What?’

‘He’s somewhere called Sapperton. I think it’s in the Cotswolds.’

Janice felt her face widen. Felt a squeezed-up part of her head come to life. Sapperton. Sapperton. She knew that name. It was the tunnel where the teams had searched for Martha.

‘Janice?’

She wasn’t listening. She was running back to the Audi, as fast as her legs would carry her, splashing crazily through the puddles. Cory was out of the car now, a strange look on his face. He wasn’t looking at her, but at Clare sitting in the car. Janice didn’t stop. She didn’t care. She opened her arm out behind her. ‘She’s all yours, Cory. All yours.’

She jumped into the car. Rose was leaning forward from the back seat, her face full of questions.

‘They’ve found him.’

‘What?’

‘The Sapperton tunnel. The place they searched for Martha? They don’t want us there but that doesn’t matter.’ She jammed her keys in and started the engine. The windscreen wipers came on, cannoning back and forth with urgent squeaks. ‘We’re going too.’

‘Hey.’ The passenger door opened and Nick peered in, dripping rain everywhere. ‘What’s going on?’

Janice clicked on the sat nav, tapped in ‘Sapperton’.

‘Janice. I asked you a question. What the hell’s going on?’

‘I think you know the answer to that. They’ve told you.’

The sat nav was crunching the instructions. And now the map came up on the screen. Janice fiddled with the toggle button, zooming out to get a perspective.

‘Janice, I don’t know what you’re thinking of doing.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘I can’t let that happen. You’ll have to abduct me if you want me to stay with you.’

‘Then you’re abducted.’

‘Jesus.’ Nick jumped into the front seat and slammed the door. Janice put the car into gear, took the handbrake off and began to pull forward. But she had to slam her foot on the brake. At the end of the bonnet, half obscured by the rain, stood Cory. His eyes were hooded miserably, his body was half hanging, as if his arms and hands had got too heavy for him. She stared at him, not understanding what was happening. Beyond him Clare was in the black car, looking stonily in the opposite direction. With colour in her face at last. Her cheeks were red. Janice got it. There’d been an argument.

She took the car out of gear and Cory came round to the driver’s side. She opened the window and gave him a long, appraising look. Studied his tan, which had been sprayed on in a booth in Wincanton. Was he as pale under it as she felt? It was hard to tell. She studied the suit – pressed and neat because he’d had time to do all that somehow, whereas she’d have to look down at herself if she wanted to know what she was wearing. And he was crying. In all the time Emily had been gone he hadn’t cried. Not once. It had taken Clare to make him cry.

‘She dumped me. I don’t know what you said to her, but she dumped me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Janice kept her voice calm. Quiet. ‘I’m really sorry.’

He held her eyes, his mouth shaking a little. Then his face crumpled. His shoulders came up. He dropped his head forward, put his hands on the side of the car, and began to sob. Janice watched him in silence, saw the vulnerable bald spot on the top of his head. She felt nothing for him. No pity, no love. Just a cold, hard wedge of nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and this time she meant she was sorry for everything. For him, for their marriage, for their poor, poor little girl. She was sorry for the world. ‘I’m sorry, Cory, but now you have to get out of my way.’