Little Face Read online

  The curtains are closed. I look down into the cot and at first all I see is a baby-shaped lump. After a few seconds, I can see a bit more clearly. Oh God. Time slows, unbearably. My heart pounds and I feel sick. I taste the creamy cocktail in my mouth again, mixed with bile. I stare and stare, feeling as if I am falling forward. I am floating, detached from my surroundings, with nothing firm to grip on to. This is no nightmare. Or rather, reality is the nightmare.

  I promised David I would be quiet. My mouth is wide open and I am screaming.

  2

  3/10/03, 11.50 am (One week later)

  Charlie was waiting for Simon on the steps of the police station when he arrived for the start of his shift at midday. He noticed that for the first time this year she was wearing her full-length black wool coat with fake fur collar and cuffs. Her bony ankles were no longer visible under thin transparent tights as they had been all summer. As one season succeeded another, Charlie’s legs turned from transparent to opaque and back again. Today they were opaque. Yesterday they’d been transparent. It was a sure sign that winter was on the way.

  At least it was October. Charlie was so skinny that she normally started to feel the cold when most people were still wearing sandals. Today her face was pale and, behind her gold-rimmed glasses, her eyes were anxious. In her right hand was a half-smoked cigarette. Charlie was addicted to holding them and allowing them to burn themselves out. Simon hardly ever saw her take a puff. He could see her red lipstick on the filter as he got closer. There was more colour on the fag end than there was on her mouth. She exhaled a small cloud which might have been either smoke or breath.

  A flick of her other hand, waving him over impatiently. So she was waiting for him. It must be serious if she was meeting him on the bloody steps. Simon cursed quietly, sensing the imminent presence of trouble, angry with himself for being surprised. He should have known it was on the way. He wished he could say that he had been expecting, any day now, to turn a corner and see the ominous face of somebody who had bad news for him. Charlie, this time.

  Simon would have liked to meet whatever fate intended to throw at him with the confidence of the entirely blameless. Ironically, he felt he would be better able to bear his punishment if it were undeserved. Something about the concept of martyrdom appealed to him.

  He found he could hardly swallow. This time it would be more serious than a Reg 9. He’d been a fool to forget – however briefly, however understandably – that he was not the sort of person who got away with things. Those creepy bastards from the Internal Discipline Unit had probably already emptied his locker.

  He felt a churning in his gut. Half of his mind was busy rehearsing his defence while the other half fought to suppress the urge to run, to take off. In Simon’s fantasy it would not be a cowardly flight. It would be slow, dignified, disappointed. He pictured himself becoming smaller and smaller until he was a line, a dot, nothing. The allure of the grand gesture, the silent departure. Charlie would be left wondering how, precisely, she’d let him down and then, once she’d worked it out, wishing she’d listened to him.

  Some hope. Simon’s departures from all his previous jobs had been frenzied, chaotic, with a soundtrack of shouted threats, of fists and feet smashing against doors and desks. He wondered how many new starts a person was entitled to, how many times one could say it was the other person’s fault and truly believe it.

  ‘What? What is it?’ he asked Charlie, skipping the pleasantries. He felt hollow, as if someone had taken a large scoop out of him.

  ‘Have a fag.’ She opened her packet of Marlboro Lights and thrust it at his face.

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘I will, if you’ll keep calm.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake! What’s happened?’ Simon knew he couldn’t hide his panic from Charlie, which made him even angrier.

  ‘Would you care to amend your tone, detective?’ She pulled rank whenever it suited her. One minute she was Simon’s friend and confidante, the next she was reminding him of her superior status. Warmth and coldness were modes she could switch on or off at a second’s notice. Simon felt like a creature squirming on a small glass slide. He was the matter upon which Charlie was conducting a long-term experiment, trying radically different approaches in quick succession: caring, flirty, distant. Result of experiment: subject permanently confused and uncomfortable.

  It would be easier to work for a man. For two years, Simon had armed himself, privately, with the idea that he could request a transfer to another sergeant’s team. He had never got as far as doing it, needing the thought that he could make the change at any time more than he needed the change itself. Charlie was an efficient skipper. She looked after his interests. Simon knew why, and was determined not to feel guilty; her reasons were her business and should be no concern of his. Was it superstitious to believe that the minute he no longer had her protection, he would urgently need it?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Please, just tell me.’

  ‘David Fancourt is in interview room 2 with Proust.’

  ‘What? Why?’ Simon’s imagination wrestled with the jarring image of Inspector Giles Proust face to face with a civilian. An actual person, one who hadn’t been reduced to a name in a sergeant’s report, tidied into a typeface. In Simon’s experience, unusual meant bad. It could mean very bad. Every nerve ending in his body was on full alert.

  ‘You weren’t here, I wasn’t here – Proust was the only person in the CID room at the time, so Proust got him.’

  ‘Why’s he come in?’

  Charlie took a deep breath. ‘I wish you’d have a fag,’ she said.

  Simon took one to shut her up. ‘Just tell me – am I in trouble?’

  ‘Well, now . . .’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Isn’t that an interesting question? Why would you be in trouble?’

  ‘Charlie, stop jerking me around. Why’s Fancourt here?’

  ‘He came in to report his wife and daughter missing.’

  ‘What?’ The words stunned Simon, like a brick wall in the face. Then the sense of what Charlie was telling him sunk in. Alice and the baby were missing. No. They couldn’t be.

  ‘That’s all I know. We’ll have to wait for Proust to tell us the rest. Fancourt’s been here nearly an hour. Jack Zlosnik’s on the desk. Fancourt told him that his wife and baby daughter disappeared last night. There was no note, and he’s heard nothing since. He’s phoned everyone he can think of – nothing.’

  Simon couldn’t see straight. Everything had become a blur. He tried to push past Charlie, but she grabbed his arm. ‘Hey, slow down. Where are you going?’

  ‘To find Fancourt, find out what the fuck’s going on.’ Rage bubbled inside him. What had that bastard done to Alice? He had to know, now. He would demand to know.

  ‘So you’re just going to storm in to Proust’s interview, are you?’

  ‘If I fucking have to!’

  Charlie tightened her grip on him. ‘One day your temper’s going to lose you your job. I’m fed up of supervising your every move to make sure you don’t fuck up.’ She’d care more than I did if they kicked me out, Simon thought. It was one of his safety barriers. When Charlie wanted something it happened. Usually.

  Three bobbies kept their eyes down on their way into the station. They couldn’t get through the double doors fast enough. Simon shook his arm free, mumbling an apology. He disliked the idea that he was causing a scene. Charlie was right. It was about time he grew out of this sort of behaviour.

  She took the cigarette from his hand, put it in his mouth, lit it. She doled out fags medicinally, the way other people did cups of tea. Even to non-smokers like Simon. He needed this one, though. The first drag was a relief. He held the nicotine in his lungs for as long as he could.

  ‘Charlie, listen . . .’

  ‘I will, but not here. Finish that, then we’ll go and get a drink. And calm down, for God’s sake.’

  Simon gritted his teeth and tried to breathe evenly. If he could get through to anyo
ne, Charlie was the one. At least she would give him a fair hearing before telling him he was talking bollocks.

  He took a few more drags, then stubbed out the cigarette and followed her into the building. Spilling Police Station used to be the public swimming baths. It still smelled of chlorine, haunted by the memory of its former self. Aged eight, Simon had learned to swim here, tutored by a maniac in a red tracksuit with a long wooden pole. Everyone else in his class had already known how. Simon remembered how he’d felt when this became apparent to him. He felt it now, at thirty-eight, when he turned up for the beginning of each shift.

  The weight of his anxiety pulled him down, dragging, sinking. Again he felt the urge to run, though he wasn’t sure if his legs would take him further into the building or out of it. He had no plan, only a need to shake himself up, dislodge his fear. He forced himself to stand still behind Charlie while she had a trivial conversation with Jack Zlosnik, the rotund, grey fur-ball on the desk who leaned where grumpy Morris had leaned all those years ago, grimly handing out green paper tickets that said ‘Admit One’.

  There was no reason to assume the worst – to state, even to himself, what the worst might be. Alice couldn’t have come to serious harm. There was still time for Simon to make a difference. He would have sensed it, somehow, if it were too late, would not be so aware of the present trickling into the past, grain by grain. Still, this was hardly scientific proof. He could imagine Charlie’s reaction.

  After an age, Zlosnik was behind them, and Simon forced his feet to mimic Charlie’s, step by step, as they made their way to the canteen, a big echo-chamber full of glaring strip-lights, the clash of voices – mainly male – and bad smells. Simon’s mood made everything appear grotesque, made him want to shield his eyes against the cheap wood laminate floor, the piss-yellow walls.

  Three grey-haired middle-aged women in white aprons stood at the serving hatch, dispensing grey and brown slop to tired, hungry bobbies. One of them slid two cups of tea towards Charlie without moving her features. Simon stood back. His hands wouldn’t have been steady enough to carry anything. A table had to be chosen, chairs pulled out, pulled back in: mundane tasks that made him impatient to the point of fury.

  ‘You look like you’re in shock.’

  He shook his head, though he suspected Charlie was right. He couldn’t shift the image of Alice’s face from his mind. An abyss had opened in front of him and he struggled to stop himself falling in. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Charlie. Really bad. Fancourt’s behind it all, somehow. Whatever he’s telling Proust, it’s a fucking lie.’

  ‘You’re not exactly the most objective judge, are you? You’ve got a thing about Alice Fancourt. Don’t bother to deny it. I saw how flustered you were when she came in last week, just from being in the same room as her. And you look secretive whenever you mention her name.’

  Simon stared purposefully at his tea. Objective? No. Never. He distrusted David Fancourt in the same way he had two other men in recent weeks, both of whom had turned out to be guilty. When Simon proved as much, unequivocally, his fellow officers praised him loudly, bought him drinks and claimed they’d known he was right all along. Including Charlie. She’d had no complaints about his lack of objectivity then. Though, in both cases, when he’d first voiced his suspicions the rest of the team had laughed and called him a nutter.

  Most people rewrote history when it suited them, even those whose job it was to stick to the facts, unearth the truth. Simon didn’t know how they managed it; he wished he had the knack. He remembered, in precise detail, the convenient and the inconvenient, knew exactly who’d said what when. His mind would let go of nothing, not one single thing. It didn’t make for an easy or comfortable life, but it was useful for work purposes. If Charlie couldn’t see that Simon’s occasional rages were a direct result of being constantly underestimated by everybody he worked with, even after he’d proved himself time and time again, how good a detective could she be, objective or otherwise?

  ‘I hope I don’t need to remind you how much trouble you’ll be in if you’ve been seeing Alice Fancourt in your own time, after I told you to have nothing more to do with her,’ said Charlie. That lectern voice again, that podium tone. Simon couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t she see the state he was in? Did she have any idea what it felt like to be so trapped in your own preoccupations that the disapproval of others rolled off you, like rain off the waxy bonnet of a car? ‘Her case, such as it was, was closed.’ Charlie watched him carefully. ‘If she really is missing, you could be suspended, or worse, arrested. You’ll be a suspect, you bloody idiot. Even I can’t protect you from something as serious as this. So you’d better hope she turns up.’ She laughed bitterly and muttered, ‘Like you don’t already.’

  Simon’s mouth was full of tea he couldn’t swallow. The neon lights were giving him a headache. A smell of stewed meat wafted over from the next table, making him want to retch.

  ‘You suspect David Fancourt of what, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Such an effort, to keep his voice steady, to stay in his seat and go through the ritual of a civilised conversation. He felt his right knee twitch, a sign that his whole body was aching to bolt. ‘But this is too much of a coincidence, after what happened to his first wife.’ Simon was unwilling to draw his long history of suspecting the right people to Charlie’s attention. If she wanted to focus on his weaknesses, let her. It wasn’t as if he could deny their existence. Yes, he was incapable of thinking clearly where Alice Fancourt was concerned. Yes, he sometimes steamed in and fucked things up, usually when the obtuseness of his colleagues made him so angry that he lost all sense of proportion.

  ‘Forget about me,’ he told Charlie sharply, placing a heavy emphasis on the last word, ‘and start looking at David Fancourt. Or rather at the picture that’s taking shape around him. Then maybe you’ll see what’s staring you in the fucking face.’

  Charlie’s eyes slid away from him. She fiddled with her hair, picking at stray strands. When she next spoke, her voice was light and flippant, and Simon knew his point had struck home. ‘Some famous bod, can’t remember who, said “To lose one wife is unfortunate. To lose two looks a bit careless.” Something like that, anyway.’

  ‘Or a bit guilty,’ said Simon. ‘Laura Cryer’s death . . .’

  ‘Is a closed case.’ Charlie’s face hardened. ‘Don’t even think about going there.’ Then, because she disliked ambiguity, she said, ‘Why? Spit it out!’

  ‘It’s a lot to happen to one innocent man, that’s all,’ said Simon. ‘I can’t believe you need me to spell it out. What if Fancourt murdered his first wife and got away with it?’ He crushed his fingers into fists. ‘What if he’s about to try his luck again? Are we going to do anything to stop him while he’s actually in the building, or are we just going to let the bastard walk out of here as free as he walked in?’

  3

  Friday September 26, 2003

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s the matter with you?’ David is in the nursery, out of breath. I am still screaming. A loud roar, like a siren, is coming from my mouth. I don’t think I could stop it even if I wanted to. A shriller, high-pitched wail blares from the cot. David slaps me across the face. ‘Alice, what’s got into you? What is it?’

  ‘Where’s Florence? Where is she?’ I demand. Our ordinary day has mutated into something terrible.

  ‘Are you out of your mind? She’s right here. You woke her up. Ssh. Ssh, darling, it’s okay. Mummy didn’t mean to scare you. Here, you come for a cuddle with Daddy. It’s okay.’

  ‘That’s not Florence. I’ve never seen that baby before. Where’s Florence?’

  ‘What the . . . what on earth are you talking about?’ David never swears. Vivienne disapproves of foul language. ‘Of course it’s Florence. Look, she’s wearing her Bear Hug suit. You put her in it before you went out, remember?’

  The outfit is the first thing I bought for Florence, when I was six months pregnant. It is a pale yellow cotton all-in
-one, with the words ‘Bear Hug’ sewn on to it, above a picture of a brown bear cub in its mother’s arms. I saw it in Remmick’s, Spilling’s only department store, and loved it so much that I had to buy it, even though by that point Vivienne had filled the nursery wardrobe with enough clothes from the exclusive boutiques she favours to keep Florence going for the first three years.

  ‘Of course I recognise the babygro, it’s Florence’s. David, who is this baby? Where’s Florence? Just tell me! Have we got visitors? Is this some kind of practical joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.’

  David’s dark eyes are unreadable. He will only share his thoughts when he is happy. Misery or trouble of any kind makes him withdraw into himself. I can see from the shutdown look on his face that the retreat has already started. ‘Alice, this is Florence.’

  ‘It’s not! You know it isn’t! Where is she?’

  ‘Is this some sort of sick joke, or have you gone mad?’

  I begin to sob. ‘Please, please, David, where is she? What have you done with her?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what’s got into you, but I suggest you pull yourself together. Florence and I will be downstairs, awaiting your apology.’ His tone is cold.

  Suddenly, I am alone in the nursery. I sink to my knees, then curl into a foetal position on the floor. I cry and cry for what seems like hours but is probably only a few seconds. I can’t fall apart. I have to go after them. Time is passing, precious minutes that I can’t waste. I have to make David listen to me, although part of me wishes I could listen to him, apologise, pretend everything is okay even though it isn’t.

  I wipe my eyes and go downstairs. They are in the kitchen. David doesn’t look up as I come in. ‘That baby is not my daughter,’ I blurt out, disintegrating into tears again. There is so much unhappiness and fear in me and it is all spilling out, here in Vivienne’s kitchen.