The Bad Place, page 3
Bum perched on the edge of the chair, spine perfectly straight, Sasha crossed her legs. Her lean body broadened to wide hips. A coil of hair from her long wavy bob – prematurely icy white – bounced across her eyebrow. She lifted it clear with the tip of one slim finger to reveal the sharp point of a widow’s peak against her olive skin. She smiled encouragingly at Lydia, and it occurred to Karin that the entire time she had been here, that gentle smile – by turns concerned, encouraging or sympathetic – never left her oval face.
‘Have you had any other reports?’ Karin asked. ‘Did anyone else see anything?’
‘We’ll have officers knock on the doors of the houses along the street. It’s possible someone else saw the… incident. But until a girl fitting that description is reported missing, there’s not a lot we can do. At this point, a crime may have been committed, or it may not.’
‘What if it’s him?’ Lydia looked anxiously at Karin. ‘What if he’s back?’
Michelle made an exasperated noise. ‘Get a grip, Lydia.’
But Sasha Dawson must have sensed the change in atmosphere in the room because she turned in her seat to look closely at them. At Karin, and Michelle clutching her glass of wine; at Simon, beside the door; and Paul, his small hands folded in front of him. Karin saw the policewoman trying to work out why they were all so familiar. She had seen that same look many times.
‘I imagine it must have been a shock when Lydia turned up and told you what she saw,’ Sasha said to nobody in particular. ‘Were you having a party?’
‘Just a meal,’ Karin said. ‘We get together occasionally.’
‘And has one of you gone home?’ Sasha nodded at the dining table. ‘There are five of you, but six places set for dinner.’
Michelle sipped her wine, said, ‘I can see why you’re a detective.’
‘We always leave an empty place,’ admitted Karin. ‘One of us… can’t make it.’
Sasha Dawson’s smile drifted. ‘So you’re all friends?’
Michelle snorted. ‘Oh, we all love each other to bits.’
Breath caught in the detective’s throat. ‘You’re those children who were taken to the Bad…’
‘Oh, you might as well say it,’ said Michelle. ‘We were the kids from the Bad Place.’
‘I was there,’ said Sasha. ‘The night you escaped. I was at the station when you were brought in.’
Michelle snorted. ‘What, were you on work experience?’
‘I’d been on the force all of a week. I was there when Becky Haskell was…’ There was an awkward silence. ‘I’ve often thought about you all.’
‘Can we go now?’ Michelle drained her glass. ‘I have to get home.’
Sasha cleared her throat, getting back to business. ‘The incident Lydia saw was around the corner, so if the rest of you were here and didn’t see anything, there’s no reason for you to stay.’
Michelle didn’t need telling twice. She pulled on an expensive cashmere coat. ‘Well, I’d like to say it’s been fun, but I can’t.’
Paul took Lydia’s hands in his. ‘I’ll pray for you.’
‘Pray for that poor girl instead, yeah?’
‘And for her, too. Take care, all.’
‘Yeah.’ Michelle rolled her eyes. ‘Can’t wait.’
‘Thanks,’ said Simon, avoiding everybody’s eye as he left.
In the hallway, Karin opened the front door and her guests stepped out into the warm evening.
‘I’m happy to stay.’ Paul looked with compassion at the others. ‘If you need me.’
‘I think DI Dawson is nearly finished.’
‘Take care of yourself.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘Same time next year, I suppose.’
Karin smiled at the inevitability of it. They would all meet up again, because these people were the closest thing to a family she had, and because some people could never escape each other’s orbit.
‘Bye,’ she called to Simon, but he was already striding down the path.
‘I don’t want to go home,’ Lydia said when Karin went back into the room. ‘I’m all agitated now.’
‘You know you can stay. You’re always welcome.’
‘I might go up now, yeah? I’m shattered.’
When Lydia went upstairs, Sasha stood, tugging her skirt back into place over her knees. ‘Do you think—’
‘That she saw someone getting abducted?’ Karin listened to Lydia thumping around above them. ‘We have these reunions once a year to remember what happened to us, and every year I think, never again. But it’s important to remember that we were the lucky ones.’
‘Lucky?’
‘We came home.’
Sasha glanced again at the six places set at the table.
‘But these nights stir up a lot of emotions.’ Karin sat heavily in a chair; it had been an exhausting couple of hours. ‘And Lydia’s… fragile, she finds these evenings particularly stressful and upsetting. So, yes, I think she was mistaken. I’m sure she saw something – a van stopping sharply, even a girl climbing in – but an abduction? I don’t think so.’
‘And when she said, he’s back…’
‘She was talking about Jerry Swann, the man who abducted us. But as we all know, that’s not possible.’ Karin began to clear the table. ‘I’m sorry if you came for nothing.’
‘Better safe than sorry.’ Sasha Dawson looked like she was about to tell Karin something… but lifted her nose. ‘Do you smell burning?’
The stench hit Karin’s nostrils just as brown smoke tumbled from the kitchen and across the ceiling. An alarm filled the room with noise.
‘The oven!’ Rushing into the kitchen, Sasha stood on a chair to wave a tea towel beneath the smoke detector, and Karin pulled on oven gloves to lift out the blackened, smoking lasagne and dump it in the sink.
‘Oh dear,’ said Sasha. ‘It’s just as well everybody’s gone home.’
When the detective left, Karin opened windows to let out the smoke. She took the plates from the microwave – her best china would go back in the cupboard for another year – and binned the salad.
Above her head, a floorboard creaked. Karin stopped to listen.
‘Lydia?’ she called, going into the hallway. ‘Is that you?’
Karin jumped when she saw Lydia at the top of the stairs, her features mostly hidden in the dark.
‘I hope you didn’t say mean things about me,’ said Lydia. ‘Cruel things.’
‘I would never do that.’
Lydia’s eyes glinted down at her, and then she dissolved into the shadows on the landing.
Karin went back next door, just as a message dropped into her phone.
When she saw it, her heart leapt with hope – and fear.
I ♥ U
BeXxx
5
The First Day…
Nobody even noticed when a stranger climbed into the minibus and drove them to the Bad Place.
It was pandemonium inside, and stifling hot. The air-conditioning wasn’t on because the youth worker who was driving them had jumped out to nip to the toilet in a pub across the road. The interior was rank with the heavy musk of body odour after a day in the sun. All the kids were sweltering in their T-shirts and jeans.
Becky and Karin were sitting in the back row discussing everything under the sun, enjoying each other’s company, the conversation jumping from one subject to another: the boys Becky fancied at school, her favourite boy bands, a sparkly nail varnish she’d discovered.
Paul’s hand swung suddenly over the top of the chair in front of Karin and swiped at her head, giving her a shock, and Becky launched herself out of her seat to try to slap him back. The second time he appeared, Becky was ready with her fists clenched. ‘I mean it, Paul, leave us alone!’
In the row ahead of Simon and Paul, Michelle was nodding to music on her headphones, while Lydia watched gulls swoop to the pavement on the seafront to grab morsels of food.
That was when the driver’s door opened and someone climbed in and turned the keys in the ignition. The engine roared and the minibus swung away from the kerb.
‘Seriously?’ said Becky when Paul reappeared over the back of the seat, looking to make more trouble. ‘If you lay another finger on either of us I will destroy you.’
Becky raised her eyebrows in a steely challenge, ready to teach him a lesson. Karin loved the way Becky’s eyebrows arched like fighting alley cats.
Paul froze, weighing up the odds, and then waved her away, as if he couldn’t be bothered. ‘You’re lucky this time,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let you off.’
Becky made a sarcastic face. ‘Yeah, big man, we’re so lucky.’
Simon laughed like a drain, because he knew Paul didn’t fancy messing with Becky. Karin’s heart swelled with love for her friend, because Bex didn’t take any shit from anyone, certainly not some divvy boy like Paul. Karin didn’t care that she felt sick from all the sweets and fizzy drinks she’d consumed, and that it was sweltering in the vehicle, because she was with Becky. She dreamed they would be best friends for ever, and they would take the same exams at school and get the same grades, so they could go to the same university to study on the same course, and live together into old age.
Rain clouds rolled in over the sea, but the streets were still packed with sightseers and holidaymakers, as the minibus turned north past the town centre and picked up speed. Nobody noticed they were going in the wrong direction, or even that the man driving them wasn’t Greg, the volunteer from the youth club, until Becky saw how his hair hung lankly over his ears.
‘Who is that?’ She prodded Paul, but he was too busy lunging back and forth, avoiding Simon’s playful punches. ‘Who’s driving us?’
And when the others finally saw it wasn’t Greg, but somebody else completely, nobody was too concerned. Greg had gone home, they thought – he’d been taken ill, or there had been a change of plan and they hadn’t been told – and another driver had stepped in to take his place. All they could see was the back of the man’s head, and an occasional flash in the rear-view mirror of the orange lenses in his glasses.
The two boys thought it was a big joke.
‘Hey, fella, who are you?’ Paul made a funny remark about the man’s hair and everyone laughed. But the driver didn’t respond at all.
‘This isn’t the right way,’ said Simon as the minibus passed the designated drop-off point and headed out of town towards Rochford. ‘Where are we going?’
Seated behind the driver, Michelle told the others in a low voice, ‘I don’t recognize him, he’s not from the club!’
Becky reached over to tap her on the shoulder. ‘Tell him he’s going the wrong way!’
‘Excuse me, but this isn’t the way!’ Michelle told him, but he ignored her.
‘Tell him again,’ Becky insisted. ‘Find out who he is!’
And this time Michelle leaned forward between the front seats to get his attention. ‘Excuse me—’
She screamed and fell back in her chair.
‘What is it?’
Michelle turned to the others. ‘He’s got a knife – a big knife in his lap!’
They all huddled together to talk, trying to work out what was going on, hoping that Michelle was mistaken, or that she was joking. But they knew she wasn’t, because she was weeping with fear.
Sitting quietly at the back, forgotten in the heat of the moment, Karin’s eyes lifted to the rear-view mirror and the man’s orange lenses briefly met her gaze.
‘Let us out!’ screamed Michelle. ‘Let us out now!’
Her panic frightened the others as the minibus headed further into the countryside. The man drove calmly, hands placed on the wheel at ten and two o’clock, pulling up slowly at junctions and lights, staying within the speed limit. Becky beat on the window when a vehicle came the other way – help us! – but it whipped past in an instant.
And after their initial terror, all the kids could do was sit stunned and bewildered as the road narrowed and the lanes became more twisted and the minibus drove into the countryside, past fields and meadows. Then tall trees loomed on either side of the road, their reflections climbing the windscreen, and a low, red sun emerged from the clouds to flash behind the trunks.
If any of them had been thinking straight, they could have made a note of the few features of the flat landscape, the way the last rays of sun sparkled on the surface of the River Crouch; or the name of one of the country pubs they passed; or they could even have tried to memorize the turns the vehicle made, left and right and left again, down a lane where a tractor was crashed into a ditch, along a bumpy rutted track, past a burbling stream. But everyone was too disorientated to track their progress – and too scared. Not even Simon knew what to do.
And then the minibus swung down a darkened lane barely wider than a pitted pathway. The clawed fingers of the bushes on either side scratched at the windows, pressing so close that it would be impossible to turn the vehicle or even reverse. The kids bumped up and down in their seats as the vehicle hit one deep hole after another, and emerged into a clearing to park outside an old farmhouse at the edge of a thick wood.
The man cranked the handbrake, killed the engine. His neck was slick with sweat, the shoulders of his shirt dark with damp where it pressed against the leather of the seat. The kids watched with a sick fascination as he took off his glasses to wipe them on his shirt.
Replacing the glasses on his nose, he turned to face them – they gasped when he lifted his hand to reveal the blade – and nodded at the door of the farmhouse.
‘I’m going to let you out and you’ll walk inside one by one. But if anybody tries to make a run for it or makes any trouble,’ – he jabbed the knife, making them all scream – ‘I’ll kill every single one of you.’
6
This is how the day always began. With a big, screaming row.
Sasha listened to the yells and shouts, the doors slamming, the floorboards pounding above her head. She was going to get dragged into it any moment… now…
‘Muuuum!’ shouted her daughter. ‘Tell him to leave my stuff alone!’
‘I didn’t take your stupid hairdryer,’ her son bellowed. ‘I don’t want your dandruff blowing all over me!’
Angel screamed in frustration. It wasn’t difficult to light a fire under her fragile emotions and Denny knew how to strike the match. Sasha went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Hurry up, please, I have to go!’
Her thirteen-year-old came downstairs, his thick mop of hair swinging across his eyes. Sasha grabbed his school tie to yank his face close to hers.
‘Breathe,’ she said.
He opened his mouth wide and let out a foetid breath.
‘Yuck! Go and clean your teeth.’ She spun Denny around and pushed him up the stairs, her son trudging away like a condemned man to the gallows. ‘And brush your hair!’
In the kitchen, she took a last gulp of tepid coffee and chased a shoe around the tile with her foot.
‘Got a fiver?’ Denny came back into the room. There was little evidence to suggest he’d made any attempt to brush his hair; it stuck up every which way.
‘What do you need it for?’
‘We’ve got a geography field trip today so I need to buy lunch.’ He lifted her purse from her bag. ‘I told you about it.’
She grabbed the purse out of his hand. ‘You didn’t tell me about it.’
Denny rolled his eyes. ‘I did.’
‘Don’t act like a sulky teenager, Denny, you’re better than that.’ She pulled out the single note. ‘I’ve only got a tenner.’
He took it quickly. ‘That’ll do.’
‘Don’t snatch.’
Her son lifted a remote at the TV on the wall and the room was filled with the sound of screeching tyres, explosions and gunfire. Cars leapt about on screen, defying all gravitational logic. Sasha could barely hear herself think.
‘That’s an awful lot of noise first thing in the morning.’
‘All my friends are watching it.’
Sasha sipped her coffee. ‘Is it age appropriate?’
‘There’s no fucking in it, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Excuse me?’ she asked sharply, as Kev walked into the kitchen. Her husband was still in his pyjama bottoms and the T-shirt he slept in. There was the lingering ghost of a sleep crease on one unshaven cheek.
‘Shouldn’t you be dressed by now?’ Sasha asked as he poured coffee from the pot, but he trudged out without replying.
Angel appeared at the door with her hands on her hips and said, as if the world was about to end, ‘My hairdryer is gone!’
She was wearing her school uniform, at least, but in the last few months some kind of diabolical transformation machine had been at work on her appearance. Every day there was some alarming new change. A little more make-up was applied, her hair dyed more luridly or moussed higher into the stratosphere, ever longer lashes obscured her eyes. Lately, she’d been talking about getting her tongue pierced. Sasha yearned to take her daughter shopping, to encourage her to buy something nice, but knew Angel would have an almost allergic reaction to every item she suggested.
‘Denny’s hidden it!’ She tugged at her hair, almost in tears. ‘Look how frizzy it is!’
‘I didn’t touch it.’ Denny spooned cereal into his mouth. ‘I wouldn’t touch your skanky stuff with a bargepole.’
‘I used it,’ said Sasha, and her daughter let out a deafening scream. ‘Mine isn’t working. I must have put it in my bedside drawer by mistake. I’m sorry, Angel.’
‘Don’t touch my things!’ Her daughter’s voice lifted shrilly over a burst of automatic gunfire on the television. ‘Don’t. Touch. My. Stuff.’
‘Don’t be a bitch all your life.’ Denny favoured his sister with a charming smile. ‘Take a day off.’
‘I’m going to be late for school!’
‘I did try to tell you.’
Sasha watched Angel run around banging cupboard doors, shouting where’s the milk, where’s the cereal, not the one with the berries, I hate the berries, the other cereal, the one I like, where is it? Denny had hidden the Special-K box at his feet and Sasha picked it up and placed it on the counter, and her daughter poured some into a bowl.
