As usual, Matilda was the last to leave the office. She passed the white board and looked up at the smiling faces of the Mercer family. It was deplorable what people did to each other. Throughout her career she had met murderers who had stabbed, shot, hanged, run over their victims, but what she had seen today was depraved. Her phone rang. She looked and saw it was Sally Meagan calling her again. It was the fourth time today she had phoned, and each time Matilda had ignored it. She waited until the phone stopped ringing before putting it back in her pocket. She couldn’t put off speaking to her for much longer.
In a private room in Sheffield Children’s Hospital, Rachel Mercer lay in bed. Her eyes were wide open, and she stared at the ceiling. Outside, a uniformed police officer was standing guard. She could hear the distant sound of life continuing as normal. Nurses came in on a regular basis to see how she was. It was always a different nurse. They spoke to her, checked her breathing, her blood pressure, her heart rate, but she didn’t reply. She couldn’t.
‘Daddy, I’m scared.’
‘It’s all right, Rachel. Everything is going to be all right. Just keep your door closed. Pongo will look after you.’
‘Who are you?’ she heard her granddaddy ask. He sounded shocked. He sounded close.
Pongo yapped.
‘Quiet, Pongo,’ Rachel hissed.
She crept to the door and pushed down the handle. Slowly, she pulled it open just a crack. Not wide enough for Pongo to escape, but wide enough so she could see out onto the landing, see what was going on.
There was a man. She couldn’t see his face as it was dark. Her granddaddy was on his knees. The man was holding him by his hair and he was stabbing him repeatedly in his neck. Blood was spraying everywhere. Her granddaddy was choking, gasping as each stab with the knife caused more blood to flow down his pyjamas, soak into the carpet, spray onto the walls. Rachel felt a warm splash of something on her face. She screamed. Her granddaddy looked her in the eye as he was thrown to the floor.
‘Rachel! Close your door!’ her dad shouted from somewhere.
Rachel couldn’t move.
It was pitch-dark by the time Matilda arrived in Bradway on the outskirts of the steel city. She parked her new Range Rover at the top of the drive and looked at it with a smile while she stood on the doorstep waiting for her knock to be answered.
The door opened and bathed Matilda in a warm glow coming from inside.
‘Matilda, this is an unexpected … erm …’
‘Surprise?’ She finished with a smile.
‘That depends on what favour you want.’
‘You’re a suspicious woman, Pat Campbell. What makes you think I want a favour?’
‘Oh, so you’ve come round for coffee and cake? You’re more than welcome. Come in. I’ll get out my photos for our holiday in Italy,’ Pat said, her reply oozing with sarcasm. The former detective inspector stood to one side to allow Matilda to enter.
‘You’re going to cut yourself with that sharp tongue of yours one of these days,’ Matilda said as she stepped into the warm hallway.
‘You’re holding a file behind your back. I may be retired but my detecting skills are still razor sharp.’
Matilda blushed as she brought the heavy file around to the front of her body.
Pat rolled her eyes and showed Matilda into the living room. It was minimalist and spacious, neat and tidy, yet homely. Anton was sitting in a recliner by the fire, feet up, reading the evening local paper. Wearing a grey cardigan, comfortable trousers and carpet slippers, he looked every inch the retired gentleman.
‘We’ve got a visitor, Anton, put the rag away.’
‘Matilda, lovely to see you,’ Anton said.
‘You too. You’re looking well.’
‘He’s looking old,’ Pat said with scorn. ‘Bowling, cardigans. He’s only thinking of booking us on one of those Saga cruises. I’ve told him, he can go on his own. Mind you, if the boat sinks, at least everyone will float with their plastic hips and their plastic knees.’
‘Ignore her. She looked in the mirror this morning and realized that expensive skin cream she’s been lathering all over her face for the past thirty-odd years doesn’t work. Would you like a drink, love?’
‘I’d better not, I’m driving.’
‘As you’re up, you can get me a gin and tonic,’ Pat said, taking his place in the recliner.
Anton made to leave the room, rolling his eyes at Matilda as he left.
‘Have a seat. Tell me what’s on your mind.’
Matilda sat down opposite Pat. ‘Is everything all right between you two?’
Pat sighed. ‘Yes. Everything’s fine. He’s just getting into the pipe and slippers routine a bit early for my liking. I’m getting old, I know that. I’m not dead, though. A Saga cruise. Can you think of anything worse? I want to go walking in the Rockies or skiing in Aspen. He wants to go to Norfolk because it’s nice and flat. I learned the flamenco in Italy. He twisted his ankle in the first couple of minutes and wore his comfortable shoes for the rest of the trip. Ignore me, I’m just having a moan.’
Matilda leaned forward. ‘How would you like a job?’
She half-closed her eyes. ‘Depends what it is.’
‘I want you to find Carl Meagan.’
‘What?’ Pat’s eyes widened. She sat up. A plethora of emotions ran across her face: excitement, fear, horror, wonder. ‘You’ve got new evidence?’
‘I’m not sure. A few weeks after Ben Hales killed himself, Sally Meagan got a letter from his solicitor. Since he’d been kicked out of the force, he’d been working as a sort of unofficial private investigator, trying to find Carl, another way to stick the knife into my back. Anyway, when Ben’s wife was clearing out his house, she found a load of paperwork. The solicitor gave it to Sally and Sally contacted me.’
‘I bet that was a frosty first meeting,’ Pat said with a hint of a chuckle.
‘It wasn’t the most comfortable of meets, no. We’re not best friends or anything, but we’ve sort of reached an understanding. We’ve been going through Ben’s information. I don’t know how he did it but he’d been speaking to child traffickers in prison and missing persons groups abroad. He may have been a dick, but I can’t fault his work.’
‘Have you found him, then?’
‘A couple of weeks ago, we were going through some photos Ben had come across. They were of kids in a school playground, wide-angled shots, but the schools weren’t in this country. They were in Sweden.’
‘Sweden?’
Matilda nodded. ‘Sally suddenly got it into her head that Carl was taken abroad. He’s blond with blue eyes, he fits the Swedish look. She wants to go out there. Me and Philip have been trying to put her off. It’s a ridiculous idea, but she’s dead set.’
‘I suppose she’s clinging to any form of hope she can get.’
‘True.