“Think really hard. It’s important.”
“I talked to the manager and the other waitress.”
“Anyone else?”
“Natasha’s uncle was having breakfast at one of the tables. He saw my bag and said it looked heavy. He made a joke about me leaving home.”
“Do you think he knew?”
Emily shrugs. I glance at Drury, gauging his reaction. Something about this bothers me. Teenage girls don’t usually write letters. They send emails or texts or they phone.
Drury is asking Emily if Natasha ever talked about her uncle. She shakes her head more adamantly than necessary.
“How did she get on with him?”
“OK, I guess.” Emily looks at her father. “Can we go? They have the letter.”
The DCI hasn’t finished. “When you planned to run away, what money did you have?”
“Tash had money.”
“Where did she get it from?”
“She had a job.”
“Was she selling drugs for her brother?”
Emily seems to hold her breath, as though the answer can be avoided as long as she doesn’t exhale. She nods. Breathes. “It was just some pills and stuff.”
“Where?”
“Parties. It’s not like she was selling to pre-schoolers.”
Phillip Martinez doesn’t hide his disgust. “Don’t try to defend her. It’s wrong!”
Emily averts her gaze.
Her father stands. “I think she’s said enough.”
Drury pushes back. “She withheld important evidence from a police investigation.”
“She made a mistake.”
“She owed it to their families.”
Emily blinks back tears, looking utterly miserable. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I thought they were in London.”
Mr. Martinez gets to his feet. “We’re leaving. Come on.” He puts his arm around Emily’s shoulders and she shrinks under his touch. Drury doesn’t try to stop them.
Pausing at the door, Martinez turns to me. “That research study I mentioned. I checked with my colleague. There are still places. I could recommend you.”
“Thank you,” I say, embarrassed that the offer is so public. “I’ll look into it.”
Drury leans forward in his chair, thumbs massaging his temples, a swarm of thoughts crowding together.
“Is it genuine?”
“Yes.”
“So they were in London?”
“Not necessarily.”
I study the letter again, looking at the syntax and sentence structure. I have no doubts about the handwriting, but the language lacks Piper’s customary flourishes, her self-deprecating sense of humor, her fatalism or her swearing.
“I think the letter was dictated. Piper was told exactly what to write, giving away as little as possible.”
“Why send a letter at all?”
“Let’s assume it was sent in October, two months after the girls went missing. That’s about the time the police were discounting the runaway theory. Maybe the kidnapper wanted to create more confusion.”
“He expected the letter to surface.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Drury stands and walks to the window, staring in dull bewilderment at the street below.
I still have questions. “How did Piper know that Emily was waiting at the station?”
“Emily could have been lying about having no other contact,” he says.
“She seemed contrite. Frightened.”
“So what’s your theory?”
“There are three possibilities. Either someone saw her at the station or Emily told someone, or the kidnapper gained access to information that wasn’t in the public domain.”
“Vic McBain was at the café,” says Drury. “I’m going to put him under surveillance.”
“It could still be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about coincidences… some of them take a lot of planning.”
He didn’t rape me.
I threw up again… all over his little dead animals. The roast chicken came out quicker than it went in.
George hit me across the face and I felt something warm dripping from my nose. Then he threw me back into my hole and took away the blankets.
He left behind a walkie-talkie, a green plastic thing with a small aerial and a button on the side. It looks like something a child might play with.
“When you’re nice to me you’ll get your blankets back,” he said, before closing the trapdoor and sliding something heavy on top of it.
I’m curled up on the bunk. Aching. My bones are sore and cold against the thin foam mattress. I finally drift off to sleep but wake in the middle of the night, feeling strange and sort of shivery. Straight away I think of Tash. George said he was punishing her. Does that mean she’s in another room? Is she lying awake like me? Wondering.