The missing belt from my coat, sodden and caked and wrapped twice around Jodie’s neck and
her fingernails broken and her hair bloodied and studded with broken leaves and
not enough air!
the skin of her throat pressed white and her mouth slack and her eyes wide and glazed and
the rain falling against their bulging, panicked, unblinking surfaces
Because of me.
Movement in the hallway. I felt myself lighten, losing consciousness. Were they, were they coming in? They were coming in.
They know what you did.
The last thing I heard was the front door opening, and then everything went black.
11.
Charles Cox Psychotherapy Ltd. Clinical audio recording transcript Patient name: Eleanor Power Session date: 21 August 2006CC: So let’s start by checking in. How are you feeling today?
EP: I’m OK.
[pause: 32 sec]
CC: I’m sensing some anxiety.
EP: No. I’m fine.
[pause: 22 sec]
EP: Can you – why do you leave these huge long gaps all the time?
CC: OK. I’m glad you asked. Sometimes we find that when we’re not rushed, when we’re given the time to go into greater depth, we discover things that really help our journeys.
[pause: 23 sec]
EP: I haven’t got anything to say.
CC: Sure.
[pause: 35 sec]
EP: OK, look, fine. She came. Last night.
CC: Siggy came?
EP: Yeah.
[pause: 19 sec]
CC: Would you like to talk about the episode you had?
EP: Well I don’t know, do I? That’s the whole fucking – sorry
CC: That’s fine
EP: That’s the whole problem. I don’t know anything about it. It’s like I go to bed every night and I’m me but then this other person I don’t know or like or want there, this other me climbs in. She moves me about, says things like she’s me, like I’m, I’m, I’m just this, this puppet. I don’t think you can possibly know what that’s like. It’s terrifying. I’m terrified, and I can’t even think about it without ending up – look, like this – ending up shaking. Do you see that, my hands?
CC: I do.
EP: It’s like, and I know that I shouldn’t say this and that it’s not the same thing but having someone else in your body, someone you, you hate, who is there without permission, it’s like waking up and finding you’ve been … I can’t say it.
CC: You feel … let’s say, you feel violated?
EP: Yes. Yes. Even if she’s just got me up and walked around the flat. I can’t remember any of it. [crying] Anything, at all. And just – my mum, the way she describes it – I just-I just [crying] I want to just
[pause: 1 min 6 sec]
EP: Sorry. I’m sorry.
CC: OK. Ellie, can you look at me? I know it’s hard, but just look at me just a moment. Thank you. There is no judgement here. None at all. Anything you say will be heard and believed.
[pause: 56 sec]
CC: OK. Do you need some water before we go on?
EP: I’m OK.
CC: It’s extremely difficult for you to talk about; I can see that these episodes affect you very deeply.
EP: Yeah. Yeah, they do. I’m scared. I never know when it’s going to happen. Like, I had this fight with my mum last night, because I wanted to try school. I mean, like sixth form. I haven’t had a fugue for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks? She just kept saying I wasn’t strong enough and about how last time we tried, my panic attacks got worse and everything, and we fell out big time because I just want to do normal stuff. Go out and live my actual life, you know?
CC: I do.
EP: And then I went to bed and I wake up and this has happened. She said – my mum said – Siggy was really angry last night. Like, she was scary, Mum couldn’t get near her to talk to her without her lashing out. Then she went out—
CC: Siggy went outside?
EP: Yeah went out and Mum had to follow me … follow her round the block until she’d agree to go back in again. Here, look this is where she fell over at one point when she was running. Look can you see on my elbow—
CC: That’s quite a scrape—
EP: Yeah. Yeah it-it really hurts.
[pause: 20 sec]
CC: What I’m hearing is a lot of conflict between you and Siggy. It’s a battle.
EP: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is.
[pause: 22 sec]
EP: The days after the fugues, I can feel Siggy kind of … there, all of the time. Like she’s got to rub it in, make sure I know she’s won, you know? Like last night was her telling me …
[pause: 27 sec]
CC: You feel she’s telling you something. Can you say a bit—
EP: It was like she was telling me to stay scared. Like it was a warning.
12.
Mae
They said nothing until they were back at street level, outside the Powers’ flat. Fine rain sieved across the street, and Mae shrugged up the collar of his pea coat. Kit strode back to the car, heading for the driver’s seat.
‘Well that was weird,’ she said, when Mae was in beside her.
‘In what way?’
Kit frowned into the middle distance. ‘I spoke to the guy at the hospital, Leon, right? The dude who called it in.’ She turned to him. ‘And he gave me Ellie’s name as someone who knows Matt and said how he’d said she volunteered there. So I called the HR office and got them to find her address. He searched for Power on the staff system – he spelled it out loud as he typed it in – and he said “Here it is, one entry, first name Eleanor”. Hers was the only record they had. Which means Christine isn’t on their system, even though she works for them.’
‘Maybe she’s agency staff?’
‘That’s what I thought, but everyone needs clearance at a hospital, surely? Kids and vulnerable adults at a hospital, you need a DBS or whatever.’
Mae frowned, went to get his phone out, but Kit was eyeballing something in the rear-view.
‘What?’ he asked, turning in his seat to see.
On the pavement, staring into the car, was a young man. Caucasian with black, tightly curled hair, a faded band T-shirt under a checked flannel shirt. Early twenties, but already a little old for the gloomy, emo vibe he was projecting.
Kit was out of the car and coming round the front before Mae was even out of his seatbelt. ‘Help you?’ she asked him, brightly.
Mae joined them on the pavement.
‘Doing surveillance?’ the guy said. His voice was scratchy, something Mae immediately put down to the yellow plastic wallet of rolling tobacco protruding from his top pocket.
Kit already had her pad out. ‘How do you mean?’
‘The people in the van!’ His jittering glare ricocheted endlessly between them. ‘I’m not stupid.’
Which may or may not have been true, but what Mae knew with a reasonable level of certainty was that he was a nutcase. Kit, on the other hand, needed maybe a little more field experience.
‘We’re the police, CID,’ Kit said, and gave their names, proper by-the-book. ‘We’re checking out a possible missing person. Do you live round here?’
He nodded across the road to the rear access of a shop that sat underneath the Powers’ flat. Mae had clocked it on the way in, a Polish place.
‘I see a lot.’ The young man pointed enigmatically to his eyes with the V of his index and middle fingers, then turned the gesture on the street. ‘But what I want to know is, what are you doing with the van? You want to listen to what I’m saying in my own house?’
Kit glanced around. ‘Can you see this van now?’
‘I’m not imagining it! It’s just gone, right now, obviously!’
Kit nodded diplomatically and tucked her pad away again. Mae couldn’t fault her professionalism: she gave him the non-emergency number, closed the conversation, stayed polite and respectful. The guy was still talking when Mae swung his own door shut.
‘… parabolic microphones, serious kit, and if it’s not you, it’s MI6, or SO-15, or whatever, and I know about it. I know, OK, man?’
Kit waited until they were around the corner before she took her eyes off the road. ‘Jesus. Get that a lot?’
Mae laughed, and got out his phone.
By the time they hit the Boston Manor Road he’d found what he expected to find. Not only was Christine not on her employer’s records – at least not under her own name – but there were no records on Christine or Eleanor Power at that address anywhere else. No entry on the local government system, NHS, banks, credit agencies, nothing.
Didn’t happen by accident.
So, what? Were they hiding? Why?
Kit turned on the radio, flicked quickly away from Heart, found nothing, turned it off.
‘Christine Power was pleased to see you though, yeah?’ she said, biting the edge off a wry smile. ‘Big DS Mae fan. Ker-azy pheromones coming off that one.’
‘Kit. Please.’
She lifted her hands from the wheel in surrender. ‘Just saying. But what did she mean about—?’
‘Can we leave it?’
She blew out her cheeks. ‘What’s next then? Open-door search then grade it? I couldn’t get hold of the guy at the moorings, but I can go down there now, sure I’ll find someone to let me in. Won’t take long.’
The open-door search was the first point of call usually, checking the missing person’s home in case they’d got sick or stuck or injured anywhere. But if it was a narrowboat it was going to be a pretty quick job.
‘After lunch,’ Mae said, suddenly aware of the chasm in his stomach. ‘I’ll go to the marina, you hit the phones. Talk to his manager about what he got sacked for.’
His phone buzzed against his leg and he pulled it out, checked the screen: Nadia. Turning in his seat for whatever privacy he could get in a five-door, he hit the green button.
‘Are you OK to pick Dominica up from violin?’ his ex-wife wanted to know. ‘I’ve just been asked to go to this meeting.’
No hi, no how’s things. And it was Dominica now instead of Bear, like they couldn’t even agree on the name of their kid. ‘Sure.’
‘And bring her back at half eight?’
‘Yep.’
‘Mike’ll be here, OK, so … just so you know.’
Mike. Who had ten years on Mae, twelve on Nadia, although a stranger could easily place him in his mid-sixties because the guy was utterly, relentlessly grey. It wasn’t like Mae hadn’t tried to find something interesting about him, something likeable. Mid-west American, drove a Citroen, played badminton three times a week, with a record that couldn’t be cleaner if it had been formulated in an aseptic lab. Never so much as a day late with his TV licence. There was, of course, more than a slim chance that Nadia’s attraction to Mike was all Mae’s fault. That ten years with him had turned his funny, brilliant, game-for-anything wife into a reliability junkie. Or maybe it was just that maybe Mike happened to be hung like a centaur.
‘Mike. Sure.’
Nadia sighed. ‘Try to do something fun with her after, OK? She always comes back from you so … I don’t know. Flat.’
He took the screen from his ear and thumbed the red circle until he could feel the casing start to bow.
‘Touch-screen means you only have to touch it, you know,’ Kit told him.
‘Uh-huh. And advanced driving means keeping your eyes on the road.’
13.
Ellie
Quarter of an hour passed before I felt halfway normal. After the police left and the panic subsided, Mum brought me sweet tea, made herself late waiting until I could convince her I was fine. She fetched the duvet from the bedroom and tucked me in on the sofa, then checked the time and swore softly under her breath.
‘I have to go and make up for that shift.’ She bent to kiss me goodbye. ‘Just stay put. Don’t let anyone in.’
‘All right, Mum.’
She tapped her fingers on the edge of the mug, running something through her mind. ‘They’ll go to his boat next, I should think,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Maybe they’ll find something there.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing.’ She found a brief smile, shrugged her shoulders.
When she finally left, I got straight up from under the duvet and went into her room, pulling a corner of the curtain aside to watch her through the window. She paused at the car, glanced up at me, and touched her fingertips to her lips. Then got in and drove away.
Maybe they’ll find something.
She meant a note.
Was there a note?
I wasted no time. I pulled some shoes on, and looked for my raincoat before remembering I’d been unable to find it earlier. I dug around in a drawer until I found the fleece-lined zip-up hoody I’d borrowed from Matt and refused to return. I left the flat with Siggy still tiny and shuddering in my chest.
14.
Mae
Mae bit into his bagel. Pinned to the fabric-covered room divider behind his workstation was a page from a set of ACPO guidelines, thoughtfully printed out and displayed by whoever had last occupied Mae’s desk. IF IN DOUBT, THINK MURDER, it read. It had been there so long that the drawing pins had gone rusty, and snagged on the cloth when Mae pulled them out. He balled it up to lob, with flukily perfect aim, into the recycling, just as Kit walked in.
‘Like things spic and span, don’t you?’ she said, looking around, holding a pen drive and standing in a strict at-ease. ‘Speaks of a need to instil order.’
Mae held out his hand for the drive. ‘Spare me the amateur mind reading. What have you got?’
‘Apart from a first-class honours degree in psychology?’
He laughed, then stopped. ‘Really?’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I can see into the very blackness of your soul,’ she said, before breaking into a grin. ‘No but seriously, tidy people do tend to crave reliability and control, and you tend to crave the things you didn’t get as a kid. Just saying.’
He opened his mouth, shut it again, totally at a loss for what to say. What to even think. ‘You do remember that I’m your boss here, right?’
She shrugged. ‘Fluid thing, though, hierarchy, isn’t it? Anyway,’ she said, leaning over him to slide the drive into a port and commandeer his keyboard. ‘Headlines. I couldn’t get hold of the person who dealt with Corsham’s contract but the HR person I spoke to said it looked like he was on short contracts and just hadn’t been offered a new one. I’ll keep trying for his direct line manager though, see if there’s any more to it.’
Mae nodded, scanning the document she’d opened. ‘Any more workmates?’
‘The guy he shared an office with said he was talking about buying some vintage lomo gear.’
‘Lomo?’
‘Kind of cult photography thing. Analogue, retro stuff. Apparently Corsham had been reading up on the ones where you take the picture and they spit the thingy out, and you …’ she mimed waving a wet photograph, ‘you remember?’
He scrolled through the rest of the notes, ticking off the lines of investigation. Matthew Corsham was an only child, estranged from his father since infancy; mother dead from cancer a few years previously.
‘DVLA have a 1989 soft top Golf Cabriolet registered to him,’ she told him, pointing it out lower on the page. ‘I’m going to run a search on that in a sec. He’d been for a few after-work drinks but no particular mates – sounds pretty shy – and he hadn’t been in the job that long.’ She lifted her hands, dropped them, underwhelmed. ‘Not much to go on though. He’d signed up for a few socials with a local photography group. I’ve emailed the guy who organized it to see if he made any friends there.’
As Mae read, the picture emerged of a quiet, unremarkable man. He’d moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh a couple of years before, then down to London only a few months ago. From what Kit had managed to trawl in a couple of hours, they were looking at an average twenty-something bloke, without a particularly vibrant social life, with good, normal, healthy pursuits. Vintage cameras. The gym. Batshit crazy girlfriends.
In the pause, Kit moved her feet a bit before telling the floor, ‘So I found that book online, A Splintered Soul. That chapter on Ellie.’
Mae looked up from the documents. ‘OK. And?’
She gave him a look. ‘You could have told me, you know.’
‘Told you what?’
‘Her phobia. Why you wanted me to change into plain clothes.’
‘OK. Well,’ he said, holding his hands up, ‘not everyone’s as well-versed in mental health as you are.’ Back in 2006, if he’d suggested DS Heath wear plain clothes because a uniform was a known trigger for a vulnerable witness, he’d never have heard the end of it.
But Kit was still looking distracted. ‘Maddening though, isn’t it? I mean, I know it’s none of my business what happened when she was little but, even in the book, there’s no mention of the trauma.’
‘Trauma?’
‘Yeah. The cause of the disorder she’s got.’
‘I think he just couldn’t work it out?’
She shrugged, but the nonchalance was forced, hiding something. ‘Just – frustrating. I mean, this is an extreme thing, DID. It gets diagnosed like, practically never, and when it does … well, they say the mind can do literally anything, but there’s going to be a bloody good reason for it to do that.’
Mae squinted. ‘You really have got that degree, haven’t you?’
But she waved it away. ‘What I’m saying is, the trauma you’d have to experience for something that extreme to happen would have to be chronic, for one thing, and fuck-off massive, for another. But he never even offers a guess. Do we even know if she knew her father, for example?’
‘Christine had been single for a long time. That’s all I know.’
‘See, that’s waaaay suspicious, isn’t it? Surely there has to be some context about her dad? Early years with him, or something. And I get that Cox had to anonymize it,’ she said, holding up her hand to pre-empt the next thing that Mae was going to say, ‘but it just seems like a massive missing piece. I mean, there’s the mention of these scars of hers but it says that was because of an accident, right? I mean, I’m no expert but I don’t think a one-off accident is going to be enough to cause something as serious as a dissociative disorder.’
Mae had noticed it too, way back when. The other cases in the book were fleshed out, the abuse or trauma that triggered the disorder in the first place forming part of the story. As per the title, they were stories of successful treatment. The book had been funded by a charity, so the message was fairly consistent: funding + excellent care = positive outcomes. The exception was the part dealing with Ellie, which was just a snapshot of the middle of her story, the few months she’d spent under Cox’s care. There was no background, and no happy ending.
‘Guess maybe he wanted to talk about the treatment part of it? To be honest it wasn’t exactly the focus of our investigation.’
Kit seemed to take offence for half a second before delivering a hearty smack on the arm. ‘I’m just interested.’ Then, ‘Maybe I should ask him.’
‘I’m going to assume you’re joking,’ he said, before remembering something. ‘You’d be wasting your time anyway.’
‘Because?’
‘It was something Lucy Arden told us – Jodie’s mum,’ he explained. ‘Apparently Jodie had asked him for copies of his research, a few weeks before she disappeared. He had transcripts done from the audio recordings of Ellie’s sessions, all her medical notes, loads of data, but he lost it.’
Eyebrows up, incredulous. ‘Lost it? How did he manage that?’
‘Apparently. He was still using floppies. Useless things. Lost your data all the time.’
Kit retracted her chin. ‘What the hell is a floppy?’
Mae rolled his eyes in reply. Kids. He turned back to his screen.
Kit was staring ahead now, through him.
‘What?’ Mae asked.
She shook herself and looked at him. ‘Just doesn’t … I don’t know.’ She mimed cogs with her fingers, not quite meshing. ‘Doesn’t fit. He spends all that time with her, recording her, everything, then the whole lot disappears? It’s fishy.’
‘Be that as it may. It’s her own business, not our remit.’
Kit dropped her hands, reddening very slightly.
‘I know. I’m just interested.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You going to get that?’ she asked him, raising a finger towards the desk phone.
Mae laughed and shook his head, then took the call he could see was from the switchboard.
‘DS Mae, Mr Jupp on the line. Says he’s returning your call about visiting a boatyard.’
15.
Mae
Jupp’s boatyard was only a couple of miles away, so Mae borrowed one of the force pushbikes. It was late afternoon, the light was sparse through a heavy ceiling of cloud. Spotting the marina entrance, he swung a leg over the crossbar and sailed it standing on one pedal, then hopped down and secured it in a single practised movement against a lamppost.
Mae had discovered the wharf earlier that summer, when he’d talked Bear into a walk along the towpath. He’d pointed out where he’d dealt with a burglary at one of the warehouses that backed straight onto the river, and he’d seen the boats on the towpath that extended from the yard. That was back when it had been warm enough for the residents to still be sitting out on their decks as the sun went down, drinking and barbequing. Different story now, at the arse-end of November. He smelled the smoke of the little log burners they used, the diesel emissions. There was the rumble of generators, punctuated by the honking of a pair of Canada geese. Scraps of laughter from outside a nearby pub lifted and cracked in the air.
He took the steps built into the sloping wall down to where a shabby prefab cube of an office sat precariously levelled on bricks. He knocked and went in. Cheap, functional furniture was laden with papers, notes scribbled on envelopes, and a jumble of polystyrene cups. Behind the desk, a fat guy in a shirt made for a thinner one.
Mae put out a hand. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Mae. We spoke on the phone.’
‘Jupp,’ the man said. He was puffy and goutish, the kind of clean-shaver who should have considered a beard. Waving a hand vaguely behind him, he said, ‘My yard.’ Strong Bristol accent. He didn’t get up, and only shook the hand reluctantly when it became clear Mae wasn’t going to put it away unshaken.
Jupp listened while Mae gave him the basics, then rummaged in a drawer and brought out a key. ‘Take you down to his boat, shall I?’
Standing, Jupp was short enough for Mae to see the shiny top of his head, lit up with the reflection of the flickering single-bar strip light. Then again, everyone was short, to Mae.
Outside, a half-hearted drizzle had started to fall, blown across them by a brisk wind. A tang of lager and used nappies was emanating from three overfilled wheelie bins. They stopped at a gate where Jupp paused to key in the code, angling his thickly padded shoulders to block Mae’s view of the keypad. Mae saw it anyway: 2580, all four numbers in a vertical line down the middle. Nice one, Mae thought: unbreakable. The gate buzzed and clunked open.
