Читать книгу Gone in the Night - Mary-Jane Riley - Страница 24

Cora couldn’t stop her fingers from trembling as she began to dial the numbers of the hospitals in the area. She knew many of the nurses on shift well. Working on the bank – essentially freelancing – meant she had worked at hospitals all over East Anglia at one time or another. But ten frustrating minutes later, after some helpful calls and other downright hostile ones, Cora had drawn a blank. It was as Alex Devlin had said, no one of her brother’s age or description had been taken to A&E the previous night.

So where was he? What had happened to him? Why couldn’t he get in touch with her? And what was he doing on a lonely road in a Land Rover? She thought back to last night and the ‘warning’ she’d been given. She gingerly rubbed her cheekbone. There had been a reason for that. Whatever he was doing, he was getting close, whether she liked it or not.

She threw her phone onto the kitchen table. ‘Take me through it again,’ she demanded, tapping out another cigarette and lighting it. One day she would stop, just not now. She was so tired and her head was swimming. ‘If you don’t mind?’ she said suddenly, remembering her manners.

Alex took a deep breath.

Cora concentrated hard, occasionally blowing out smoke through the corner of her mouth as Alex told her what had happened once more, only interrupting for clarification.

‘And you’ve no idea who the men who took Rick away were?’ They didn’t sound like the same ones that had picked her up, and anyway, the timing was wrong.

‘None. I’m sorry I didn’t ask more questions. It had been a long day and I had been at this charity event at Riders’ Farm and—’

‘Riders’ Farm?’

‘Do you know it?’

Cora laughed harshly. ‘Oh yes. The brothers Grimm and the witch and the wizard.’

Alex raised her eyebrows. ‘Wow. Those are certainly some monikers.’

‘As rich as Croesus but with the morals of alley cats.’ She stopped. What was she saying? For all she knew this Alex Devlin might be best buddies with the Riders. ‘Sorry, that was a bit harsh. But they are big donors to one of the hospitals where I work. Everybody has to bend the knee when they walk past. And they love it. Smug bastards.’ She ground out her cigarette in a saucer. ‘They like women too. Correction. They like to control women. So I’ve heard.’ She added quickly.

‘I take it they’re not the most popular family around here?’

‘You could say that. Others might say they’ve brought employment to the area, tourists.’

‘But you say?’

The look on Alex’s face was open and friendly. But she was a journalist. And Cora didn’t want to be part of her story.

‘So this event,’ she said finally, ignoring Alex’s question, ‘who did you meet?’

‘Jamie Rider, among others.’

‘And what did you think of him?’ She lit another cigarette from the one she’d been smoking, trying to push away the memories of her mother sewing curtains for the Riders, babysitting those damn boys while leaving her and Rick to fend for themselves. Her mother baking scones for Marianne Rider’s coffee mornings. Her father tugging his forelock and calling Marianne Rider ‘Ma’am’ and Joe Rider ‘Sir’, as if they were the bloody queen and bloody Prince Phillip.

Alex narrowed her eyes. She looked as though she was about to say something, but then thought the better of it. ‘He was charming.’

‘Charming. Right.’ She nodded.

Alex leaned forward. ‘Why do I think you know the Riders better than you’re admitting to?’

‘King’s Lynn,’ Cora said, banging her forehead. ‘Why didn’t I think of them? It could be possible he was taken there. And I know several of the nurses in A&E.’

She picked up the phone and stabbed out a number.

‘Margot is phoning me back,’ she said after a minute’s chatting. ‘She thinks that they may have had someone brought in, so she’s going to check.’ Her leg was jiggling up and down. She slapped her hand on her thigh to stop it. ‘Tell me more about you, Alex. You’re from this part of the world, aren’t you?’

Alex nodded. ‘Yes I am. Sole Bay up the coast is where my heart is, but I needed a change, and thanks to people’s love of saving cash I was able to buy a flat in Woodbridge. So here I am.’

Cora nodded. ‘I did see it, when I looked you up. Your book, I mean. Sounds like a great idea. A bit like that woman who cooks on a shoestring or bootstrap. Jack somebody. It’s all about saving money.’ She looked away. ‘I also read about your sister and all that happened.’ She pulled on her cigarette wishing that damn phone would ring.

Alex didn’t flinch. ‘She’s had a tough time, but she’s doing well now. I’m proud of her.’

‘I’m proud of Rick,’ said Cora. ‘He’s had one or two problems, but we were dealing with them together, and—’ she chewed her lip. She had to be careful, Alex was too easy to speak to.

‘It must be difficult, with him being homeless.’

Alex’s voice was so gentle it almost made Cora cry, so she busied herself with the kettle and cups and a box of teabags. She wished that phone would bloody ring.

‘It’s not great, I have to say, but we manage.’

‘You manage?’

Careful. ‘We used to live around here, near the coast anyway, but had to leave when I was eighteen.’

‘Had to leave?’

Sharp.

Alex was too on the ball. ‘Sort of. Anyway, we were living near Bury St Edmunds and Rick was working on a farm. When I qualified as a nurse, Rick decided to sign up for the army.’

‘So, how did you get here?’

The kettle boiled. Steam curled under the kitchen cupboards. Cora poured water onto teabags in mugs. ‘Rick was here. I wanted to be near him, so I followed him to the city and managed to get on the bank. Plenty of work at the hospitals around here.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Everyone going off with stress, you see. They need agency nurses.’ She squished the teabags against the side of the mug, poured some milk in and handed one to Alex. ‘Sorry. More caffeine. Rick saw action in Afghanistan. Watched his friends get blown up, maimed. But it was on his second tour that the worst happened.’

‘Go on,’ said Alex.

She sighed. ‘There was a young girl – look, you’ve got to know that part of the reason they were out there, in Afghanistan, was to “capture hearts and minds”.’

Alex nodded. ‘I know. I read about that.’

‘They would give out sweets to the kids, help the women, helped the men if they could. And they were winning. They were.’

‘A young girl?’ prompted Alex.

Cora gripped her mug even tighter. ‘Rick was at some sort of checkpoint. The girl came towards him. She was fifteen at the most, he reckoned. But she was already beautiful. Lovely eyes. As she came closer, Rick said he saw tears in those eyes. She spread out her hands. And then—’

Cora stopped, took a deep breath, gathered her thoughts. Every time she told this story – and she tried not to tell it often – she had to damp down the tears, talk about it as though it had happened to someone else and not her brother.

‘She blew herself up.’

Alex drew a sharp breath.

Cora knew the stark brutality of her words was shocking, but there was no other way to say it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Alex said.

Cora gave a brief smile. ‘It doesn’t end there. One of his friends was killed and Rick received shrapnel wounds. He came home but he was a different man. Helen – Rick’s wife – got her husband back in one piece, but he wasn’t the man who’d left for Afghanistan, and no one seemed to care. He tried so hard for so long. He even held down a job in security for a year or two. The photography helped for a while – it had been a hobby of his for years – but it didn’t keep the demons away in the end. He would lose his temper at the slightest thing, just fly off the handle.’

‘Did he hurt his wife?’

‘Once. And that was it for Helen. She worried he would hurt the girls.’ Cora saw Alex’s questioning look. ‘His daughters.’ She gripped the sides of her mug to stop her hands trembling. ‘They were only four and five and they didn’t understand why Daddy had changed towards them. I think he was pushing them away deliberately.’

‘So Helen threw him out?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Cora, sadly. ‘He left before, as he put it, he did any more damage. He also said that every time he looked at his girls he thought of the girl in the village and how she’d been young and carefree not so many years before. But when he left he had nowhere to go. Or nowhere he wanted to go. So he got on a bus and ended up in Norwich.’

‘On the streets.’

Cora sighed. ‘Not straightaway. He had some money and he stayed in a hotel, then a hostel. But then the money ran out.’ She shrugged. ‘He went on the streets. Said he’d met someone who could help him get a good pitch, that sort of thing. I tried to get him help, but Rick didn’t want the bit that was offered. Said he didn’t deserve it. Said no one could understand what he was going through. And I suppose they couldn’t. I came this way because I wanted, no, needed, to keep an eye on him. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being all on his own. But he didn’t seem to care whether I was around or not.’ The best lies contained a grain of truth.

‘And Helen?’

‘Moving on. She took the girls to her parents in York. My nieces. I won’t see them grow up now.’ She sniffed, rubbed away some tears from the corner of her eyes. ‘We – Helen and I – know now that he was suffering from a head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Still is. He didn’t tell us it was so bad. We didn’t understand.’

Alex took hold of one of her hands. ‘I’ve been there, Cora. Regret, lost opportunities. I know how guilt can eat away at you until it takes over your whole life. You have to let it go or it will destroy you.’

How Cora wished that bloody phone would ring.

‘And what about you?’ asked Alex.

‘Me?’ Cora sniffed. She lit another cigarette.

‘Yes, you. You’re entitled to a life too, you know. Rick made his choice. It doesn’t mean you have to give up your life.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Okay.’

‘Really, I’m not, so can you leave it, please.’ She made her voice deliberately sharp. There was no way she wanted this woman, this journalist she hardly knew, to start poking her nose into that business. Finding Rick, well, that was another matter. She would just have to make sure she kept Alex Devlin pointed in the right direction, didn’t allow her to veer off course. She jumped up and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘This isn’t getting us any nearer to finding Rick.’

‘No. But I wanted to get a sense of who he is.’

‘Perhaps if you hadn’t left him to be taken in a strange car to God knows where you might have done just that.’ Cora knew she sounded mean and unforgiving but she couldn’t help it. Alex had got under her skin.

Alex picked up her bag. ‘That’s unfair, Cora. He was probably taken to a hospital and left before they could treat him. I’m sure he’s fine. That could be the answer. I’m really sorry I didn’t do better. I hope you find him soon.’

‘Please don’t go.’ Cora grabbed Alex’s arm. ‘Look. He would have been in touch with me by now.’

‘Really? How?’

Cora could see the doubt written on Alex’s face. ‘He always finds a way to get a message to me.’ She sat down again, her shoulders slumped. Up and down. Mercurial, Rick had told her that once. ‘Sit down. Please.’

Alex sat, though Cora could see it was with reluctance.

Cora’s phone rang. She snatched it up. ‘Hello?’

It took Margot on the other end only a few seconds to tell her that she’d been wrong. Someone had been brought in to A&E, but he was an elderly man of seventy-five.

She threw the phone down. ‘No luck there.’

‘We will find him, Cora.’

‘When I went looking for him, one of his mates, Martin, said that a couple of blokes had spoken to him, to Rick I mean, a few days before he disappeared. And that he wasn’t the only one.’

‘The only one what?’

‘Who these men spoke to.’

Alex frowned.

‘Martin said they’d been talking to Nobby and Lindy, two more of the homeless, and he hasn’t seen them since either.’ Cora leaned forward. ‘Don’t you see? These men could be the ones who picked Rick up. Maybe he didn’t want to go with them. I don’t know, maybe—’ she waved her hands around, ‘maybe they forced him in some way. Maybe,’ she said, warming to her theme, ‘maybe they were the ones who picked him up off the road? Come on, you’re a journalist, you must know how to find missing people. You can get into all sorts of databases and stuff.’ And the more she thought about it, the more she thought it would be a good idea to have Alex on board. She really was worried about Rick, what he was trying to do was dangerous. Then there were those goons last night. She rolled her shoulders. Bloody hell, she ached. And her head ached.

‘Cora, have you told the police that Rick is missing?’

Cora began to laugh, but knew she had to control herself before the laughter became hysterical. ‘Do you think they care if someone who lives on the street is missing? Of course not. They’ll only say he’s moved on or fallen in with some criminal gang or gone somewhere else to score.’ Her finger made patterns in crystals of sugar left on the table. Besides, she did have an idea where he might have gone. Before. But now, after this supposed accident?

‘Maybe. But he would probably be classed as a vulnerable person and more would be done to—’

‘Really?’ Cora was all sharp sarcasm.

‘Look,’ said Alex, ‘I’ll have a word with a friendly copper to make sure he hasn’t been picked up by them for some reason or other. I’ll phone him on our way to see this Martin who you know. We can try the hospitals again later. But let’s not sit here doing nothing. And maybe we should report him missing. Cover all bases, yes?’

Cora drummed her fingers on the table. Last night had been a warning. Don’t poke your nose in, don’t stir things up. Well, fuck that. She was bloody well going to poke her nose in where they didn’t want it and Alex Devlin could help her do just that. Reporting Rick’s disappearance to the cops wouldn’t help find Rick – the dozy buggers wouldn’t lift a finger – but it would piss the Riders off.

She stood. ‘I’ll get my coat.’