Hide and Seek, page 4
“What is it? I’m sorry.” She said it all in a rush, then put one hand over her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“I’m looking for Gilly,” I said clearly, crouching down in front of her to make it easier for her to see me.
“She’s upstairs.” Mrs. Poynter’s eyes closed again.
“Are you sure?” She’d have come down if she’d heard voices, I thought. I was almost sure that the house was empty apart from the two of us.
“Leave me alone.” She snuggled down in the armchair, her head leaning against the back of it. I stood up, wondering what to do. It couldn’t hurt to look upstairs, although I was worried that Gilly might come back and find her mother passed out in a chair, and me snooping around upstairs, and be mortified and angry in equal measure.
But it wasn’t snooping exactly. It was making sure she was all right.
I went back to the living room door and looked up the dark, narrow stairs. I didn’t want to climb them. They were steep and forbidding, and there was no landing at the top—just a door on either side. One would be Gilly’s bedroom. The other would belong to her mother, and probably wouldn’t have a chalk pentagram on the floor. Probably.
I passionately didn’t want to pick the wrong one.
In the end I decided that Mrs. Poynter would have the room at the front of the house, overlooking the street, and Gilly would be in the back room, so there was no danger and I should just open the door on the left. I ran up, noticing how steep the steps were and how narrow the treads. I tripped halfway up and put a hand out to save myself from sprawling. The carpet burned my palm and I winced. I had to use my left hand to open the door I’d decided was Gilly’s, and I fumbled for the light switch. I found it eventually. A weak yellow light filled the room from the bulb in the middle of the ceiling, and really, it needn’t have bothered. Bleak was the only word for what it revealed. Before I did anything else, I turned and softly closed the door behind me, feeling better with something solid between me and Mrs. Poynter’s pale gaze. I didn’t actually think she was capable of climbing the stairs in her current condition, but I wasn’t in the mood for surprises. The latch clicked into place and I moved away from it on tiptoe, trying not to make too much noise on the bare floorboards.
It was Gilly’s room, but only the school books on the desk confirmed it. There was nothing personal to be seen at all—no photographs or posters. A framed picture of a rabbit hung above the bed, but it was yellowing and dusty. I guessed a previous tenant had forgotten it because it was far more suitable for a nursery than a teenager’s room. The walls were a depressing shade of beige. A small bookcase stood against one wall, but it was half empty and all the books in it were secondhand classics or school textbooks, nothing like the ones I read for pleasure. The single bed was an old wooden one, scuffed and secondhand like the desk and the bookcase. I glanced at the bedside table, expecting to see a novel or a magazine, but there was only a lamp. The bed was rumpled, as if someone had been lying on it earlier. That wasn’t actually surprising: there was nowhere else to sit in Gilly’s room, unless you counted the upright chair at her desk. I thought of the warmth and chaos of life in Sandhayes, the big Victorian villa I lived in, and of the huge room at the top of the house, the one I’d inherited from poor Freya, full of posters and books and art that meant something to me. The contrast with Gilly’s life was painful.
I went over to the bed and put a hand on it, half expecting it to be warm, but the blanket was cool to the touch. The pillow was hollowed by Gilly’s head. My toe hit something solid under the bed and I bent down to see her school shoes, kicked off. Her uniform was thrown over the back of the chair. She’d come home, changed, and flung herself down on her bed. On the other side, a small wastepaper basket contained balled-up tissues, as if Gilly had lain down and wept. Or worse. I tilted the basket, and saw that a few were spotted and streaked with red. Cutting … I knew plenty of girls who did it, slashing their skin to ribbons in neat lines down arms or thighs, because physical pain was better than the emotional kind. Cuts healed, if you let them. Scars soothed.
The room hummed with recent occupancy: I could feel Gilly’s presence even though she was gone. She was there and not there.
I edged over to the desk and looked at the books, hoping for something like a note or a diary or the receipt for a train ticket to somewhere better than Pollock Lane. Failing that, something that told me what was going on between Gilly and Max Thurston would have done. All I found was a space in the dust, a rectangle where something had rested. I bent and looked under the desk, seeing a twin socket with an adaptor in one side for the desk lamp and the small light on the bedside table. The other socket was empty. So it was a fair guess that whatever was missing had been plugged in. A computer, I thought, and wondered how Gilly had been able to afford one—wondered why she’d been allowed to have one—when everything else in her house was so basic, so pared back and old-fashioned.
A creak from downstairs made me jump—were those footsteps coming up the stairs? There was a shuffle and a sliding sound that ended in a thud. Definitely someone coming up the stairs. I grabbed a notebook from my bag and pulled a page out of it, then, on a whim, put the notebook on Gilly’s desk, on top of a stack of other books. I scribbled a brief note, folded it over, and tucked the corner of it under the desk lamp to stop it from blowing off the table. Then I crossed to the door and reached out to open it just as someone turned the door handle. The door burst open and I jumped back, stifling a scream. Mrs. Poynter stood there, leaning at a dangerous angle. She looked at me blankly.
“Gilly?”
“She’s not here,” I said. “I was just leaving her a note.”
“Are you finished?” The last word fought its way out of her mouth, suffering serious injuries as it went.
“Definitely.” I nodded emphatically. “I should really go.”
She looked at me blearily. “Go. Now.”
“That’s just what I was thinking.” But you’re standing in my way. And if you try to make me walk past you, I’m just not going to be able to do that. I was scared of her, I realized, and even though I rationalized it immediately—of course I was afraid she might fall against me because we would both definitely fall down the stairs—I knew that wasn’t it.
She turned away from me and opened the other door, half falling up the step that led into her own dark bedroom. The only light came from the street, and heavy net curtains blocked out most of it. The room was too dim for me to be sure, but I thought I saw a streak of something on the wall before Mrs. Poynter shut the door; something dark. Something that could have been blood.
That was just my imagination, I told myself, shivering as I snapped off the light in Gilly’s room. Breakneck speed on those stairs wasn’t very fast at all, but I hurried, reckless now, worried that the cold air of her bedroom would revive Mrs. Poynter, and revive her interest in what I was doing in her house. The light was off in the living room, and in the darkness I stumbled over something on the floor, something solid and unyielding that proved to be one of my boots. I searched the floor on my hands and knees, my fingers snagging on knotholes and old nails that stuck up from the floorboards. I covered ever-wider circles, hunting, increasingly desperately, in vain. I couldn’t find the switch for the lamp either. In the end I opened the front door and let the light from the street guide me to the far corner where the second boot lay, miles away from where I’d left it. I shoved my feet into my boots and didn’t take the time to lace them up properly.
Nothing and no one could have made me spend a minute longer in Gilly Poynter’s house, even if it unlocked the answer to every question I had. I pulled the front door shut after me with a clatter. It was only when I was sure I was free that I let out the breath I hadn’t even known I was holding.
5
It was so much more than the cold evening air that made me shiver as I ran away down Pollock Lane. I folded my arms and hugged myself to stay warm, but it was no good. The chill was deep inside me.
At the end of the road I stopped for a moment, looking up and down the deserted street to see if Gilly was walking home. There was no sign of her.
I started to hurry up the hill toward town and heard a noise from behind me: a double click that made my heart jump. It was a car door opening, the rational part of my mind informed me, while a more basic bit of my brain told me to run. I compromised on spinning round, ready to run or fight or scream, and it was both reassuring and terrifying to see who was standing behind me, leaning on the open door of his Range Rover. Dan Henderson. Inspector Dan Henderson, to give him his full title. The most senior police officer in Port Sentinel. My mother’s childhood sweetheart.
My boyfriend’s dad.
Obviously it was a complicated situation. But then, Dan Henderson was a complicated man. And at the moment he was smiling at me—a smile that meant nothing since I wasn’t prepared to trust it. I did my usual mental checklist for Dan. Still tall, dark, exceptionally threatening, disturbingly like his son. Oh, and possibly angry.
In other words, just the same as usual.
“What are you doing down here, Jess?”
“Visiting someone.” I started to walk back toward him. I didn’t know which role he was playing at that precise moment, but I knew which one I wanted. The policeman. “Actually, you’re just the person I wanted to see.”
His eyebrows drew together, and all right, it was unusual for me to be enthusiastic about running into him. He was far too interested in rekindling his relationship with my mum for my liking. Even if you overlooked the fact that he was married, or that his wife was dying a slow, horrible death (and I wasn’t prepared to overlook either detail), Dan Henderson had been bad news eighteen years before, and he was still bad news. He’d broken Mum’s heart and driven her into my father’s arms, and I owed him my life twice over, and I didn’t like him one bit.
“What do you want with me?”
“I’m worried about a friend of mine. Gilly Poynter. She lives back there.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of Pollock Lane. “She was supposed to meet me and she didn’t turn up.”
“When was this?”
“We were supposed to meet at the library at five.”
“Five o’clock this afternoon? An hour ago?” Dan started to laugh. “Come off it, Jess. She’s a teenager, I presume?”
I nodded. “She’s the same age as me. But—”
“But nothing. She didn’t come to the library on a Friday night. Can’t say I blame her.”
“It’s out of character.”
He raised one eyebrow, sardonic as the devil. “Is that right?”
“Yes, it is.” I was refusing to be flustered. “And there’s no sign of her at home.”
“Is that where you’ve been?”
I nodded.
“Looking for another mystery, Jess?”
“Not looking.” I sounded defensive, even to myself. “I just wondered. Her mum was weird too. Kind of out of it. You know, there was some stuff in a mug in the kitchen that looked like powder. Maybe she was drugged. Or maybe she took something herself.”
Dan shook his head. “I’m not going to go and arrest Mrs.…”
“Poynter,” I supplied.
“… for being out of it on a Friday night. She’d probably been having a well-earned glass of wine before you turned up to terrify her about her daughter’s whereabouts. It’s Friday night. She’s probably at a party.”
“Gilly had taken her laptop with her.”
“All right, then she’s probably using it somewhere. Why don’t you send her an e-mail and see?”
“I don’t have her address.”
Dan shrugged. “Not my problem. And neither is the fact that she stood you up at the library.”
I thought about arguing with him—telling him about Gilly cutting her hands, about the blood-stained tissues in the bin, about Max Thurston lurking in the library—but he would have laughed at that too. It didn’t add up to a reason to call in the cops, and if I hadn’t run into him, I wouldn’t have done anything so dramatic. But it annoyed me that Dan was so dismissive. I didn’t know Gilly well, but he didn’t know Gilly at all.
And I’d been right before, about Freya and about Seb Dawson, which Dan might have remembered.
“Well, if she turns up dead in a ditch, at least I warned you.” I turned on my heel and started to walk away.
“Wait a second, young lady. Where are you going?”
“Home,” I said over my shoulder.
“I’ll give you a lift.”
“I don’t need one.”
“Come on, Jess. Let me drive you home. I’ve finished work for the day, so I’m heading that way anyway.”
Dan lived in the house directly behind mine. It did make sense to go with him if he was driving up through the hilly streets to our neighborhood.
That didn’t mean I wanted to do it.
“That’s very kind of you, but I’d rather walk. It’s a nice night.”
“Your teeth are chattering.”
“Yeah, I said it was nice, I didn’t say it was warm out.” His face darkened and I hurriedly added, “I just meant that it’s not raining now. I’d better go. Thanks again.”
“Jess.”
I’d already turned to go, but I turned back. There was something in Dan’s voice that made me quite sure he’d find a reason to arrest me if I didn’t cooperate.
“Get into the car.”
“But—”
“Now.”
There was no way round it. I’d already used up all my polite and not-so-polite ways of saying no. I trudged back to the passenger door. There was a part of me that was very glad not to be hauling my bag up the hill. There was another part that was replaying the last time Dan had given me a lift, when he’d been terrifying and unsettling.
I got into the car and shut the door, feeling as if I’d have been much safer wandering the streets alone. Dan had already put his seat belt on.
“Buckle up.”
It was surprisingly hard to do that when you were perched on the extreme edge of the seat. I yanked the seat belt across and leaned over to click it into place.
“Need any help?”
“Nope.” Seat belt on, I wedged my bag between me and Dan and tried not to look at his profile as he started the engine. Straight nose, long eyelashes, square chin—Will, exactly. And it was beyond strange to see someone I cordially disliked wearing the features I adored more than anything in the world. It was like something from a nightmare.
“It’s a bit late for you to be out on your own, isn’t it?”
I checked my watch. “It’s twenty past six.”
“It’s dark. You’re on foot. You’re alone. You’re vulnerable.”
Because I was a girl, I knew he was thinking, and my feminist heart was outraged. I wanted to make him say it so I could argue the point with him. “Vulnerable to what, exactly?”
“You could get mugged. Pickpocketed. You could have that bag stolen.”
“Because there’s so much street crime around here.” I didn’t have to look around to know that there wasn’t so much as a piece of litter or a spray-painted tag on a wall to hint at criminal behavior. I had grown up in a mildly edgy bit of North London where you could buy pretty much any drug you wanted just outside the train station (not that I had been in the market for that kind of thing). Muggings weren’t even reported in the local paper. I couldn’t quite take Dan’s concern seriously.
He glowered. “You think you’re safe because you’re not in London any more, but there’s plenty of people out there who wouldn’t think twice about taking everything you have. Especially at this time of year. Criminals want a bit of cash to spend on their kids, and it’s in your pocket.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said, and tacked on an innocent smile when he whipped round to glare at me. I might possibly have taken his point on board if he’d been a bit less patronizing about it, but being patronizing came naturally to him.
Dan had fallen silent, listening to the radio traffic on the set he had in the car. The beeping and static would have bothered me, but he seemed to tune it out. I listened to something that turned out to be a report of a stolen moped that might have been in the area. Once I’d got used to the stuttering transmissions and radio jargon, I found I was fascinated. Dan was frowning. He dug in the door pocket beside him and threw a notebook into my lap.
“Write down the license plate for me.”
“Pen?”
He fumbled in his pocket, swearing under his breath, and found a Biro with a broken end.
“Is this standard police issue?” I asked, inspecting it.
“No, but it works. And since you don’t even have a pen, you don’t get to criticize it.”
“I do have one.” I peered into my bag. “Unless I left it at Gilly’s house.”
Dan tapped the notebook without looking at me. “Write. Now.”
I did as I was told.
“Read it back to me,” he demanded.
“HX53 HPJ.”
“Did you get a description of the vehicle?”
“It’s a moped. Silver with a white carrier on the back. No front number plate.”
His eyebrows went up. “You got it right.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I didn’t think you were listening.”
But you thought you’d test me anyway. “I was. It’s interesting.”
That got me a look. “Most people don’t think it’s interesting. Most people would ask if I could turn it off.”
I shrugged. “It’s your job. Driving me around isn’t. I mean, I know this isn’t a taxi.” Although you are behaving as if it is and I wish I knew why.
“No, it isn’t.” Dan drove in silence for a minute. The car was warm, the seat comfortable, even if I was hunched up on one side of it. I felt myself start to relax.
Which was, of course, a mistake.
“So how are you and Will getting on?”
I sat up straight. “Um. He’s not back from school.”
