The Night They Vanished, page 25
“Why the hell have you let him go?” I ask DC Norton, the moment I see him.
He sighs. “He has alibis for both the hit-and-run and the murder of Katie Bentley. We’ve gone over his van, inch by inch. There’s no evidence—nothing—to suggest he’s done anything to your family. The only link is him working for them. That’s not enough, Hanna.” He pauses. “We will, of course, be keeping an eye on his movements.”
I have to resist the urge to scream. I’m glad Adam is here, glad he’s here to be the calm one.
“You said he put something new on the Dark Tourist website?” he asks, and he curls one of own hands around my clenched fist.
“We’ve had an alert set up for any changes on the site,” DC Norton says as he leads us down the corridor. “We didn’t want to shut it down in case the Digital Investigations Unit had any luck tracking him down. This is the first new traffic to the site since you came in.”
Instead of an interview room, he takes us into an open-plan office, full of desks and computers. He turns a monitor around so we can both see the screen.
WELCOME TO THE DARK TOURIST—ONE NEW LISTING!
Underneath there are two photographs and one line of text.
I don’t recognize the house in the first picture—it’s a new-build, obviously not even lived in, part of a building site, a new housing development. The second photograph, though… it’s Sasha. Not an old photo, obviously recent. I haven’t seen her since last summer, and in this photo she looks older. She’s all wrapped up in a coat and scarf, leaning against a wall, looking away at something, caught unawares. My heart stutters as I read the text underneath.
INSIDE INFO ON THE TERRIBLE MURDER OF SOUTH WALES SCHOOLGIRL
I reach for the mouse, but DC Norton stops me. “That’s all there is. It doesn’t link to a page—it’s just this, on the home page.”
“There must be more,” I say, and I can hear the panic in my voice. “We have to find her, we have to find her now. You need to bring Owen back in. If he has her… if he hurts her…” My breath hitches and I know I’m on the verge of losing it. He thinks I killed Jacob and now he has Sasha. “There must be something we can do—we can’t just sit here and wait for him to murder her.”
“We’re not sitting doing nothing, Hanna—we have a whole team on this.” He frowns as another plainclothes officer comes over and beckons DC Norton away. They carry on a quiet conversation as I watch Adam going through the Dark Tourist website, searching every page for clues.
I can see something’s wrong as soon as DC Norton comes back.
“What is it?” I say.
“We got a hit—a connection between the listings. Gemma Bentley—the hit-and-run victim. I spoke to the team working that case. She was a key witness in the trial that got Ethan Taylor sent to prison. They worked together.” He shakes his head. “Damn it. They questioned him, but he had alibis for the night of the hit-and-run, doesn’t own a car…”
“Don’t tell me—his alibi was Owen King?”
DC Norton winces. “Close: Lee and Carrie Brown.”
“Shit… So why, what—are they all working together? Giving each other alibis?”
“We have people checking out his last known addresses, his known associates,” DC Norton says. “All forces have been alerted and sent his photograph as well as your family’s. We might need you to do a media appeal.”
“That will all take too long—we need to find him now.” I know I’m not helping, I know what I’m saying isn’t logical. What am I expecting them to do—find him by magic? But my mind is screaming in panic and DC Norton and Adam are standing there so damned calmly and—
“What about a date?” Adam asks. “The other listings put dates.”
DC Norton shakes his head. “There’s nothing. Do either of you recognize the house?”
I lean in to look closer at the photograph, taking in every detail, desperate to find something familiar. But it’s just an empty shell of a house, there’s nothing familiar to find. I look at Adam, but he shakes his head.
“We’re analyzing everything we can about the photograph—we have software and an expert digital team. We’re seeing if we can find enough information to figure out where it is, if not the exact address. If we know the area, it might ring some bells for you.” He hesitates and looks at me. “We hope he doesn’t have your family. We hope this is just intended to frighten you. But… you have your family’s mobile numbers. We’d like you to sit with a member of our team and call their numbers again. If your family is with him and he has their phones… We’re applying for communications data in relation to the mobile phones, so we may be able to trace their location that way.”
I take a deep breath as we all stare at my phone. DC Norton thinks he has them. He doesn’t want me to leave another message for Dad or Jen or Sasha. He wants me to leave a message for the man who has taken my family.
My phone rings then, and the serendipity of it ringing just as we’re staring at it makes us all jump.
The number on the screen is not one I recognize. My heart starts pounding as I look at DC Norton and he nods.
Oh God. I connect the call.
“Hanna? It’s… it’s Carrie.”
My heart rate doesn’t slow. Carrie Hayes or Brown or whatever name she’s using is not going to be ringing me for a nice, cozy catch-up.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she says.
I let out a shaky breath. “Is it Owen? Does he have my family?”
Silence on the line.
“Please, Carrie. If you’re scared… if he’s threatening you—”
“It’s not what you think. It got out of hand, that’s all. And now Owen has roped Lee into it—using him as an alibi. I could lose my job. We both could. He made us lie to the police and—”
“Carrie, please. I’m at the police station now—will you talk to them? Will you tell me what you mean? Help me.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. But I never realized… We thought we were covering the fact that Ethan had broken a probation rule, that’s all. That’s what Owen said.” There’s another long pause. “It’s Ethan. Owen started things, but he got Ethan all riled up and… I tried to talk Ethan out of doing anything when I last saw him, before Christmas, but he wouldn’t listen…”
I shake my head, even though I know she can’t see me. “I don’t—Carrie, I don’t know Ethan. Neither does Adam. It has to be Owen. Ethan is a stranger—why would he do this?”
I can hear Carrie breathing. “Ethan is not a stranger. I know he took a different name when he was fostered, but… Hanna, Ethan is Jacob’s brother.”
She ends the call without another word, and when I try to call back, it goes straight to voicemail. I try to unravel her words as I look at Adam and DC Norton and the world shrinks a little bit more as I process it. Oh. I see. I see now.
Ethan Saunders.
He thinks I killed his brother and now he has my family.
Chapter 37
SASHA—Tuesday 3 p.m.
I was looking forward to half-term so much. A week without having to get the bus or go to school. Although, to be fair, other than Ethan showing up, yesterday wasn’t that bad, and I’m not dreading going back after half-term quite so much. I’m not the weird new girl anymore, I’m just another girl. I’ve even started talking to a couple of the girls who sit near me in class. Nice, normal girls who, in nice, normal times, could end up becoming friends. Moving here, starting this new school, could have been the happy-ever-after to a really boring YA novel, where I end up with some friends, I pass my exams, and go off to a good university.
But instead of half-term being this lovely much looked forward to break, I spend every second in a state of heightened anxiety. Because after I told him about Hanna, there’s been no sign of Ethan. It’s what I thought I wanted. He’s gone, and so is the phone he gave me. He didn’t call the house or turn up again, thank God, but I jumped every time the house phone rang, or Mum or Dad’s mobiles. Every time I heard a car driving past, I froze, waiting for it to stop, pull in, for Ethan to climb out.
But in the very long day between me telling him and us going away, there was nothing. And I don’t feel reassured, not in the slightest. The look on his face when I told him about Hanna… I don’t know what to do.
If I still had the phone, I could take it to the police, but when I think about it, even if I did, what could I prove? Yes, there’s a whole history of my contact with Ethan on there, but he’s never said anything incriminating on text—nothing police-worthy, anyway.
I can’t tell Mum or Dad, because then I’d have to explain that I’d actually had a forbidden phone for months, that Ethan gave it to me, and I’ve been lying to them the whole time.
And if I did tell someone? I don’t know where Ethan is living, where he’s working, if anywhere. I suppose he’s meant to keep the authorities informed as he’s just got out of prison, but I don’t know that for sure. And worst of all—he knows where I live. He knows where I go to school, where I get on and off the bus.
The only other thing I could think to do was go back to Littledean. Find Owen King. Get him to speak to Ethan for me. But he wouldn’t. He’d see my worry and misery as a victory—a point against my dad, against Hanna. Plus, I’d basically have to run away from home, even if it was just for a day—there’s no way I’d actually get permission to go back there.
My head constantly aches and I’m struggling to act in any way normal because I’m so distracted all the time.
And I don’t… I don’t know what to do.
It’s half-term and we’re away for a few days. Dad booked it ages ago and it’s the last chance before the holiday park opens at Easter. Because it’s a much bigger, busier park than the old one, it’s going to be frantic right through until October. Dad said—and the irony of all this is enough to make me cry—he said if I carry on with the good behavior, there might even be a part-time job for me. A chance to actually be part of the holiday camp I live in, a chance to actually earn some money of my own. He said this as I was desperately contemplating running off, taking a bus to beg Owen King to help me.
So, with this half-term, with this last chance, we’ve headed back to southeast Wales, traveling along the Heritage Coast before moving west to the Gower, staying in B & B’s with sea views and full English breakfasts. Bracing walks on the beach, and afternoon teas. I didn’t want to go; it’s harder to pretend everything’s fine when the three of us are together all day. But I didn’t want to stay either. Staying meant my every last nerve getting shredded each time a phone rang or a car passed.
And it’s not like I had a choice, so here we are, ten in the morning on the Tuesday of half-term, driving the coastal roads toward our second stop. We spent the first weekend in Porthcawl, and even though hardly anything was open, I spent almost the whole two days by the fair, because I knew Mum and Dad wouldn’t want to waste their time there. So, while they walked the coastal path or relaxed at the hotel, I lurked around the amusement arcades, ate too much ice cream, watched people mindlessly shoving money and tokens in machines. For two whole days.
We’ve moved on now and it’s actually sunny today, and with the windows closed and the car heating on, I could almost pretend it was summer. It’s weird, being back this side of Wales. Like coming home rather than going away. The new part of Wales we’re living in is very pretty, the sea a lovely deep blue. Back here, it’s very much a stormy gray. But still, two months in, this feels like coming home and West Wales feels like the holiday.
That’s stupid, I know. I was miserable back in Littledean. Miserable at school, bored stupid at home. Mum was right that the move could be a proper fresh start. This week could be the start of it—for the first time, I can fully appreciate Dad’s no-phones-on-holiday rule, so his and Mum’s mobiles have stayed switched off at the bottom of Mum’s handbag since Saturday, there just for emergencies. Ethan doesn’t know we’re on holiday. Maybe if he has reappeared over the weekend, he’ll get bored and give up when we don’t come home. I mean, it’s true what he said—he’s just a computer guy. How much damage can he do?
And when we get home—I’ll beg Dad to start picking me up from school again. I’ll tell him all the horror stories about the bus, and I’ll beg and plead. I’ll bloody beg him to go back to the old ways, where I’m never free to meet or get calls off anyone. And I’ll stay locked up like Rapunzel in her tower until I’m eighteen. The thought is actually a relief.
Another thought pops into my head as we drive down a steep, winding lane toward our next destination. Maybe Dad should find out about the phone, and all of the meetings. I wouldn’t say anything about Ethan’s scary revenge thing with Hanna, but if I played stupid and cried and said Ethan gave me the phone ages ago and I’d felt so guilty, but I didn’t know what to do…
Dad would go back to the police or probation service again, probably. This time, it might really get Ethan into trouble… But if it was Dad who did it, if Ethan was watching and saw that I’d been grounded again, that I wasn’t going on the school bus anymore, that I was basically under house arrest—if he was already in trouble and he saw all that, he’d give up, wouldn’t he? He’d step back and leave me alone. And he’d leave Hanna alone.
I’ll risk being locked in the tower forever for that. For things to just go back to normal, or whatever passed for normal before I made that stupid Facebook account. I don’t even care if the promises of my own phone and a part-time job are taken away. It’ll be like my own prison sentence for computer fraud, but with better food. I’ll be out in four years—maybe less for good behavior.
I duck my head down to hide a smile, as Dad parks in the car park behind a small hotel on the seafront. I feel like I’ve been in limbo for weeks and even though it’s hell I’m on my way to, because the fallout will be horrific, it’s definitely relief I’m feeling in the pit of my stomach. Relief at making a decision to actually do something.
The hotel at our second stop is old, all chintz and dark wood. It’s clean, but there’s a definite musty smell as we walk through the door. A smiling woman with the most hideous pink lipstick checks us in and I’m happy when we’re given two rooms. I was worried we’d all be in a family room like in the last hotel, and I wouldn’t get a second alone, but I’m given a single room on the same floor as my parents and we all troop up the creaky stairs together before going our separate ways.
The relief disappears when I step into my tiny room, though, because there’s a brown paper parcel sitting in the middle of the single bed. I freeze and quickly close the door behind me, in case Mum or Dad decide to come and check on me.
This is a small, seaside hotel in a small, seaside town. There’s no room service, so no convenient phone next to the bed for me to phone down and find out where the parcel came from. There’s not even a key card to open the door. The door was unlocked and open when we came up the creaky stairs, the key for the door sitting on the table next to the bed in a china dish. I’m guessing the room has been unlocked since it was cleaned earlier in the day, so even if I asked at reception, they might have no idea how the parcel got here.
There was no one behind the desk when we first walked in—we had to ring the little brass bell and wait an age before the pink-lipsticked receptionist appeared. Which means if the desk isn’t manned all the time, anyone could have walked in at any time, checked the reservations, found out which room I was going to be staying in… Two rooms booked under the name of Carter, mine was obviously going to be the single.
I crouch down and look under the bed, then open the wardrobe to check for lurkers in there. It’s not an en-suite room, so I don’t have to worry about a madman with an ax hiding behind the shower curtain. I pull the curtains closed and lock myself in the room before sitting on the edge of the bed to look more closely at the parcel.
There’s no name on it, so it can’t have been sent up via reception. It has to have been hand-delivered to my room. I pick it up. It’s about the size of a hardback book, but lighter in weight. I’m tempted to open the window or door and hurl the thing away, but I’d end up feeling mighty foolish if it turns out to be some cute welcome thing from the hotel. I can imagine the scene if I chuck it out like an unexploded bomb, and it turns out to be complementary toiletries.
But I passed Mum and Dad’s room down the corridor on the way to my room, and I saw inside and there was no parcel on their bed. I try to handle it as little as possible as I tug at the tape, just in case it contains some severed body part and I have to call the police. I’m trying to joke to myself, but now I’m picturing Hanna’s hand, with that tattoo I spotted last time she visited, seven tiny black stars dotted across her wrist. Yes, Officer, I recognize my sister’s hand, I recognize this star just by where it was severed.
I pull the brown paper off and am left with a white box. Not leaking blood, not smelling like death, but that doesn’t ease the way my entire insides are somersaulting.
I lift the lid off the box and frown. It’s a photograph in a frame, that’s all. A plain, cheap wooden frame, a snapshot-size photograph. I don’t get it. I recognize Hanna in the photograph—Hanna at the age she was in the photos I found of her, or perhaps a little older—but this is a new one. She’s facing the camera, arm in arm with a boy who looks a few years older than her, both of them smiling, both of them looking happy. The boy has bleached-blond hair, long at the front and hanging over his face. He has his ears and nose pierced and he’s wearing almost as much black eyeliner as Hanna. I don’t recognize him; I don’t think he was in any of the other photos I found.
I just don’t get it. Why would Ethan—because it has to be Ethan—leave this here? Is this Owen’s friend—the one who died? I drop the framed photograph back in the box and that’s when I spot it. The arm the unknown boy has slung around Hanna’s shoulder—there’s a tattoo. A dozen tiny black stars on the back of his hand.
