Lock Me In

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. (#ulink_d082d5ec-e2da-5fc2-bc0e-35c92b9942f0)

Mae (#ulink_d082d5ec-e2da-5fc2-bc0e-35c92b9942f0)

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.