Jumping down, she completed another circuit of the walls, but giving up quickly, turned her attention instead to the other items in the room. She pulled the pictures off the wall and yanked fruitlessly at the metal coat hooks. She pulled the pointless cooker and fake basin away from the wall, then, in a final fit of pique, grabbed the clock that hung above the bed and tossed it across the room. It was a flimsy children’s clock, designed to help kids learn to tell the time and it stared down at her day after day, mocking her with its idle hands, which remained resolutely locked at a quarter past twelve. It landed with a clatter on the far side of the room.

Ruby breathed out heavily. All that was left now was another assault on the door. It was solidly built with a heavy lock. There was no way she could pull it off its hinges or ram it with her shoulder. They only way to open it was to force the lock with some kind of implement. But what could she use? She would need something heavy and solid, which she could smash down on it …

Bricks. She was surrounded by bricks. The mortar had been touched up in places, but the brickwork was probably a hundred years old or more, so … Ruby ran her hands over the cold surface of the walls, forensically searching for signs of weakness in the mortar. Round and round she went, her nails scraping at the mortar, but every brick held firm. Had her captor thought of everything? Had he left nothing to chance?

Ruby was tired now and about to give up, when she spotted one place she hadn’t tried. Pulling the bed away from the wall, she dropped to her knees to examine the brickwork that lay behind.

As she leaned down to take a closer look at the mortar, she felt a trickle of cool air brush over her face. She kept her eyes closed, revelling in it for a moment. It felt as if someone was stroking her face, like an act of kindness. It felt like a lifetime since she’d received one of those.

The air was coming through the brickwork. She dropped down on to her front and crawled closer to the wall. Sure enough, the brick was loose. Her damaged fingers protested but she jammed them into the crumbling mortar round the edges and tugged for all she was worth. To her surprise the brick came out easily.

The cavity behind it was stuffed full of paper. Confused, Ruby pulled the papers out, but was disappointed to find the cavity was shallow, hardly more than the depth of the brick itself. She pulled at the bricks next to the opening, but they refused to respond and three broken nails later, she gave up.

She was about to pick up the brick to begin her assault on the door, when her eyes alighted on one of the many pieces of paper that now littered the ground around her. On it was a drawing – crudely done in felt-tip pen – of a green tree decorated with baubles.

Curiosity now got the better of her and Ruby read the contents of the home-made card. It was an Xmas card to her mother from a girl called Roisin. In it, she wrote about how much she missed her family, how they were not to worry about her sudden disappearance and how much she was looking forward to the day when she could put this card in their hands herself. The latter section of the text was stained with tears and the card was dated a little over two and a half years ago.

Ruby dropped it like a stone and sank to the floor. In an instant, the full desperation of her situation became clear. She was not the first girl to have been abducted and held down here.

Which begged the question: what had happened to them? And where was this ‘Roisin’ now?

48

‘You’re not in trouble, Lianne. But you will be, if you don’t start talking.’

Helen was already in a dark mood and the teenage girl’s refusal to talk was only exacerbating her bad humour. When she had burst into the room to confront Nathan Price, she had found him manhandling a teenage girl. A teenage girl who was definitely not Ruby Sprackling.

‘You’re telling us that Nathan Price is a friend of the family.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And do friends of the family usually pop round when you’re home alone?’

Nothing in response.

‘We’ll find out either way. Your parents are coming in – if they can confirm that Nathan Price is a friend of the family –’

‘You haven’t told them, have you? About him?’ Lianne interrupted.

There was real alarm in her face now. Helen felt bad about lying, but needs must.

‘I didn’t have much choice, did I, Lianne? If you won’t talk to me …’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘So talk to me. I know you’re scared. I know that he hurt you.’

A livid bruise covered the girl’s right cheek.

‘But he can’t touch you here. Tell me what’s been going on and I swear he won’t come near you ever again.’

Helen held her hand out to the young girl. Lianne looked at it, then dropping her gaze to her lap, muttered.

‘I met him on Friday night.’

‘Where?’

‘Revolution.’

Sanderson shot a look at Helen, but was ignored.

‘And?’

‘He bought me drinks you know. Asked me stuff.’

‘He took an interest in you.’

‘He was nice. He had money too. So we chatted until midnight, then went off.’

‘Where, Lianne? It’s really important you tell me –’

‘We went to his van, ok?’

‘You slept with him?’

‘What do you think?’

‘How old are you, Lianne?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘How old are you?’ Helen repeated more forcefully.

‘Sixteen.’

‘Lianne …’

‘Fourteen, ok, I’m fourteen.’

The girl started to cry. Helen reached out to take her hand and this time the girl didn’t resist.

‘How long did you stay with him?’

‘A few hours.’

‘He was with you the whole time?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then what?’

‘He dropped me home.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Just after four o’clock.’

‘Just after four a.m. Are you absolutely sure?’

‘I saw the clock as I came in. I was pleased – my folks are dead to the world at that time.’

Helen concluded the interview shortly afterwards, the young girl having agreed to make a formal statement about the events of Friday night. There was some comfort in the fact that Nathan Price would face criminal proceedings – sex with a minor was a serious offence that would land him on the Sex Offenders Register – but it was of little solace to Helen. Lianne Sumner had just cleared Nathan Price of any involvement in Ruby Sprackling’s disappearance.

Like it or not, they were back to square one.

49

He tried to focus, wrenching his mind back to the tasks in hand, but still he couldn’t settle. His unpleasant exchange with Summer had left him unsettled and disturbed – it was hard to concentrate on work today. Clients came and went as usual and he dealt with them in his usual professional manner, but he was on auto-pilot, getting the job done with the minimum of effort and interaction. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why was she hostile to him? It didn’t make any sense. Why was she so … ungrateful? Didn’t she understand what he’d had to go through? The risks he’d taken?

News of the discovery of a body at Carsholt beach had knocked him for six. He’d watched the local news repeatedly since, bought every edition of the local paper, scouring the reports for details. Images of a large police forensics team on site had unnerved him, as had the confirmation that local hero DI Grace would be leading the investigation. Ever since he’d seen the news, he’d been on edge, half expecting a knock on the door. He knew that this was unlikely – he’d been so careful, so meticulous in his work – but it just served to underline the lengths he’d gone to – the sacrifices he’d made – to do right by her.