Lena nods, but her mind is already elsewhere.
‘Can you track him that way?’ asks Elissa’s grandfather. ‘Through YouTube?’
‘I’m afraid not. Right now, while we wait for further communication, our priority is the location of that white Bedford van. I have every resource I need, so I don’t want you to worry about that. Hundreds of officers, not just from Dorset but from all the neighbouring counties. The National Crime Agency too. The public response has been huge – thousands of people up and down the country out searching. I’m joining the deputy chief constable for another media briefing at six. I’ll call you straight after.’
Lena stares in dull acknowledgement.
The déjà vu is awful; it’s Bryony Taylor, all over again.
Back in the car, Mairéad sits behind the wheel with her hands on her belly. Since this morning’s press briefing she’s had no further pain, but that doesn’t mean her baby is safe. She needs to phone the surgery, get a referral to the early-pregnancy assessment unit. She wants an ultrasound, right now. Wants to hear a heartbeat and a doctor telling her everything’s OK. And yet there are a million different things to do first.
Taking out her phone, she contacts Halley, back in Bournemouth. ‘What’ve you got?’
‘Lab came back on the number-plate DNA swabs,’ he tells her. ‘Not a bean.’
‘Great.’
‘Are you still at the house?’
‘Just left.’
‘How’s Lena doing?’
‘Christ, Jake. I don’t know. It’s not good.’
‘Yeah. Feels like a horror story unfolding, doesn’t it?’
Mairéad glances out of the side window at the Mirzoyan home. ‘I want to look more closely at Lasse Haagensen, the chess teacher. I know it’s been done. But this time I want his whole life turned over.’
She throws the phone on to the passenger seat. With Bryony Taylor, there were three communications and then silence. The window for saving Elissa Mirzoyan is narrowing every hour.
Elissa
Day 6
I
He comes for her while she’s asleep.
When Elissa wakes, she can’t immediately work out where she is. For the first time, there’s no sharp floor pressing against her skin. Then she remembers the story she narrated for the camera and the prizes she earned for her duplicity: a bed, a blanket, a hot meal. In the outside world, those things are nothing special. Down here, they’re everything.
As soon as she opens her eyes she knows the situation has changed. There’s something manic about the ghoul’s light as it flits around the cell. He’s panting, too. Great gouts of condensation billow from his silhouette.
Once he’s checked everything, he lays his torch on the floor, angled towards her. Elissa scrunches up her eyes against its glare. The blanket is around her shoulders, so she’s not as cold as before, but she’s frightened now. This feels serious.
The ghoul hunches over the iron ring. There’s a clink, as of something unlocking. A sharp rattle of chain.
‘Up,’ he whispers.
Earlier, she thought they’d made progress. Now, the menace rolling off him drains her stomach of blood. ‘What’s happening?’
The words slip out before she can call them back. You don’t speak until you’re told. Say you understand. Anxious not to provoke him further, she scrabbles up, supporting her manacle with her good hand.
He comes at her then, a monster in the dark. She can’t suppress a scream, and when it rings off the cell walls he grabs her by the neck and shoves her in front of him.
‘Please,’ she moans. ‘Oh, please, don’t.’
‘Enough,’ he hisses. ‘Do as you’re told and move.’
Elissa stumbles forwards. It’s only when she passes beyond the perimeter of her chain that she realizes he’s unlocked it. She’s free, and yet she’s not; the loose end doesn’t drag on the floor, which means the ghoul must be holding it.
When he scoops up his torch, light bevels around her. Shadows lengthen and swing. Three more steps and she’s through the open door.
In her terror, Elissa can hardly breathe. Nor can she make any sense of the half-glimpsed shapes that bow out of the gloom. He’s going to kill me, she thinks, convinced beyond doubt. This could be my last living minute.
Her breath is a whistle in her throat. Her family is so far away.
Stone steps in front, pressure behind. Elissa struggles up.
So much time she’d thought she had before her. So many years unlived.
The ghoul shoves her again, harder this time. In response she climbs faster, hurrying towards her fate.
Keep good thoughts in her head. Thoughts of family, of love and laughter. But her mind is racing so fast she can’t fill it. In her panic, she bites her tongue. The pain is glass inside her mouth.
The ghoul’s torch illuminates a switchback. Elissa leans around it.
‘Up,’ he hisses. ‘Up, up.’
In an instant she’s back in her mum’s Fiesta, parked outside Wide Boys. Lena Mirzoyan is saying something – just a throwaway line, but it’s soaked in love, steeped in it; and then the scene falls away and she’s back on the staircase, emerging into a squalid room that might have been a kitchen long ago. That she’ll spend her last moments separated from those she cares most about, with no one to hold her hand, is the worst of all fates.
It’s light outside, an afternoon grey. After so long imprisoned in darkness, Elissa’s senses are overcome. Her muscles burn with the effort of walking. Her feet trip over floorboards warped by damp.
Ahead, a corridor of sloping shadows. Here, the air’s even colder. It presses at her shoulders, her face. ‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘I did what you said. I did.’
The ghoul is behind her. She could glance back and look at him, but she’s too scared to do that, too scared to consider what it’ll mean if he lets her. Even now, she can’t abandon hope.
All at once she’s outside, her shoes sinking into soft mulch. Around her, dripping trees point towards an overcast sky.
The Memory Wood, she thinks.
It’s so beautiful. The whole world is beautiful. Tears prick her eyes.
Then she sees the white van, parked to her left, and its sticker: a trilby-wearing skull smoking a cigarette.
CHILLAX.
The van doors are open. When the ghoul shoves her she bangs her knees against the bumper.
Suicidal to climb in, but what choice does she have? She can’t fight. Her muscles are so slack she can’t even run. Somehow, she lifts her right knee, swinging it on to the cargo bed. The ghoul grabs her other leg and flips her.
Elissa tumbles over, unable to protect her wrist. The pain is a white-hot scream. Her stomach clenches and she vomits, a liquid gush. Behind her, the ghoul leaps into the van.
Elissa blinks, but her eyes aren’t working. She smells something odd, recalls a vague memory of flowers. There’s something wet against her lips, and suddenly she’s so scared that she just wants this to end, and quickly.
How many more seconds of life?
How many?
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she whispers.
Then the darkness extinguishes her.