‘There’s been another communication,’ she explains. ‘I won’t lie. It’s going to be upsetting. But I need you to watch it. You might notice something we haven’t.’
With a glance at Judy, she opens her laptop and taps the play button. Elissa Mirzoyan emerges, as if from a nightmare.
The girl looks dreadful. Emaciated, scared, ill. When Lena Mirzoyan sees her daughter, she sags forwards as if her strings have been cut.
Onscreen, Elissa takes a few steadying breaths. Then, in a voice that rasps like wet sand, she says, ‘There was this time, last summer. Mum promised to take me to London. I’d always wanted to ride on the Underground, take a Tube to all the famous stops – check out Madame Tussauds, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, 221B Baker Street.’
‘Did you go?’
Even though she’s watched this two-minute clip thirty times, Mairéad still stiffens when she hears that voice. On the sofa, Lena Mirzoyan recoils.
‘Yes,’ Elissa replies. ‘Although not to any of those places I said. We ended up going to the cinema to see a repeat showing of Léon, this old movie my mum likes. I hated it, hated every minute.’
‘That doesn’t sound fun.’
‘No. Afterwards, we were meant to go somewhere for cake. Black Forest gateau, just like she promised.’
‘You didn’t get cake?’
‘We went to a pub. Mum drank five vodkas, then we caught the train home.’
‘Your mum sounds like a real bitch.’
Elissa Mirzoyan stares at the camera for five long seconds. When the laptop screen goes dark, Mairéad closes the lid. ‘I’m sorry. I know that’s hard to watch. It’s what seems to motivate him – getting girls to disparage their mothers for the camera.’
Lena lurches to her feet. Eyes wild, she races from the room. Judy Pauletto goes to follow, but Mairéad holds up a hand. ‘Give her a moment.’
Within a minute, Lena is back. ‘Elissa,’ she says, breathless. ‘She’s sending us a message.’
II
The air inside the living room acquires a static charge.
Mairéad stands up far too fast. The room drains of colour. She clenches her teeth, waiting for the dizziness to pass. ‘Explain.’
‘We did go to London on her birthday, but we never used the Tube. Elissa made me promise we wouldn’t – she hated the whole idea. We took a train to Waterloo, and from there we hopped on buses everywhere she wanted to go.’
‘You said there was a message.’
Vigorously, Lena nods her head. ‘That’s part of it, don’t you see? Why change that bit of the story? The man who’s holding her – he wouldn’t know. That bit’s just for us. We used buses that day, but Elissa says we used the Tube. I think she’s telling us she’s underground.’
Mairéad opens her mouth. She glances at Judy Pauletto before saying, ‘That’s quite a leap.’
Lena shakes her head. ‘Not if you know my daughter. Besides, I don’t think it’s the only message. Those places she mentioned – we never went anywhere like that. We spent the morning in the British Museum and all afternoon at the Science Museum.’ She holds out a sheaf of tickets. ‘See? I still have our stubs.’
Mairéad’s heart begins to beat faster. Already, Judy is scribbling furiously. ‘This is good, Lena. This is excellent. What else can you tell us?’
‘Those other places. They might be part of the message too. Elissa’s only changing certain parts of the story. I think the replacements are meant to give us clues. Madame Tussauds, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Baker Street – I don’t know what she’s trying to say, but I know she’s saying something.’
‘221B Baker Street,’ Elissa’s grandfather says, ‘was the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes.’
Mairéad nods. ‘And Madame Tussauds is the waxworks. Perhaps she’s hinting at a mask, some kind of disguise. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not was the place in Piccadilly that closed down. It had a huge collection of oddities: shrunken heads, five-legged lambs, all kinds of freakish stuff.’
Just for a moment, the strength seems to go out of Lena. Then she straightens. ‘We did go for cake, but it was carrot cake, not Black Forest gateau.’
‘You think she’s telling us she’s underground … in a forest?’
‘I’m sure of it.’ And then Lena swallows, because the horror of that is almost unbearable. ‘The film she said I liked – Léon. I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Léon’s a Luc Besson film. About a girl who strikes up a friendship with a hitman after her parents are murdered.’
Lena Mirzoyan sits on the sofa and hugs her knees.
‘You’ve got a very smart daughter,’ Mairéad says. ‘Would you watch the video with me one more time? See if you notice anything else?’
When Lena nods, Judy Pauletto opens her notebook to a fresh page.
Outside, rainclouds drag a curtain across the sky. Has Elissa Mirzoyan really been imprisoned underground, in woodland, far from prying eyes? If so, her chances of survival, already gossamer-thin, are virtually nil.
Hold on, please hold on.
Abruptly, and with a crushing and inescapable sense of loss, Mairéad realizes that her feelings of nausea have entirely disappeared.
Elissa
Day 6
I
She wakes to a crashing in her head, like a harbour wall pounded by sea. Her face is stuck to something … by glue, or vomit, or blood – she cannot tell. Although her stomach is empty, her bladder is full to bursting.
Is this her coffin? Is that why her head feels so confined?
Her lungs grow tight. It’s an effort to breathe. When she tries, fractionally, to move her leg, it slides over something rough and cold. The floor beneath her is uneven. It’s also familiar. Somehow, she’s back in her cell.
What shocks her most is her relief. Relief that she’s back in surroundings she knows, relief that her situation has stabilized. Earlier, she’d convinced herself she was about to die. Instead, it seems she’s received a reprieve. She has no idea why the ghoul evacuated her to the van. Perhaps it was a test, or a sick form of entertainment.
The pressure in Elissa’s bladder grows. When she raises her head, something cold and slimy drips from her face – partly digested eggs and bacon. With her good hand, she wipes it away.
Next, she feels for the manacle, groaning when she finds it back in place. There’s a wetness all along her arm that she knows must be blood. She feels no pain from where the wound reopened – just a vague pulsing – but there is a smell, like someone threw a dead thing into a laundry basket of soiled clothes.
A rattling cuts through the chaos of her thoughts. Moments later, Elissa hears the squeal of a rubber seal. Cold air washes over her. Then a voice, wavering and uncertain.
II
‘Hello, Elijah,’ she says.
If he hears her response, he gives no indication. She doesn’t sense him cross the floor, doesn’t see his torch’s stuttering beam.
There’s shallow breathing. Nothing else.