Lock Me In. Kate Simants

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СКАЧАТЬ she wasn’t joking.

      ‘What did you find, Mum? This morning?’

      An infinitesimal pause. ‘Ellie—’

      And then, from outside, we heard a woman’s voice. ‘This one. Over here.’

      We both stood up, fast. She had turned towards the sound but swung back to face me, hands on my shoulders, pulling me into a hug.

      ‘Listen to me,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Let me talk to them. We can make sure they look for Matt properly, and maybe it’ll all be fine. But it wasn’t before, with Jodie, was it? And if something has happened to him, and if you – Siggy – had anything to do with it, we need to control this as best we can.’

      Three knocks at the door.

      ‘You are a good person, Ellie. We are good people. We’ve done our bloody best. I will not allow that bitch to ruin your life, or mine.’ She brought her mouth right against my ear, and in a vicious whisper she said, ‘Do you hear me? Siggy? You’re not having her. You’re not going to take my daughter.’

      From the other end of the corridor I could hear a second voice, a man, calling through the front door.

      My mother touched my face. ‘Not. A. Sound.’ And then she left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

       9.

       Mae

      Mae knocked again.

      Cold spiked in the morning air, and the sky above Abson Street was a flat, formless grey. Kit, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a borrowed pinstripe skirt suit, took a step back to assay the building, intermittent clouds of breath forming in front of her face. She stretched, then pressed her fists into the small of her back, wincing.

      He cocked his head. ‘Been fighting?’

      She let out a small grunt and straightened up. ‘Roller derby.’

      ‘You’re kidding.’

      Kit grinned. ‘Nope. You’re looking at west London’s fourth-finest blocker.’

      He’d seen bruises on her legs before, at the gym, and wondered what her sport was. Hockey, he’d guessed, or rugby possibly. But roller derby was something else. Explained the tattoos, too. He tried extremely hard not to think about her in war paint and fishnets. Extremely hard wasn’t hard enough.

      ‘You play round here?’ he asked, bending to call through the letterbox. ‘Ms Power? Ellie?’

      ‘Sure. Another reason that I’ll hate you forever for making me wear this—’ she gestured at her skirt, ‘monstrosity. I look like I’m selling insurance. I’ve got a rep to protect. This is my “hood”.’ She accompanied that with some kind of gesture that he guessed was supposed to be gangsta.

      ‘Straight outta Acton,’ he offered, but she just frowned, too young for the reference. ‘Never mind.’

      There was the scrape of several locks, and the door opened to reveal a lean, serious woman in her fifties. For just a moment, she gave them a warm smile that didn’t match the restless eyes, and he remembered her in her entirety: the feeling that she always had a mask up, was always trying to calm herself down, keep something in.

      Christine Power.

      ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. Then she recognized him. ‘Ah. DC Mae.’ The finest splinter of ice in her voice.

      ‘It’s DS now, actually. How are you, Christine?’

      She didn’t answer the question. This was the moment to say she looked good, that she hadn’t aged. But the truth of it was that every minute of the five years since their paths had last crossed was in stark evidence in each crease of her face, in the near-complete greying of her hair.

      Kit cleared her throat.

      ‘This is DC Ziegler,’ he said. ‘She’s a Trainee Investigator.’

      Christine pulled her gaze away from Mae and greeted Kit, turning on the smile that reminded him how she’d been semi-famous once. A reporter, back when women covering international stories were vanishingly scarce.

      ‘We’ve come for a chat with Ellie. Is she in?’ he asked, taking in what he could of the corridor behind her, given the lack of light. ‘We’re concerned about the whereabouts of a Matthew Corsham?’

      Christine gave a tight shake of her head. ‘She’s not here right now, I’m afraid. Can I help?’

      ‘If you have a few minutes,’ Kit said, stepping forward.

      The door opened a little wider as Christine stood aside, and Mae followed Kit into a square, magnolia-coloured living room. They were offered tea. Mae declined with a smile, but Kit groaned with relief.

      ‘Could murder one,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Coffee would be great, if you have it.’

      Christine nodded and turned away, closing the door behind her.

      Mae turned slowly to face Kit. ‘Ordinarily we avoid using words like murder.’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘Figure of speech, man. Lighten up.’ She shoved her hands in her pockets and looked around.

      The place was as tidy as it could have been, but everything was shabby. The carpet was in tiles, worn down in places to the foam backing: decades of service had left the curtains with vertical streaks sun-bleached almost to white. Elsewhere: chipped paintwork, bare lightbulbs, no photos, no clutter of any description. And it was cold in there. He touched a radiator. Hadn’t been on that morning, and the dust on the control tap at the bottom said it had been longer. Like last year. This was more than slumming it.

      ‘They just moved in?’ Kit whispered, looking around. ‘I’ve been in homelier bus stations. Who doesn’t even have a single photo on the wall?’

      She turned to the single line of paperbacks, standing on the deep sill of the single-glazed window, and bent her head to read the spines. Mae looked, too: Dissociation and Me; A Child of Many Parts; Fugue State: A Carer’s Guide. She glanced back at him, confused. He knew what was coming.

      ‘Yeah. Ellie’s … she’s not well. Mentally.’ Said it casually, like he was telling her Ellie was fond of horses.

      ‘OK. Like how?’

      He lifted a shoulder, dropped it. There wasn’t time to explain properly. ‘Complicated.’

      ‘Try me.’

      Mae checked round the doorway, then said, quickly, ‘It’s called DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder.’

      Kit nodded. ‘Makes sense she still lives with her mum, then. Poor bastard,’ she added with a shrug, an unfazed gesture that made him suddenly conscious of how diametrically different СКАЧАТЬ