No One I Knew by A McDine (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📕

I’d seen? I stared blindly out of the window as I thought it through, but again, something didn’t ring true. If Niamh had kidnapped Immy, surely she would have come to us with her demands?

Not if she thought the police were at the house. It would be too risky. Maybe she’d decided it was safer to approach Bill. And Bill would have come up with a way of finding the money because he was Immy’s godfather and our oldest friend. It made perfect sense, the more I thought about it. He’d given Niamh the money and was now on his way to pick Immy up from wherever it was Niamh had been keeping her. Bill, the hero of the hour, would bring Immy home to us.

Home. That’s where I should be, not playing detective in this dank warehouse. I needed to be home when Bill walked up the front path with Immy in his arms. I turned and hurried towards the back door.

‘Cleo,’ said a disembodied voice, and I jumped a foot in the air.

‘Niamh!’

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

I fought an overpowering impulse to flee. ‘I… I was looking for you.’

‘Well, you’ve found me.’ She stepped forwards, shielding her eyes from the light of my phone. ‘Can you turn that feckin’ thing off?’

‘Not until you tell me where Immy is.’

‘Immy?’

‘Where are you keeping her?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Because if you’ve so much as harmed a hair on her head, so help me God, I’ll -’

‘Cleo!’ The surprise in her voice had turned to frustration, and she waved her arms around the empty warehouse. ‘Immy isn’t here.’

‘But you kidnapped her from our garden on Sunday and you’ve been holding her hostage ever since. How much ransom money did Bill pay you? Five grand, ten? Because if that was all, you were short-changed. I would have given everything I owned to have her home. Everything.’

‘You think I kidnapped my own daughter?’

‘She’s not your daughter,’ I hissed. ‘You relinquished any rights the day you gave her to us.’

‘I did what I thought was best for her. I trusted you to look after her. And now you’re telling me she’s missing?’

‘Don’t play games with me, Niamh.’ I spat the word out, and she flinched. ‘Has Bill gone to fetch her?’

‘Bill?’

‘You’ve got what you wanted. Just tell me where she is!’

At that, Niamh pulled off her hood. My hand flew to my mouth as I took in her shorn head and gaunt face. The tattoo that crept up her neck and the piercings that studded her ears, nose and lip. The haunted expression in her eyes. It was one thing to see a blurry black and white custody photo. It was another to see her in real life.

‘I got what I wanted, did I?’ she said with bitterness. ‘That’s funny, that is, because I can’t ever remember wanting to be raped.’

I couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘Is this… is this all because of what happened in Corfu?’

She was silent.

‘You know I would have helped you. Things didn’t have to get this bad.’

‘Yeah, well, I thought I could tough it out. But I’m all right now. I’m going home.’

‘Tracey told me.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve been to the squat?’

‘I was looking for Immy. Please, Niamh, tell me where she is.’

‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, pulling her hood back up and loping towards the staff room.

‘So why did Bill give you all that money?’ I cried.

She turned and faced me, her hands clenched at her sides. ‘You can’t figure it out?’ She shook her head. ‘I thought you were cleverer than that, Cleo. You disappoint me.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her mouth curved into a crooked smile. ‘Why don’t you ask Bill?’

Chapter Thirty-Three

I stumbled across the field towards the car, not caring about the trail I was leaving through the farmer’s crop or that the spiky wheat heads were ripping my legs to shreds. The need to be back in time to see Bill bring Immy home was all-consuming, pushing everything else out of my head.

I reached the gate and hauled myself over it, my legs as weak as saplings. I fumbled in my back pocket for the car keys, dropping them in a clump of nettles at my feet.

‘Shit!’ I thrust my hand in and felt around for the fob, wincing as the nettles stung my hand and wrist like a swarm of maddened wasps. Eventually I found it, breathing out as the central locking clicked open.

The journey home was a blur and before I knew it, I was walking up to the house and turning the key in the lock. The hallway was in darkness.

‘Stuart?’ I called.

‘In here,’ came a muffled voice from the front room. I pushed the door open. Stuart was slumped on the sofa in the dark, nursing a bottle of beer.

‘Have you heard from Bill?’ I said.

He frowned. ‘Not since yesterday. Why?’

‘I think he’s got Immy.’

He sat up suddenly, and a spray of beer sloshed out of the bottle onto the cream carpet. In normal times, I’d have berated him for being careless and fetched a cloth to wipe it up. These weren’t normal times.

‘I’ve just seen him with Niamh,’ I said.

‘I thought you were at work?’

I switched on a side lamp and sat on the coffee table in front of him. His eyes never left my face as I described my trip to the warehouse, the arrival of Bill’s Range Rover and his heated exchange with our old au pair. ‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘She kidnapped Immy and Bill was handing over the ransom money. Now he’s gone to fetch Immy so he can bring her home.’

But Stuart was already shaking his head. ‘Niamh wouldn’t kidnap her own daughter.’

‘You can’t know that!’

‘You said you spoke to her afterwards. Did she admit it?’

‘Not in so many words. But she wouldn’t, would she? For all she knew, I could have been recording the conversation on my phone.’

‘It sounds far-fetched to me. Even if you’re right