Little Girl Lost Read online

  ‘The shop’s long gone, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s been closed for years. Come home.’

  He turned his face towards her, his eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you treat me like I’m stupid,’ he growled, his anger rising at her having contradicted him.

  ‘I’m not, Daddy,’ she said, stepping gingerly towards him, trying not to lose her balance. She could see the quivering in his jawline from the chill.

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ he said, more venomously now, his teeth gritted.

  ‘I didn’t say that, Daddy. Come with me.’

  She was beside him now, could smell the fresh cigarette smoke coming from his clothes. His skin was pale, his teeth chattering slightly. She reached out, placed her hand on his back to draw him towards her. It was only then that she felt something hard and cold beneath his shirt.

  ‘What is that, Daddy?’ she said, reaching for the object she had felt.

  Her father twisted from her, reached around and drew out a revolver, which he had tucked into his waistband.

  ‘Jesus, Daddy, give me the gun,’ Lucy said, moving towards him.

  ‘No,’ her father said, clasping it to himself. ‘It’s not safe.’

  Lucy raised her hands, placating him, even as she inched towards him. She could see the gun clearly beneath the street lamp – an old-style Ruger Speed Six. It must have been her father’s personal protection weapon when he served in the RUC. The Glock 17 had replaced the gun in 2002 as standard issue for officers.

  ‘You don’t need the gun, Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’m here to protect you. You can give it to me.’

  Her father glanced at her sceptically, gripped the revolver tighter.

  ‘You can trust me, Daddy,’ she said, reaching out to him. ‘Just give me the gun.’ Her hand inched closer, her fingertips just connecting with the blue metal of the barrel.

  ‘No,’ he screamed, flailing his arm out of her reach; in doing so he caught her a blow to the side of the head, knocking her to the ground, then stumbling and falling awkwardly himself. The gun fell from his grip, landing with a soft thud on the snow-covered pavement.

  Lucy heard the soft groan that escaped him as he fell. Struggling to her feet she retrieved the gun quickly, checking to see if it was loaded, but each of the chambers was empty. She pocketed it then slid towards her father to help him get up. He lay like a dead weight, the gash on his temple clear where he had struck it against a half-covered piece of discarded red brick. In the illumination of the street lamp, his blood appeared as black as tar against the snow.

  CHAPTER 12

  She stood again in the corridor of a hospital ward, watching the bustling of the nursing staff, the slow shuffling of the elderly patients, their slippers squeaking against the yellow linoleum floor as they walked. Some used IV stands for support as they moved. One man, his pyjama top opened to reveal grey wisps of hair matting his chest, passed her four times on his way up and down the corridor, his false teeth clacking in his mouth as he muttered to himself.

  Her father had been taken into the treatment room and had the cut stitched. The triage nurse who stayed with him was a stout woman in her mid-forties.

  ‘You’ve not been getting yourself into fights now, have you?’ she asked, winking at Lucy.

  Her father swore at her, his aggression only building as she laughed off Lucy’s apology for his behaviour.

  ‘I’ve heard worse,’ she said.

  ‘Bitch,’ her father spat. ‘She has the devil in her, that bitch.’

  ‘Not much worse, mind you,’ she conceded, pulling the thread through and tightening the knot at the edge of his wound.

  The doctor who examined her father was a young, fresh-faced man who introduced himself as ‘Josh’. Lucy put him at no more than twenty-five. He smiled when he spoke to her, held eye contact, laid a hand on her arm as he explained why he thought it best to keep her father in overnight.

  ‘He’s a little unsettled,’ Josh said. ‘Between the cold and the fall and that, we’d like to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘I can watch him at home,’ Lucy said. She knew her father would not react well to being told he was being admitted to hospital again.

  ‘I’m sure you’re very capable,’ Josh said, smiling. ‘But you can’t be expected to watch him all by yourself. We all need some respite once in a while, don’t we?’

  ‘He can be a little difficult,’ Lucy found herself saying, despite feeling that in so doing, she had somehow betrayed her father to this stranger.

  ‘We can handle it,’ Josh said. ‘Why don’t you grab a coffee and we’ll get him settled? The older ones, sometimes it helps if family stay clear for an hour or two.’

  ‘I’ll stay with him, thanks,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Of course,’ Josh said, as if that had been his hope all along.

  Fifteen minutes later, she relented and left the ward, her father screaming from the bed, his arms restrained after he had hit Josh.

  Lucy sat in her car in the car park. The snow fell in light flurries now, coating the windscreen of her car. As it thickened, she felt both that absurd claustrophobia she always felt inside a car in bad weather, and deep gratitude that the covering would prevent anyone from seeing her crying.

  Her father’s gun was locked in her glove compartment now, but she knew she could not keep it there; she would have to mention it to her mother when next they spoke. She rested her hands, red raw, on the steering wheel, turned it lightly back and forth despite the fact she had not turned the key in the ignition. Depressing the accelerator, she toyed with the key ring, unsure where she was going.

  Finally, decisively, she took the keys out and got out of the car. Back in the hospital, she stopped at the shop for a bottle of lemonade. Then she made her way back into the belly of the building, past the corridor leading down to the geriatric ward where her father was being kept, and instead took the stairs up to Ward 6.

  Alice lay alone in her room. Her dinner sat untouched on the tray beside her bed. Lucy asked at the nurse’s station for Robbie.

  ‘He only works to five thirty,’ the young nurse reminded her. ‘He said he’ll be back in the morning though,’ she added, smiling.

  ‘I’m just going to sit with Alice for a few minutes if that’s OK?’

  The nurse nodded. ‘Go on ahead. Just be careful. Visiting time’s over, so Sister Hall might ask you to leave,’ she added conspiratorially.

  ‘It’s OK. I’m a policewoman,’ Lucy said. ‘I was the one who found her.’

  The nurse nodded with understanding, but repeated, ‘Sister might still tell you to leave.’

  Alice’s room was silent, but for the gentle humming of the radiator, its heat heavy with the smell of fresh paint. She lay on her side, her hands clasped, pillowing her cheek. She did not turn to look at Lucy when she came in, her only acknowledgement of Lucy’s presence in the room a slight shifting of her position.

  ‘I brought you something to drink,’ Lucy said, holding the bag aloft.

  Nothing.

  ‘I thought you might like company,’ Lucy explained, sitting down by the bed. Again, there was no response.

  ‘I thought I might like company too,’ she added.

  The door opened and an older nurse backed in, using her bottom to prevent the door swinging closed again. When she turned she had in front of her a plastic storage box containing a few old toys and some books. She seemed embarrassed to find Lucy sitting there.

  ‘I was just going,’ Lucy said, half standing. She could see by the woman’s badge that this was Sister Hall.

  The sister glanced out at the ward. ‘Sit where you are, love,’ she said. ‘These are some old things lying around the ward,’ the woman explained, placing the box by Lucy’s feet. ‘Alice,’ she said loudly. ‘I’ve brought you some toys, love.’

  She waited a moment to see if this would elicit some reaction, but to no avail.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Sister,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Margaret,’ the woman said, glancing at Alice
before she turned to leave.

  Lucy waited until the door closed, then spoke to Alice again. ‘She’s a lovely woman, isn’t she?’

  The child did not move, and showed no signs of having heard.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’ Lucy asked, then continued before the child could answer. ‘I’m on my own, too, you see. I thought I might sit here with you for a while. You can keep me company.’

  Somewhere down the corridor a child began to scream, the sudden intrusion of sound making Lucy jump in her seat. Alice jumped too, then clutched the bedclothes tighter in her joined hands.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Lucy asked. She stood and poured some lemonade into the glass by the bed.

  ‘Come on, Alice. Sit up and have a drink.’

  Slowly, the blankets shifted as the girl turned towards her. She sat up timidly in the bed, her elbows jutting at angles as she leaned back on them.

  Lucy held the glass to her mouth. The child took the smallest sip, some of the liquid spilling down the sides of her mouth. Lucy lifted a tissue and wiped the girl’s chin, then offered her the glass again. She drank more deeply this time, smacking her lips when she’d had her fill, then turning again in the bed, so that her back was to Lucy once more.

  ‘You got her to take something then,’ the nurse said. Lucy had not heard her coming in. ‘Good for you. Sister Hall said to tell you we’ve made tea if you want some.’

  Lucy sat for the next half-hour in the sister’s office with Margaret and the two staff nurses who were on duty for the night. As one cup of tea followed another, Lucy felt herself begin to relax and realized that, in the weeks since she had moved to Derry, this was the most companionable half-hour she’d spent.

  Finally, one of the nurses asked her how she liked the police.

  ‘It’s great,’ she said instinctively, knowing it was the thing to say. ‘Well,’ she added, ‘it’s OK. It’s a job.’

  ‘What made you do it?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said. ‘I was a fitness instructor for a while, but got bored.’

  The three women regarded her, smiling encouragingly, but not speaking. Lucy felt she needed to continue to fill thes silence. ‘My father used to be in the force, during the Troubles. He retired early.’

  The three other women watched her, nodding.

  ‘He was kind of forced into leaving. We were put out of our house one night. We moved into barracks in Antrim. Daddy stuck it a few more weeks, then resigned.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lucy wondered how to respond. Did she tell them the truth: that they hadn’t been welcome in the Catholic areas because her father was a cop; nor welcome in the Protestant areas because they were Catholics. In the end, they’d settled into an estate in the Waterside where, one night, their windows had been smashed in and petrol poured through the letter box and set alight.

  ‘The usual,’ she said instead.

  ‘What about your mum?’

  ‘She … they split up soon after. She’s in the police too.’

  ‘They must be very proud of you, following in their footsteps,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy said, forcing herself to smile. She stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea. I’ll check on Alice.’

  ‘Tell her to keep the noise down,’ one of the younger nurses said.

  When she went back into the room, Lucy saw that Alice appeared not to have moved and remained buried beneath the bundle of blankets. However, one of the books Margaret had brought in now lay open on the bed beside her.

  ‘Were you reading this?’ Lucy asked, picking up the book. It was a collection of fairy tales, the cover depicting a child in a red cloak smiling gaily as she strode down a woodland pathway, a basket hanging from the crook of her arm. Just to her right, peeping out from behind a thick tree trunk, was the hairy face of the wolf. In the distance behind her, three pigs, arm in arm, danced up the pathway.

  ‘Would you like me to read one of them to you?’ Lucy asked, opening the book to the contents list and scanning the titles. Choosing one she thought the girl might like, she began to read.

  ‘Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Goldilocks …’

  CHAPTER 13

  Lucy woke with a crick in her neck, her cheek wet with her own drool, and the pattern of the stitching at the edge of the chair impressed into the skin of her face. The ward was coming to life, the clatter of the breakfast trolley merging with the noises of the nurses beginning the day’s work. The sharp swish of bed curtains being drawn, the clanging of instruments and trays; somewhere, towards the end of the corridor, a television played SpongeBob SquarePants.

  Alice lay curled in a ball beneath the covers, her face pressed against the wall. She’d woken Lucy on several occasions during the night with her screaming. At 4.30 she’d wet the bed and Lucy had had to hold her while the staff changed the sheets. The girl had sat on Lucy’s lap, unresponsive. Her hands rested lightly on Lucy’s but applied no pressure.

  Margaret, the sister, had suggested Lucy sleep in the parents’ room, but she’d not felt right doing so. For a start, she wasn’t a parent. Besides, if Alice woke in the night from her nightmares, she’d want someone there, Lucy reasoned.

  She’d managed to drift off before six. By that stage, the coldness of the night had passed and the ward was beginning to warm up. Lucy had taken off her coat, but used it to blanket herself in the seat. She’d laid her head back against the cool of the seat, then must have dozed off.

  Margaret came in to see her before her shift finished.

  ‘She’s settled then,’ she asked, nodding towards Alice.

  ‘Eventually,’ Lucy said, standing and moving towards the window, both to allow room for Margaret to work, but also to allow her to stretch out the cramps in her muscles.

  ‘You should go and get breakfast,’ Margaret said. ‘Use the staff canteen on the second floor. I’ll stay near here until you come back up. Get yourself a decent fry-up.’

  ‘Sound’s healthy.’

  She winked good-naturedly. ‘Add an orange juice to balance it out, sure.’

  Lucy’s father was still sleeping when she went down to check on him. He’d had a peaceful night, the nurse said. Considering the sedation they’d given him, it was hardly surprising, she added.

  Lucy stood at the end of the bed and watched him sleep. He’d aged a lot over the past year, ironically since he had stopped drinking. Lucy remembered him at her graduation in the Police College three years previously. She’d been surprised he’d come. Her mother was there, obviously, though in her role as ACC. She barely acknowledged Lucy’s presence and made sure that she did not come into contact with her father. But her dad was still raw about the police, even after almost two decades. He’d never said as much, but Lucy suspected that he regretted having to leave. She could only assume that he had done so for her.

  She recalled the night of the attack. Her father had come home from work as normal. They’d been having dinner. She remembered that she was eating spaghetti hoops; she’d never been able to eat them since.

  The first brick had come through the kitchen window at the side of the house. The glass pane cracked and collapsed into the room in a few large shards and a multitude of smaller splinters. A heavy grey block landed with a dull thud on the table in front of her, leaving a divot of white wood exposed beneath the mahogany veneer of the table surface.

  Immediately her father grabbed her around the waist and flung her out into the hallway. The corridor was already dark with the onset of evening. She lay on the carpet and watched with terror as the large window above the sink shattered and another brick clattered onto the kitchen floor. Her mother was under the table, reaching out to Lucy to come to her while her father crawled across the floor, through the broken glass, to the locked cabinet under the sink where he kept his service revolver.

  Just then, she heard creaking behind her and turned to see a pair of eyes looking in through the small letter box cut in the front
door. The face was young and the eyes wide. They regarded her with hatred.

  ‘Pig bitch,’ their owner spat.

  The letter box clattered shut again and Lucy glanced back at her father. More creaking forced her to turn back again and this time she saw fingers holding the letter box open while liquid poured in through the gap. It sloshed heavily onto the carpet of the hall. The empty plastic bottle was forced through as well. Lucy smelt the fumes of the petrol even as the hands outside the door struck a batch of matches and dropped them in through the letter box. They hit the floor and instantly a stream of flame rushed up the door towards the shutting letter box, while a second ran across the carpet towards her.

  ‘Daddy!’ she screamed.

  She felt his hands on her legs, dragging her back towards the kitchen. She saw, from the floor, his feet rush past, back and forth, as he filled pans with water and threw them on the flames. Her mother had come from beneath the table now and was soaking towels at the sink and giving them to her dad to fight the fire.

  Ten minutes later, a Land Rover load of her parents’ colleagues screeched to a stop outside their house. Several burst in through the front door and took Lucy out to where their vehicle waited, back door ajar, at the foot of the drive. She saw beyond, a number of other officers, supported by the army, standing in the centre of the road, guns raised at the crowd gathered at the end of the street. She heard, before the Land Rover’s heavy plated rear door shut, the absurd popping of rubber bullet rounds being launched into the air above the heads of the crowd, and the clattering of rocks off the riot shields the soldiers brandished before them.

  She was taken to a hotel on the outskirts of the town where her parents joined her. Half an hour later, her father’s boss, a heavy man with red cheeks and a thick moustache, arrived at the door. She was in the room next door where soldiers were unloading some of their belongings recovered from the house, while her mum and dad talked with him. She’d sat with her cheek pressed against the adjoining door between the two rooms, as much to hear the reassurance of her parents’ voices, to feel their proximity, as anything else. There were raised voices, her mother’s mostly, dulled by the closed door. Twenty minutes later, her father’s boss had left. She’d opened the door and peeped out at him leaving. He’d stopped in the corridor, shook hands with her father and wished him well. Then he’d spotted her watching. He’d saluted her, stiffly, then winked and smiled at her. She’d returned the salute, even as her mother pushed past her into her room.