Stolen (7 page)

DI Bryan rang later in the afternoon to tell Dale that Lotte wasn’t well enough for any more visitors that day. ‘I took two old friends of hers over there this afternoon,’ he explained. ‘They’d come forward after reading about her in the paper. Lotte worked with one of them and she shared his flat with him and his partner for some time.’

‘Are they hairdressers?’ Dale asked. She remembered Lotte mentioning a gay man she worked with who had become a close friend.

‘One of them is, though Lotte didn’t recognize either of them,’ Bryan said. ‘But she had regained a memory of a day on the beach with her parents and sister when she was five.’

‘That’s a start,’ Dale said with some excitement.

‘Yes, but I think the strain of it was too much for her,’ he replied. ‘These guys Simon and Adam were chatting away to her about some of their friends, people she used to work with, and she suddenly had a sort of fit. She couldn’t get her breath, it seemed it was a panic attack. We had to call a nurse and we were asked to leave.’

‘Is she OK now?’ Dale asked.

‘Yes, when I rang back a short while ago they said she was resting quietly.’

‘Couldn’t she be transferred to a hospital near here?’ Dale asked. ‘It’s such a long way for anyone from Brighton to go and visit her.’

‘That suggestion was put forward today by the psychiatrist,’ Bryan said. ‘I think he was thinking mostly of Lotte’s parents, though they haven’t bothered to ring the ward at St Richard’s today to see how she is, so they don’t even know she recovered memory about them.’

‘I can’t see them wanting to take her home with them when she’s well enough to leave the hospital. Even if they offered I don’t think it would be good for her,’ Dale said.

‘Simon and Adam suggested she could go to them,’ Bryan said.

‘Did they now!’ Dale said, feeling something ridiculously like jealousy.

‘She won’t be able to do that unless she regains memories of them,’ Bryan said. ‘Anyway, tomorrow’s another day, maybe we’ll have another breakthrough. And the national press and the television companies are running the story about her tomorrow morning, so we should get some more leads.’

Some little while after Dale had put the phone down, she found herself pondering about these friends of Lotte’s. Unable to remember the name of the salon where Lotte said they met, she went to ask April, Sharon and Guy who all lived locally if they had any suggestions which one it might be.

‘If she said it was the best salon in Brighton, then it would be Kutz,’ April said after a moment’s thought. ‘I trained there. Do you know the name of her friend?’

‘Simon or Adam,’ Dale replied.

‘Oh, that will be Simon Langford! He’s a real sweet guy. And he’s still there. I spoke to him just last week.’

April was a small, bouncy brunette who often had them in stitches with her tales of working in a hairdressing salon in London’s West End. She’d come back to her family in Brighton, as Guy had too, with the intention of saving enough to open her own salon.

‘I’ll ring there and try and get hold of him,’ Dale said. ‘I’d really like to meet him.’

At just after eight Dale left Marchwood Manor in a taxi to call on Simon and Adam. She had spoken to Simon briefly on the phone and he said he’d been terribly shocked to see Lotte’s picture in the paper and was still totally mystified as to why she hadn’t contacted him when she left the cruise ship. He was clearly upset that she hadn’t remembered him and his friend Adam that afternoon, and even more so because they’d caused her to have a panic attack. He invited Dale over immediately because he said he was desperate for more information about Lotte.

Simon and Adam’s flat was above an antique shop in Meeting House Lane in the North Lanes. It was a quiet backwater, and a wrought-iron spiral staircase led up to the front door which was on a balcony. Dale thought it was the kind of interesting place she’d like to live in herself, right by all the shops and bars, yet only a stone’s throw from the seafront.

Simon was tall and thin, with very short brown hair, the tips bleached blond. His ears and nose were too big for him to be called handsome, yet he wasn’t unattractive, for his smile was wide and warm and his eyes were a deep dark brown. He wore cream linen trousers held up by braces and a chocolate-brown shirt that matched his eyes.

‘I’m really glad you phoned,’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘It’s just a shame Adam’s been called out tonight, I know he’ll be disappointed he missed you.’

‘It’s good for me to find out a bit more about Lotte,’ Dale said as he beckoned her in. ‘Since discovering about her being estranged from her parents I realize I don’t know much about her at all.’

‘I’ve been frantic about her for such a long time.’ Simon put one hand on his hip in a very camp gesture. ‘She was sending me a postcard from every port, but they stopped suddenly.’

Dale could remember Lotte writing postcards; she had assumed they were to her parents.

He showed her into the sitting room, which was very arty with huge navy-blue sofas, stripped floorboards and vast, brightly coloured modern art posters on the walls. He invited her to sit down and offered her a drink.

‘Was there any reason she stopped sending the postcards?’ he asked as he handed her a glass of white wine. ‘Did she find a new man, or was it just ’cos she got involved with new friends?’

Dale sensed his hurt and puzzlement and she felt the kindest thing was to tell him the truth. Lotte needed friends more than ever now, and Simon couldn’t really help her without knowing what she’d been through.

‘I would’ve preferred to get around to this a bit more gently,’ Dale said. ‘But Lotte didn’t stop sending you cards because she lost interest in you, it was because she was raped.’

Simon blanched, and Dale’s eyes prickled with tears just the way they always did when she thought about what Lotte had gone through. As she went on to tell Simon the whole story she was overcome with emotion several times; she didn’t think the horror of it would ever go away.

‘The bastard,’ Simon hissed when she’d finished. ‘I hope the police strung him up.’

‘I think we can safely assume he’ll never be capable of raping anyone ever again. They depend on tourism there and the police wouldn’t let someone like him put people off going ashore,’ Dale said darkly. She blew her nose, wiped her eyes and took a long glug of her wine, before moving on to tell him about Lotte’s recovery. ‘I believed her when she said she was going home, I had no reason not to.’

Simon had remained silent through most of what she’d told him, then as she drew to the end, he got up and went over to the window. He looked out without speaking for a few moments.

Finally he turned back to her. ‘It’s obvious she went with someone off the ship. You see, if she hadn’t she would’ve come straight here.’

That didn’t sound very logical to Dale. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘She could’ve gone absolutely anywhere.’

‘She wouldn’t, because you can bet your boots that after what she’d been through she felt much the same about herself as she did when she first came to Kutz,’ he said, his brown eyes dull with anxiety. ‘She was like a little waif then. You could almost smell the aloneness of her. She’d had no money to buy decent clothes, no one to give her a bit of love. She looked scared of her own shadow. I tell you, if she wasn’t made to leave that ship with someone, she would’ve come running back here as fast as her legs would carry her. This flat would always be her place of safety.’

‘How old was she when she came to Kutz then?’ Dale asked, touched by his affection for her friend, yet a little jealous too.

‘Almost nineteen. When I found out what the bitches she was sharing with were doing to her, I got her to come and live here with Adam and me. She always said that meeting me was like coming out of a dark place into the light. And for us she was our sister, mother, friend and housekeeper all rolled into one. We loved having her with us, she kind of balanced out our lives. That’s why I know she would’ve come back here to see us first if she was hurt, because we were her family.’

‘Did you tell DI Bryan this?’ Dale asked.

‘I tried to, but straight cops tend to see gay men as fanciful airheads. They don’t imagine we can form deep and meaningful relationships with women if we don’t have sex with them.’

‘Bryan didn’t come across like that to me,’ Dale retorted. ‘What did he say when you told him she must’ve gone with someone from the ship?’

‘I don’t think he believed I knew Lotte well enough to make such a statement. You probably don’t either?’

‘Oh, I do,’ Dale assured him. ‘You see, you talk about her in the same way as I do, so I know you’ve seen the same things in her as me.’

Simon’s eyes dropped and a blush crept up his neck.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I think I pushed too hard today, and that’s why she had the panic attack,’ he said. ‘You see, I mentioned Mark, and suddenly she couldn’t get her breath.’

‘Who was Mark?’ Dale asked.

‘A sailor she fell in love with. But if she remembered him she probably remembered everything else that came before him. That might have been too much for her.’

As Dale was talking to Simon, Lotte was lying still in the hospital bed, her eyes shut, pretending to be asleep so no one would come and talk to her.

Her heart was no longer racing, she wasn’t scared or agitated the way she had got when Simon and Adam were here. But that had happened because a sudden deluge of memories came back to her. It was like being hit by a hurricane, and she wasn’t even able to reassure Simon that it wasn’t anything in particular that he’d said, just that all at once she knew who he was, and all he’d meant to her.

At nineteen she’d sat with him pouring out stuff she’d never told anyone before or since. He was the man who showed her how to deal with it. She was only too happy she could remember his part in her life, for it had been a very important one.

Thanks to Simon she now knew why the hospital room seemed so familiar too. It was like the one Fleur was in just before she died.

Lotte was never actually told there was something wrong with her sister. She could remember being puzzled as to why Fleur stopped going to dancing classes, and that she often didn’t go to school and seemed to sleep such a lot. But no one ever explained it.

Perhaps her parents couldn’t face up to leukaemia themselves, let alone try to make it clear to their younger child. But not knowing Fleur was ill made all the special treatment she got, the treats, new clothes and toys, trips to anywhere she fancied, seem so terribly unfair.

It was Fleur herself who told her in the end. Lotte had been given a good hiding and sent to bed without any tea for complaining when she was left with a neighbour while Mum and Dad took her sister to London. Fleur crept up to see her with some cake, a bottle of Tizer and a bag of toffees.

‘They only took me to a hospital,’ she said. ‘I had to have some special tests because I’ve got something wrong with my blood.’

Lotte thought that if she never complained about anything ever again Fleur would get better. But she didn’t, she just got weaker, thinner and paler, and each time she was taken into hospital, she stayed longer.

Lotte could remember Fleur’s tenth birthday very clearly. A room just like the one she was in now, but filled with flowers, cards, teddy bears, dolls and a cake like Cinderella’s coach, with four pink ‘My Little Ponies’ pulling it. Fleur was so weak she couldn’t even blow the candles out, and she asked Lotte to do it for her.

A week later she died.

Lotte was told what had happened by Mrs Broome, the neighbour she was staying with while her parents were at the hospital. Mrs Broome said Jesus had taken Fleur to live with him because she was very special, and that once Lotte went home, she had to be especially good and quiet because her mummy and daddy were very sad.

Lotte went home later that day, and her dad opened the door to her. He picked her up and hugged her, and she remembered his face was all wet with tears.

He put her down and told her to go and see her mother. Lotte stood for a little while in the doorway of the front room, just looking. It always seemed a cold room because it never got any sun. There was a big three-piece suite which was dark red, and in the alcoves on either side of the chimney breast were black wood wall units. Some of the shelves were open, with ornaments and books on; others had sliding glass doors and the best glasses were kept in there.

Her mother was on the sofa, all hunched up, her head in her hands, and she was kind of rocking herself and making an awful moaning sound.

Lotte went over to her and sat down beside her. There was no response from her mother, who didn’t appear to have noticed she was there. So Lotte knelt up beside her and tried to put her small arms around her shoulders.

‘You’ve still got me,’ she said.

She remembered what she said so clearly, even after sixteen years, because of the way her mother reacted. She flung her arms out, knocking Lotte to the floor. ‘I don’t want you, you little brat,’ she spat out. ‘All I want is my beautiful Fleur.’

Lotte wanted pretty, funny, entertaining Fleur too. There was a big hole in her life where her sister had been; she’d always played with Lotte, read and sung to her. She’d explained things Lotte didn’t understand, did her hair, told her stories, and when they went to the shops together, she knew how much change they should get, and the best places to buy anything.

Why didn’t anyone understand that she loved and missed Fleur too?

There were so many painful memories in the period after Fleur’s death. It seemed as if each day brought new hurts, and Lotte felt bewildered as to why she was constantly being shouted at or punished. But having a belt taken to her backside, and being beaten so hard she couldn’t sit down without pain for a couple of weeks, was one of the worst.

Her only crime was being caught playing with Fleur’s Barbie Dolls.

‘You are not fit to touch her toys,’ her mother screamed at her, her face purple and contorted with hatred as she lashed out with the belt. ‘Don’t you ever go in her room again!’

Lotte’s bedroom was a tiny box room with no room for anything more than a single bed and a chest of drawers. But Fleur’s room next door to it was at least three times larger and until she’d died they’d always played in there together.