He closes the door behind me.
“Dina will be taking care of her,” he says. “As long as you do what I say, nothing bad is going to happen.”
The weak part of me wants to believe him.
“Come on. We’re going up the steps now.” He has softened his voice, like he’s talking to a child. “Good girl.”
When we emerge into the rest of the house, I figure out fairly quickly that this is the small terrace house that belongs to Rachel Lacey. I recognise the beige walls and the brown carpet. The tenant must have moved out as most of the furniture is gone.
Magnus leads me up to the next floor. Then he hands me a towel, shampoo and body wash and pushes me into the bathroom.
“Smarten yourself up, Faye.” He shuts the door.
I work quickly, turning on the shower and stripping. I know he’s right outside the door. I sense his presence looming like a sentry to hell. I feel his eyes watching me, and am almost certain he can see my naked body through the wooden door.
I step into the bath, pull the weak stream of water from the shower head towards me and immediately begin rubbing the shower gel over my body. I see dirt and sweat rinse down the plug hole. There’s a bruise the size of my palm on my left hip, and more bruising around my wrists.
Pain is nothing. Pain is temporary. It has no importance when my little girl is lying unconscious in a fucking cellar, guarded by two psychopaths.
I think about ways to kill Magnus as I’m drying myself. I want to rip his throat out with my teeth, taste his blood. I want to run him over with my car, feel the bulk of him disintegrate under the tyres. No one has ever made me feel rage like this in my entire life.
I open the bathroom door, wearing my towel.
“Good girl,” he says. “Give me a smile.”
I do as I’m told.
CHAPTER 52
NATHAN
PC Forrester is probably in her late twenties and has blonde streaks in her dark hair. She’s staring at me with an unamused expression on her face while I repeat the same facts over and over again.
“What made you realise the woman in the house was not your stepmother?” she asks.
“Like I said, nothing in particular. She just seemed… different.”
“And she told you she was Claire Blackburn?”
At this point I’m so tired I don’t even remember. The events of last night come and go like distant waves in a sea of anxiety. After I persuaded Claire to let me call the police, they came bowling in and whisked us both off to the station for questioning. I sat on a hard plastic chair for hours, waiting to be interviewed, and just as the clock began to strike 6 a.m., Forrester called me in.
“Yes, she told me she was Claire Blackburn,” I say. “I believe she did.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I thought I was giving a statement, not being interrogated,” I snap.
She scribbles something down in her notebook.
“Look,” I say. “Someone needs to be out there searching for Faye. This isn’t like her. She didn’t come home.”
“We’re looking into that, Mr Mathis.” She smiles, but it’s tight-lipped and seems almost sarcastic.
“I can’t reach my stepmother,” I reiterate. “Do you understand that this is very strange? And she has dementia. She’s vulnerable. Anything could have happened.”
“I understand the severity of the situation. We’re doing everything we can,” she says. “Now, have you been in touch with your sister to find out if she knows of your mother’s whereabouts?”
“Stepmother.” I correct her and she raises an eyebrow. “No, Penny’s away at some spa in the middle of nowhere. No signal.” I pause. “Actually, I feel like she should be home by now. She didn’t say what day she was coming home but?—”
