Little Girl Gone: The can’t-put-it-down psychological thriller. Alexandra Burt

just saying if you need anything, call him. I’ll be gone for three weeks, four tops, after that I’ll come home for a weekend. I told you that last week, remember?’

      Was he trying to tell me that I was senile?

      ‘I’ll fly home as often as possible, I promise, depending on the workload.’

      I heard muffled voices and the sound of him switching his cell from one ear to the other, then a metal detector alerting and a voice telling someone to step aside. I imagined Jack, his arms raised, the handheld metal detector following the contours of his body.

      ‘I’m at the gate. Take your meds, okay?’

      ‘Sure.’ I knew Jack had been counting the pills and only stopped after I had phoned in the refills. The truth was I could no longer remember how it felt to be normal and I wanted to believe that I would get better, eventually. It could take weeks or months, the doctor had told me, and I didn’t see any alternative. And so I appeased everybody and told myself any day now it would all be better.

      I swerved to the right and hit the curb. It took me only a few seconds and the car was back under control.

      ‘Bye, I’ll call you, okay?’

      I didn’t answer, hung up the phone and threw it on the passenger seat. I had always been a careful and defensive driver, I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. I was acting like a lunatic. If I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a foil beanie on my head, I wouldn’t be surprised.

      I spotted the North Dandry sign and pulled up to the curb. I killed the engine and looked at the brownstone. In the back Mia’s contorted body was hanging over the side of the seat, her head turned at an odd angle. She had fallen asleep. And I had failed to buckle her seatbelt.

       Chapter 9

      ‘Detectives,’ Dr Baker nods at them on his way out. ‘Thirty minutes tops. If her vitals make somersaults I’ll put my foot down.’

      The detectives wait until Dr Baker has left the room.

      I recognize one of the detectives but not the other. Just yesterday they had questioned me and it seems like they should be spending their time looking for Mia. I have nothing more to add but the detectives regard me like an insect under a microscope. I can’t read their faces, they are all but blank.

      ‘My name is Detective Wilczek. I’m with the Special Victims Unit and I’ll be heading the investigation. You remember Detective Daniel?’ Wilczek is in his forties, buzz cut, thin and wiry. His nails are bitten to the quick. He points at the middle-aged rotund man. ‘We appreciate you talking to us, Mrs Paradise,’ he says and pulls out a notebook.

      Dr Baker has removed the morphine pump and I try to ignore the pain behind my left eye.

      ‘I’d like to go over everything again, if you don’t mind. I understand you must be getting tired of repeating the same thing over and over but I prefer to hear it from you.’

      Traces of morphine linger in my system and I long for the warmth that went through my entire body at the push of a button, making me feel weightless. Everything was surreal then but now my body is heavy. My heart sinks. They would lead with the fact that she’s safe if they had found her and so I resist the urge to ask them.

      I walk them through it, my routine during that first month since I had moved into the brownstone, Jack’s job in Chicago, the days leading up to her disappearance, the morning I found her crib empty. While Wilczek takes notes, he never interrupts me. When he doesn’t take notes he twists the narrow wedding band on his right hand with his thumb.

      ‘Tell me about the locks. Why did you have those locks installed?’

      ‘Just to be safe.’

      ‘Did you feel threatened in any way? Did anyone make a threat towards you?’

      ‘No, nothing like that. I was basically living there by myself most of the time, it was just a precaution.’

      ‘Nothing odd happened in the days before your daughter disappeared?’

      ‘Not that I can think of.’ I want to tell them that I have already answered all these questions but given the fact that one of them is from another department, I decide to go along with the questioning.

      ‘Who had access to the apartment?’

      I think about it for a while. ‘Jack. The movers. The man who installed the locks.’ Suddenly my pulse quickens. ‘The guy who installed the locks … he was odd, he looked at me the entire time.’ I’m grasping at straws but for all it’s worth, they haven’t asked me about him yet.

      ‘We dusted the entire apartment for prints. The ones on the door are from the gentleman who installed the locks. We checked out his alibi and he’s been eliminated. He takes care of his elderly parents. There are a few from your husband, mainly on the furniture. Some other prints on the furniture checked out as prints from the movers.’ Wilczek’s voice turns composed, almost kind. ‘Were there any strange phone calls? Anyone watching you? Anything out of the ordinary? Even something insignificant to you might be a very important fact.’

      Once, there was an imprint in my bed, the sheets crumpled, as if a supernatural visitor had taken the liberty of living here in my absence. Then one day I came home and the mirror appeared crooked. Was I imagining it, is my view of the world skewed somehow? My first thought was; there’s someone here. But the house was empty. So I dismissed it. The next time it was the coffee table, haphazardly pushed aside. There were visible dents in the rug, as if my mother’s ghost, annoyed by my lack of furniture placement, had come to rearrange my table properly. Remembering the crooked mirror, I dismissed it, as if I was accepting my warped and disturbed home, completely letting go of all logic.

      ‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ I say.

      And then: ‘Tell me again why you didn’t call 9-1-1?’

      ‘I had the phone in my hand, dialing the number, and then I saw that her bottles were gone. Her clothes, everything. I didn’t understand what had happened.’

      ‘So you did what?’

      ‘I looked for her, everywhere. In my car. In alleys, around the neighborhood, everywhere. I asked a homeless woman on the corner if she’d seen anything. I even looked in Dumpsters.’ I catch myself but it’s too late. The word Dumpster echoes in my mind. It just didn’t sound right. I looked for my daughter in Dumpsters. Why did I even say that?

      ‘You went up and down the street you say; did you ask for help?’ Wilczek’s voice remains calm.

      I shake my head.

      ‘How about the people working construction in the house?’

      ‘It was a Sunday, everybody was gone.’

      ‘How about your neighbor? There was one other person living in the building, right? Did you ask him for help?’

      ‘He visits his sister on the weekends. He leaves on Friday afternoons. I called him a few times but I couldn’t even leave a message.’

      ‘What did you think happened to your daughter?’

      Focus on his question. ‘I didn’t have any idea.’

      ‘Did you call your husband?’

      ‘No.’ I lower my head and wonder where I’d be right now if I had called Jack right away. Jack would have called the police, he would have rushed home, and he would have known what to do, because Jack always knows what to do. Not calling him was just another one of my blunders. ‘He had just left and started his new job. He was under a lot of pressure. I knew it would be hard for him to call every day and he was due to come home in a week