Missing, Believed Crazy Page 13

  ‘Oh.’ Jade tapped her forehead. ‘That’s what I keep meaning to say. We’ve got to disguise Trix before we meet Brad.’

  ‘What?’ I leaned forward. ‘Can’t we trust him? I thought he was your brother.’

  ‘There are brothers and brothers,’ said Jade. ‘All I’m saying is that we have to treat Brad carefully. I’ll tell him in my own time and my own way. He shouldn’t know Trix is Little Trixie until I’ve explained the situation very slowly and carefully.’

  ‘How can we disguise Trix?’ said Mark. ‘We’ve only got our own clothes.’

  ‘Pull in when you can, Mark.’ Trix spoke quietly. ‘I’m going to need a T-shirt and some trousers from Wiki, your baseball cap, Mark, and, Jade, I’ll need your dark glasses.’

  ‘No way,’ said Jade. ‘Those are Ray-Bans. You don’t use Ray-Bans as a disguise. You just don’t.’

  ‘You’re going to dress up as a boy?’ I asked Trix.

  ‘We all have to make sacrifices,’ said Trix.

  JADE

  Mark pulled off the road into this gate entrance. Wiki got into the front of the car. I sat with Trix and the boys’ bags.

  As Mark drove, Trix disguised herself. Baseball cap, extremely expensive and stylish shades, baggy T-shirt and trousers.

  She looked ridiculous, pathetic, totally absurd.

  She looked like a boy.

  BRAD HART

  OK, so you want to know about my little sister. She’s the white sheep in the family. My older brother George and I live life on the edge. Parents? Careers? The law? We just don’t care.

  We live by one simple, beautiful, golden rule: LIFE IS SHORT – HAVE FUN.

  JADE

  We were getting low on gas. Mark took the SUV off the main road. We wound through some country roads until we reached a village of about five houses and a village green. We parked up in a dark spot and waited.

  I rang Brad. ‘We’re in a place called Kington,’ I said.

  ‘Great. Lemme check on the navigator. Is that Kington in Scotland, Cornwall or Wiltshire?’

  ‘Brad, I’m pretty sure it’s not in Scotland or Cornwall.’

  ‘You’re pretty sure? D’you actually know you’re not in Scotland?’

  ‘It was a joke, Brad. Kington, Wiltshire, is where we are. Near some swings and a little green. Look for a big black SUV.’

  ‘What? It says five hundred and eighty miles on the navigator.’

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I said, not Cornwall, Brad. Wiltshire.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.’

  MARK

  We were in a stranger’s car, parked in some little village deep in the countryside. We were waiting for someone we had never met to take us we didn’t know where. I’d left the engine running, so at least it was warm in the car.

  Then the engine began missing.

  ‘There goes our diesel,’ I said. The engine died.

  WIKI

  We sat in the dark, each of us thinking our own, mostly depressing, thoughts.

  After about half an hour, Jade rang her brother. Here’s how the conversation went:

  ‘Where are you, bro? . . . Almost there, that’s great . . . No, it’s not on the outskirts of a town . . . Supermarket? What supermarket? Are you sure – ? . . . Kington, not Kingston, Jesus, Brad. Kington in Wiltshire . . . So how many miles are you away now? . . . Eighty-six miles. Oh great, that’s just terrific, Brad . . . Repeat after me: Kington, Wiltshire.’

  She snapped the phone shut. ‘Brad took a wrong turning,’ she said. Staring out of the window, she held out a hand in Trix’s direction. ‘Gimme my Ray-Bans.’ Trix passed them to her.

  We sat in silence for a few more seconds.

  ‘What?’ she said suddenly. ‘What’s with the heavy silence? Anyone can take a wrong turn.’

  Trix put a hand on her shoulder.

  JADE

  Don’t you just hate it when people start feeling sorry for you? Life’s bumming out in some way but you’re keeping it together somehow. Then someone puts a hand on your shoulder and someone else asks if you’re OK and, whammo, you’re gone.

  MARK

  ‘Are you all right, Jade?’ This was Wiki.

  Result? Niagara Falls.

  For about a minute, Jade stared out of the window and sobbed away like someone had died. Then she wiped her nose, sniffed hard, and took a deep breath.

  ‘I guess I’d better tell you about my family,’ she said.

  JADE

  We all have our secrets, but mine’s bigger than most.

  Fact is, Brad and George, my dysfunctional brothers, are pretty much all the family I have.

  My father’s this mega-rich businessman who owns a chain of casinos in Las Vegas. My mom’s English. Way back when she was working as a dancer in Vegas she met Mr Rick Hart. They got it together, got married, got three kids, got bored, got divorced.

  Mom came back to England when I was about ten. She met this record-producer guy called Ziggy Rasmussen. They got it together, got married, etc., etc., but it turns out that Ziggy’s not too crazy about the whole family thing. He tells Mom it’s us or him. I get shipped off to boarding school. My brothers move into an apartment in London.

  Because here’s the deal. Back in Vegas, my father’s got another family. He has ‘moved on’, he says. He gives us each this big trust fund to pay for our education. When we hit eighteen, each of us gets seriously rich. The only condition is that he doesn’t want to see us or hear from us again.

  Mom and Ziggy liked to travel. Most of their travelling seemed to take place during the school vacations. Pretty soon I started staying with my two brothers. A couple of years ago, the marriage went south, but Mom’s kinda got into the habit of travelling. The last I heard, she’d met this barman in Barbados.

  A few weeks before, she told Brad that we’d be having a family Christmas. We’re not holding our breath.

  WIKI

  Jade told us her story in a flat, cold voice.

  When she finished, she turned to us and said, ‘You tell anyone about this and you die, right?’

  We muttered our agreement.

  ‘I only told you because you’re about to meet my brothers. The only other person I’ve told is Holly.’

  ‘How old are your brothers?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Twenty-four and twenty-two.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  Jade gave a little laugh. ‘What would you do if you had a big fat trust fund? They spend it.’

  MAJOR GRAHAM BARTON

  Kington residents have complained in the past about teenagers hanging around the green, causing trouble.

  What has been done by the authorities? Absolutely sugar all!

  I told my wife June that I’d be getting evidence to show the police the kind of problems Kington has with youths, yobs, boy racers and the like. That night I had noticed the big car by the green. There were several people inside – teenagers, I suspected. They were there, waiting, for almost two hours.

  It worried me, frankly. I told June that I would be staying up to keep an eye on the situation. One can never be too careful these days.

  WIKI

  Soon after midnight, we heard a high, angry buzz in the distance. It sounded very like a sports car being driven at high speed.

  ‘I’m hoping that’s not Brad,’ said Trix.

  Moments later, a silver Porsche turned the corner and braked. Then, seeing us, it accelerated with a roar of the engine and stopped with a squeal of tyres in front of us.

  JADE

  Picture it. A tiny, cute-as-pie English village at dead of night, and suddenly there’s my big brother Brad burning rubber and revving the engine of his Porsche.

  Just what we needed, right?

  He got out of the car with a, ‘Yo, sis, how ya goin’?’

  ‘Hello, Brad.’ I managed a smile. ‘These are my friends Mark, Wiki and –’ I suddenly realized we hadn’t fixed up Trix with a boy’s name. I grabbed one
from the murky depths of my brain – ‘Tim.’

  ‘Tim?’ Trix turned away in disgust at my choice of name. OK, so it wasn’t great but it was the best I could come up with.

  ‘Hanging out with the guys, eh, sis?’ said Brad. ‘I’m not going to ask what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘That’s good, Brad.’ I gave my words maximum sarcasm. ‘Because I wouldn’t tell you anyway.’

  ‘Great 911 Carrera.’ Mark wandered around Brad’s car. ‘But maybe a tad small for five people, don’t you think?’

  ‘Nah,’ Brad jumped into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ve had seven in here. After a party – it was wild, man. You two guys get in the back and my sis and Tim will keep me company in the front with the bags.’

  Mark got in. Wiki squeezed in beside him. Trix – or rather, Tim – sat on my lap.

  ‘Hope you guys are good friends,’ said Brad, putting the car into gear and driving off so fast that each of us nearly left our heads behind.

  ‘There’s only one way to drive with my brother,’ I shouted from the front of the car. ‘With your eyes tight shut and praying every inch of the way.’

  MAJOR GRAHAM BARTON

  When a silver sports car turned up making the most infernal racket, I reached for my camera.

  Three boys and a girl got out of the big vehicle. A longhaired youth emerged from the sports car. They didn’t stay long, I’ll admit, but I sensed they were trouble.

  That’s how we are in Kington. We take action. I got one perfect photograph when the five hooligans were standing in the headlights of the sports car.

  If there was trouble, I had the evidence.

  WIKI

  It was a journey from hell. Jade’s brother burned up the motorway towards London, heavy metal blaring from the sound system.

  It was the early hours of the morning when we arrived in London. Somewhere in the centre of the city, we pulled up outside a large, modern building. Our bodies aching, our ears ringing from the noise, we walked through a brightly lit lobby and took the lift to the fourteenth floor.

  Brad opened the door to his flat. It consisted of a big room which looked as if a bomb had hit it – beer cans, CDs and ashtrays were all over the floor.

  ‘You guys coming out clubbing?’ Brad asked.

  ‘We’re bushed,’ said Jade.

  ‘There are mattresses round the place. You kids make yourself at home,’ said Brad.

  Then he was gone.

  There were mattresses all right, but finding them in the ruin of the flat wasn’t easy. In the end I crashed out in my clothes beside Mark on a big evil-smelling mattress that was under a small mountain of unwashed clothes in the sitting room. Trix and Jade found another mattress on the floor of one of the bedrooms and slept there.

  HOLLY

  When I awoke on day two in the so-called civilized world, things became distinctly weird. The publicity agent with the big hair, Vogel, had arranged for what he called a ‘photo opportunity’ that morning. My mother was to take me round to Trix’s house, where I’d be snapped having morning tea with her mother and stepfather. The idea was to show how Trix’s family and friends were there for each other at this difficult time (‘Barf,’ as Jade would say).

  We got to the house soon after ten. The photographer was already there. Eva, my mother, Jason the stepfather, Eddison Vogel and little me sat in a conservatory. A maid served us tea. We prepared to look tragic for the camera.

  Then the phone rang.

  The maid went to answer it. She came back. It was Detective Inspector Cartwright, she said. He insisted on speaking to Eva.

  When she returned, she was in a state of shock. She sat down slowly on her chair and whispered, ‘They’ve found Trixie’s T-shirt.’

  DETECTIVE INSPECTOR BARRY CARTWRIGHT

  You’re not supposed to be emotional in this game but, just for a moment in my office, I lost it. I may be a policeman but I’m a human being too. By now it was almost as if Little Trixie was part of my family.

  The call came from the office of the Show Us You Care fund. They had received a parcel. In it was a T-shirt Little Trixie used to wear. It had been slashed with a knife.

  No message. Nothing. But there didn’t have to be.

  Tears pricked my eyes. Sometimes this is a dirty, dirty job.

  WIKI

  We awoke late the following morning. By daylight the flat looked even worse than it had the previous night.

  I walked into the kitchen. Jade was standing in front of a sink in which dirty dishes and glasses from the last month or so were piled high.

  ‘Beyond the valley of the gross,’ she said in a faint voice.

  JADE

  I admit it. My brothers have never been that hot on housekeeping. I’ll go further. My brothers have never been that hot on anything. Except partying. They are very, very good at that.

  ‘Where’s Brad?’ Wiki asked.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost eleven in the morning. ‘He’ll be out for a while yet,’ I said. ‘George and Brad usually go to bed at about lunchtime.’

  Mark appeared at the door. For the first time in living history, he was lost for words.

  ‘Maybe we should tidy up,’ said Trix.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I laughed. ‘I’ve spent my life clearing up after my brothers. That is so over.’

  I went to the fridge, opened it.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got a choice for breakfast,’ I said. ‘Beer, beer or more beer.’

  I sniffed some milk. Heave. ‘Maybe someone had better do some shopping,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Mark.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll come too.’ Wiki seemed unusually eager. ‘I need a breath of fresh air.’

  MARK

  When we got downstairs, we discovered that we were in one of those parts in the centre of the city where there are bars and hotels and expensive clothes shops but nowhere to buy bread and butter.

  Wiki saw a street sign. ‘We’re in Mayfair,’ he said.

  ‘The middle of London,’ I said. ‘A great place for a hideout, I must say.’

  We walked, taking care to remember which way we came. It took us over half an hour to find some bread, butter, milk and orange juice.

  We were back at the flat soon after midday. One glance at the girls’ faces told us that something had happened while we were away.

  HOLLY

  As soon as I got home, I went to my room and dialled Jade’s number. The whole T-shirt thing had thrown me. It had to be them who had sent it. What were they thinking of? It had been my big fear that without me there to keep things more or less sensible, the gang would do something wild. But this was beyond wild. It was crazy.

  Jade picked up on the second ring.

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ I asked. ‘Sending Trix’s T-shirt through the post. What’s going on out there?’

  ‘Holly, calm down.’ Suddenly Jade sounded weirdly normal, almost grown up. I could hardly recognize her for a moment. ‘First, we are not “out there”. We’re in London. And we’ve sent nothing to anyone.’

  So, we unscrambled. Jade told me about the scary visitor in Wales – how they had left Gideon, the whole strange business about staying with her brothers George and Brad.

  ‘Your brothers? You’ve always said they were a couple of –’ I swallowed back the swear word that was on the tip of my tongue. ‘You said that they were not always entirely reliable.’

  Jade seemed to take a deep breath. ‘We didn’t exactly have a choice, Holly,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Tell me about this T-shirt.’

  I told her. We agreed to talk later. I had only one thought in my mind. The game was up. We had done our best, but our plan was spinning out of control.

  Surely even Trix Johansson-Bell, the most stubborn girl in the world, would see that.

  JADE

  When I told her about the T-shirt, Trix gave a little gasp. ‘My mum,’ she said. ‘My poor mum. She’ll be panicking. I must do something.’

  ‘Wait,’
I said. ‘Let’s be sensible about this.’

  Trix looked at me, surprised. Tell the truth, I was kind of startled myself. I have never knowingly spoken the words “Let’s be sensible about this” in my entire life.

  Then I did something else that was weird. I put my arm around Trix. I felt her lean away from me, then relax.

  ‘Let’s just wait till my brothers get back,’ I said. ‘We’re in this together, right?’

  Trix gave an angry little laugh. ‘Oh yeah, they’ll definitely come up with a great idea.’

  EVA JOHANSSON

  Before that terrible day, I had held myself together in a proud way – I was strong as a mother should be.

  Eddison had told me that, by showing what he said was ‘tragic dignity’, I was reminding the world that even celebrities can be brave. ‘Eva, honey,’ he said, ‘you’ve become a role model – a role model for the nation. Maybe even an international role model.’

  An international role model? Me? I could hardly believe it. The awful grey cloud of Trixie’s disappearance had a silver lining.