Missing, Believed Crazy Page 5

  There was something about the Trixter, I was discovering, that made you want to help her. She was so certain that anything seemed possible.

  ‘I only know one person who lives really out of the way,’ I called after her, ‘and that’s my godfather.’

  She stopped, turned. ‘Does he drive?’

  ‘Sort of. He’s got this old London taxi.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ she said.

  At least I had managed to slow Trix down for a moment. Walking at my pace, I told her a bit about Gideon Burrowes.

  ‘He was my father’s best friend at school – really intelligent but apparently a bit wiggy even then. He went to university to train to be a genius scientist. I’ve seen him skipping through books on nuclear physics like we would read a comic.’

  ‘I don’t read comics.’

  ‘But then he went strange. At some point in his twenties, he gave up being a genius and went to live in Wales up in the mountains, all alone except for loads of cats. He makes rocking chairs.’

  Trix walked in silence for a while.

  ‘He sounds OK,’ she said eventually. ‘There’s nothing weird about liking cats or making rocking chairs.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a TV or read the papers. He cuts his own hair. He’s convinced that the government are spying on him.’

  ‘Maybe they are.’

  ‘He won’t have fillings put in his teeth because he thinks they contain receptors which can read what he’s thinking. He refuses to fill out forms. He’s had fake number plates put on this old taxi that he drives so that the authorities will never know where he is.’

  ‘Ah.’ Trix frowned. ‘I must admit he does sound a bit strange.’

  ‘My dad says that, in his way, Gideon’s the sanest person he has ever known.’

  GODFATHER GIDEON BURROWES

  Wear dark glasses, Mark said. I liked that. It intrigued me. As if we were playing a game. Perhaps we were. He explained what he wanted me to do. I simply agreed. I made the list and agreed.

  Get the taxi.

  Drive to London.

  Pick up Mark and a friend.

  Pick up another friend on the way out.

  Drive home.

  Oh, and wear dark glasses.

  Why ask questions? We are each individuals, a complex mass of molecules, prions, sinew and tissue. We were born with free will. It is our nature to create our own personal destiny not that of others.

  Hence, a few basic ground rules to which I have more or less adhered since the age of nineteen.

  Ask no questions of others.

  If they ask questions of you, answer only those that give nothing away.

  Privacy is the most important thing in the world.

  No marriage, no love stuff. When I was young, one or two young ladies were misguided enough to take an interest in me. I managed to shake them off, thank heavens.

  These days, I live on my own and rarely meet other people.

  I have a telephone but I avoid answering it. I prefer to store messages upon an answering machine. Now and then, as in the case of my godson, there are people to whom I would like to speak. On those occasions, I return their call.

  Something else I learned at nineteen. I don’t like human beings much. If I have to see them at all, I prefer the small versions, the children. They take up less space in the world for a start.

  My godson is all right – better than most humans, not as good as a cat – and he comes to stay with me once a year.

  I have never known precisely what a godfather is supposed to do, so I take him shooting on my land, talk to him about science, generally let him breathe the air of freedom.

  But it was a surprise when he rang me that July. Bringing pals, was he? I’d just have to put up with that.

  Wear dark glasses, the boy said. I wasn’t even sure I had a pair.

  EVA JOHANSSON

  I left Jason in LA, put my film project on hold for a week, and returned to England to send Trix to her summer camp. What would you expect? I am a mother. It’s what mothers do.

  My elder daughter is a strong character like me and was old enough to decide how she wished to spend her holidays. My job was to spend two days with Trix in England, put her on the train to her camp, and catch a flight back to LA.

  I considered telling the Drunk that his daughter had changed her plans but I was on a busy-busy timeline at that moment. We had agreed that he would be seeing her for two weeks at the end of the holidays and that had not changed – or so I thought.

  Besides, he probably would have been too off his face to understand.

  PETE BELL

  A call would have been good. Just a call. I may not be a candidate for Dad of the Year but she is my daughter.

  But then my ex doesn’t do nice. And Trix must have had something else on her mind. Maybe she was too busy saving the world to worry about her old dad.

  WIKI

  On the last day of term – a hot, swimming-pool day – we met in the park, standing around a bench, trying not to look shifty.

  Trix, who had somehow become our leader without anyone agreeing to it, went through the plan. Because the plan hardly existed, it didn’t take long.

  On the first day of the holidays, we would each go home. Holly and Jade would fly off to Italy with the de Vriess family.

  On the third day of the holidays, I would meet Mark at his house in Chiswick. We would be collected in a taxi by his godfather, a Mr Burrowes, We would drive to Paddington Station, where, on a road called Praed Street, Trix would be waiting to be kidnapped.

  We would kidnap her, drive out of London to Wales, where Mr Burrowes lives. After a couple of days, Holly and Jade would fly back to join us and then . . .

  For the briefest moment, Trix lost her air of certainty as the plan came to an end.

  ‘And then we decide on our next move,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me, O mighty leader,’ said Holly, trying to keep a straight face. ‘But isn’t that plan just the teensiest bit vague?’

  Trix gave Holly a hard-eyed look and then eyeballed the rest of us for a moment.

  ‘This can work,’ she said quietly. ‘This is going to save lives.’

  JADE

  Oh yeah, right. Like we really believed that.

  WIKI

  The day of The Vanish was to be like any other day. That was what we had agreed.

  I got up early that morning, said goodbye to my parents, and took the bus to the station. I would be at Mark’s house before ten.

  HOLLY

  It was not true that we forgot all about Trix, V Day and all that, but by the time it was due to take place we were in Italy, snoozing, sunbathing, lolling around in the pool now and then. We had other things on our minds.

  JADE

  A holiday vibe kicked in big time once we were under that baking Italian sun. We had waited all year for this.

  ‘Are you thinking of The Vanish?’ Holly murmured under her breath to me as we lay by the pool.

  ‘Nn-nn.’ I shook my head. ‘I think it just vanished.’

  MARK

  Because I don’t see much of my dad – he is a very successful businessman and spends a lot of time doing deals – I normally like to talk to Godfather Gideon about the days when he and my father were young together.

  This time was different. Wiki turned up at my house after breakfast, a neat little rucksack on his back. Gideon was there by mid-morning. He and my mother have never got along, so it was not exactly a warm, social occasion. He left his taxi running as we said goodbye to Mum and climbed in.

  On our way towards Paddington Station, none of us was in the mood for conversation.

  MRS SARA BLISS

  Gideon Burrowes, Mark’s godfather, is not what one would call normal but I discovered during my marriage to Mark’s father that he is essentially harmless. Mark sees so little of his father that I have always felt it does him good to be in male company.

  But I had a niggling sense that things were what I call ‘ou
t of kilter’ that morning. The little black boy, William Church, was a surprise – I couldn’t think what Mark and he had in common. Then Gideon appeared, wearing a pair of very small dark glasses of the type hippies used to wear. Nothing felt quite as it should be.

  It occurred to me, as they drove off, that I should have a word with Mark’s father but he was somewhere in Dubai and I didn’t have a number for him.

  WIKI

  Nothing Mark Bliss had said prepared me for Gideon Burrowes. He was in his forties, I learned later, but he had this thick mop of straight grey hair that reached down to his shoulders.

  He wore a dark, baggy suit that was probably made about a hundred years ago. Weirdest of all, he had these circular, metal-rimmed granny glasses that you see in photographs of hippies back in the 1960s. It was difficult not to laugh but somehow one sensed that this was a man who was not too heavily into joking.

  He hardly said a word after he had picked us both up at Mark’s house.

  EVA JOHANSSON

  Trix was not herself. I can see that now. Too silent. Too pale. Too moody. At the time though, I was very preoccupied by what was happening in La-La-Land, better known as Hollywood! My agent had rung to tell me that I was up for a second screen test on a major movie. There were calls. There were plans. Frankly, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane back to America.

  I drove Trix to Paddington Station. I found her a seat opposite a nice old couple. She had been worried about missing the train and so, of course, we were ten minutes early. I said goodbye.

  Trix’s last words to me were, ‘See you, Mummy. Look after yourself.’

  This is very hard for me – there is no pain like a mother’s pain.

  MRS GARNETT

  We like to be in good time for the journey home. When this tall, elegant woman, talking rather loudly in a foreign accent, swept into the carriage at Paddington, we rather hoped she would not be sitting opposite us.

  MR GARNETT

  But luckily it was only her daughter, a quiet girl in a Feed-the-World T-shirt, who sat down. She was firm about one thing – she didn’t want to sit alone, she told her her mother. With a little smile in our direction, she chose the seat opposite ours. Only later we discovered that she was the famous little Trixie Bell.

  MRS GARNETT

  As the mother fussed about a bit, putting the girl’s suitcase on the rack, asking her rather loudly whether she wanted the window seat and so on, I began to think I recognized her from somewhere. Had she been a newscaster years ago – or maybe one of those weathergirls? I remember thinking that there was something not entirely natural about her. She was like someone acting the part of a mother rather badly.

  Then, with a couple of showy mwa-mwa kisses, she was off.

  MR GARNETT

  Trixie Bell waved out of the window as her mother walked off, but the mother never looked back. It was rather sad, I thought.

  EVA JOHANSSON

  I had a plane to catch. I was on a rather tight schedule. Jason rang from America as I got back to the car. The film I was auditioning for had been mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter. He particularly remembers that I was quite upset about saying goodbye to Trix.

  MARK

  Though I say it myself, we looked well scary. I was wearing a baseball cap and a puffa jacket that my father had given me for a sailing trip that had never happened. I had a white silk scarf wrapped around my neck that I was going to pull up over the lower part of my face like a bandit in a cowboy film. Then I had these big reflector shades that I wear for skiing.

  Wiki looked even creepier than usual. He had on a black trilby hat, cheap dark glasses and a long black coat. He was like someone going to a funeral.

  MRS GARNETT

  After a couple of minutes, the girl casually started looking for something in her jeans pockets. Then she checked in the coat she had put on the seat beside her. She grew increasingly panicky.

  MR GARNETT

  ‘My mobile,’ she said. ‘I’ve left my mobile in the car.’

  My wife tried to calm her. ‘Don’t worry, love. There’s always a landline.’

  MRS GARNETT

  ‘I must have my mobile,’ she said in quite a trembly little voice. She looked at her watch. ‘Could you just keep an eye on my things?’ she said to me.

  My husband said, ‘Well, the train goes in eight minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ she said. And she was gone, out of the carriage, running down the platform.

  That was the last we ever saw of her.

  EVA JOHANSSON

  That blinking cellphone. She was always losing it. I found it on the back seat about an hour later when I had parked the car at Heathrow Airport. Of course, it was too late to do anything about it.

  WIKI

  It was a simple plan, but a good one.

  There would be the lost phone. Trix would make sure that she was seen getting off the train. Once through the ticket barrier, she would run to Praed Street outside the station. Again, she would make sure people saw her.

  We would be waiting in the taxi, looking out for her.

  GODFATHER GIDEON

  Why we were obliged to wait around the corner before picking up Mark’s other friend slightly puzzled me. But, no questions. That’s the thing.

  WIKI

  And suddenly there was Trix. She was pacing backwards and forwards outside the station like a real little girl lost. I’ll give her that – she was a great actress.

  I leaned forward from the back seat and pointed her out to Mr Burrowes. He drove the taxi forward. Trix saw us and started walking away from us but near the edge of the pavement.

  As we pulled up beside her, Mark opened the back door of the taxi. She turned, surprised.

  Together, Mark and I reached forward and grabbed her.

  ‘What?’ she shouted so loudly that Mark and I let go of her. ‘No! No!’ she screamed. She looked at us furiously. Then she sort of fell into the taxi as if we had grabbed her. We slammed the door.

  Mr Burrowes looked around, a bit surprised.

  ‘This is Trix,’ said Mark, trying unsuccessfully to sound jolly. ‘She’s a bit of a joker.’

  ‘How do you do, Trix?’ said Mr Burrowes.

  ‘Hi,’ said Trix, sitting on the floor.

  ‘There’s plenty of room on the—’

  ‘Let’s go, Gideon,’ said Mark more urgently now.

  The taxi moved off, the slowest getaway car there has ever been.

  I glanced back. A mother with a pram was staring after us.

  TRACY BROWN

  It seemed to happen in slow motion, like a terrible dream. I noticed this old taxi coming down the road. It was driven by this man with dark glasses and long grey hair – a real psycho type. I couldn’t see them, but I sensed he had really cold eyes. I was just thinking to myself, That’s no taxi driver, when he pulled up beside this young girl and the back door of the cab opened.

  I remember the girl screaming ‘No!’, and then these two people in dark glasses – small gangster types, one black and one white – grabbed her. The taxi waited there for a few seconds – I can only think that the poor little girl was struggling. But before I could do anything, it was gone.

  You know the creepiest thing? He drove away slowly, that man. As if he were enjoying every moment of it.

  Poor Trixie. Poor little Trixie Bell. If only I could have done something for her. I was so shocked I wasn’t able to catch the registration number.

  WIKI

  According to one of my favourite websites, totallyweirdfacts.com, the average person going about his daily business gets caught on security cameras 672 times a day.

  So we all kept our shades on until we were well out of London. Trix lay on the floor of the taxi. Godfather Gideon kept driving. He never said a word.

  GODFATHER GIDEON

  I suppose it was not entirely what one would expect at the start of a godchild’s stay, but I’ve always believed that individuality is the lifeblood of a society and I
liked the idea that Mark was involved in some escapade of his own. Any worthwhile life has its share of adventures.

  As the taxi trundled on to the motorway, I heard the three of them laughing. I closed the little window behind me. I find the laughter of children slightly upsetting.

  MARK

  We had done it. We were on our way. When the Trixter clambered off the floor and sat down between Wiki and me, it was as if the craziness of what we were doing hit us for the first time.

  ‘That was the most pathetic piece of kidnapping I’ve ever seen,’ she muttered. ‘Talk about a couple of powder puffs. I had to put up a struggle against myself.’