Missing, Believed Crazy Page 9

‘That’s not village children,’ I said. ‘That’s them!’

  And it was. Trix was actually jumping up and down as if she were a little kid.

  We told the taxi-driver that we were fine here and paid him his fare. As we stepped out, we got our first proper view of Trix, Mark and Wiki.

  They looked, well, different.

  Jade stared at them as she stood by the taxi.

  ‘What happened to you guys?’ she said.

  JADE

  You know the cover of that book Lord of the Flies, the one where these kids hide up and take over this island or something? The children are all ragged, with dirty faces and a kind of crazed-animal look to them? That was Trix and the boys that day.

  ‘You look like savages,’ said Holly.

  Trix hugged Holly and then me.

  Mark made the usual grunting noise that passes for ‘Hello, how are you?’ in the world of boys.

  ‘No offence and all that,’ I said, ‘but you guys look kind of revolting.’

  Trix laughed. ‘The whole washing thing is a bit less of a big deal here,’ she said.

  ‘We noticed,’ said Holly.

  Wiki picked up my suitcase, which I admit was rather large, and practically fell down the side of the hill. ‘What have you got in here?’ he asked.

  ‘I like to accessorize,’ I said. ‘So kill me.’

  He picked it up and smiled at me. Big admission: the countryside suited Wiki Church. He no longer looked as if you could sneeze him into the next county. He seemed to have grown some muscles in his arms. His spots had gone.

  Then I saw it. I screamed. Something dead – a creature – was hanging from Wiki’s belt.

  ‘What is that? I asked, pointing with a trembling finger.

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. I’ve got to skin that rabbit,’ said Wiki.

  ‘Oh, barf city,’ I said. ‘I like bunnies. Is it dead?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Mark was actually laughing.

  Holly looked at the rabbit, then at Wiki.

  ‘Did you just say “skin it”?’

  WIKI

  That evening, the five of us sat in the attic (‘Hey, a den, that is so cool,’ said Jade), watching the early evening news.

  Trix was the second story, after some big money crisis.

  ‘The parents of missing teenager Trixie Bell are to turn to the leading publicist Eddison Vogel to help in the search for their daughter.’ The newscaster managed to sound slightly surprised by this development. ‘Here’s our correspondent Fiona Maxwell.’

  The woman who was reporting our case – Mark called her ‘our Little Trixie Bell correspondent’ – appeared on the screen.

  For a change she was not outside Trix’s house but in central London. She could tell us exclusively that the country’s leading expert on publicity was to give his services free of charge to Eva Johansson and her husband, Jason Everleigh. She had spoken to him earlier in his office.

  A small man with big hair sat behind a desk empty of paper. As he began to speak, his name ‘Eddison Vogel’ appeared at the bottom of the screen. In a soft voice, he said that like the rest of the nation he had been touched and moved by the story of little Trixie Bell. He had met Eva and Jason in the past. When Jason had asked whether he might be able to help, he had not hesitated before agreeing.

  ‘This is not your normal type of business, Mr Vogel,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Because it’s not business.’ Vogel smiled, but there was just a hint of irritation. ‘This is about looking out for each other. About caring for another human being.’ He glanced at the camera as if suddenly noticing that an old friend was in the room. ‘I can do a little bit. The people out there can do a little bit. This is all about working together to get little Trixie back to her family where she belongs. That’s the thing – the only thing – that matters, Fiona.’

  For a moment, the Trixie correspondent seemed too moved to speak. Then she returned us to the studio.

  It was Trix who hit the Off button. ‘What was all that about?’ she said.

  JASON EVERLEIGH

  Let’s get this straight. I have a heart as big as any man. You want tears. I can cry as much as anyone – maybe more. Just because I’m a successful businessman, it doesn’t mean that I’m not into caring.

  Trixie was my stepdaughter. Someone had taken her. My wife was in bits. I’d had to leave several important projects stateside on hold. I had the press camped on my doorstep. I had a policeman hanging around the place as if he were a member of the family.

  It was a situation. Situations need problem-solvers.

  So I had put in a call to the best problem-solver in the business, Eddison Vogel. Soon he was changing everything.

  PETE BELL

  When I was a journalist, Eddison Vogel was known as ‘the Rodent’. He called himself a publicist, but whenever there was something nasty in the press – a big showbiz divorce, a politician behaving badly, some actor with a drink or drugs problem – the Rodent would soon be sniffing about.

  I met him once. He didn’t look like a rat – more like a sleek well-kept mouse, but one with a dangerous bite. He was small, elegantly dressed, with a neat beard and shiny, perfectly manicured nails. He smelt very expensive – the very best man-scents were fighting for attention on his neat little body.

  He spoke very quietly in an accent that was slightly German, with a hint of Eastern Europe, all smoothed over by a smiling mid-Atlantic charm. No one knew where Vogel came from. Some said he was once a brilliant professor. Others that he wrote poetry in his spare time.

  All I knew was that he gave me the creeps. There was something about Vogel that made me want to wash my hands after I had met him.

  And now he had been brought in to help find my only child.

  EDDISON VOGEL

  We each of us have our own weaknesses. My personal weakness is that I am too nice. Not many people realize that. They think that Eddison Vogel is only interested in money and his famous friends. Not true. I have been lucky in my life. I like to give back. Ordinary people are important to me.

  So a few days after agreeing to handle the public relations side of the Little Trixie Bell project, I gathered the key players at Eva Johansson’s house and explained to them what I could bring to the party. No, scrub that. Put: what I could contribute in this tragic and difficult situation.

  I had given the matter of Little Trixie Bell much thought. I had asked my researcher to come up with a campaign. That Sunday, in the conservatory at Jason and Eva’s house, I presented it to the family and to Barry Cartwright.

  I asked him where his investigation now stood.

  ‘We have established various useful leads,’ he said. ‘There is the taxi-driver. Door-to-door interviews have been conducted in the neighbourhood of Little Trixie’s home and we have also spoken to teachers at Cathcart College. We are convinced that she is still alive and that the trail is still warm.’

  Barry spoke at some length. The more I heard, the more clearly I saw the situation. He was floundering. The police hadn’t a clue what to do next.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said when at last he had droned to a halt. ‘But let’s come at this story from a different angle. We have to get the public involved. We have to make people care about Trixie Bell. They must feel involved – almost as if it is their own daughter, granddaughter, sister, friend who has disappeared. Once Trixie has a place in the heart of the nation, finding her will be only a matter of time.’

  I paused, allowing my words to sink in. ‘We have to develop a story – a narrative. What’s the story with Trixie Bell?’

  ‘She’s a very caring girl,’ said her mother.

  ‘Caring? Great,’ I said. ‘Tell me more.’

  WIKI

  Everything was different after Holly and Jade arrived. It was as if they brought the Cathcart spirit to Hill Farm. I don’t mean that in a good way.

  Life in the country had changed Mark and me. The business of surviving had made him less cocky and me more confident. We didn’t
exactly like each other – he’d call me ‘Speccy’ now and then, and he liked to remind me that it was his godfather who had got the whole kidnap thing under way – but we kind of recognized we were in it together.

  Soon Jade had changed too. She became more Jade. She decided that life in the country was gross, or a drag, or sometimes even Barf City.

  She thought Gideon was creepy. She complained that there were no pizzas. If I have one memory of that week after the girls arrived, it is of Jade hanging around Trix and Holly, muttering about how her shoes were being ruined.

  JADE

  I had come to this crazy wilderness of a place, wearing shoes from Prada’s spring collection. Big, big mistake. No one had mentioned that the Trix thing would involve my becoming a total fashion victim. I was the only person on that farm who cared what they looked like, which meant that in a real way I was suffering more than anyone else.

  Not that I made a fuss about it.

  MARK

  Some gang. Most of us were keeping out of each other’s way. I was just beginning to wonder how we were going to get the Trixter back home without getting into trouble ourselves when things took a serious turn for the worst.

  WIKI

  We had this ritual. When Mark and I returned from the shop with the day’s papers, we would go to the attic and check out how the Little Trixie investigation was going.

  That Sunday, the newspapers had a big front-page story about her. It was headlined ‘OUR LITTLE ANGEL’. There was a new picture of Trix, wearing a Feed-the-World T-shirt. Beneath it was written: ‘Little Trixie Bell – all she wanted was to save the lives of children.’

  Inside there was a big profile under the heading ‘SHE CARED THAT WE DIDN’T CARE’. The newspaper had talked to everyone – Trix’s mum, her dad, Miss Fothergill, even Griffo Griffiths.

  Suddenly Trix was no longer just another kid. She was like this walking conscience, ‘the hidden face of our caring teenagers’. There was the story of the fashion show at Cathcart and how it had gone wrong, and a picture of her room at school with all its photographs and posters about the starving in Africa.

  I read it out to the others. At first we laughed – Trix was being described as a weird, perfect version of the Trix we knew.

  ‘What’s this got to do with my kidnapping?’ Trix asked at one point.

  I read the closing paragraph.

  ‘Now, in a cruel twist of fate, Little Trixie Bell, the teenager who campaigned against cruelty and violence, is a victim of cruelty and violence herself. The last word should go to the man leading the hunt for the missing girl, Detective Inspector Barry Cartwright. “We owe it to our children to find this brave little girl who has shown us how to care. Each of us must do our part to make sure that Little Trixie is found and returned to her family.”’

  At the bottom of the page, it was announced that a Show Us You Care fund had been established. Readers were urged to ‘do their bit. Every pound will help in the search for Trixie Bell’.

  HOLLY

  I expected Trix to be pleased. I mean, her plan had been to get the money rolling in. But she looked shocked, pale.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Jade, her usual tactful self. ‘Saint Trix. Can I touch the hem of your garment?’

  ‘It’s sick,’ said Trix. ‘I don’t know what we should do now.’

  We sat in silence, looking at the newspaper spread all over the floor. Then, as if in answer to her question, my mobile rang. It was Mum, phoning from Italy.

  ‘Holly, love,’ she said, ‘sorry to bother you but you have to come home. The police want to speak to you.’

  WIKI

  I needed to clear my head. There was too much stuff going on between the five of us. In the outside world the kidnap seemed to be slipping out of control.

  The following afternoon I went for a walk to think about the next stage. I found my favourite spot – an old oak log overlooking the valley. I took out the knife Gideon had lent me and whittled at a Y-shaped ash branch I was making into the shape of a catapult. Here’s how I saw the situation:

  Reasons for continuing with the kidnap plan

  1. I had promised Trix that I would help her.

  2. We had managed to give the police the slip.

  3. Living at Hill Farm had been the best fun I had ever had.

  4. I don’t like abandoning projects halfway through.

  5. That’s about it really.

  Reasons for abandoning the kidnap plan

  1. We had no idea what to do next.

  2. Being at the centre of something that was on the front page of the newspapers was kind of scary.

  3. Just because we were staying with his godfather, Mark suddenly seemed to assume he was in charge of things.

  4. Gideon suspected something. I just knew it.

  5. Holly reminded me of my life at Cathcart and looked at me as if I was some kind of sad case.

  6. Jade was going to drive me clean up the wall.

  7. I saw less of Trix now that the girls had arrived at the farm.

  8. Why were we doing this? We must have been breaking about a million laws. Maybe it would have been better just to give some money to charity and have done with it.

  9. I’d get expelled from Cathcart. The shock would kill my parents and I’d have to live the rest of my life with a cloud of guilt over my head.

  10. I’d get found out. I always do. I’m just one of those people who get found out. It might be something in my genes.

  11. ‘You lied to us, William.’ I can hear my mother saying that. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

  12. ‘Because of Africa, Mum. Eighty-two point three per cent of the world’s starvation is in that one continent.’

  13. ‘Don’t try to blind me with science, William. Since when have you been interested in Africa? Is Africa worth destroying your education – your whole life – for?’

  14. ‘Well, William, is it?’ Even Dad would turn on me. ‘Answer your mother. And no lying this time.’

  ‘Yes. I mean no. I don’t know.’ I spoke the words out loud and they hung in the hot summer air for a moment.

  A twig snapped behind me. I was not alone. Surprised, embarrassed, I stood up.

  It was Trix. She had been standing in the woods behind me.

  ‘Easy, warrior,’ she said, smiling.

  I looked down and realized that I had a knife in one hand and a half-made catapult in the other.

  She walked over to me. We sat on the log together.

  ‘Your catapult’s not going to work like that,’ she said. ‘It needs a bit of elastic between the two bits of wood. Just a hint.’

  I laughed, turning the Y-shaped ash branch in my hand. ‘It’s kind of a work in progress,’ I said.

  We sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘You’re different these days,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘No. It’s good. When you came here, you were this geeky city boy. Now you’re –’ she laughed – ‘you’re almost tough.’

  I shrugged and looked away.

  ‘Yes, no, what?’ she asked.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘You were having a very serious conversation with yourself.’

  ‘I was thinking about how all this was going.’

  ‘Whether we should give up?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  I looked at her, surprised. Trix is not exactly famous for changing her mind.

  ‘It’s going OK, but we can only do it if we work together,’ she said. ‘And right now I just can’t see that happening. Mark’s showing off. Holly’s wishing she was on holiday. Jade’s . . . Jade. Talk about an odd bunch.’

  ‘D’you think the police are on to us? That that’s why they want to talk to Holly?’

  ‘No. Otherwise Jade would have had a call.’

  ‘We could wait and see what they say to her.’

  Trix shook her head. ‘They’ll tap her mobile. The way I see it, we’ve got a choice. W
e either get organized and push this thing through. We need to have a plan. Each of us has to play our part.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘We go home. The rest of you can say you had no idea what was going on. I’ll admit that I had some crazy plan. I’ve had a breakdown – what my dad calls a “teenage freak-out”.’

  ‘Adolescent pattern schizophrenia,’ I murmured.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘That would be the most likely type of teenage freak-out for you to be suffering from,’ I explained. ‘Adolescent pattern schizophrenia starts later usually – about seventeen or eighteen – but you could probably get away with it.’

  Trix was looking at me. ‘You are so weird, Wik,’ she said.

  ‘Just trying to be helpful,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, whatever the teenage freak-out’s called, everyone will be so pleased that I’m home, it’ll soon be forgotten.’

  ‘Little Trixie won’t be an angel any more.’

  Trix sighed. ‘She never was. I’ll be just another messed-up teenager making life difficult for adults.’

  ‘The Trixter.’

  ‘Right.’ She smiled sadly, then took a photograph out of the back pocket of her trousers. It was a small, close-up photograph of an African child whose picture had been on the wall of her room at Cathcart. ‘I just wanted to do something to help them,’ she said, almost to herself.