Lost Girl Read Free Page A

that first year and shown her photograph to as many of the millions as he could reach, which wasn’t many. And while he implored the troubled faces to understand,
he came across many other people showing photographs amongst the crowds, along the streets, in the towns and villages, and as he walked he knew that he had truly gone mad from the loss of his
little girl.
    He would never be able to adequately describe to anyone how stricken he’d been nor express the tormenting repetition of his thoughts. No combination of words would ever suffice. And he
came to believe that when minds were forced to function in such a way, they simply broke.
    For two years their lives had been solely concerned with grief. Not only had their child gone, their capacity for happiness was taken with her. Maybe this was something the abductors never
considered: the insidious consequences of their actions, the deadening longevity of effect. Or perhaps they were euphorically aware of this, and the far-reaching ripples empowered them through the
curious mental alchemy of the narcissist. If this was so, then he had the right to destroy them.
    The father rose from his knees and lay on the bed, curled himself around the slippers, Cloth Cat and the shirt. And only then did he begin to shake.
    Four hours later, the call he’d been waiting for arrived, so the father wiped his face with a towel and cleared his throat of the clot his grief had laid there.
    The communication was voice only, without visuals. As if he had willed her to call, it was Scarlett Johansson, and she gave him the details of the next man he was to visit. The sex
offender’s name was Robert East.

THREE
    Robert East’s bungalow stood at the far end of the close, behind a low front wall of Cotswold stone. Before the pink stucco house front and the white stone drive, a neat
brown lawn had died between opposing rows of ornamental shrubs. Wooden blinds blacked out the sun in every window. There was no gate. Nice when times were better, better than most now they were not
so good.
    During reconnaissance, straight after Scarlett’s call, the father had peeked at Robert East’s bungalow for the first time. Nothing had changed in the street in the three subsequent
days when he’d driven past, or watched from a distance. All of the same cars were in the same places. And again, in the dry foliage of the front gardens, not a single twig or leaf stirred as
if the heat had preserved the place as an arid still-life.
    There were only six properties in the cul-de-sac, owned by people keeping their heads down in the best bit of Cockington. Three bungalows in good shape on the right-hand side, every curtain shut
and all the blinds down. Out front: two Mercedes, one Jaguar. The discreet glassy bubble of a small spherical camera lens could be seen on the front of two of those places, watching the cars and
front windows.
    Two concrete town houses reared on the left-hand side of the street, clutched by the brittle arms of overhanging skeletal trees. Two storeys with lots of glass faced the sea, cut into the side
of the hill seventy years gone. Balconies were empty and windows were closed, but someone was still up early to watch the sun rise in the building neighbouring his target, because the living-room
blinds were open on the first floor. The glass was black and reflected the wide dome of sea in the bay.
    Two street lamps had cameras. He would also be seen by the cameras on the properties as he walked the length of the short road. Not reason enough to abandon ship. The father didn’t want to
waste any more time because time changed the memories of people he needed to speak with. Time moved faster now, and the lives it drove forward were ever filling with gathered debris of the mind and
senses. Too much catastrophe in the world needed to be comprehended, with more and more happening all the time. It was the age of incident. Merely at a local level in Devon, there was the hot
terror of