Deceit Read Online Free

interviewed everyone sitting nearby and no one had seen anything.
    Except for a young boy who’d seen a man he thought looked creepy and weird sitting on his own at a table. Odd looking. Dark hair, with a grey streak. Black jacket. White shirt. Claire’s heart had missed a beat when she’d heard that. Her throat had tightened. She’d felt for the ring; felt relieved when she was able to twist it easily round and round her finger.
    Then she’d calmed herself, breathed deep…reminded herself that
she’d
seen someone who looked like that too. And it hadn’t been Robert. He was dead. She’d seen him fall from the crane. No one could have survived that. Not even Robert with his bag full of spells.
Say it often enough
, she thought,
and it will be true
.

    The police were following up every lead. Who had just been released from prison, been discharged from psychiatric units, had a history of taking children?
    A man was held for questioning, then released. Pictures of Matthew appeared everywhere. On the television. On billboards. Wherever they went. Claire’s dad was on the news, on the radio, interviewed in the paper. People were tweeting and blogging and messaging about it, and then the rumours started. Nasty, dark ugly things that seemed to replicate themselves endlessly… getting meaner and darker and uglier with each telling.
    Suddenly her dad was being vilified. He hadn’t been distraught enough on the television. He hadn’t cried. He didn’t have an alibi at the time of Matthew’s abduction. He was out to get revenge against his ex-wife who had denied him access to his children.
    The old family house where he now lived on his own, since Claire, Micky and their mum had moved to Grandma’s, was besieged with reporters. When Lindsay had stayed over, she’d been attacked coming out to go to work. Insults were thrown and worse.
    It got so bad the police had to provide round-the -clock protection. Even the Chief Constable was forced into making a statement live on television. “Simon Cottrell is not a suspect in this case and never has been. He was at work at the time of the abduction, as was his partner, Lindsay Walsh. Mr Cottrell has a close and loving relationship with his children. We are happy that no member of the family
or
any family friend is involved in Matthew’s kidnap. If the harassment of Mr Cottrell
or
Miss Walsh continues, we will take swift action against anyone involved.”

    Things calmed down, but the rumours didn’t go away. And they were doing damage. Claire’s mum was trawling the Internet obsessively. Reading anything and everything she could find about Matthew’s kidnapping, however unlikely or bizarre or terrifying. And the insanity was infecting Micky.
    “You don’t think it was aliens that abducted him, do you? Or vampires? They won’t come and get us too, will they?”
    She wouldn’t go outside, even into the garden, unless Claire was with her. And she followed Claire everywhere, even to the loo where Claire could hear her anxious breathing outside the door. If Claire was out of sight Micky started to panic… she hated going to school. Was unhappy that Claire went to a different school and they had to be apart during the day. She wouldn’t sleep alone either and she had bad dreams and would thrash about and cry. Stroking her hair gently would calm her, make her sigh in relief as she slipped back into a deep sleep, but Claire would wake exhausted. She had a continual buzzing in her head and a permanent ache behind her eyes.
    The old fear that she thought was buried deep started to surface again. Her thumb continually rubbed at the ring. When no one was looking she went up into the attic. Checked that the Emerald Casket was still safely hidden under some loose floorboards covered over with an old rug. Nothing had been moved. The dust had settled on everything and had not been disturbed.
    I was stupid
, Claire thought.
I should have hidden it up here when Grandma first left it to