Page 40 of The Vanishing Place

An elderly couple slowed as they walked past the police car, watching Effie as she opened the door and sat in the back seat.

“The locals know who you are,” said Morrow from the driver’s seat.

“I think they’re working it out,” Effie replied.

“It wasn’t a question.” Morrow smiled in the rearview mirror.

Lewis reached across, touching a hand to Effie’s thigh.

“That little performance on the bridge,” she continued, “the forgotten bush girl saving the bush child—I’ve heard it from every imaginable angle.

Which, I must say, is particularly impressive, given that the entire event was concealed by rain.

” She gave a soft snort. “One kid thought that you were both going to jump. He reckoned the river was going to take you back to your tree homes. Forest people, he called you.”

Effie forced a tight smile.

“I don’t imagine it’s easy to keep secrets around here,” said Morrow.

“Apparently not.”

“So.” Morrow looked into the mirror. “No one in Koraha knew you’d left the bush?”

“Just Lewis.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“And forgive me,” Morrow gave a small shake of the head, “I’ve heard a lot of speculation over the past few days. Why was it that you left?”

Effie stiffened, her tone cold. “Is this an interview?”

“No, no. Just making conversation.”

Effie turned to the window, to the hills in the distance. “As I told you the other day, I had a fight with my dad.”

“Ah, yes.”

Effie glanced back at the mirror. “Have there been any signs of him?”

“No,” replied Morrow. “No sign of your dad.”

The car went quiet and Effie looked away.

“June showed me some pictures of you as a child,” said Morrow. “And, I must say, Anya is the spitting image of you. Quite remarkable.” She smiled. “There are more than a few conspiracy theories floating around the village. Quite inventive, some of them. Great imaginations, these coast folk.”

“People are allowed to talk.”

“Well, it might be worth speaking with them. Perhaps telling them where you’ve been. A number of people thought you’d died, or been reincarnated as a tree.”

Effie didn’t reply.

“I’ve wondered myself,” said Morrow, “how a fifteen-year-old girl managed to leave the country. Legally, I mean.”

Lewis tensed, his fingers tightening around her leg, and Effie stiffened. Maybe she disliked Morrow after all.

The car slowed, pulling up outside the police station, and Effie opened the door before it had come to a complete stop. None of them spoke again until they were seated in the interview room.

—

“So,” Morrow began. “We have theories.”

“Theories?” said Effie.

Morrow leaned forward on the table, interlocking her fingers. The softness she’d shown with Anya had gone.

“Possibilities,” she said. “Two of them.”

Morrow turned her head sideways, looking at Wilson, who gave a single nod, then she turned back to Effie and Lewis. Effie wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard the young detective speak.

“One slightly less than ideal. But either way, it’s an open-and-shut case.”

Effie opened her mouth, but Lewis jumped in.

“CIB have left?” he asked.

“Yep. Gone. Packed up yesterday morning,” said Morrow. “Just the two of us left. And we’ll be heading back to Christchurch straight after this. We’ll continue working from there, but like I said, it’s—”

“But—” Effie interrupted.

“There’s no point in us staying here,” said Wilson. “This…” He cocked his head. “This isn’t a command center. It’s a joke.”

Morrow touched her palm to the table and the man hushed.

“We found these,” she said, pushing two sheets of paper across the table. “This first photo is of two tutu shoots that we found discarded out the back of the hut.”

Effie blinked. “They’re poisonous.”

“Incredibly toxic, yes.” Morrow nodded. “I’m told that tutu shoots have been known to kill full-grown elephants. Within hours, apparently.” She shook her head. “Convulsions, loss of consciousness, respiratory distress. Not a nice way to go.”

“But even as children we knew not to touch them,” said Effie. “Dad made sure we were all aware of the dangers.”

“Well,” said Morrow, “chemical and pH testing found that the food leftovers on the table, as well as a half-drunk cup of tea, were contaminated. Likely both the vegetables and the drink were boiled in water that contained the tutu shoots.” She tapped a finger on the photo.

“Meaning that, as the water heated, the poisonous tutin was extracted from the shoots and contaminated the entire meal.”

Lewis touched Effie’s knee.

“And the postmortem?” asked Effie.

“It confirms poisoning.” Morrow paused. “I’m sorry.”

Effie rubbed a hand over her mouth, her throat and tongue dry.

“This,” said Morrow, moving to the other piece of paper, “we found clutched in Four’s fingers.”

Effie focused on the creased rectangle of yellow paper, the corners worn by sweat and the crush of her brother’s grip. Two words were written on it, the writing smudged and hectic.

I’m sorry .

Effie frowned, then looked up. “You’re thinking suicide?”

“Yes.”

“But the cross on his chest,” said Lewis. “Surely he didn’t do that to himself?”

“It’s possible,” Morrow replied. “But no, we don’t think so.”

“The girl did it,” said Wilson.

“What?” Effie glared at him. “Why on earth would—”

“Anger,” he continued. “Hatred.”

Morrow silenced her colleague with a glance.

“We found the knife,” she said, after clearing her throat. “It had been thrown into the bush, not too far away.”

“Prints?” asked Effie.

“Obviously anything concrete will take another few days, maybe a week. And, given the people involved, I doubt there will be any matches. But they were able to tell us one thing. The only prints that were lifted from the knife were small, likely belonging to a child.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

“We believe that Four killed himself, most probably out of guilt.” Morrow paused. “A growing sense of remorse for what he’d done to the girl.”

Effie glanced from one detective to the other. “But Anya said Four never hurt her.”

Morrow’s colleague scoffed. “He had her chained up. The girl admitted that.”

Effie looked at Morrow.

“It’s not unusual,” said Morrow, “for a child to develop positive feelings toward their captor over time, as a coping mechanism.”

Lewis frowned. “You think Anya has Stockholm syndrome?”

Effie shook her head, but she couldn’t maneuver her thoughts into words.

“Anya has displayed lots of the signs,” said Morrow, looking at Lewis as she spoke.

“She was desperate to get back to him, to be back in the familiar world that he’d created for her.

And she’s consistently exhibited negative feelings toward authority figures.

Plus, the girl’s demeanor—she’s jittery and unpredictable.

She’s shown that she’s unwilling to trust or to open up. ”

“But the cross.” Lewis frowned. “You said that—”

“Anger, maybe.” Morrow nodded. “But it could also be that the symbol was a sign of love. That the girl was blessing him.”

“Tia,” said Effie. “And the picture. What about Tia’s body? And Hana?”

Morrow pressed her hands together in front of her face.

“Look,” she sighed. “My team were all over that hut for a day and a half.”

Effie knew what was coming; she knew, and yet she wasn’t ready.

“They didn’t find a trace of your sister, or anyone else,” said Morrow. “No clothes, no sanitary items, no personal belongings, no pictures. Nothing. We need to wait on DNA, of course, but that could take months. And even then, any female DNA could belong to Anya.”

“What about the notes?” asked Effie. “The pages I found under the floorboards?”

I’m terrified that I’m losing her to him.

“Tia wrote those,” said Effie. “Tia was there.”

You escaped. You lived.

“Yes.” There was a softening to Morrow’s face. “But they weren’t dated. They could have been written years ago.”

The reality ached in the center of Effie’s chest, stabbing at her like a hot needle. But she wasn’t ready for it.

“Effie, we think your sister has been gone for a long time. And that, most likely, the girl has invented her. That, essentially, Anya has been imagining a mother figure. That she’s created a parent as a way to survive.

It’s possible that Anya invented this Hana person too.

As a friend or a companion perhaps. Someone to talk to. ”

Morrow touched her fingers to her lips.

“We’ve been through the missing persons records, going back years, but there’s no mention of anyone called Hana.” She looked at Effie. “Do you have any idea who it could be? Growing up, did you come across a Hana in Koraha maybe, or did your dad ever mention her?”

“No.” Effie sank back into the chair. She’d asked herself the same question a hundred times. “I never knew a Hana.”

“I see.” Morrow gave an unsurprised nod.

Effie kept her expression even and focused on the weight of Lewis’s hand on her leg.

“The hut was flooded with evidence of the girl and Four,” said Morrow. “It was just the two of them living there.”

“But,” Lewis ventured, “someone else had to have tied Anya up. When your colleagues found her, she was in that crate, secured.”

“The knots around her wrists were slack,” said Wilson. “And the ones around her ankles were sloppy at best.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lewis.

“She’d tied herself up,” Wilson continued. “As punishment.”

“For what?”

“For leaving him, perhaps,” said Morrow. “Or…”

She paused, her expression unreadable, then she slid another piece of paper onto the table. It was the drawing Anya had done—two bodies with two sentences scrawled underneath.

Mum broke his rules. Mum wouldn’t say sorry .

Morrow didn’t need to say anything. She tapped the pieces of paper with her fingertips—the suicide note, then Anya’s picture. The writing was unmistakably similar. The tightness of the s . The curl to the y .

“The other possibility,” said Morrow eventually, “is that Anya poisoned her uncle…and wrote the note.”

Effie shook her head, but the words fired through her.

Morrow pulled the paper back. “Obviously, there are still a number of things we need to follow up on, and it will be a bit of a wait until we hear from the lab, but we’re pretty confident that we’ve got everything we need.”

Effie felt nauseous, the cogs spinning frantically behind her eyes. “But,” she said, “I saw someone when I was out there. A man. I felt him watching me.”

“Felt or saw?” The question, and judgment, came from Morrow’s colleague.

Effie pushed two fingers into the knot between her brows. “Both.”

“And you have proof of that?”

“No. But—”

“I think,” said Morrow, “that with your history, you are perhaps ascribing more to this case than is actually there.”

“We have a traumatized child who was chained up in a hut,” said the young detective constable.

“Alone. With only her captor for company, and a very damaged and active imagination. Then, miraculously, she escaped. Either because her uncle developed a sudden bout of conscience, or because she killed him.”

“I just think,” said Lewis, “that with the vastness of the terrain, it’s important to consider—”

“Look,” Morrow interrupted, “I get that this is hard, on both of you. And that there’s a lot of history here.

But…” Her eyes shifted to Lewis. “You’re a sole officer in a small community, dealing with misdemeanors and talking down tourists.

Unfortunately, we deal with child abuse cases all of the time.

We know what to look for. And we know what we’re doing. ”

Lewis sat back in his chair as if the strength had been sapped from him.

“I’m not meaning to sound like a jerk,” said Morrow. “It’s just the way it is.”

“And,” said Wilson, “either way, it should be reasonably straightforward from here. Anya is under ten, so regardless, she can’t be held criminally responsible. And suicide isn’t a crime. So no headaches there. You should be pleased.”

Morrow held her hands out, palms up. “Open and shut,” she said.