* * *
They found Saffron slumped on her bedroom floor, incapable of speech or movement. Her dishevelled mother wore a towelling robe. She leaned against the door, nursing a glass of wine and staring into the middle distance.
The floor was strewn with baby clothes, sterilizing equipment and packs of nappies. The smell took Joe back to the hospital ward where Katie had nursed Luke. He saw his wife taking stock of the baby in the Moses basket. She turned to Saffron and Isobel.
‘I’m not here as a police officer.’ She knelt by Saffron’s side. ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.’
Her words didn’t seem to register.
‘Have you found him?’ said Isobel.
Katie shook her head. ‘When did you last speak to him?’ she said.
Saffron seemed to be having difficulty formulating words. Joe wondered if she’d been given a sedative. Isobel sipped her wine.
‘This afternoon,’ she said. ‘Messenger told Saffron to call him. To pretend everything was all right, find out where he was.’
Joe raised an eyebrow. ‘And…?’
Saffron moistened her lips with her tongue.
‘I couldn’t pretend. I blurted out, “How could you?”’
Joe stifled a sigh. ‘Did he say anything?’
She shook her head. ‘He cut me off then switched off his mobile.’
‘So he knows the police are onto him.’
Saffron gave a nod. Her mother raised her glass to her lips. Her hands were shaking.
‘Messenger will do all he can to find him,’ said Katie. ‘So will Duffy.’
Isobel gave a brittle laugh.
‘And then what? A trial? Liam goes to prison? Meanwhile the whole world knows what happened. And we have to live with knowing what he did to…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. Her voice faded to a whisper. ‘I should have left him in the snow.’
Saffron glared at her mother. Joe tried to read the expression on the younger woman’s face. Pity? Contempt? She turned to Joe.
‘I’m scared,’ she said. ‘Will you stay?’
A nod. ‘Of course.’
* * *
As Katie drove away, Joe went in to the kitchen to make tea. He carried a tray up to Saffron’s bedroom and sat in silence with the two shocked women. Later, he watched Isobel feed her granddaughter with formula then lower the baby into the Moses basket and swathe her in a pink blanket decorated with cartoon elephants.
Still reeling, Saffron seemed to remain oblivious, staring into the middle distance. Studiously avoiding the baby, she sank onto the bed and pulled the duvet around her, as if trying to keep the world at bay. Isobel stroked her head. Moments later, Saffron was asleep, breathing heavily.
Merciful oblivion.
Her mother motioned for Joe to pick up the Moses basket, beckoning him onto the landing. She led the way into Adam’s bedroom. Joe placed the basket on the bed. Isobel lay beside the baby, sinking her head onto the pillow. She inhaled deeply then whispered something Joe couldn’t hear. He stooped and bent his head closer. He could smell wine on her breath. Sour. Stale.
‘This is my fault,’ she said. ‘I wish I was dead.’
‘Why is it your fault?’ said Joe.
But there was no reply. After a moment, the woman shut her bloodshot eyes and began to breathe heavily. He waited for several minutes then left the room, closing the door behind him. Walking along the corridor, he heard a distant clock strike midnight. He paused by Isobel’s bedroom.
The door was ajar, the lights were on. A floorboard creaked as he went inside.
The room badly needed airing and was strewn with clothes and glossy magazines. Near the unmade bed was a small fridge. Inside were bottles of Chablis and bars of chocolate. The bedside table was strewn with packs of pills. Joe recognized the antidepressants – Citalopram – but not the others. Sleeping pills, he assumed. The woman seemed to chase oblivion in any number of ways.
Turning to leave, his eye was caught by a half-open drawer in the bedside table. He took out a scrapbook. It was old and tattered, crammed with photos and keepsakes. School reports. A swimming certificate. Photos of young Isobel with a man (her father?). Joe flicked through the pages, tracking Isobel’s life from childhood to adolescence, then to her marriage.
He was struck by the number of photos in which one person (Felix, he presumed) had been cut out. Replacing the scrapbook, he slid the drawer back into place. It stuck. He pushed harder but still the drawer wouldn’t close. He pulled it out, all the way, revealing a strip of ancient gaffer tape. Something had been taped to the underside of the drawer and had come loose. Peering into the cavity he saw an envelope. His fingers closed around it.
Gabriel.
The name was written in faded blue ink. Inside was a birth certificate registering the arrival of Gabriel James Pennefeather.
Mother: Isobel Pennefeather.
It was the next column that caught Joe’s eye.
Father: Unknown.
As Joe struggled to make sense of what he was looking at, he saw something else inside the envelope: a cutting from the Daily Mail.
Justice for Kinsella girls.
He remembered the article only too well. It shared the front page with three photos: the iconic image of the twins; a shot of Joe outside court, ashen faced; and the mugshot of the man known as the Salamander.
The neat beard.
The smile that failed to reach the eyes.
Joe sank to the bed, poring over the contents of the envelope.
It wasn’t sound or motion that alerted him to the danger – his assailant moved silently – but a sixth sense.
Turning, he had a split-second to register a raised poker. Then a savage blow to his head sent him crashing to the floor.
Blackout.
34
Blood.
On the carpet.
Pain.
In his head.
Joe touched a tentative hand to the wound. The blood had not yet begun to clot. He had been unconscious for no more than a couple of minutes. He dragged his hand towards his face. His wristwatch swam into focus: 12:17. He recalled hearing the clock strike midnight.
A sound came from outside the room. A distant, low moaning.
Joe dragged himself into a sitting position, leaning against the bed.
The moaning continued. A woman?
He pulled himself to his feet and stumbled to the door. Outside on the landing, he followed the sound of the groans.
A noise from downstairs.
Footsteps? A door closing?
He peered over the balustrade. Into the darkened hall.
No sign of life.
The moaning was coming from Adam’s bedroom. Joe grasped the doorknob and stepped inside.
The room was deserted, dark except for light spilling from a laptop on the floor. Onscreen: a video. Porn. Filmed in a featureless room. A hotel? A blur of flesh. A woman’s voice.
‘Fuck me… Fuck me…! FUCK ME…!’
Judging by the camera angle, the footage had been shot on a camera (a mobile phone?) at the foot of the bed.
‘God…! GODALLFUCKINGMIGHTY! I love your COCK! FUCK ME!’
Joe’s eyes were slowly adjusting to the mass of seething flesh. He could make out a man’s back. A pair of pale, fleshy buttocks, pumping between a woman’s skinny splayed legs.
The man moved then stood aside, revealing the woman’s face.
Isobel.
Panting.
Dishevelled.
Propping herself on her elbows.
‘What the fuck are you doing…? Don’t stop…’
The man had his back to the camera. Joe watched as he reached out to stroke Isobel’s face, tracing a finger along her jawline, prising open her lips then inserting his thumb into her mouth. She sucked hard. Her eyes were glazed, she was breathing hard, looking into the man’s eyes, oblivious to the camera. Her hand darted out, grabbing for the man’s cock. Her voice was hoarse.
‘Do
n’t stop… PLEASE!’
He pushed her hand away.
And now Joe saw it.
On the back of the man’s hand.
A nicotine patch.
Seconds later, the identity of the woman’s partner was confirmed as he turned to the camera and allowed a smile of triumph to spread across his face.
‘Fuck me, Liam… FUCK ME!’
Joe’s mind flashed back to a conversation with Felix.
About Isobel going missing.
AWOL – that was how the lawyer had put it.
A day here, a day there. Her ‘Greta Garbo phase’.
Was this where Isobel had gone to ground? For secret hotel trysts with the man Saffron had brought home? If the power of genetic sexual attraction could overwhelm reunited siblings, it could also cast a spell over an unwitting mother, long estranged from the son she’d abandoned years ago.
As the video played on, Joe’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The bedroom was not, as he’d thought, empty. At the far end of the room, two figures were slumped on the floor.
Isobel and Saffron. Naked. Gagged. Facing the laptop. Their backs to the wall. Arms above their heads. Wrists bound to the radiator.
Isobel’s eyes bulged, her face was shiny with tears, her wrists and ankles bound together. Joe tended to her first. He pulled at the gag in her mouth. A flimsy pair of knickers. The woman gasped for air.
‘Make it stop.’ Her head jerked towards the computer. ‘Please…’
Joe slammed the laptop shut.
The silence was broken by Isobel, half speaking, half sobbing. She couldn’t look her daughter in the eye.
‘I’m sorry… It was like being possessed… I couldn’t stop… I’m so sorry…’
Wracked with sobs, her shoulders heaved.
Joe turned to Saffron, removing the gag that had been stuffed into her mouth. A pair of silk panties. Her face was set hard. She gave no sign of having heard her mother.
‘He took the baby.’ She nodded to the laptop. ‘He made us watch.’
On the floor was a towelling robe. Joe covered the younger woman, then grabbed the bedcover and did the same for Isobel. Snatching scissors from the desk, he cut the ropes that bound the women to the radiator.
‘He’s got a gun.’
Saffron struggled to her feet, pulling the robe around her body. Joe could sense her fighting to keep from breaking down. He saw the open cupboard. Three shotguns remained. He took one and loaded it, pocketing spare cartridges.
‘How many exits does the estate have, apart from the main gates?’
‘One,’ said Saffron. ‘By the old stables.’
Joe was halfway out of the room. He tossed her his mobile.
‘Call 999. Make sure they alert DI Messenger.’
He glanced at Isobel. She was still on the floor. Then he left the women alone, Isobel’s words ringing in his ears.
‘I’m sorry… God help me… I’m sorry…’
* * *
The back door was open. Clutching the shotgun, Joe raced outside, onto the terrace. The moon was obscured by cloud. The darkness was almost total. He ran across the rolling lawns. Past the giant oak. Towards the gates that separated the house from the wildlife park. The wind rustled the trees. Through the gates, Joe paused, panting. Straining to catch the faintest sound, the slightest sign of life.
Nothing.
He ran on, taking the path to the elephant house where the saga had begun. Two murders. The devastation of the Pennefeather family. Revelations about Joe’s own wife and son. Blows he’d not yet begun to absorb, let alone process.
And now Isobel’s affair with Liam.
Her son-in-law.
Her son.
He thought of the woman’s scrapbook.
The envelope in her bedside drawer.
The newspaper clipping about the Kinsella girls.
Gabriel’s birth certificate.
Father unknown.
Did O’Mara know everything? Or was there one last shock awaiting the man who had kept everyone else in the dark?
Reaching the barns that housed the elephants at night, Joe stopped. No sign of life. But someone was near. A man. Joe couldn’t see him. But he could sense his presence.
An animal instinct.
He ducked under the fence and stole across the enclosure, heading for the ele house. Stopping by the keepers’ entrance, he stood still, head raised, senses straining for signs of life, like an animal trying to scent its prey.
Then he heard it. A baby crying. The sound was distant, muffled. It stopped as suddenly as it began. He pressed his ear to the wall of the barn. Inside, something – or someone – was moving. Above a plaque identifying the barn’s occupants, Kashka and Samson, was an iron bolt. No way to open it without making a noise. The observation window would have to do.
The barn’s interior was lit by a low-voltage night-light. Joe could make out Kashka. Behind her was little Samson, the ele Bella had tended on the night she died. No sign of Liam or his daughter.
Joe moved on, into the next barn. He saw Plato, six tons of African elephant, still in musth, fluids seeping from glands around its temples.
He heard it again. A baby’s cry. Faint. Further away. He ran across the yard, ducking under a fence, hacking through overgrown shrubbery, heading for the old stables. Emerging from the bushes, hands scratched by brambles, he stood still, shotgun poised, eyes roving the darkness.
Rounding a corner, he saw the distinctive number plate: PI22A.
The Mercedes was in one of the stable stalls.
Still no sign of life, just the piercing wails of the baby. Joe approached the car. The Moses basket was on the passenger seat. Inside was the baby, her face scrunched in angry protest.
Liam’s voice came from the shadows.
‘They don’t deserve her.’
Joe turned. The Irishman’s shotgun was aimed at his chest. The gates to the road were open.
‘A few seconds more and I’d have been gone,’ said Liam. He gestured towards the twelve-bore in Joe’s hands.
‘Put it down.’
‘You first.’
A thin smile.
‘We both know that’s not going to happen.’
Joe studied the man’s face.
‘OK,’ he said.
But as he made to lower the shotgun, he squeezed the trigger, blasting the car’s front tyre. The gunshot echoed far and wide.
‘Fuck you!’
Liam’s voice was drowned out by a cacophony of animal cries from every corner of the wildlife park. Elephants trumpeted, tigers roared, birds screeched, gorillas bellowed, monkeys shrieked, wolves howled.
The baby erupted into a fit of screams that seemed to emanate from the depths of her soul.
The Irishman took a step forward, jabbing his shotgun at Joe’s belly.
‘Pick her up.’
Joe obeyed, first putting down the shotgun. He leaned into the car, grasping the Moses basket by the handles. Straightening, he felt the barrel of Liam’s gun digging into his back.
‘Back to the house,’ said Liam.
Joe’s heart was hammering, his mouth was dry. He had disabled one means of escape but there were others, not least his own car, parked in front of the mansion.
‘The police are coming,’ he said.
Another jab in the back.
‘Move.’
The cries of distress – animal and human – echoed around the wildlife park as Joe headed for Pennefeather Hall.
‘How in God’s name do you sleep?’ he said.
‘Ask Isobel how she sleeps.’
‘It wasn’t her fault the couple who adopted you died. It wasn’t Isobel who put you in care.’
‘“Care”?’ The Irishman’s voice was full of rage and scorn. ‘Duwayne told you what we went through. I’ve been fucked over all my life. Now I’m fucking some of the bastards back.’ He jabbed at Joe’s shoulder, pushing him through the wrought iron gates. ‘The weirdest thing?’ said Liam. ‘Sex wi
th Saffron? Best ever. She couldn’t get enough, pregnant or not. As for Isobel…’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘What a sick fucking world.’
‘So you decided to make it sicker,’ said Joe, earning a savage dig in the back.
Rounding the corner, he saw the mansion’s lights were ablaze. The house was illuminated by floodlights, the pale blue walls contrasting with the cream columns that rose towards the night sky. In front of the house lay the avenue of chestnut trees.
And the bronze plaque.
Gabriel.
But it was the sight of the woman on the steps that drew the eye.
Saffron. She held a shotgun in her arms.
‘Is my baby OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Joe.
He put the basket on the ground, so she could see the infant.
‘Where’s your mother?’
Saffron didn’t seem to hear. She turned to Liam, her tear-stained face etched with fury and disbelief.
‘You’re vile,’ she said.
The man’s voice was steady. ‘I am what you people made me.’
His wife’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m your sister. You screwed your mother.’
He shrugged. ‘She has to live with the consequences of what she did. And I want her to live every day with what happened to Bella. To Adam. To you. To the baby. Above all, with the memory of being with me in that hotel.’ He smiled and mimicked Isobel’s cries of passion. ‘“Fuck me, Liam. FUCK ME!”’
He broke off. Joe followed his gaze. Another figure was emerging from the house.
Isobel. Dressed in a black velvet evening gown that hugged her figure.
Regal. Serene.
Her hair was tied back, her feet were bare.
She made her way slowly down the steps.
‘Put down the guns.’
Her voice was hoarse. Liam gave a mocking smile.
‘Hear that, Saffron? Mummy’s angry.’
Joe watched as Isobel drew alongside her daughter, stretched out a hand and grasped the barrel of the shotgun. Saffron resisted for a second before relinquishing her grip. She handed the weapon to her mother.
‘I have a question.’
The Irishman’s tone took Joe by surprise. Gone was the anger, the bravado. The man sounded like a timorous child seeking approbation. Reassurance. He looked his mother in the eye.
Animal Instinct Page 26