THE UNWILLING SON an absolutely gripping mystery thriller that will take your breath away

by Jane Adams

  He was the key to this, she decided. The key to the bad thing. The one who had the answers and could make the evil stop.

  Katie didn’t know for certain where to find him and had no idea who he was, but she knew that she had to try. He was coming back, he had work to finish, and Katie knew that he would be looking for her.

  * * *

  The Prophet Martyn Shaw had been on retreat, meditating. His seclusion meant that the news of Lee’s death was close on seventy-two hours old by the time his second-in-command, Charles Marriott, gave it to him. He took it calmly, though Marriott could see the tension in the Prophet’s slim body and the tightening of the mouth that he had come to associate with great inner turmoil closely confined.

  ‘Do we know who he chose?’ Shaw asked. ‘He left no will?’

  Marriott shook his head. ‘He left no words, but we know what he planned, Martyn.’

  The Prophet nodded slowly. ‘I’ve dreaded this,’ he said quietly.

  ‘There’s more,’ Marriott told him. ‘Katie ran away from home last night.’

  Shaw gave him a sharp look. ‘We’ve someone looking out for her, I hope?’

  ‘Taken care of. We’ve had her watched ever since we heard Lee was weakening. Best-protected runaway anywhere.’ He smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but Shaw did not respond, his mind on other children whose faces he could not yet see and whose names he did not yet know but who would be dead before the month was through.

  * * *

  The young man’s hair was as dark as his clothing and, as he crossed the wasteland behind St Leonard’s Church, only his pale face reflected what little light penetrated this far from the deserted road. He moved slowly, careful of the piled rubbish and partly demolished walls, the unexpected holes where garden drains had once been and the kitchen steps that led out into now-blasted yards. He knew this place well enough. It had been in this condition for the past two years, since the development money dried up and the land was abandoned, along with the plans that had led to the demolition of so many little streets.

  He glanced back once, looking at the way he had come with intense concern, as though to make certain that he had it right. It was hard to fill in the detail, what had once been walls and doors and entry gates where now there was only rubble and memory, but he felt that he had it right. That there had been no mistake and he had left the child where that first one had been found all those years ago.

  His bike was parked in the shadows between two streetlamps. The chrome gleamed when it caught the light. He straddled it, holding the machine firmly between long legs, feeling in his pocket for something before kicking the bike into life. The skin of his back crawled, itching and tightening as though in preparation for what he had in mind. The faces etched into his flesh — designs in ink drawn by an artist so talented that sometimes her skills seemed like another kind of magic — moved across the surface of his back.

  He paused, checking once more that the paper was still inside the pocket of his jacket, taking it out for a moment and examining the clipping in the harsh yellow light. The eyes of a child met his own.

  Chapter Six

  A long way from Mallingham, Katie woke to a chill grey dawn, her body stiff and cold from the night she had spent in the bus shelter. She had taken the night bus north, looking on the map and choosing something that went in approximately the right direction. The result was that she was now fifty miles from home, numb to the bone, hungry and appalled at how much it was going to cost her to get to Mallingham if her last journey was anything to judge by.

  She’d have to hitch a lift. Her money wasn’t going to get her anywhere near if she relied on buses, and trains were obviously out. Her mum said that they were always more expensive.

  She found a small café, open for the workers on the early shift, and bought herself some breakfast. As she ate, she looked at her map again, grateful to be out of the cold and damp for at least a little while. Her best plan was to head for the motorway, she thought. She’d often seen people standing on the slip roads holding cardboard signs.

  She found a stack of old boxes behind the café and took some time to make one for herself, drawing the letters large and filling them in with scribbled ballpoint pen. On the map, the M1 didn’t look so far away and Leicester couldn’t be more than another fifty after that. From there she could get to Mallingham. There was bound to be another bus, it must be almost local service from there.

  Armed with her sign and an ill-founded optimism borne largely from an inability to read maps, Katie set off on what would prove to be a long miserable walk.

  * * *

  At just before nine o’clock on the morning of the 22nd the office workers at Triton Textiles were about to start their day. Their factory had once been part of a small industrial estate, but redevelopment had left it as isolated as St Leonard’s Church, which could be seen across the wasteland. It was a dog that caught their attention, one of several strays they frequently saw and often fed. This one was a black and tan and looked as though it might have had some German shepherd in its ancestry. It was circling a mound of bricks, from time to time rearing up on its hind legs and using its front paws to prod at whatever had attracted it. Then it thrust its head forward and pulled hard at something.

  ‘Must have found a rat,’ Sheila Brown commented.

  ‘That’s not a rat, it looks like . . .’

  Mary Anthony did not finish her sentence. She stood quite still for a moment and then ran out of the door and down the stairs. Sheila followed her, not quite knowing what was going on but panicked by Mary’s sudden urgency.

  She caught up with her friend as Mary was trying to coax the dog away from whatever he’d found. ‘Grab him,’ she told Sheila. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t bite.’

  Sheila got hold of the dog as best she could and held him away from Mary, who was advancing on the pile of bricks, a look of horror on her face. She turned slowly to Sheila. ‘Go and call the police. Now!’ she shouted.

  For a moment Sheila just stared at her. ‘What is it? What can you see?’

  ‘It’s a child,’ Mary told her. ‘Oh, my God. He’s dead.’

  * * *

  Ray had been out of the office for most of the day. When he returned, just after five, George was already there and Sarah arrived to meet him only a few minutes later. There were a dozen messages waiting on the answerphone.

  ‘We have to get a secretary,’ George said.

  ‘Can we afford one?’

  ‘Can’t afford not to.’

  Ray recalled the woman he had met when he had gone to see Martha. Rowena something or other, he thought. Martha had mentioned later in their conversation that Rowena was looking for work and had just taken a computer course. He made a mental note to phone Martha and ask about her and then mention it to George.

  ‘What messages have I got?’

  ‘One from Old Brothers. They liked our presentation and want a quote and some further advice on implementing the system. Couple of other enquiries coming from that advert we placed in the Mercury and someone called Martha wanting you. She sounded upset.’

  ‘Martha?’ He was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Isn’t that the friend you saw yesterday?’ Sarah asked.

  Ray nodded and reached for the phone.

  Martha was at St Leonard’s. ‘Have you heard the news or seen the papers?’ she demanded.

  ‘No, I haven’t. What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach you all day,’ she told him. ‘It’s about that little boy, Ian Thomason, who disappeared. He’s dead. They found him near the church on the wasteland. He was under a blanket and laid out like my Roger.’

  Chapter Seven

  Katie had walked for miles. And hours. The motorway had been so much further than it had looked on the map. Finally, though, she had been given a lift and the middle-aged couple who picked her up seemed very nice, despite the fact that she was soaking wet and dripping all over their upholstery. They were Martyn Shaw’s
people, but Katie didn’t know that. They did not go out of their way to advertise the fact. The woman wore a small pendant around her neck that carried the symbol of the Eyes of God — a small, stylized eye within a circle — but this was concealed beneath her shirt and Katie didn’t see it.

  By the time they had travelled a few miles up the motorway Katie realized she had problems. The couple seemed to know that she had run away from home despite her protestations that she was going to see friends and her parents knew all about it. She tried to lie about her age but the woman gave her a look which said she didn’t buy it and the man asked, ‘Why not use my mobile? Phone your mum and dad and at least let them know you are safe.’

  As a runaway, Katie thought, she was pretty useless. But these people seemed so nice, so concerned, and she knew her mum and dad would be going through hell, so in the end she agreed and called home. It was very hard trying to explain what had made her run away, especially in front of strangers. She just kept saying, ‘I had to,’ and ‘Sorry about the money,’ not knowing what else to tell them and horribly aware of how she slurred her words.

  ‘The money doesn’t matter,’ her mother told her. ‘Katie, please, just come home. Or let us know where you are and we’ll come and get you.’

  Then the woman spoke to Katie’s mother and promised they would drop her off at the nearest police station when they left the motorway. She gave her mother their mobile number and their names and did her best to reassure her that Katie would be fine and home again soon. Katie wanted desperately to go along with this, but something stopped her. She pretended to agree but she had decided, first chance she got, that she’d make a run for it. The compulsion to follow the dream was just too strong.

  * * *

  There was, thought Ray, something almost mystical about the piece of plastic tape that separated a crime scene from the rest of the world. It was such an insubstantial barrier and yet it might have had the appearance and substance of the Berlin Wall for the effect it had. On one side of the tape life went on as it always had done. On the other life as most people knew it ceased to be and became other-worldly, sinister and terrible. Only the fear and the pain crossed the barrier, creeping out to poison any that came within range.

  There was a single officer left on duty to fend off the curious, though the pouring rain was doing his job for him. A tarpaulin had been rigged over the site and he stood in the shelter, trying hard to avoid the runnels of water that flooded off the edge of it. Ray didn’t recognize him and did not feel like introducing himself at that moment. Martha was crying. Sarah, who had driven him here, stood a few feet back from them both, separated by the gulf of their common experience, another border as mystical and insubstantial as the crime-scene tape.

  ‘It’s the same place,’ said Martha. ‘The same place and he was laid out the same way. That bastard Lee’s dead and they’ve come to finish what he started.’

  Ray wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He had left his raincoat in the car and his hair was plastered close to his head, his jacket soaked through.

  ‘It’s not the same, Martha,’ he insisted. ‘It can’t be. I won’t let it be.’

  He looked across at the young officer and remembered himself eleven years before. He had been a sergeant then and this pile of rubble had been St Leonard’s Vicarage and the boy lying on the front steps, covered by a rough blanket, had been Martha’s son.

  When they finally drove away, Ray insisted that they take a detour. He directed Sarah through what was left of the terraced back streets, ordering her to stop opposite a new supermarket and then, a little later, by another building site.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Sarah wanted to know.

  ‘I wanted to see the places where the other children were found,’ Ray told her.

  Sarah looked at him sharply. ‘You think she could be right?’ she asked fearfully.

  Ray looked at her but said nothing.

  Chapter Eight

  It seemed like for ever before Katie and the couple she had hitched a ride with left the motorway. Their names were Emma and Bill and they had done their best to make her feel at ease and confide in them, asking her questions about her home and her studies and whether she had any pets. The sort of questions her friends’ parents might ask when they were trying hard to be nice but really hadn’t got a clue.

  Katie did her best to reply in the spirit in which the enquiries were made, but she wasn’t really interested, too involved with her plans for escape.

  Twice after making the phone call they tried to get her to say where it was she was going and what she had planned to do when she got there. She could answer only with embarrassed silences and finally pretended to go to sleep to avoid their questions. Tired as she was from her long walk, the hardest thing was keeping this pretence from descending into the real thing and she was relieved when finally the car’s deceleration and the change in the sound of tyres on the road surface alerted her to the fact that they had left the motorway.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked, pretending to wake.

  Emma glanced at her and her look told Katie once again that she had fooled no one. It occurred to her belatedly that there had been no change in the rhythm of conversation between the two when they had supposed her to be sleeping. Katie knew from experience that the first thing adults did when they thought you couldn’t hear was to talk about you.

  ‘We’re just coming up to Northampton,’ Emma told her. ‘We told your mum and dad we’d drop you off at the police station and of course we’ll stay until we know you’re going to be all right.’

  Katie turned away from the woman’s searching gaze and huddled back into her silence in the corner of the car. Northampton, where on the map was that? She remembered seeing it and knew it was still roughly in the right direction, but she couldn’t quite place it in relation to Mallingham. She thought about getting her map book from her pack and having a look, but decided against it almost at once. It might look too suspicious, and Emma, Katie felt, was suspicious enough of her already. Besides, she wanted to be ready to make a run for it as soon as the car stopped and trying to shove a map book back into her pack would just waste time. Anyway, she thought, at eight o’clock in the evening it was now far too dark to see.

  She tried to pay attention to her surroundings without making it obvious. Bill seemed intent on getting her to talk again.

  ‘Your mum and dad are going to be relieved to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They must have been worried sick.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You seem like a nice kid. It must have been pretty serious for you to take off like that. Knowing how worried they would be.’

  Katie nodded but said nothing.

  ‘So, why d’you do it, Katie? What went wrong? You know, I’m sure if you told them they could sort it out.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something you feel might shock them?’ Emma put in. ‘But parents aren’t that easily shocked, you know. They’d much rather be put in the picture so they can help.’

  ‘I know,’ Katie told them. ‘Really, I know.’

  Emma turned around as far as her seat belt would allow and scrutinized her closely. It was, thought Katie, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to tell a secret of her own. Katie’s heart sank, certain that the woman was going to launch into one of those ‘I remember what it was like to be a teenager’ talks that adults seemed to be so fond of and always did all wrong. One thing about her mum was that she didn’t do that sort of thing. She’d talk about the stuff she’d done as a kid. Laugh about it, even cry sometimes, but she never made out that she knew what Katie thought and felt just because she’d once been that age. ‘It’s different for everyone,’ was Lisa’s line. ‘I’ll always try to understand, baby, but never assume I do. Sometimes I need things spelling out, you know.’

  Katie wished she’d been able to do that this time. Spell things out for her mum and ask for her help. It was the voices in her dreams that stopped her
. That and the real fear that if her parents once knew then they would become a part of it, and the danger would reach out and encompass them too. Them and Gavin and all the family that she had ever known and cared about.

  They were approaching the outskirts of Northampton now and Katie looked eagerly out of the window for some further clue. How far from Mallingham? Where should she go when she got away from these two?

  She could barely hide her excitement when she saw a sign saying Leicester was only twenty miles away. Would there be a bus service? Would it run tonight? And, if it did, would she have enough cash? She thought so, but she had never travelled alone before and so far all of her suppositions had turned out to be wrong.

  Watching out of the window, Katie figured that Northampton was based on a complicated one-way system that spiralled in towards the centre. Bill was trying to work out the route to the police station. They had slowed down approaching a set of red traffic lights and Katie decided that it was now or never. Once they reached the police station there’d be people who would give chase; it would no longer be just Bill and Emma. But, Katie thought, they could hardly run after her if she left them at the lights. They were third in the queue of traffic, and a line of cars stretched behind them. Once they had stopped, Katie waited, watching for the lights to turn from red to amber. She was sitting on the driver’s side and a second line of traffic had pulled up alongside. The lights changed. Katie wrenched the door open and leapt out, dragging her pack behind her. The door clanged against the car next to them and she ran, leaving it wide open. The lights had turned to green and the cars in front of Bill’s had moved off. She looked back long enough to see him get out of his car and the driver of the car she had slammed the door into also leaping out and shouting at Katie, then turning to yell at Bill.