by Karla Forbes
The last thing she heard, as a car ploughed straight into her, was a horn frantically sounding a warning and a terrible screeching of brakes.
***
Hubner saw her fall, and stopped dead before suffering a similar fate. He stood, clutching onto a tree for support, panting with exertion and watching the scene being played out before him. The car veered wildly across the road with Annelies sprawled on its bonnet. As it came to rest in the opposite ditch, she was flung free and landed like a rag doll on a grass verge.
Hubner quickly pulled back out of sight and waited. Nothing happened for several seconds, then the two occupants of the car piled out and rushed to where she lay. Hubner held his breath, offering up a silent prayer to whichever deity was listening, that she was dead.
She didn’t move. The two people hunkered down by her side and as one of them felt for a pulse the other was already pulling a phone from his pocket.
Hubner came to a decision. He scrabbled down the bank to pretend to offer his assistance. A subtle pressure on her throat whilst going through the motions of checking her vital signs would ensure that she was dead. The two men looked up as he approached, shock etched on their faces.
“I saw what happened,” Hubner said. “Can I help?”
One of the men began talking into his phone giving details of their location. The other turned to Hubner with a rush of relief. He gestured to where his car was standing with the doors still open.
“There’s a blanket on the back seat,” he said. “Bring it over, will you? We need to keep her warm.”
Hubner had no intention of running errands. “Is she breathing?” he asked.
“Yes, and she has a pulse, but it’s shallow.”
This wasn’t what Hubner wanted to hear.
“Are you sure?” he asked, shouldering his way past. He leaned over Annelies and under the pretence of listening to her breathing, he wrapped his hand around her lower jaw.
The other man shot out an arm, pulling him back. “Yeah, I’m sure. Give her some air, will you.”
Hubner shook him off. “I know what I’m doing. I’m a qualified first aider. If you get the blanket I’ll keep an eye on her.”
The second man finished talking into his mobile and ended the call.
“The ambulance is on its way,” he said with relief. He looked at Hubner. “Do you know her? Did you see what happened?”
A second car slowed and stopped. As the driver stepped out, Hubner rapidly reassessed the situation. He was being seen by too many witnesses, and the opportunity to kill her was slipping away. He jumped to his feet.
“No, I’ve never seen her before. She ran straight past me into the road.” He took a couple of steps back. “She looked as though she was running away from someone. I’ll take a look around. Whoever it was might still be in the woods.”
He turned on his heel and hurried away, melting into the cover of the trees, then stood for a moment weighing up his options. As long as he acted promptly, the situation was still salvageable. He began to retrace his steps towards the lodge, but then remembered that he had left the door of the van open. He swore and broke into a run.
***
Sarah Feltham lay for a long while, forcing her muddled thoughts to focus on what had happened. Somehow it was important. A different man had come. He had frightened her at first, reminding her of the other man, the one who had raped her. But this one had tried to be kind. He had brought her food, but then she had vomited into his face and his fury had been terrifying. She had cried out in fear, and he had left her alone. But then had come another stranger. A woman.
Sarah’s mind began to drift once more, but a voice in her head, urgent and demanding, had shouted at her, telling her to stay awake. This was important. She rallied her thoughts and forced herself to concentrate. Why was it important? The answer shot into her head like a slap around the face. The woman represented other people, normal life, perhaps even rescue.
She dragged herself up onto her elbows and looked around her with the first stirrings of hope. The pain in her head pounded like a hammer into her brain, and nausea engulfed her. She would have been sick if her stomach hadn’t already been empty. The walls of her prison spun around her and she crumpled back onto her side. More than anything she wanted to surrender to the sweet balm of sleep. The warning voice came again, screaming at her, telling her that she had to stay awake. Only she could save herself, but she had to act fast. She raised her head once more and looked around her with vacant eyes. It was then that she saw it: the thin beam of sunlight streaming in through a gap in the door.
She stared at it without comprehension. The door had been locked night and day since she had woken up in this miserable place. Occasionally she had caught a glimpse of the outside world when the door had been opened and quickly closed, but it had long ceased to have any meaning. Her entire world had been reduced for so long to touch and smell, incarcerated as she was in total darkness, that her brain had become numb.
She stared at the sunlight, knowing that somehow it was important but not understanding why – and then, as she gazed, stupefied, a fly found its way in. It buzzed lazily around her and settled on the bucket in the corner.
Suddenly, she understood.
The fly had come in through an open door!
An open door was a route to freedom. She scrambled to her knees and crawled forward, stretching towards the beam of light like a starving man reaching for sustenance. The chain pulled taut, stopping her just inches from the door, and she yanked on it, crying out with frustration. She had been tethered to the floor for so long that she had long since ceased to notice. She began to yell, feebly at first, but then with growing strength as she realised, for the first time in days, that she could see blue sky. She listened. There was the sound of a plane flying overhead and then the distant roar of a motorbike. Normal sights and sounds that told her the world, outside her metal prison, had continued without her.
She called again, louder than before, and began hammering on the side of the van, using the metal handcuffs as a battering ram. She listened again, and this time she heard another noise: the sound of footsteps running towards her. She caught her breath with renewed hope and began yelling. The door flew open and she squinted against the glare, struggling to make out the figure standing, silhouetted, against the sunlight.
A voice cut through the sudden silence.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” he rasped. She screamed out in horror, knowing that the door to freedom was about to clang shut once more.
She scuttled away from him, creeping abjectly into the furthest corner.
“Please!” she wailed, “let me go... Don’t leave me here again… I can’t stand it… Please… I beg you…”
He held up his hands as though calming a frightened child. “It’s OK,” he said reassuringly. “It’s over now. You’re going home.”
He pulled his mouth into a lopsided grin, and looked upon her with such sincerity that she wondered if she could allow herself to believe him.
“I’m… going home?” she whimpered. “Do… Do you really mean it?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said kindly.
She began to hope. She smiled back at him, uncertainly at first, but then with childlike excitement. She was still smiling as he reached out to her, grabbed her firmly around the throat and crushed her windpipe with a single violent downward thrust of his thumbs.
***
Nick caught sight of his quarry and cursed. It was already too late. Whatever business had taken them to Wimbledon Park had been concluded, and they were on their way back to their car. He turned his face away and pulled out of sight, just in time, as they strode towards him, deep in conversation.
“Just one more and we’re finished,” Wilson was saying, but Fox’s answer was lost to the rumble of passing traffic. Nick followed them at a leisurely pace, knowing that the slashed tyre was going to hold them up for a while. When he eventually caught up with them and positioned himsel
f at a safe distance to watch proceedings, the two men were regarding the damage with glum faces.
It seemed to Nick to be as good a time as any to phone Annelies and bring her up to date. He used her mobile to call her, and listened with resignation as his own phone rang and went into answerphone. He left a message, telling her briefly where he was and promising to call again later.
He looked to where Wilson and Fox were struggling with the spare wheel and cast his mind back to the first time he had seen them, similarly stranded. On that occasion, he and Tim had offered to help, and as a result Tim had died.
His mouth twisted into a hard line at the memory. Giving in to a rare bout of pessimism, he began to wonder if he would ever succeed in bringing these men to justice. In spite of hunting them down, rarely letting them out of his sight and trailing them across the south of England, he had failed to come up with a single scrap of evidence that would interest the police. It was a difficult thing to have to admit, but so far he had failed. The stark truth was that if, at this moment, he walked into a police station and told them everything he knew, it would be him, not the real murderers, who would hear the sound of a cell door slamming shut.
***
“If I could get my hands on the arsehole who did this,” Fox muttered as he wrestled to position the jack, “I’d fucking kill them.”
“If they live around here, you might not have to,” Wilson told him.
Fox paused in his work, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand and leaving behind an oily streak. “How do you make that out?” he asked sullenly.
“Think about it,” Wilson said. “A few weeks from now, whoever did this might be bleeding from every orifice and wondering why they don’t feel so good.”
“I hope so,” Fox said emphatically. “I bloody hope so.” He turned back to the work in hand and began jacking up the car.
Wilson watched him, unwilling to soil his hands. When his mobile rang a few seconds later, he was able to give an apologetic shrug and answer it with the air of a man who would be lending a hand if something more pressing hadn’t turned up. He recognised the number and instinctively lowered his voice.
“Gerhard? What’s wrong?”
“There’s been a development!” Hubner told him. “I’m getting out of here, now.”
“You’re what!” Wilson sputtered. “What the hell for?”
“Someone saw the woman inside the van.”
Wilson gaped in horror. “Who? How? Bloody hell, Gerhard, you should have been more careful.”
“It was nothing I did,” Hubner snarled. “She vomited in my face. It went into my mouth. I’m not swallowing that shit for anything.”
“So?” Wilson snapped. “All you had to do was rinse your mouth out. Even if you had swallowed some of the plutonium, a small amount like that wouldn’t do any harm.”
“That’s what I did,” Hubner said brusquely. “But when I got back to the van, there was a woman nosing around.”
The penny suddenly dropped with Wilson. “Are you telling me that you left the van unlocked?” he asked incredulously.
Hubner went on the defensive. “Yes… And? You might have done the same if you’d just taken a mouthful of plutonium and puke.”
“So what happened to this woman…the one who was nosing around?”
“She ran away, straight into the path of an oncoming car.”
Wilson looked around him making sure that he couldn’t be overheard. “You mean she’s dead?”
“Not necessarily. That’s why I’m getting out of here.”
“What do you mean?” Wilson hissed. “She’s either dead or she’s not. Didn’t you check?”
“No, I didn’t!” Hubner bellowed. “It didn’t seem the most sensible thing to do in the circumstances. There were three people on the scene, and one of them had put a call through on his mobile. I doubt whether he’d been ordering a pizza!”
“Yeah, you’re right” Wilson conceded, realising that he had crossed the line in making his point. It didn’t do to antagonise this man. “What happens now?”
“I’m packing up and going straight to Ramsgate,” Hubner said, apparently mollified by the contriteness in Wilson’s tone.
“What about our guest?” Wilson asked, alarmed. “We can’t take her there. It’s not safe.”
“She’s no longer a problem,” Hubner said tersely. He had no need to explain; Wilson understood perfectly. “I’ll dump her on the way to Ramsgate as planned. You two finish what you’re doing and meet me there.”
“But what if this other woman isn’t dead?” Wilson argued unhappily. “She’ll tell the police what she saw.”
“Precisely,” Hubner agreed. “That’s why I’m leaving now. If the police turn up they’ll find nothing. I booked us into the lodge with false names and addresses. They won’t have a lead they can follow.”
“The van?” Wilson ventured.
“No problem. I’ll switch plates again just to be sure. How’s it going your end?”
“It’s going well,” Wilson said, deciding it was best not to aggravate Hubner further by mentioning the slashed tyre. “Four down and one to go.”
“Good. I’ll meet you both in Ramsgate. See you there.”
The phone went dead and Wilson wandered back to where Fox had finished jacking up the car and was sullenly unscrewing the wheel nuts. He glanced up at Wilson’s approach. “Thanks for helping,” he grunted.
Wilson ignored the sarcasm. “That was our beloved Sturmbannführer,” he said with a hint of malice. “I can’t believe it; he’s human after all. It’s quite satisfying to know that he can panic and screw up like the rest of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Fox asked.
Wilson hunkered down beside him and explained what had happened. Fox paused in his work, his expression darkening as he listened.
“In that case, he can forget Kingston. If we were going back to Hampshire it would have been en route, but I’m not backtracking if he wants us to meet up with him in Ramsgate.”
“We have to,” Wilson warned. “He’s in a bad enough mood already, without us turning up with the job half-done.”
“It won’t be,” Fox said, a sly smile spreading over his face. “I know a bloke with a pub in Chatham. I’ve got a score to settle with him, the bastard. It’ll give me a great deal of pleasure to dump the last of the shit on him.”
“A pub in Chatham?” Wilson repeated uncomprehendingly. “I don’t understand.”
“Chatham is on the way to Ramsgate.”
“What about it?”
“The pub’s in the middle of a built-up area.”
“Yeah, and…?”
“He doesn’t get that much passing trade, so he knows most of his customers. They come from the nearby housing estates; ordinary people with families.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“Pubs like that are always organising things like quiz nights, darts matches…”
Wilson’s frown faded and was slowly replaced by an expression of realisation. “I suppose it could work…”
“Of course it will,” Fox said. “It’s perfect.”
***
James Feltham sat by the phone hunched with misery. He had barely moved from the spot since Sarah had disappeared, and the strain was showing. His features were drawn and haggard, and the black shadows under his eyes gave testimony to the fact that, instead of sleeping, he had spent each night distraught, staring into the darkness. William and Chloe had been taken away to stay with their grandparents, and without their noise and chatter the house around him had died. He remembered, with pain, those occasions when he had taken himself off into his study claiming a need for peace and quiet.
He now had more than enough quiet, but he certainly didn’t have peace. His mind had been in a state of turmoil since the abduction, knowing that it was his occupation that had brought this horror upon them all.
The family liaison officer walked in from the kitchen balancing mugs of tea and
a packet of biscuits. He handed them around to the small group of police offers and sat down beside Feltham.
“You need to keep your strength up, sir,” he said solicitously. “Get this down you.”
Feltham looked up distractedly, his thoughts far away.
“What?” He saw the tea and shook his head. “No thanks. I don’t want anything.”
The policeman extended his hand, urging Feltham to take a mug. “Come on sir; drink up. It will make you feel better.”
Feltham took it without enthusiasm, but made no attempt to drink. He stared into the middle distance, lost in his misery.
“If Sarah wasn’t married to a Member of Parliament,” he said, “she would be sitting at home right now, safe among her family.”
The family liaison officer sat back, blowing on his own tea to cool it. “We don’t know that, sir; she might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Feltham turned on him, his face bleak. “She was abducted because of my job. We both know that. It’s a fact, and I’ve got to live with it.”
He fell silent trying to remember how many days had passed without word. Was it five? Six? He didn’t know. Time was merging into a one long stomach-churning nightmare of waiting and hoping. In the beginning he had tried to keep himself occupied, working as normal and following a semblance of routine, but as the days had passed and hope slowly faded, he had sunk into a miasma of guilt and despair. Each time the phone went he would answer it with trembling hands, adrenaline irradiating his body. Everyone around him would move swiftly into action, each knowing exactly what they had to do, but so far there had been no word. The unspoken feeling was that the longer this went on, the more ominous it looked.
Feltham put his mug aside, its contents untouched. “The demand should have come by now,” he said, his voice cracking. “What are they waiting for?”