by Anita Waller
He stopped for a moment, trying to find the right words. Pilot provided them.
‘I’ll kill the fucking bastard.’
‘Pilot,’ said Dunbar, ‘believe me, I’d let you. This little girl is so damaged, both mentally and physically, that it is almost a carbon copy of her grandmother. That, of course, is a deliberate action on Treverick’s part. It’s why he took her. Treverick sees his imprisonment as down to Amy and her family. That’s not going to change until the day he dies. On the day she escaped, she was in a dreadful state. He apparently told her he was going to work but he wouldn’t chain her up. He clearly thought she was incapable of moving. She is one brave child, I can tell you.’
Again, he paused.
‘We had to wait a further two days before we could talk to her again because she began to bleed badly and they had to do major surgery. When we next spoke to her, we knew who she was. The DNA results were back. But we not only knew who she was, we knew who Daddy was because when we found Amy in that field the day after he killed her she still had his semen on her and we DNA tested it. We had a match with Treverick for the perpetrator and a match with your DNA that you both supplied seven years ago. She is your Grace.’
The sound that came from Lauren was almost inhuman in its intensity and Pilot held her tightly.
‘So she saw her chance and escaped?’
‘Yes. She waited some time and then realised she could move around an empty house. She broke a downstairs window because the door was locked and crawled out, which is why she was covered in cuts and scratches. She has no idea where she was, she just ran as fast as she could despite the pain she must have been in and on that first night she told the Wainwrights she had slept in a garden shed. She must have been so cold but she said it had a chair in it with a cushion and she used the cushion as a blanket. She left early the next morning, probably through being so cold and unable to sleep until eventually something inside her had told her she needed to stop. She went to a house with a red door – she said because it looked nice – and Mrs. Wainwright rang us immediately.’
Sarah stood and gathered up the untouched cups of tea.
‘I’ll make another drink,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a shock. You need a drink.’ She walked into the kitchen and wiped away a tear. She ached for the young couple that had been robbed of so much.
‘I want to see her.’ Lauren stood and faced Dunbar, her face implacable.
‘You will, but not until the psychologist has explained your side to her. She knows nothing of you, doesn’t even know her name was Grace. Treverick named her Angel. No surname, just Angel.’
‘Does she look like me?’
‘Now that she’s clean and had her hair washed and brushed, she’s actually very much like you,’ he smiled. ‘But mentally she’s in a bad place. We cannot just spring a new Mummy and Daddy on her without a lot of careful planning. Physically, she’s also in a bad place. Just like your Mum, Lauren, she will never have children of her own. She is undernourished, very tiny for a seven-year-old and she will come back to you but it has to be at the right time.’
And then the tears began to flow.
‘I never gave up. I knew she was alive. Pilot, we can love her better.’ She turned to Dunbar. ‘How soon...?’
‘How long is a piece of string,’ he responded. ‘That side of things is out of my hands, I have no medical training so the experts will decide at what point we can start to reveal who she is, who her family is. My job is to find Treverick but that isn’t going to be easy. If he has any brains at all, he will have disappeared by now. And believe me, he does have brains. Now, this is what is going to happen in the immediate future. We are allocating protection to patrol this locality but that can’t go on forever. It can, and will, for the near future. Pilot, you have to step up your security. Your children and Lauren need to be protected at all times. Once we find Treverick, you will be able to breathe easier but until then don’t take any chances at all. We believe he lived within maybe an eight mile radius of where we found Grace because I don’t think in her state she could have travelled further than that but even if we find the house where he kept her for seven years, he’s not going to be there.’
Pilot nodded.
‘Protection will be in place by tonight.’
‘Good. As you know, we have limited funding. Your children need to know who is looking after them, who they run to if there is a problem.’ And then for the first time he laughed. ‘Although I guess Noah is a little young for running.’
Sarah returned with fresh drinks and they all took one. Lauren couldn’t taste it, she couldn’t think of anything beyond Grace coming back to them. She turned to Pilot.
‘Get everyone back here. I need the children with me. Your Mum and Dad, Nan Brenda and Granddad Ken, Aunt Freda – get them back here. They have to know about this. He could go for any one of us now he’s lost Grace.’
‘Now you’re starting to think clearly, Lauren,’ said Dunbar. ‘This man is so evil, he’s well off the scale. We will be fitting panic buttons at Stonebrook Cottage for your grandparents and at Moorgate Manor for your parents, Pilot. But panic buttons are only ever any good if you’re actually there. Everyone needs to up their security in every way until we’ve got him.’
Pilot took out his mobile phone and organised the family into dropping everything and travelling to Hillside Cottage. He explained that they needed a family conference.
Dunbar put down his mug and spoke quietly to Pilot.
‘Do you need me to stay and explain anything? We will be in touch constantly until Grace is back home with you but I need to do my job.’
‘No, you and Sarah go. If there are questions I can’t answer, then I have your number. It goes without saying how grateful we are for this, but please bear in mind we need to see our daughter as soon as possible.’
The police car disappeared from view as Pat and David’s Lexus drove up the drive, followed within a minute by Ken and Brenda in the Range Rover.
Pat was the first through the door carrying her tiny grandson. ‘There’s a police car looks as though it’s taken root at the bottom of the drive. You know why?’
Pilot took the sleeping baby from his mother and passed him to Lauren to put in the crib.
‘We certainly do. We’re going to make drinks for everyone and if you want anything stronger than tea or coffee please bear in mind there’s a police car at the bottom of the drive. Mum?’
‘Do I need anything stronger?’
‘Probably later...’
‘Then I’ll have tea. Your Dad will have coffee, no sugar.’
‘Dad?’
Coffee, no sugar,’ David said with a sigh. ‘She’s put me on a diet.’ He bent down to whisper to a giggling Olivia. ‘She’s cruel to me, isn’t she, Honeybun.’ Olivia nodded and skipped over to the doll’s house. Time to play.
Pat’s greying hair was looking a little tousled and she tried to smooth it with her hand. She turned her huge eyes towards her husband. ‘David, do you have a comb? I didn’t even stop to pick up my bag.’
David grinned and looked at her. ‘You look absolutely fine, still the same gorgeous face I fell in love with all those years ago - a bit chubbier, perhaps, but...’
Pat punched him on the arm. ‘Careful, husband dearest, I’m the one controlling your food at the moment. It can be reduced further...’
He rubbed his hand across his expanding stomach area and laughed.
Ken and Brenda walked through the door, concern etched on their faces.
‘Do you know...?’
Pilot interrupted her. ‘There’s a police car at the bottom of our drive. Yes, we know.’
‘Oh...’ Brenda looked quite disgruntled. ‘Can’t tell you anything, can I?’ Brenda had aged well and she put it down to Ken being some ten years younger than her. She always said that a brown dye skilfully applied to her naturally greying hair worked wonders. And a toy boy for a husband kept you on your toes. Ken, in his blunt Yorkshire fashion,
always said she was a bit of a’reight, anyway.
He was looking older; his legs had suffered some damage a few years earlier and Brenda had noticed increasingly that he tried to hide the pain when he stood up. He had lost most of his hair now and never went anywhere without his glasses, but she still blessed the day he had arrived on her doorstep looking for a job.
Pilot did a quick tally of drinks and moved into the kitchen to make them. Everyone sat around talking about anything but what they wanted to talk about; everyone except Lauren. She couldn’t speak.
She watched Brenda sit down carefully. She was remarkably fit for an eighty-seven-year-old woman but the aches and pains were becoming more pronounced. Ken held her hand, squeezing her fingers gently trying not to let his own aches and pains show.
Pilot carried in the drinks and steered Lauren away from staring out of the window at the darkening sky, to a place on the settee. He looked at his wife.
‘Shall I begin?’
She nodded, knowing that if she tried to tell the twisted story, she would start to cry and they would miss most of it.
‘What about Olivia? Shall I take her to her room?’ Pat asked.
‘No!’ The word was almost a scream coming from Lauren’s mouth. ‘No, she must stay here. She’s playing; she’s lost in her world. She won’t realise what we’re saying.’
David looked at his son.
‘Pilot?’
‘Grace is alive. She’s coming home to us.’
There was an eerie silence in the room and then Brenda said, quite simply,
‘Thank you, Lord, thank you.’
Chapter 5
Later that afternoon, Pilot told the family the entire harrowing story, all the time keeping an eye on Olivia. He wanted no nightmares for his second daughter. The people sitting around listening to him waited until he had finished and then continued to sit silently.
Finally, David broke the tension.
‘How quickly can we get her home to be mended?’
‘We have no idea. We can’t even see her yet, she is so damaged and the professionals say no contact yet. She has to hear about us slowly.’
All of them nodded. Not all of them agreed.
‘The most important thing at the moment is security. Treverick is going to be angry, angry enough to try and take out any one of us, or even all of us. Dad, I’m going to ring Mark. We need to talk to him to get something in place by tomorrow morning. It’s lucky for us that Mark set up his own security company. At least we know him and that he’ll put his best operatives on to it. There will be police cars at Stonebrook and here tonight but we need to be upgrading that. I’d like you to be with me at that meeting if you can.’
David nodded. ‘Of course, and the cost will be covered by me for all three properties.’
‘We may not need to cover costs at Stonebrook.’ He turned to Ken and Brenda. ‘Ken, when do you exchange on Stonebrook?’
Ken and Brenda had taken the decision to retire and had sold the business within a day of it being advertised. As a result, they still hadn’t found their future home and had planned on moving into a hotel in Padstow until they found exactly what they wanted.
‘Two weeks.’ Ken smiled. ‘The new owners would like to move in yesterday, but no, it’s two weeks. Why?’
‘I want you to move in here. I know you said you wouldn’t when we first asked you, but things are different now. It will take away some of the worry if you’re here. Please say yes.’
They looked at each other and Brenda nodded.
‘Pilot’s right, Ken. There is more safety in numbers and they have plenty of room here. It scares me that Treverick knows Stonebrook so well, he could hide in any of the outbuildings and we wouldn’t know.’ She turned to her granddaughter. ‘Lauren, are you okay with that? This is your home, and you haven’t said anything.’
Lauren reached across and squeezed Brenda’s hand.
‘I’ll go make up a bed for tonight and then tomorrow we’ll sort out a suite of sorts for you so that you have your own space away from the little monsters. This is what I wanted anyway, as you know. I never wanted you to stay in the hotel.’
‘Well, that’s one worry off the list,’ said Pilot. ‘Mum, didn’t you say Dawn and Josh are travelling over this Friday? Maybe we should put them off?’
Pat lifted her head and fixed angry blue eyes on her son.
‘I will not allow that imbecile to force me into putting a hold on my life. I’ll explain the situation to Dawn later, and give her the choice, but there is no way I will put her off. And I rather fancy I know what Dawn will say. And I definitely know what Josh will say – he is his father’s son.’
Just for a moment – and no one knew others experienced the same moment – everyone held a memory of John Thornton close to their heart. He had been the rock that all of them had leaned on and he had died far too young. But he had died loved by so many people.
Pilot moved into the room that had been John’s office and picked up the telephone that the author had used so many times. He glanced down the preset list of numbers pinned to the wall just above the phone and pressed 6.
He listened to the ringing and waited for, at the most, three seconds before hearing,
‘Carter Security, Mark Carter speaking.’
‘Mark.’ Pilot spoke quietly and with a note of urgency.
‘Pilot? That you?’
‘Yes. Listen. I need a meeting with you as early as possible tomorrow morning. Will you be able to come to Hillside? I can’t leave Lauren.’
Mark didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course, 7am suit you? Or do you want it earlier?’
‘No, that will be fine. There will be a police car at the bottom of the drive but I’ll warn them you’re coming. You still driving the MG?’
‘I am. Pilot – what’s wrong?’
‘I’ll fill you in tomorrow with all the details but Grace is alive and in a safe place. We’re going to get her back but there are other issues now.’
‘There’ll be a man there in fifteen minutes. I’ll tell him where to spend the night, but he’ll not be sleeping. Do you need one anywhere else tonight?’
‘Yes. Not at Stonebrook, Ken and Brenda are staying here, but Moorgate needs protection. Mum and Dad will be going home later. There’s a police car there, too.’
‘Leave the police car issue with me. I’ll contact the DI you dealt with and tell him what I’m doing. He’ll authorise passes for my men. Was his name Dunbar?’
‘Memory as good as ever, Mark,’ said Pilot. ‘Yes it is. He’s still on the case. He was the one who came here this afternoon.’
‘Right, leave it with me. The lad who is coming to you tonight is Alan Shimwell. Just do what he tells you to do and you’ll be safe. I’ll be there at seven o’clock in the morning. Pilot – I’ll need to know everything. Every last little detail, understand?’
‘Of course … And Mark, thanks.’
He put down the phone and returned to the others.
‘Sorted. Mum and Dad, there’ll be someone at Moorgate when you get back, just show him the best place for him to be overnight and make sure he’s got access to drinks and suchlike. He’ll not be sleeping. Dad, Mark is coming here at 7am for a meeting with us. You’ll be here?’
David nodded.
‘I will.’
Lauren went upstairs to make up a guest bed for her Nan and Granddad and the group of people downstairs began to disassemble. When she went back downstairs it was to see a tall, fair-haired man, about thirty years old, standing at Pilot’s side.
‘Lauren, this is Alan Shimwell. He’s going to spend most of the night in your Dad’s office, but he’ll be doing walk rounds as well. I’m going to take Brenda and Ken back to Stonebrook for some clothes, medication and such, but you’ll be safe here. We’ll bring stuff they’re going to need for a couple of weeks and then everything will be coming anyway.’
Lauren’s face was ashen.
‘Be careful, Pilot. Don’t take any stupid cha
nces like going round inspecting the outbuildings. The police can do that. We don’t know where he is...’
Pilot’s voice was flat, emotionless.
‘Lauren, I hope he’s there.’
Chapter 6
With Ken and Brenda safely ensconced in one of the front bedrooms, it was late that evening by the time Pilot and Lauren were able to sit down and discuss the enormity of everything that had happened during a very long day.
‘So, that’s everybody safe for tonight but that doesn’t really mean anything – we’ve seen that Treverick has patience. Until he’s caught, we can’t live normal lives, Lauren.’
She nodded.
‘I know. And when Grace comes home to us, I think it will be harder to keep us safe because I think he will want her back. We can’t even move somewhere else. He would find us. The only way we will be rid of him is when he is dead.’
‘And you have to know, Lauren, that if I ever get the chance, I will kill him. It will take me away from all of you but then everyone will be safe. I will do it.’
‘I know and let’s face it, anyone who is part of our family would do the same and take the consequences. But for now, we have to trust Jake. It seems that Treverick is a master of disguise so to be honest we wouldn’t know who he was. That’s the truly scary part. He completely fooled Amy all those years ago. She had no idea she was marrying her childhood attacker.’
He pulled her closer to him and they sat staring into the flames in the large inglenook fireplace. Again, Lauren had referred to her mother as Amy and not Mum. They didn’t speak for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.
They went to bed after saying goodnight to Alan and making sure he had everything he required. He said he was fine, he had a kettle and water and he could manage without anything else. His eyes never left the outside world all the time he was speaking to them and they left him with a deep feeling of reassurance.
Neither of them spoke of the subject they really needed to discuss over and above everything else.