The story Kate told while Nelly dabbed her with some stinging kind of lotion – that she’d been out for a walk and managed to lose her way in the woods – sounded ludicrous to her. Like anyone would go for a woodland stroll in a short skirt and high heels. But Nelly had obviously seen stranger things along the river, because she just nodded and seemed to accept it. ‘We can drop you at the lock,’ she offered. ‘There’s a bus stop five minutes down the road from there.’ Kate thanked her profusely and said that would be absolutely fantastic.
Relief was flooding through her, mingled with anger. Both at that creep of an antiques dealer, and at herself for having walked into another compromising situation against her better judgement. Still, she’d have the final laugh when she handed the incriminating recording to Julie Hawkins.
Here it is, she thought, reaching into her bag. It was worth it in the end.
Her fingers poked through a long rip in the material. Her heart jolted in panic. Her hairbrush was still there. Her lipstick and eyeshadow. But the sound recorder was gone. So were her phone and her purse.
Had they fallen in the river?
No, they hadn’t. Numb shock hit her as she remembered. Struggling to free herself from the brambles. The tearing of cloth. It hadn’t been her skirt.
Her purse containing her ID. Her real name. Her home address. Her keys and her business cards. And the recording of her conversation with Geoffrey Hawkins.
They were still back there in the woods.
Eight
It took three bus rides to get home, the first of which dawdled around the south Oxfordshire villages for the best part of an hour, the second of which seemed to take forever to turn up and the third of which, cutting west through the city from Oxford centre, was loaded with catcalling drunks. Kate would have walked the final leg, if only she’d been wearing proper shoes. It was the wrong side of ten-thirty before she finally made it back to Jericho, rattled and exhausted and still fretting about her lost things and what the hell she was going to do. Geoffrey Hawkins now knew everything about her. The ‘Helen Brown’ front was totally blown apart. He knew what she did, why she’d approached him; and it wouldn’t take much to find out that his wife had hired her to do it. A nightmare situation.
The warm, soft light from the windows of her flat looked so inviting as she hurried the last steps to her door that she could have wept with relief. She pressed the doorbell, ready for Hayley’s surprised reaction at her appearing without a key, and full of apologies for being back so late.
No reply. Kate waited a few moments and was about to ring the bell a second time when she realised that the door wasn’t only unlocked, it was lying open half an inch. Strange, she thought.
She went inside. The TV was on, with the volume up too high: some American cop movie, a screeching car chase and gunfire, playing to an empty living room. The remote control was resting on the armchair. Kate picked it up and muted the noise from the television.
‘Hayley?’ she called out. Not too loudly, in case she woke Charlie. Which, she thought with a little spike of irritation, the blaring movie might easily have done anyway. It wasn’t like Hayley to be thoughtless like that.
Kate walked into the kitchen, expecting to find her friend making tea or a snack. ‘Hayley?’
No Hayley. She was probably in the bathroom, Kate thought, and discreetly returned to the living room where she flopped in the armchair in front of the muted TV and spent a moment or two reflecting unhappily on her predicament. How was she going to get her stuff back? First thing, she’d have to report her bank card stolen. Was there a twenty-four-hour service you could call to do that?
Two minutes went by, then three, then five. No sign of Hayley, no flushing toilet, no sound of any activity. Distracted from thinking about her troubles, Kate got up and walked back out into the short passage that connected the tiny flat’s rooms. The bathroom door was last on the left, where the passage angled back slightly out of sight. It wasn’t the best-fitting door in the world, and when the light was on you could see it shining through the gap between the bottom edge and the worn linoleum floor. Charlie was forever leaving it on, and so Kate was very used to seeing the telltale strip of light glowing at the top of the passage.
But there was no light coming from under the door now. Kate turned the handle. The door opened to darkness.
‘Hayley?’
Kate frowned, irritation turning to apprehension. Where was she? How could she leave Charlie alone like this?
Thinking of Charlie gave her the impulse to check on him. She walked back down the passage, stepping softly as she neared his bedroom door. She gently grasped the handle, quietly turned it, eased the door open a few inches and put her head round the edge. The room was softly bathed in the soothing blue glow of his little nightlight, and in the shadows Kate could see that his Spiderman duvet was rumpled and pulled back. She stepped silently inside the room to straighten it up.
And that was when she realised that the bed was empty. She backed away from it, startled and now suddenly more anxious. Was he hiding in the wardrobe again? One of his games was to sneak in there when she thought he was fast asleep, then wait quietly until she came to check on him and come bursting out at just the right moment, yelling ‘Fooled you!’. Worked every time. He was a master at frightening the wits out of her. Of course, he did it less and less these days, ever since his eyesight had begun to deteriorate.
But the wardrobe didn’t burst open. Kate ran over to it and grasped the wooden knobs of the doors and swung them out wide. There was nothing inside but clothes on hangers, neat stacks of vests and underwear, shoes, games, toys. Everything that should have been in there except Charlie.
Kate left the wardrobe hanging open and hurried from the room. ‘Charlie? Where are you?’ She no longer needed to keep her voice down. ‘Charlie? Hayley? Come on, guys!’ She ran back into the living room, then the kitchen, then back to the bathroom. The thought striking her that they might have gone into her own bedroom for some reason, she checked there too. Every room in the flat. Empty. Nobody home.
Don’t panic. Stay calm. Think about it rationally.
Where could they be? Maybe Hayley had taken him out somewhere. Perhaps he’d been acting up, or couldn’t sleep. Surely she wouldn’t have taken him with her to a pub? Or what if something was wrong? What if he’d tripped and fallen over or knocked into something because of his sight, and been somehow injured and Hayley couldn’t reach her on her mobile, and she’d needed to get him to the hospital? Now you’re catastrophizing, Kate thought. But she couldn’t help it. She was the mother of a sick child.
She ran outside, turned and skirted the plain red brick wall of the building, turned again and gazed breathlessly up and down the little lane at the back that served as a parking area for herself and the residents of neighbouring flats. Hayley drove an old nineties’ Fiat Punto with faded red paintwork, the plastic trim missing from the front left wheel and scuff marks along the wing from a low-speed argument with a wall. The car was there, its one naked wheel and scrape damage distinctive and unmistakeable in the glow of the nearby streetlight. Kate stared at it for a second as she deliberated about what that meant.
Okay, so Hayley hadn’t gone off in the car. But she might have taken Charlie somewhere on foot. And the car’s presence still didn’t preclude the possibility, no matter how remote and unlikely and irrational and unthinkable, that they’d been taken off in an ambulance …
Panicked at the idea, Kate ran back inside her flat. What should she do now? Call the police? Call the hospital? No, call Hayley’s mobile. That was the logical next step. She dashed into the living room and snatched up her landline phone, called up the menu of pre-entered numbers, scrolled down the alphabetical list until she found HAYLEY MOB and hit the dial button and pressed the handset hard to her ear, tense and waiting.
After a pause, the dial tone started up. Then Hayley’s mobile began to ring. Just three feet away from where Kate was standing, in the living room.
Kate stared bewildered in the direction of the ringtone, then rushed over to find Hayley’s bag lying on the floor, out of sight down the side of the sofa. She dropped to her knees and felt inside the bag, found Hayley’s Nokia among the other items such as her purse and keys, and fished it out. It was still ringing. Kate ended the call on her own phone, and the Nokia went silent. She replaced it inside the bag.
Okay, so Hayley had gone off without her bag, without her phone and without any money. But that still didn’t mean …
She was still wildly trying to figure out what it did or didn’t mean when the landline phone started ringing in her hand. She fumbled it to her ear and answered, in a voice that was tight and quavering with nerves. ‘Hayley? That you? Where are you?’
But it wasn’t Hayley.
‘Hello, Helen,’ said the familiar voice on the other end of the line.
Nine
‘Expecting to hear from me, were you?’ Geoffrey’s voice said in her ear. She could hear the smile on his lips.
She gripped the phone tightly. ‘What do you want?’
‘The same thing as you,’ he said. ‘To meet up again. We need to straighten things out, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I want my stuff back.’
‘Of course you do. Why don’t you come and get it?’
Kate swallowed. ‘I – I have things to do. It’s late,’ she said. Glanced involuntarily in the direction of Charlie’s open bedroom door and added, ‘My boy’s sleeping.’
The smile she could hear on the other end of the line now grew into a chuckle. ‘Really? That’s funny.’
‘Why? Why’s that funny?’ she asked, flushing with a sudden surge of anger.
‘Because he’s sitting here right beside me,’ said Geoffrey’s voice. ‘Aren’t you, Charlie?’ It sounded as if he’d turned away from the phone to address someone else in the room.
The heat of Kate’s anger plummeted to subzero. It was as if all her blood had been drained out of her and replaced with cooling fluid. Ice water. Liquid nitrogen. She began to shake. She pressed the phone so hard into her ear that it hurt, straining to hear the smallest sound on the line. What she heard made her quake even more. The sound of a child sobbing. She recognised the voice of her child better than her own face.
‘That’s right,’ Geoffrey chuckled. ‘He’s with me.’
‘You came into our home!’
‘Well, you did let me have your key. Nice little place you’ve got.’
‘Don’t you hurt him!’
‘He’s not been harmed. You can trust me on that.’
Kate swayed on her feet. She slumped heavily on the arm of the chair. Her head was reeling. It wasn’t possible. ‘Where’s Hayley?’
‘She’s here, too,’ he said simply. ‘Among friends. Waiting for you to come and join her.’
‘I’ll call the police if you don’t let them go right now, you hear me, you sick bastard?’
‘I really don’t think that would be such a good idea,’ he said calmly. ‘I mean, you do want to see your boy again, don’t you?’
Her heart lurched, sending impulses of fear outwards to every extremity of her body from her toes to her fingertips. ‘You said you wouldn’t harm him—’
‘I said nothing had happened to him yet. That’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
‘Please—’
‘Now let’s stop wasting time. You’ll find us at my antiques warehouse. You’d best be on your way or …’
‘Wait, wait, don’t hang up.’ Kate got up from the arm of the chair and frantically began searching for a pen and a scrap of something, anything, to write on. ‘I – I don’t know where the place is. Tell me where to go. I’ll be there.’
She scribbled hastily on the back of a magazine as he gave her the directions. ‘Okay. I have it,’ she told him. ‘I’m leaving right away.’
‘Are you sure, Kate?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
‘That’s good to hear. Don’t do anything you might regret, Kate. I can see anyone approaching from my office window. You’ll find the door unlocked. Come right in. Come alone. Come now. You have thirty minutes.’
And he hung up.
Kate dropped the phone and put both hands to her mouth. Tears rolled down her face. For a few seconds she was unable to move, as if the fear had paralyzed her nervous system. Then she ripped the cover from the magazine she’d scribbled the directions on, hurried over to the sofa and grabbed Hayley’s bag again, plunged her hand inside and found the keys to the Punto and tore them out and ran for the door.
It was only as she threw herself inside the car and twisted the engine into life that she realised she was still wearing the high heels. There was no time to go back and change. The Fiat’s headlights blazed into life and Kate took off.
Her breath came in gasps as she drove, grazing parked cars and tearing through red lights. Thirty minutes wasn’t a long time to cross the city and make her way into the countryside. Every minute seemed to pass in half that time. She jammed her foot to the floor, willing the little car to go faster. Geoffrey had been in her home. He’d taken them. He was going to hurt her boy.
Nearing the centre, she burned through another red light and skidded through the junction of Speedwell Street and St Aldate’s. Right past the police station, praying there were no patrol cars anywhere nearby. Over the old stone Folly Bridge, so fast the wheels left the road on its apex. Then tearing southwards down Abingdon Road; and finally she left the city behind and was heading for the village of Kennington. She stole a terrified glance at her watch. She could make it.
He was going to hurt her boy.
No, he was not.
She’d die first.
The moon was almost full and the night was bright as she urged the Punto cross-country. She kept the interior light on so that she could snatch the occasional look at the directions on the magazine page. She was going to make it.
The final turning flashed up on the left as she sped down the dark country road. She almost missed it, the tyres screeching and scrabbling for grip as she threw the car into the turn. The Fiat fishtailed and straightened out and she accelerated hard down the narrow lane. She was almost there. Three minutes to go.
One minute and twenty-four seconds later, she was at the gate with the sign that said PRIVATE PROPERTY – STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE. A smooth concreted track led for a hundred and fifty yards between two aisles of trees, and then the warehouse was there in her lights. A converted stone barn on two storeys, set in at least an acre of fenced-off land with nothing but fields all around. A gravelled parking area extended across the front of the building. Kate approached too fast, braked too hard and left dugout tracks twenty yards in length before the car rasped to a halt. She flung open the door and clambered out. The black VW Transporter van was parked in front of the building. The warehouse’s windows were all in darkness. Except for one in the very middle of the upper floor. A dim light was burning somewhere behind it; in the yellowish glow she thought she saw the figure of a man silhouetted in the window, watching her. Then the light went out, and the figure vanished.
Ten
One side of the warehouse’s double entrance was unlocked, just as he’d said. The slatted wooden door was tall and thick and heavy, and its hinges groaned as she swung it open far enough to venture inside.
The ground floor was lit only by the moon-glow filtering in through the dusty windows, casting long dark shadows all around her as she stepped nervously, tentatively, into the building. The smell of old furniture hung thick in the air, a mixture of must and mildew and wood soap and wax polish. The space was large, her footsteps echoing off distant walls and the high ceiling. She could hear her own heart thumping loudly, punctuated every two beats by the heavy tick-tock of a long-case clock that stood unseen somewhere in the gloom.
As her vision grew accustomed to the darkness, she could distinguish the shapes of dressers and sideboards, tables and bookcases positioned about the room. Legs of uptur
ned chairs, like curving spikes; the glint of moonlight from the window playing off a standing mirror; the twin pinpoints of narrow-set gleaming eyes peering at her out of the shadows, which made her heart writhe in alarm and drew a gasp out of her, before she realised that it was the stare of a stuffed owl on a perch.
Kate’s muscles tensed again as she heard the rumbling, creaking, rattling sound that echoed around the building and seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. Then, at the far side of the warehouse, a single naked bulb came alive in a dull glow, and she understood where the sound was coming from. The grey steel cage of a goods lift stood from floor to ceiling, extending through a hole to the storey above. It was the creak and grind of turning pulleys serviced by a rumbling electric motor she could hear, lowering the lift platform down through the cage.
The figure of a man stood on the descending lift. His face was in shadow, but she instantly recognised the shape of Geoffrey Hawkins, and felt her knees weaken.
The goods lift juddered to a rest on the floor. The steel-barred cage door creaked open and he stepped out under the dim light. Now she could see his face, and make out the beaming smile on his lips.
‘Nice to see you again, Helen. Or … should I say, Kate?’ His voice carried around the warehouse. He paused for a moment, then took an echoing step towards her and the shadows covered his front, making his silhouette look large and threatening as he slowly crossed the room.
‘I want my son.’ Her voice sounded tiny and weak. She cleared her throat. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded more strongly. ‘What’ve you done with him, you fucking creep? And where’s Hayley?’
‘He’s upstairs,’ Geoffrey said. He kept walking slowly towards her, picking his way between the shadows of the standing antiques. His voice sounded restrained, as if he was bubbling with some kind of anticipation and working hard to fight it down. ‘As for your friend Hayley? You’ll be joining her soon enough, Kate.’
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