Stolen

by Lesley Pearse

  She was just backing up to take a run at the window when Howard came in behind her and caught hold of the candlestick in her hand.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he said. ‘You’ve done enough damage for one night.’

  His cheeks were wet with tears and he was shaking, and she surmised that Fern had died.

  ‘Is she dead?’ She had to have it confirmed.

  He nodded and looked so utterly devastated that Lotte felt unable to say anything spiteful.

  ‘Let me go now,’ she said. ‘If you lock me up again you’ll just be getting in deeper and deeper. I killed her after all, and we can tell the police everything else was Fern’s doing.’

  He looked at her long and hard for some time. Lotte could see he was really scared, and that he didn’t know what to do any more. Fern had always been the strong one, the organizer and the boss; Howard’s role had been mainly supportive.

  ‘I can help you,’ Lotte wheedled. ‘This is awful but we can get out of it if we keep our heads and work together. We have to do something: either ring the police and tell them what happened, or get rid of her body. You can’t leave her lying in the kitchen. And what did you do with the baby’s body?’

  He didn’t answer, he couldn’t even look directly at her, and Lotte sensed she was right in thinking that he and Fern had intended to dispose of both her and the baby together tonight.

  Just the thought of that made Lotte want to reach out for something heavy and dash his brains out, but even though he was thin he was wiry and much stronger than she was and it could end up with her brains being spilled out.

  ‘You aren’t a bad man, Howard,’ she said, putting her hands on his arm. ‘I know it was all Fern pushing for this – she was crazy! If you ring the police now I’ll tell them that. We could even say you were away on business for much of the time and didn’t know what was going on.’

  All at once his eyes flashed dangerously. ‘It was you who made all this happen,’ he snarled at her. ‘You cast a spell over my Fern and you did your best to drive a wedge between us.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Lotte said, her stomach churning with fear because he looked so savage.

  ‘Oh, but you did,’ he said. ‘You fooled Fern into believing you’d willingly have a baby for us, but you just wanted me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Want you?’ Lotte couldn’t help but look and sound scornful as the idea was so preposterous. ‘I had to be drugged, starved and kept prisoner before I submitted to you.’

  All at once he grabbed her hands and yanked them behind her back. She screamed out and tried to fight him off but his hands were like steel vices. He dragged her by both her hands back to the hall, snatched up a length of rope hanging on a peg by the door, and secured her hands behind her back.

  ‘Stop screaming or I’ll gag you,’ he said, and pushing her forcefully on to the hall chair, he used another length of rope to tie her ankles.

  He left her for just a couple of seconds and came back with a pair of kitchen scissors in his hands. He caught hold of a clump of her hair and cut it, then another and another, going all over her head until her blonde hair lay thick on the floor all around the chair. His breath was rasping as he did so, and it seemed to her that there was some kind of symbolism in this act, though she didn’t understand what.

  Lotte was too scared to say anything. She knew by the two ready prepared lengths of rope that he and Fern had planned what they were going to do with her well in advance. But Howard hadn’t expected to have to do it alone; he was clearly completely unbalanced by Fern’s death and the knowledge that now he’d have to get rid of her body too. Lotte decided to remain silent so he didn’t gag her. She might need her voice later.

  Once she was secured, Howard went into the kitchen, and although Lotte couldn’t see more than a few feet into the room she heard him pour himself a drink. She guessed it was brandy to calm his nerves – he gulped it down like a man dying of thirst. A little later she heard him open the cupboard by the back door. She guessed by the crackling sound that he was getting out the picnic blanket with a waterproof backing, intending to wrap Fern’s body in it.

  In the next ten minutes she heard the glugging of drink, sobbing, sniffing and rustling as he wrapped his wife up. But Lotte’s mind was on how she could undo her hands. She’d seen hundreds of films where rope was cut by a shard of glass, even a rusty nail, but such things didn’t lie around waiting to be discovered. If she tried to shuffle or hop along the passage to find something, Howard would hear her.

  She fumbled with the rope and found it wasn’t very tight; she thought with a bit of wriggling she might be able to get free. But it seemed wiser to leave her hands tied until he put her in the car.

  When he came back into the hall his eyes were red and puffy from crying. She could smell brandy on his breath and he had blood all over his trousers and shirt.

  He looked down at her and his lip curled back like a savage dog’s. ‘We had it all until you came along,’ he snarled at her. ‘I always knew you’d be trouble, but you bewitched her with your wide blue eyes and your little girl looks. I hate you!’

  She wanted to hurl abuse back at him, to tell him he was a weak pervert, dominated by a ruthless, cruel woman, but she knew it wasn’t advisable to antagonize him any further.

  He gagged her before unlocking the front door and hauled her outside. To her surprise his car wasn’t there, only a big, dark-coloured van. She supposed he must have bought or hired it in the last couple of days because she hadn’t seen it before. It was too dark now to tell the exact colour, or what make of van it was, and when he opened the back doors to shove her in, she could see nothing, but there was a faint smell of fish.

  He bundled her in roughly, and slammed the doors. Once he had returned to the house, Lotte tried loosening her hands. But it wasn’t as easy as she’d expected; as she moved one hand the rope just tightened round the other, and now she felt sick with terror because she couldn’t get free.

  As her eyes grew used to the darkness she could see a small bundle, around fifteen inches long and six or seven inches thick, near her. Tears sprang up for she knew it was her baby. She’d never been allowed to hold her in her arms and now they were going to share the same grave.

  Howard came back then, carrying Fern wrapped up and secured with rope. He put her in a great deal more carefully than he had Lotte and she saw he was still crying.

  Just a few minutes after leaving the house the van bumped over rough ground and Lotte realized they must be on the hard, the area above the waterline at West Itchenor where Howard’s boat was moored. Clearly he was planning to load her and Fern on to the boat, then park his van elsewhere. Once the tide had come right in, he would sail out into the harbour and on out to the open sea. She realized then that the little blue book he’d been looking at so intently earlier was the tide times. She was glad then that she’d stabbed the woman he loved, and she hoped he would have a miserable, lonely life and a terrible, painful death. Someone so cold-blooded deserved to suffer. And even if the thought of that didn’t make her any less terrified, it justified her killing Fern.

  As she lay there waiting for the moment when he’d come and haul her out on to the boat, it struck her that he was taking a very big risk. It might be dark but it was only about nine in the evening, and people must be about and would see him. But then, she’d never been down here at this time of night, so for all she knew there could be many men loading up their boats for fishing trips and suchlike, and what Howard was doing wouldn’t look suspicious.

  The back door of the van was flung open and Lotte was hauled out by her feet and slung over his shoulder, quickly followed by a blanket to hide her and cut off her view. He walked only a few steps over stones, wheezing with the effort, then climbed up four or five steps on to a jetty. Dangling down his back, Lotte could see water between the gaps in the planks, but within a few yards he jumped on to his boat, which rocked beneath them.

  She was thrown into the tiny cabin. It was a small drop, no
more than three feet, but she banged her head, jarred her whole back, and a pain shot through her elbow.

  By the time Howard returned, grunting and wheezing under the weight of Fern who was perhaps three stone heavier than Lotte, she was beside herself with terror, for she’d again attempted to get her hands untied and failed.

  Howard eased his wife’s body in with care, stopping to rest and get his breath back. Lotte was so close to Fern on the floor of the cabin that she could smell her blood, mingled with Opium, the perfume she always wore, and it made her feel sick.

  Howard went off and briefly came back on board once more, presumably with the baby’s body, but he didn’t put it in the cabin with them. Lotte felt the boat lurch as he jumped off again, and then heard the sound of the van being driven away.

  Desperation made her go all out to get free, but even though she almost stripped the skin from the back of her hands pulling them against the rope, she couldn’t release them. She tried to bang her tied feet on the cabin floor in the hope that someone would hear the sound, and she grunted against the gag too, but it was to no avail. The tide was coming in fast, she could hear the slap of waves against the hull, and now she understood the phrase ‘staring death in the face’, for she could see absolutely no way of escape.

  It was some time before Howard returned, perhaps an hour, during which Lotte had endured cramp in her legs and pins and needles in her arms and she felt she might suffocate with the gag. He took no more than a cursory look into the cabin, but even so she got a strong whiff of drink and wondered if he’d been into the pub in his bloodstained clothes, or had gone home. He slammed the cabin door and started up the engine.

  Lotte’s cotton dress and cardigan wouldn’t have been warm enough at night on land. But once they were out on open water she was freezing. Lying there shivering, she strained her ears, hoping to hear other craft, but there was nothing close by.

  She knew when they’d left the harbour for the swell increased dramatically. All she could see was a square of night sky though the glass panel on the cabin door, and now and again spray flicking up over the stern too. Howard was there, steering the boat, but he was to the right of her line of vision. She wondered how far he was going to go before he threw her overboard.

  Time had ceased to have any meaning. It felt as though she’d been in the boat for hours, but she guessed it was probably little more than two, when he cut the engine.

  The cabin door opened and in he came to drag her out by the shoulders.

  ‘Calm down,’ he snapped at her as she bucked and struggled. ‘There’s nothing to gain by doing that.’

  He hoisted her up to sit her on the side of the boat, and to her amazement cut the rope at her ankles with a penknife.

  ‘I’m not going to drop you in tied up,’ he said, blasting brandy fumes in her face. ‘They’ll think you took your own life when they find your body. I’m putting the baby in with you too.’

  Then he cut the rope on her wrists, and finally removed the gag.

  ‘I regret the day we rescued you from that man in South America,’ he said, grabbing hold of her chin and yanking it so she had to look at him. Dark as it was, she could see a maniacal gleam in his eyes, and his face was contorted with hatred. ‘We should have stood and watched him kill you. You destroyed everything I had with my Fern. We were sweethearts right from kids, there was never anyone else for either of us. Now you’ve killed her, and I’m all alone. I can’t even give her a Christian burial – I’ll have to weigh her down so she’s never found. You did that to me!’

  ‘I’m sorry she’s gone, but don’t do this, please,’ Lotte whimpered.

  He didn’t answer, just let go of her chin, pushed her in the chest and suddenly she was in the sea. It was such a shock, and so cold she felt her heart might stop. But she managed to tread water and rub the water from her eyes, and she saw him standing on the boat grinning down at her, holding something in his hands.

  ‘You said you wanted to hold it!’ he said, and with a chilling laugh he pulled the covers from the bundle to reveal her baby, dressed in white. ‘Here you are, catch!’ he shouted, and hurled her at Lotte.

  Lotte was too horrified to react for a minute. It was only when Howard started up the boat again and headed on further out to sea that she realized the baby was right in front of her. She looked perfect, just very pale, stiff and cold, dressed in a white babygro. Lotte caught her up in her arms as she trod water and held her tightly. She was so icy cold Fern must have put her in the freezer.

  ‘I’m so sorry, little one,’ she whispered, almost choking on her tears. ‘Forgive my part in this. I wish I could’ve protected you.’

  The wash from the boat went right over her head and swept the baby from her arms. By the time she’d righted herself and spat out the salt water she’d swallowed, she could no longer see her. ‘God bless!’ she cried out into the inky darkness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘How far were you from the shore?’ Dale asked in awed tones. She was absolutely stunned by Lotte’s story. While she knew from the facts that Lotte had either been thrown into the sea, or had jumped of her own accord, she hadn’t actually considered what that might entail, or even how it had come about. But even more disturbing was that Lotte had killed Fern.

  Dale couldn’t imagine anyone less likely than Lotte to stab another human being, she was far too docile and kind, and rarely moved to anger. It kind of proved that anyone could do anything if pushed hard enough. Yet awful as it was to think she had been forced to kill Fern, the image of her baby being thrown into the sea with her was heartbreaking and sickening. Dale thought she would be capable of killing Howard with her own bare hands for that appalling deed.

  ‘How far from the shore? I don’t know, distances are deceptive at night, especially at sea,’ Lotte replied. ‘I could see lights very clearly, I thought it was just a quick swim away, but the shore never seemed to get closer. I suppose I was being swept along sideways with the current.’

  ‘But you must’ve been in there for hours! How did you survive?’

  ‘Sheer determination, I presume.’ Lotte shrugged. ‘I can remember at the start I was so furious at Howard’s evilness that I felt I had to reach someone to tell them about it. But I couldn’t really swim, it was too rough. I was just bobbing around like a cork in the water, letting it take me where it pleased. But I think that anger kept me from giving up.’

  ‘You must have been terrified,’ Dale said in a small voice.

  ‘Not exactly. I was terrified in the house, the van and the boat, but that was because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. But out there in the sea I felt I was in control. I made myself forget how cold I was, and keep moving towards the lights. I knew if I did start to think I was too tired to move then I would drown. So I kept my mind on what Howard and Fern had done to me and vowed I would expose them.’

  Lotte shuddered as she recalled that cold which struck right through to her innards, making it hard to move her arms and legs. She wasn’t going to tell Dale, but much of the time she couldn’t see the lights on the shore because the waves were too big. As they kept rolling over her, she had to force herself to make a concerted effort to ride with them. The sea and the sky were both black as ink, there was no moon and scarcely any stars either. It was the loneliest she’d ever been, as though she was the only surviving person on the planet. Yet even worse was the knowledge that her baby was being sucked down into the depths. That was like a physical pain which was stronger even than the intense cold.

  ‘Do you remember getting to the beach?’ Dale asked.

  Lotte shook her head. ‘I do remember seeing the first lights of dawn in the sky, which gave me hope that someone would spot me and rescue me. But I think I must have been slipping in and out of consciousness then, and the waves just washed me along. I do remember the scrape of shingle beneath me, but that was only fleeting.’

  The two girls sat in silence on the bed for some time.

  ‘It wil
l be different this time when the men come for us,’ Dale said at length, her voice shaking with fear. ‘They aren’t going to make us drinks like Fern did for you, and you can’t stab anyone with a Stanley knife, the blade isn’t long enough to do more than cut skin.’

  ‘But then they won’t want to kill us,’ Lotte said soothingly, putting her arms around her friend because she sensed she was about to go into a panic attack. She didn’t truly believe the men wouldn’t kill them, but she felt she had to be positive for Dale’s sake. ‘They might even refuse Howard if he tells them that’s what he wants. So he’ll have to come here himself. Between us we can handle him.’

  ‘You think so?’ Dale asked. ‘I wonder where he is right now? And what he did with Fern’s body.’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling he’s somewhere close by,’ Lotte replied. ‘Looking back, I think it was him who tried to strangle me in hospital. Funny that seeing him didn’t immediately jog my memory, but then I was still pretty out of it during those first few days in hospital.’

  ‘You seemed to rally round after meeting your rescuer,’ Dale pointed out.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Lotte murmured.

  ‘Do you like him?’

  ‘Yes, very much, in fact David’s a very good reason to get out of here alive,’ Lotte said. ‘But will he be put off me when he finds out I killed Fern?’

  ‘I think it will make him have more respect for you, babe,’ Dale said with a watery smile, the first one of the day. ‘I know I won’t be pushing you around any more, not now I know what you’re capable of!’

  ‘You never did push me around, just the odd nudge,’ Lotte laughed. ‘Now, shall we both do some shouting out the window?’

  The sea and sky had turned a sullen grey in the rain and the footpath along the edge of the shore from Itchenor towards West Wittering was getting very muddy.