I shivered. Nathaniel’s safety looked like being in my hands. If Jake thought there was a chance Nathaniel would go to the police, I really didn’t give much for his chances. I had to play this very carefully. There was an awful lot at stake.
The car covered the miles and I swung into the drive and parked. Taking the bag from the boot, I walked down the garden path to the studio. Opening the door, I went in. The studio was empty. What few belongings Jake had had were missing. I called his name in case he was in the toilet. But even before I opened the bathroom door and discovered that empty too, I knew Jake had jumped ship.
THIRTY-THREE
What now?
I sat down on the settee to think it out. My first feeling was massive relief. If he had truly gone, and it looked a certainty because he’d taken all his things, then I was immediately off the hook. I didn’t have a clue where he was now and I could not be accused of harbouring nor assisting.
I rested my head back against the upholstery and felt the accumulated tension drain from me. Thank God, the danger was past at last.
Maybe I shouldn’t have insisted on Annabel travelling down to London when she wasn’t well and hadn’t wanted to go. Too late, she’d agreed to do what I demanded but at least Sir Jeffrey was on hand. He would look after her.
I got to my feet and began the business of transferring all the items I’d brought over from my cottage back into my car. All the kitchen equipment: kettle, toaster, saucepan, etc., and dismantled the bedding from off the settee that Jake had slept on. The least I could do was leave the studio clean and tidy, as it had been when Nathaniel flew off to Switzerland.
I ran the hoover over the threadbare carpet, wiped down the surfaces and cleaned up the bathroom. It might not have been thorough enough to remove DNA evidence of Jake’s occupancy but at least it looked much more wholesome. If the police had no idea that Jake had ever been here, there would be no systematic search for evidence.
I toyed with the idea of posting the studio keys through the letterbox in the bungalow’s front door but decided as Nathaniel had delivered them into my hands before he left I should hand them back to him.
Taking a final look around, I locked the door, pocketed the keys and drove home.
My mind drifting along pleasurably on the lines of maybe asking Chloe out this evening, I opened the kitchen door and stepped inside.
A hand shot past my face and immediately slammed it shut behind me. Jake Smith detached himself from the wall. He’d been flattened against it, unseen, awaiting my arrival. My heart rate hammered itself up into the stratosphere until I could scarcely breathe.
‘You on your own, Harry boy?’
Unable to speak because my tongue seemed to have glued itself to the roof of my mouth, I managed a nod. He had successfully jumped the surprise on me. I’d no idea that he might be here, waiting for me, it rendered me instantly wrong-footed. The shock left my legs feeling as soggy and weak as wet cotton wool.
I groped for the kitchen chair and slumped on to it.
‘What are you doing here?’ I croaked through stiff lips.
‘You wanted me out of the other place, so, here I am.’
I shook my head from side to side very slowly, trying to gain time to think. No way could I tell him about Fred’s death while he was here at the cottage. He would trash the place – after he’d trashed me. I’d got to get him out.
‘You can’t stay here.’
He hitched a leg on the corner of the table. ‘Go on, then, tell me where we’re going? You said you’d drive me.’
‘I … I don’t know of anywhere …’
He lunged across the table and grabbed the front of my shirt collar, twisting it, trapping my flesh painfully against the unyielding button.
‘Try.’
I was beginning to choke but he abruptly released me. ‘And while you’re trying, you can make me a mug of tea.’
It ended with me making two mugs, one each. It was bizarre, seated either side of the table, drinking tea in a civilized fashion, knowing his flashpoint of anger might ignite at any moment and he could kill me. But the sharp awareness of this all too likely scenario had my mind jinking in terror like a fish taken from the water.
‘Haven’t you got any other friends who are away from their pads right now?’
I stared at him. It was a brilliant question. Of course, that was how we’d fallen lucky in the first place with the studio. Just that one question gave me the answer. I considered it briefly; there was no time to drive around aimlessly looking for an empty gaff. Not when I knew where there was one for the taking.
Draining my mug, I stood up. ‘Get your things. We’re off.’
‘You thought of somewhere?’
I nodded.
‘Safe?’
I shrugged, feeling my self-confidence coming back now I seemed to be the one in charge. ‘Safe as the next.’
The journey into Leicestershire didn’t take long. I turned off the main road down a narrow side road then turned left into the entrance to a long drive. We passed a sign board that read Unicorn Stables.
Jake flashed a glance at me as I drove on. ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘Yep.’
‘If you’re trying to trap me …’ He didn’t finish the threat, the aggression in his tone said it for him.
I ignored him and swung left in an arc when we came to the house, followed the drive around to the back where it ended in the stable yard. I cut the engine and we both sat silently scanning the runs of closed stable doors, the total absence of stable lads. There was an unmistakable deserted air hanging over the whole place.
He grunted. ‘Looks OK.’
‘Come on.’
I got out of the car and went across to the feed room. He followed me. The room housed the stock of horse-nuts, oats, etc. Additives like linseed oil and molasses were stacked tidily on shelves. The hay bales were stored separately in an open-ended barn. The air smelt dry, not musty.
‘This do?’
He grinned wolfishly, ‘You know, Harry boy, I think you and me should go into partnership.’
I repressed the shudder of disgust that ran down my spine. His comment was doubly bitter since I’d stupidly thought him out of my hair only to find I was still as trapped as ever.
‘Let’s get your stuff moved in here out of the car.’
He’d brought the one bag containing his own things, but there was all the equipment I’d thought destined for the cottage to shift.
He returned to the car, collected his bag and took it inside the feed room before following me round to the back of the car. I opened up the boot – and froze.
He came right up behind me. ‘What’s up?’
He looked into the boot and saw what I’d seen: the distinctive bag from the hospital containing his late father’s possessions. He took a deep breath, clenched his fists and pressed them to his mouth.
‘He’s … dead … yes?’ But there was an agonized pleading in his voice, wanting me to contradict him.
‘Yes, early this morning. I’m very sorry.’
‘Oh, you will be, by Christ, you will be.’
He caught my right arm, twisting it up my back to breaking point.
‘Walk.’
He kicked my left leg behind the kneecap. I staggered forward and he kept up the momentum by frog-marching me into the feed room.
‘Where is she?’
I knew who he meant but played dumb. ‘Who?’
‘Your pregnant bitch.’
He accompanied the words with a vicious, sharply jerked knee into my coccyx. Pain, like a bolt of red-hot electricity, shot up my spinal column into the base of my skull.
‘She’s out of your reach.’
They were the last words I was going to say to him about Annabel. Thank God I’d made her go with Jeffrey to London. I couldn’t tell him where she was, even if he tortured me, because I didn’t know where. London was a very big place.
If Jake intended t
o kill me, there was nothing I could do about it; I wouldn’t be able to stop him. He was several inches taller than I was and a good deal broader and heavier. He was also stronger.
I didn’t kid myself. If it came to a fight he would undoubtedly win. But if he didn’t know where she was, he couldn’t hurt Annabel.
It was some consolation.
‘I have got something I need to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Fred confessed. In the hospital, when I took his things. He told me he murdered Alice.’
It stopped him dead. I let the grim fact sink in. His fingers dug deeper into the flesh of my arm.
‘And … did he kill Alice?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s me stuffed then. I can’t tell the fuzz it was my dad …’
‘No.’ I could see only too clearly he couldn’t besmirch his own father’s posthumous reputation. I wasn’t going to tell him that Fred had confirmed it by admitting he’d stubbed out his cigarette in Alice’s ear, singeing her hair and setting it alight. The burning smell hadn’t been cigarette smoke – Matthews was right. It had been hair. The police alone knew that salient fact. I’d tell them, play back the confession, give them the concrete proof. They’d prove it from DNA.
‘So,’ Jake snarled, ‘I’ve nothing to lose now he’s dead, no family left … nothing to lose.’
THIRTY-FOUR
He laughed, an evil, high-pitched snorting sound, his eyes wild and merciless, still holding my arm in a steely grip.
‘You will tell me, Radcliffe. When I get through, you’ll be begging to tell me.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know where she is.’
‘Then I’ll have to see if I can jog your memory.’
‘Whatever you do to me, it won’t help because I don’t know where she is. That’s the truth.’
He reached down swiftly to the side of his right, laced-up boot. Then straightened up, a knife in his hand. I immediately thought about that Tuesday at Southwell Races. Unseen by any of the punters, he’d slid a knife up inside my shirt and drawn blood. I’d thought my number up then but he’d merely used it as a gentle persuader to ensure I followed him out to the car park and into his car. It was probably the same knife. If so, I could vouch for the fact it was razor sharp.
‘I’m gonna ask you once, only once, then you get a slash, OK?’
I didn’t bother to answer him, but fear brought a reflux of hot burning acid into the back of my throat. He’d got a grip on me that was unbreakable. I could try wrestling but all I’d achieve would probably be a dislocated shoulder.
‘Where … is … your … whore?’ The words were spaced and filled with intent.
I swallowed down the hot acid. ‘I don’t know. If I did I wouldn’t tell you.’
Then I closed my eyes and knew a fraction of a second in advance where and when the knife would go in. I felt the wind brush my right cheek, braced myself against the savage pain on the way and jerked my head to the left. I wasn’t wrong. He’d swung the knife in an arc that, thankfully, missed my eye but sliced down my cheek, the sharpness of the knife splitting the skin and sending blood pouring down.
‘You gonna tell me? Or do you want some more?’
I certainly didn’t want more but I knew then that he wasn’t going to risk killing me. He wanted to exact the maximum revenge, and to do that he was saving killing me until he’d killed Annabel. As I realized that, a plan began to form in my mind. It would depend on just how much punishment he was going to inflict. It would also depend even more on how much pain I could take. But unless the savagery had reached a really impossible pain level, he wasn’t going to believe what I was going to tell him.
‘Where is she?’ he yelled at me.
Blood was running into my mouth. I tossed my head, sent a spray of scarlet drops over my right shoulder, knew some had landed on him when he let out a bellow of rage. With luck the drops would soak into his shirt. They could prove very useful as evidence of his guilt.
‘You fucking bastard, tell me!’
‘I don’t know,’ I said sullenly.
He jerked me unexpectedly backwards. I saw a movement of his arm reaching for something on one of the benches, but with my eyes now looking up at the ceiling, I couldn’t make out what he was doing.
I soon found out. He’d picked up a heavy metal measuring scoop. The next second he slammed it down with all his strength on the top of my head. The grip on my arm slackened and, with knees buckling, I fell to the floor.
The world reeled around me and the lights went out.
How long I’d been out of it was an unknown, but consciousness reluctantly took its time returning. The blackness slowly turned to grey, pain sending stabs of sharp bright lights through my head. My befuddled brain struggled to make sense of where I was, what had happened. My immediate reaction was I’d come off a horse. I could handle that. It was the norm. I’d been here many times before – on average, falls happen every dozen rides, give or take. Only this time I wasn’t lying down on either muddy grass or a clean bed.
My arms were in a stiff position at right angles to my body. I couldn’t move them, tried wriggling my toes – they worked, thankfully. Gingerly lifted my knees one at a time – they too obeyed instructions. Not too bad then. No spinal injuries.
The analytical, assessing part of my brain ran through the usual checks I did after a racing fall. I tried opening my eyes. The reason I couldn’t move my arms was because they were lashed to the arms of a chair – a chair I recognized. It was the one used by Bert Merriman, head lad at Elspeth’s stables. No, my rapidly functioning brain informed me, former head lad. Elspeth was no longer in business. Maybe she wasn’t but this was definitely Bert’s chair that he’d used when cleaning his tack.
It was sited directly underneath the metal rod hanging down from the ceiling, ending in several huge hooks used for hanging bridles that were waiting to be cleaned.
And at that point, I remembered where I was – in the feed room at Unicorn Stables. Close but not correct. This wasn’t the feed room; it was the tack room next door, although Bert’s chair wasn’t in its usual place. The soreness down the right side of my face told me it wasn’t imagination wrought by a bang on my head. The reason why I was here was because of Jake Smith.
Although my arms were pinned, my legs seemed free of the chair itself but still somehow restricted. I tried bending forward to look and couldn’t. A length of rope encircled both the back of the chair and my chest. OK, if I couldn’t bend to see what the situation was regarding my legs, I could move them to find out.
I tried bringing them both out in front away from the two front legs of the chair and found I could lift my lower legs all the way up, bringing them parallel to my thighs.
Around my ankles there was a hobble doing its job. Basically, hobbles were used, often by gypsies, to prevent horses wandering away too far. A short length of rope was attached to each of my ankles with a further piece of rope, maybe a foot or so in length, stretched between them. The reason they were used on horses was because they worked. This hobble would work on me if I tried escaping. A slow shuffle at best could be achieved. Anything faster and I’d topple over and fall flat on my face.
Escape at this point was impossible. I’d have to wait for Jake Smith to release me. A cheering thought. He wasn’t intending to release me, though. I was trussed up helplessly because he intended to extract the details of where Annabel was. The body’s parasympathetic nervous system was physically impossible to control, and the thought that brought the dampness of sweat to the palms of my hands was just what form of persuasion was he going to use?
The door opened. Jake Smith came into the tack room. He was carrying a rope, a shallow metal tray of the sort that was used to collect drops of oil from under car engines and a heavy plastic bag filled with some white substance. He came up in front of me, noted I’d come round and sneered. Dropping the items, he went out again. Obviously he was going to use all these disparate objects for
my delight.
When he returned a few minutes later carrying an old-style Alligator saw, the sweat began to drip from my hands. He stood with the saw held across his upper thighs. He smiled chillingly at the tension and acute apprehension I had no doubt he could see on my face.
‘Ask yourself, arsehole, is she worth it?’
I played an ace.
‘She said you were a monster.’
His eyes glittered with hate. ‘Where is she?’
I shook my head and deliberately upped the aggro. ‘No dice.’
He dropped the saw, picked up the rope and tied a loop in one end. Coming round behind me, he dropped the loop around my neck and I felt it tighten as he strung it up around the bridle hooks.
‘Going in for the overkill?’ I challenged him.
‘You just fucking wait. You’ll be crying like a baby soon.’
I hoped not but, knowing the savagery he could deal out, I wouldn’t have bet on it. I needed to judge the next few minutes to the exact second before I actually did cave in. Having secured the hanging rope, he came round in front of me and, to my utter amazement, undid the ropes that secured my arms. Then undid the rope around the chair that encircled my chest. I eyed him without moving.
‘Stand up,’ he ordered.
I did so. If I’d been amazed a moment ago, I was even more so now.
‘OK. Drop ’em.’
I gaped.
‘Come on, for fuck’s sake.’
‘What?’
‘Get ’em off!’
My heart rate, already as high as I thought it could get, found another gear. I undid my waistband. The trousers concertinaed down my legs to the floor, leaving me sporting my boxer shorts.
‘Kick ’em away.’
I obeyed. Where this was going I didn’t want to speculate. It had suddenly turned into a horror movie.
He jerked on the rope and the noose around my neck forced me to sit back on to the chair. He proceeded to clip a leading rein to the front of the noose around my throat and then tied the other end to the leg of a solid bench by the side wall. I was going nowhere, not up, down or sideways.
Dead Reckoning Page 24