Chapter 52
Rachel rubbed her head. He mouth was dry and she had a twig stuck to her face. She gazed around; all she could see were trees, rocks and shrubs. She lifted her dusty hand off the ground and wiped it across her gritty eyes. Her mind raced back to the previous day. Had she drank too much and passed out? The strange dreams she’d had mingled with the reality of the day before. Dreams of flying, of her old house with her Collie dog called Mr. Bickerstaff. She dreamt that she had taken a load of photos of him and when she printed them off he was missing from all of them. Then a thought flashed through her mind. Ryan grunting in front of her, his hot breath. She twiddled her hair; had she had sex? Reaching for her pocket she delved down to pull out her cigarettes; great, no fags. She was stuck in some wilderness feeling like shit after some sort of bad trip with no fags. Standing, she gazed at her surroundings and staggered around. She came to a clearing, a tree. “Ouch,” she whispered as she squinted at it, feeling her back at the same time. Splinters, she remembered the sex, if she could call it that. That was the last time Ryan would get his hands on her body, as she recalled he had seen to himself in record time and thought he was some sort of Casanova.
Her heart quickened as her eyes darted in every direction. Something felt wrong. She scratched her arm, her vision became blurred. What on earth had she taken? She remembered smoking some weed but weed didn’t normally knock her out. She staggered towards the dirt path. “Hey guys, this isn’t funny,” she yelled. She stopped and gazed around. Where was everyone? “Ryan you ass, did you have some of whatever I took as well,” she shouted as she approached his body that was splayed out on the ground. “Ryan?” She kneeled down and rolled him over. She shrieked and fell backwards onto her bottom as she realised her wet hand was covered in his blood. Blood, it hit her. Ryan was dead, she was attacked. She grappled with the ground trying hard to get hold of something that was fixed so that she could pull herself up. Her heart boomed causing her to see little dark speckles in front of her eyes, her stomach lurched and she vomited.
Adrenalin pumped as she got to a standing position. She wiped her lips with her arm and staggered as fast as she could towards the waterfall, she could hear the water in the distance. A memory flashed across her mind, a man attacked her. A dark haired, slightly round man. Were they all dead? Had she been the lucky survivor in all this? “Eve, Selina,” she yelled. “Stephen, Kevin.” No reply, all she could hear were the tweeting birds and rustling in the shrubs. The crashing of the water at the bottom of the waterfall was close. She continued to stagger, her mouth tasted rotten and she was parched to the point of feeling faint. As she reached the waters edge she bent over and cupped some water into her hand. She greedily drank it until she could drink no more then she stopped and looked behind her. She might not be alone; they might still be around, playing their sick game. Quietly, she stood and waded her way through the shrubs that led to where the jeep was parked the day before. There was nothing, no cars, no jeep, nothing. Great; from what she could recall, it would be a long walk back to any form of civilisation.
She began trekking along the grit road hoping that she could get to a main road without meeting anyone threatening. Her hands began to shake; she needed a cigarette more than anything. Her camera, what had happened to her camera? A tear rolled down her cheek as the realisation of what had happened hit her. Ryan was dead, her friends were all missing, her attacker was nowhere to be seen. Ryan, her friend. She smiled; they had got a bit silly the night before and made a bit of a dumb mistake. She imaged what would happen if he was here now, how they would just laugh it off, how he would be so convinced he was the best she’d ever had and he’d laugh. He probably would’ve told everyone and she probably would have never lived it down. But none of that would’ve mattered, she just wished he was still alive to be an idiot all the time. She wept and screamed. There was no one, she was alone. They had all left her.
She continued down the snake-like road and walked around a bend and down a slope. She stopped as she spotted a fallen tree. Beside the fallen tree was the start of a blood trail. Her heart quickened as she crept forward, following the trail until she reached a man lay in the road on his front. His arms were splayed out above his head, his knees were bent. She ran up to him, he murmured. After a sharp intake of breath she stepped back. Her attacker lay before her, he was wounded and almost dead. He opened one eye and moved a finger. She stared, fixated with his predicament. How had he got here? Who had wounded him? She had missed one hell of a night in her drugged state. Her stomach turned again, she held it down. Her head began to pound and the brightness of the sun was so intense she could barely see. The man’s hand reached towards her ankle. “You can fuck off,” she yelled as she crushed his fingers under her foot. She had to keep going, get away and find out what had happened to the rest of her friends.
For about an hour she staggered up the dirt path and still felt no nearer to a road but then again, she was staggering. Her muscles felt like ton weights, she eventually fell to the floor. She would sit for a minute; regain her strength. She closed her eyes and concentrated on each painful head pound. So thirsty; so dry; so nauseous.
Her camera was a good one, her nanna was the best. When she got home, if she could find her camera she would show Nanna her pictures. She definitely wouldn’t tell Nanna what she did with Ryan though. The tattoos and piercings were one thing but Nanna definitely wouldn’t approve of casual sex against trees. She smiled as she saw her nanna sat in the kitchen reading one of her usual crime books. Her nanna was cool; on her return she would put her book down and pull out a beer from the fridge. They would then have a long chat about how it all went. Her drinking with her nanna was what they did some nights, followed by a ping curry meal. Ping, ping, “curry’s done Nanna,” she whispered with a smile. The ping turned into a siren. “Oh Nanna, did you burn it? I didn’t know you could burn curries in the microwave.”
She felt an arm under hers as she was rolled onto something. She forced an eye open. The intense sunshine was blocked by a man in a white shirt holding a needle. She yelled. A woman ran over and smiled as she stroked her arms and talked to her in a language she didn’t understand. With a smile on her face she went to sleep. Nanna hadn’t burned the curry, it was done. Rachel smiled as she laid the table for them both. “Thanks Nanna, I don’t say thank you often enough” Her nanna looked back at her with smiling eyes.
“You will always be my little girl.”
“Can I have one of your ciggies Nanna?” Nanna smiled and passed her the packet. Rachel placed the stick in her mouth, lit it and inhaled. “Thanks Nanna.”
Epilogue
The summer had passed in a blur of police interviews and media speculation. Her mother stole the limelight on many occasions with her public displays of upset. “You should write a book, you should talk to the tabloids, you should contact magazines, the money isn't to be scoffed at,” she would say but not once did she show Eve any comfort or tell her how much she had missed her. Her father had turned up to meet them after they landed back in England but failed to say anything meaningful. She’d thought that just this once, given her ordeal and her visible injuries that they might want to hug her or tell her that they loved her but the most they did was what they always did, merely carried out their parental duties. To the world they were a tower of support; to her they were emotionally vacant. She'd even told them she was going back to her studies the following year to become a teacher, her mother had shrugged before continuing to tell Eve how she could make money from her story instead and not bother.
As the weeks went by, she'd started to argue with her mother again, she didn’t want the papers and the interviews, she wanted to blend back into normal life, anonymously. Besides, most of the gristly details had been held back due to the on going trial of Guz and Mehmet Kaplan. Celile Asker had died by gun shot wound that night, Sadik Kaplan had died due to the stab wound from Celile’s accidental attack. Mehmet had been luckier, when the gang shot him; they only
caused a flesh wound. After a week in hospital he was moved to a prison ward.
It was looking bad for Guz her solicitor had assured her. Guz would be lucky to ever be free again and was looking at charges ranging from theft to multiple murder. Mehmet however was looking at a lighter sentence following their testimonies, they all really did believe that he knew nothing of their murderous plans and he had also taken a stab wound for Eve. She shuddered as her thoughts drew back to ‘that night.’ To date the Police had not managed to track down the rest of the gang, she supposed that they'd moved on, taking their illegal activities to another part of the country. Detectives however, were optimistic about some leads that they were following so maybe, just maybe there was hope.
The descriptions that Eve gave of White Suit and Scrawny had led them into an investigation of a mafia style gang that had been operating invisibly for years in the tourist regions. The description that she gave was the best information they’d had to date. Her solicitor had confirmed that Guz and Mehmet had originally refused to talk and vowed that they would not say a word to anyone about any of it, accepting whatever would come their way. Mehmet had buckled under questioning and told investigators about the places that his father had met up with White Suit. Apparently, Guz spoke in great detail of these places when he'd consumed a few beers. After further investigations and drug busts following Mehmet's leads, they had a first name, Nicolai. Not much but a start. Eve shivered; that might not even be his real name, they may never know the real identity of White Suit. A market for women and passports would never just go away, the threat was now greater than ever. She thought deeply about all that was happening and felt tears begin to well up in he corners of her eyes. Even if they caught White Suit, there would always be another White Suit to take his place.
Guz’s sat-nav had also led to various locations that they suspected White Suit had operated from but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Most people that were questioned denied his existence; all too scared of him she expected. Guz’s phone usage history was another story. The violent texts demanding girls and documents from a man he had logged only as The Boss filled his inbox. They had tried to trace these calls but the phone was found to be unregistered and was out of operation.
Tuana Kaplan, the perpetrators elderly mother claimed not to know a thing, she had so far cooperated with the Turkish Police after leaving the hospital. Eve glanced down at the translated statement. ‘They came back agitated and kept sending me out of the way, I started to read my book then I fell asleep on the chair. I suspected that they were up to no good as they kept going to the outhouse at the bottom of the land out the back but I thought they were storing their stolen goods there. I never expected them to keep a woman whom they had kidnapped in the outhouse. I knew my Guz was bad but I never knew he could do what he did.” A wet trail meandered down Eve’s cheek. The woman who had warned her knew her son was bad, she knew what he was capable of or else why would she have warned her. She must have known that they were potential targets from hearing her sons’ discussions. Where did the ‘trust your instincts’ lecture really come from? She had replied with exactly that in her response and hoped that during the trial, justice would prevail. She wept as she thought of the old woman, she probably had no control over what her sons did but she must have known. Did that make her guilty? Eve would leave that question to bear a heavy weight on the old woman’s conscience.
Lastly she closed her eyes and spared a moment for her friends and the others. The bodies of a German couple were dug up. Ilse and Gerhard, Kevin had found their passports in Guz’s glove box and carried them around in the hessian bag, determined to get justice for them too. Having the passports made identification of the bodies easier. She shuddered and began to weep as she thought of their families, suffering like she was. Her friends wiped out forever, as if their bodies or their identities were just a commodity to be traded.
The dig is still on going; so far they have found another four bodies. The police are convinced that their criminal activities spanned other areas, other regions, other unused places in the wilderness. The true extent of their murderous crimes may never be exposed. Eve picked up one of the photos that was stored on Rachel's camera that they recovered in the clearing. It was the photo of her and Kevin kissing by the waterfall, the flower hat just about to fall off her head, she smiled and allowed a tear to fall.
“Mummy Eve, why are you crying?” Harry said as he looked up at her ready to go out. He played with his favourite lucky shell before he placed it in his pocket; the little shell that Kevin had kept in his pocket, keeping his promise to provide Harry with a gift.
“Mummy is just thinking of her friends, that’s all Sweetie,” she said as she bent down and stroked his soft hair. “I love you so much, so so much.” She squeezed her son hard and wept on his tiny shoulder. She looked down, she had created a mascara smear on his pale blue jacket. The little boy hugged her back.
“I love you too Mummy.”
A loud explosion went off, followed by a rocket and another blast. The porch that was in darkness lit up a bright cerise colour. She parted from her son and placed his bobble hat on his head. She wrapped his scarf around his neck before zipping up his coat.
“I see my two favourite people in the whole world are ready for fireworks,” Kevin said as he entered the kitchen. Eve wiped her eyes and hugged Kevin hard.
“I love you,” she said. She leaned back and smiled. He took a tissue out of his pocket and wiped her eyes before placing the case documents back into the brown paper envelope.
“I love you too, more than anything. These past few months have been the worst and the best of my whole life. If I had to do it all again so that I could be here now with you, I would without any hesitation,” he said as he zipped up his coat and grabbed his walking stick.
“Do you love me too Kevin?” Harry said, his wide eyes staring up at them and his cheeky grin expanding.
“I love you too, Mini Munchkin,” he said as he lifted the little boy up with his one arm and kissed his head. Eve smiled; she had her perfect little family. Harry would still go back to his Dad a lot of the time but she knew she was important to him. She had a special bond with him, a bond only a mother can have, one she’d been denied with her own mother. She had something special with Harry, something her parents would never understand. To make her life perfect she had Kevin, her love and she knew they would have a wonderful future together as a family.
The little boy giggled as Kevin hugged him and Eve pretended to bite his ear. “Stop it Mummy.” Kevin placed Harry down on the floor and passed Eve his mittens.
“Come on then, let’s go and meet Auntie Rachel and watch some fireworks,” Eve said as she placed one of Harry’s mittens on his little hand. He ran off towards the door before she could get the other one on.
Eve smiled back at Kevin; he leaned in and kissed her tenderly. “Come on then, let’s go and have some fun.” Kevin walked aided by his stick towards the door, Eve smiled to herself. Her family, her life and happiness, she had everything she wanted. The only tears she would weep now were in memory of her lost friends; three special people who would always have a place in her heart, her friends who didn’t make it. “Are you coming or what?” He said as he turned back and smiled.
“Yes, come on Mummy. You’ll make us miss the fireworks.” She smiled; she loved hearing her son call her Mummy.
“I’m on my way Sweetie,” she said as she darted to the door and turned off the light. She was now ready for a night of fun with her beautiful family.
THE END
Thank you for reading Whispers Beneath the Pines. Any reviews on Amazon or Goodreads would be much appreciated.
Further works by Carla Kovach
Flame
To Let
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
> Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Further works by Carla Kovach
Whispers Beneath the Pines Page 23