by David Hodges
Killing the outboard engine, he scrambled out of the inflatable into calf-deep water and, without bothering to secure it, stumbled up a slight incline into the side road which cut off from the main drag along the edge of the flooded fields in front of a row of stone cottages.
He took no notice of the cottages or Hayden’s plain CID car parked in a shallow layby just past the last in the row – he had more important things on his mind – and he was relieved to find his Volvo exactly where he had left it seemingly an eternity ago. The thugs who had incarcerated him had not bothered to take his car keys off him when they had seized his mobile and he produced the remote with the theatrical aplomb of a man whose worries were now all behind him. Gabriel Lessing was finally going to make his mark on society and earn the fame he had been denied for so long – at least, that is what he thought.
Kate was very frightened. Tommy had hardly taken his eyes off her since wheeling her up into the very tower room from which, ironically, she had earlier sprung Gabriel Lessing. It wasn’t just a look either. It was the intense devouring stare of a ravenous animal, but an animal that was obsessed with something far removed from food. With her anorak back on and securely zipped up after her terrifying experience downstairs, she was nevertheless conscious of the fact that underneath it her blouse hung in tatters around her and although she was completely covered, under Tommy’s penetrating stare she had the disturbing, unreal feeling that he could see right through the fabric.
She was relieved that Lessing seemed to have made good his escape, but was under no illusions as to what that would mean for her. The little wimp was too preoccupied with his own welfare to worry much about the lady cop who had risked her neck to effect his release. Though she prayed that if by some fluke he managed to get clear of Lowmoor and make it to the nearest village his natural cowardice would send him straight to the nearest police station, she realized there was also every chance that he would do nothing and just keep on going.
No, she had to face facts. Even if Lessing had managed to get away, she couldn’t rely on him to send help; she was on her own and her time was almost up. She had to get out of this room before either Lessing was found or Pavlovic finally gave up on him and was forced to cut his losses, for then her life would not be worth a dime.
That realization sent her brain into near panic-stricken overdrive as she desperately tried to think her way out of her dire situation. It was obvious that Tommy was not going to walk away and leave her locked up in the room. He had been told by Pavlovic to stay with her and it was obvious that he was going to comply with those instructions to the letter. But so confident was he in his physical prowess that he hadn’t even bothered to lock the door behind him and that did at least present her with a chance, albeit a slim one, if she could just manage to work out a way of distracting him.
Studying that hard brutish face, however, and reading the blatant message in the tiny blue eyes that covered her like twin pistol barrels she shuddered. The one option that had occurred to her couldn’t have been more risky and the very thought of what she would have to do filled her with absolute revulsion. But desperate situations called for equally desperate measures and she wasn’t blessed with the luxury of choice – coupled with which, something had presented itself to her to spur her on.
By chance her fingers had brushed against the cold steel of the pocket knife she had used to cut Lessing’s bonds and which, amazingly, she had left behind in her panic to get him out of the tower room. The knife was now lodged between the slats of the box on which she sat and its blade was still in the open position. Only a couple of inches long, it nevertheless provided her with an opportunity she could not ignore.
Taking a deep breath, she slowly unzipped her anorak, allowing it to fall open and with it the remnants of her blouse. Tommy’s eyes flickered slightly.
‘I know what you want,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Tommy grinned, exposing a row of broken teeth. ‘Do you?’ he said.
She nodded and stood up. ‘You can have it if you agree to let me go,’ she said, knowing full well that there was no chance of that and praying he would not see through her contrived naïvety and suspect a trick.
But he was too obsessed with his carnal desires to suspect anything and he ran his tongue across his lower lip in anticipation. ‘Why don’t I just take it anyway?’ he sneered, moving a step closer.
She shook her head this time, feigning shock at what she had known all along would be his response and shrinking back against the crate. At the same time she fumbled behind her for the knife. ‘No – no, not unless we have a deal.’
He snorted his derision. ‘You’re in no position to make deals, lady,’ he pointed out, ‘just in case you hadn’t noticed.’
He took another couple of steps towards her – a giant of a man, well over six foot in height and built like a brick shed, a crescent-shaped scar down one side of his face and what looked like old stitch marks from a bottle injury across his bald scalp. She felt sick. What chance did she have against this huge powerful thug who had already killed at least two people?
But it was too late for second thoughts now, for he was towering over her, trapping her against the crate, his thick wet lips curled in a lecherous grin and a thin trail of saliva running from a corner of his mouth down his chin. As his left hand closed over her right breast and his right slid down inside the front of her trousers, she brought her knee up savagely between his legs. But it was apparent that he had been expecting this and deflected the blow with a twist of his knee, bursting into a roar of laughter at the futility of such an obvious response.
‘You’ll have to do a lot better than that, lady,’ he taunted – which is exactly what she did. What he had not suspected was that the move had actually been a diversionary tactic and he was totally unprepared for the follow-up. The pocket knife clasped tightly in Kate’s hand swung in a deadly arc towards him, slashing through his right cheek and opening it up to the bone.
The effect on Tommy was predictable. With a wild almost feminine scream, he stumbled backwards, both hands flying to his face in a futile defensive gesture as he cannoned into the wall, fountains of blood spurting everywhere, like the discharge from a fractured water pipe. Kate made the most of the situation, ducking under his arms and racing for the door. She heard him wheeling round behind her, lumbering in pursuit despite his injuries and hurling threats and foul abuse after her as she wrenched the door open.
She took the narrow staircase two at a time, almost losing her balance twice on the uneven steps before she gained the corridor below – at which point she stopped short, staring wildly about her. Where to now?
Heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her. ‘Bitch,’ Tommy yelled. ‘I’ll rip your guts out!’
It had to be the ground floor and the toilet window she had used before; it was the only way she knew.
She turned left towards the main staircase, fearing that at any moment Tommy might produce a pistol and put a bullet in her back. But he didn’t and within a few yards she was out of his line of sight as she threw herself down the stairs, blind panic pushing her on at a reckless breakneck speed – the thought of the thug racing after her enough of an incentive to keep going.
She reached the floor below well ahead of him – a quick glance over her shoulder satisfying herself that he was not in sight. Maybe she had lost him, maybe he had turned right in the corridor above and was even now checking the wrong floor and heading in entirely the wrong direction? After all, how could he know about the toilet and that all-important insecure window?
But then she heard a shout and the thud of feet on the stairs behind her once more. Somehow he had sensed where she had gone and, like a bloodhound, was sticking to the scent. She forced herself to run faster.
Her heart seemed to be leaping about inside her chest like a live thing, the perspiration pouring down her face and neck when she finally stumbled through the toilet door. The mist was clearing outside and moonlight now
illuminated the room again, revealing that the window was closed. She clambered up on to the toilet seat and tugged on the cup-handle to pull it up. It stirred, but refused to open, apparently jammed. Hell’s bells, there was no time!
Footsteps now in the corridor behind her. Tommy! She was trapped! She rushed back to the toilet door to shut it, feeling for a key in the metal lock as she did so. There wasn’t one. Her mouth was dry, her head spinning.
‘Got you!’ a harsh voice snarled and she saw a shadow through the gap as she slammed the door in the thug’s face and put her foot against the bottom of it. Then her questing fingers found the bolt. It seemed to be only a cheap antiquated thing, probably only held on by two or three screws, but it snapped home a fraction of a second before Tommy put his shoulder against the door.
Kate tried not to think about how long the bolt would hold, but sprang back across the room to the toilet seat, clambering up on it and using all her strength to haul on the window’s cup-handle. The window rose an inch, then jammed again. Behind her, the toilet door was shaking under Tommy’s maniacal assault and she heard a splintering sound as the bolt started to separate from the frame. She was shaking now, crying out in tearful frustration and hauling on the cup-handle with a kind of futile desperation. She was going to die, just like Ellie Landy, but worse. Tommy would rape her first and then take his time killing her, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
As the bolt on the toilet door finally flew off and hit the floor with a metallic ‘clink’, she forced her fingers under the partially open window and hauled upwards in one last ditch effort – and it was then that the window suddenly shot up as if propelled by a spring, admitting the cold damp air of the marsh.
Tommy got to her as she scrambled through the gap, grabbing the hem of her anorak. But in his weakened bloodied state he was no match for her and when the heel of her left foot smashed into his badly injured face, he was forced to let go with an agonized cry, overbalancing and pitching backwards on to the toilet floor, leaving Kate to stumble off into emerging strands of moonlight – free at last but for how long?
CHAPTER 19
Hayden was sitting in the CID car, staring dismally at the clouds of white mist, feeling totally helpless and frustrated. He had no intention of returning to Highbridge nick as he had been instructed to do by Roscoe, but deep down he couldn’t help asking himself what on earth he hoped to achieve just sitting there in the cold car, staring at nothing. True, the mist had thinned a little, but not enough to enable him to get things moving, so all he could do was to sit there, staring at it and desperately praying for it to disappear completely.
His prayers were not immediately answered, but as his spirits hit rock-bottom, he suddenly heard the growl of an engine. Frowning, he pressed closer to the windscreen, wiping a hand across the partially clouded glass and clearing a small space through which he was able to see a few feet of roadway in front of the car. He strained his eyes, looking for what sounded like an approaching motorcycle. But he saw nothing even though the engine seemed very close. Then it dawned on him that the sound was not coming from the roadway in front of him but from his left and the direction of the flooded fields. A boat – it had to be a boat and that distinctive growl was more than likely produced by an outboard motor. He felt a sudden surge of excitement. A boat – at last he was in with a chance.
Grabbing his torch and throwing open the door of the CID car, he hauled himself out on to the roadway and stumbled blindly in the direction of the approaching engine, just as it died in a choking gasp what had to be only a few feet away. Seconds later he caught a glimpse of a fuzzy shadow, cutting through the swirling vapour, directly across his path, before abruptly vanishing again.
For one glorious moment he thought it might be Kate, on her way to where she had left her car after bringing the borrowed dinghy back but then cruel common sense prevailed. He had only been afforded the briefest of glimpses of the figure in the murk and had not been able to tell whether it was that of a man or a woman, but he had seen enough to know that the build was all wrong – Kate was tall and slim, this character was short and dumpy. Nevertheless, he was determined to find out who it was and what they were doing in a boat on the flooded Levels and he broke into a run, plunging into the mist after them.
He heard the crack of remotely operated electronic door locks and saw the orange flash of a vehicle’s front indicators just as he reached the big Volvo car and he managed to grab the driver’s door to prevent it being closed behind the rotund little man who was climbing behind the wheel. Hayden recognized him immediately, despite the mist curling in round the interior light, and quickly reached inside the car to snatch the key from the ignition.
Gabriel Lessing cringed in his seat, releasing a series of sobs. ‘Please,’ he whimpered, ‘don’t hurt me. I won’t say anything, really I won’t.’
It was obvious that he didn’t recognize Hayden from the interview at Highbridge police station, but his pathetic pleas sent a neon alert flashing in the CID man’s brain.
‘Won’t say anything about what, Mr Lessing?’ he queried with a heavy frown.
Lessing’s jaw dropped as recognition suddenly dawned and with it an abrupt change in demeanour.
‘Give me back my key,’ the agency man snarled straightening up. ‘You have no right—’
Hayden leaned further into the car, his intimidating bulk crushing Lessing into the seat. ‘I asked you a question,’ he said softly. ‘Won’t say anything about what?’
Lessing flinched again, his new-found bravado abruptly evaporating. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he blurted. ‘I just want to go home.’
Hayden released his breath in an explosive hiss. ‘I am not a violent man, Mr Lessing,’ he said, ‘but I am beginning to lose patience with you, so you had better come clean right now. Where have you just come from and what won’t you say anything about?’
Lessing gulped. ‘They – they locked me in a room,’ he whined. ‘They would have killed me but for that woman sergeant. I – I only just got out in time.’
Hayden stiffened and knelt on the edge of the seat. ‘I think you’d better tell me everything,’ he said harshly, ‘especially what you know about my wife.’
Which the press man did immediately, his reluctance totally shot away now – the whole story spilling out of him in a garbled rush.
‘And you left Kate there after she’d got you out?’ Hayden choked when he’d finished. ‘You ran out on her?’
‘There was nothing I could do,’ Lessing lied. ‘I was going for help.’
Hayden glared at him, his face ashen. ‘You despicable little worm,’ he snarled, hauling himself back out of the car. ‘If anything’s happened to her, you’d better start looking for somewhere to hide your miserable carcass.’ He held up the ignition key he had seized. ‘Meanwhile you can start walking.’ Raising his arm and pivoting round, he hurled the keys as hard as he could into the mist and was rewarded by a faint plop as they hit water.
Heedless of the bleating protests that chased after him, he headed back across the roadway at a run. Lessing had not bothered to pull the dinghy up on to the grass and, even as Hayden caught sight of the rubber prow, the thing had already begun to drift away from the bank. He lurched forward and grabbed the rope trailing over the grass, pulling the craft back in. Then, snaking the rope over a broken fence post projecting above the water close to where the main road disappeared, he secured it with a hitch and climbed aboard.
Fortunately Lessing had also left the key in the ignition and the engine was still hot. It started after a couple of coughs and, well familiar with sailing dinghies from his time at public school and after that as a member of a local club, he had no difficulty turning the boat in the right direction. Seconds later he was a grey phantom disappearing into the mist, steering one-handed while he gripped the torch tightly under his arm as he jabbed the keys of the pad on his mobile with the thumb of his other hand.
The meeting in DCI Ricketts’ offic
e was acrimonious, with both Ricketts and Roscoe on the defensive and continually sniping at each other over Kate Lewis’s disappearance. Hart did his best to cool things down, but only succeeded in drawing the hostility back on himself and the NCA for keeping their suspicions about Larry Gittings quiet for so long. Only when the crackling mobile phone call came through did the atmosphere change and the two DCIs listened with rapt attention to what was for them a heated one-sided conversation between Roscoe and the mystery caller.
‘Another problem?’ Hart queried when the DI slammed the phone down again.
Roscoe eyed him grimly. ‘You could say that,’ he growled. ‘That was Hayden Lewis. It seems he may have found where your so-called Sandman is holed up and also where Kate Lewis could have been heading when she disappeared.’
‘Where is he now?’
Roscoe snorted. ‘On his way to some manor house in Lowmoor. Bloody fool thinks he’s Superman and, if what he says is kosher, he’ll need a damned-sight more than blue tights and the power of flight to get out in one piece.’
Ricketts gulped. ‘This could provoke a major incident. The Chief Super will go spare.’
Roscoe’s eyes glittered. ‘Then maybe you should warn him what’s going down before it happens, sir,’ he said, ‘and while you’re about it, you might like to suggest he gets on to headquarters PDQ to request specialist support and some armed backup.’
Grabbing his coat from the back of the chair and with Hart in tow, he stomped out of his office, snapping at the detective constable sitting at one of the desks in the general office to join him as he headed for the main doors. Out in the police station yard a few seconds later, he tossed the car keys to the DC. ‘Let’s go hunting,’ he growled. ‘We’ve got a DS to find.’
The DC glanced upwards. ‘Looks like we’ll have some help too, sir,’ he said.
Following his gaze, the DI allowed himself a grim smile of satisfaction. He had already suspected that the mist was starting to thin and the confirmation was right there above his head in the form of the pale smoky face of a slowly emerging moon.