As Tom reached the top of the stairs he saw that there was a sort of window in the door to the room. It looked like it was made of plastic rather than glass and was scratched and filthy, but it was clear enough for them to be able to judge the moment.
The team leader was holding up a gloved hand, telling them all to wait. Tom couldn’t stand it. He needed to get to Leo, but he knew that at this moment he had to leave this to the specialists.
Suddenly the hand dropped, the door was flung open, and six policemen flew through the doors, shouting at the tops of the voices, ‘Police, police. Stay where you are. Don’t move.’
The team leader had chosen the perfect moment. One man was on the floor, the other kneeling down with his hands around his neck, shaking him. Before they were able to struggle to their feet, the two fastest policemen were on them.
Tom scanned the darkened room, lit only by two dim fluorescent tubes, buzzing and crackling as they flickered. His eyes flashed around, looking for signs of Leo. And then he saw a dark patch half way across the huge pillared space. A black mound among scraps of debris.
‘Dear God,’ he whispered. He ran. He didn’t care about the two scumbags who had done this to Leo. All he cared about was getting to her.
He skidded to a halt, falling to his knees at her side. His voice caught in his throat, but he had to speak to her, to let her know she was safe.
‘Leo? Leo, it’s Tom. You’re safe now, love. We’re going to take care of you.’
He gently eased the damp fabric away from her mouth and wet the cloth again, trying in vain to cool the burning skin. What had they done?
‘I’m just going to check you, to see what we can do to make you more comfortable.’
Tom lifted his head and shouted to nobody in particular, ‘Where’s that fucking ambulance!’ then his attention went back to Leo.
Gently he pulled back the sleeve of the arm that appeared to be attached to one of the pillars. He bit back a gasp of horror. Leo couldn’t know how bad this was.
Her arm was so swollen that the plastic tie securing her wrist was almost completely hidden under the pus-filled, hot flesh that surrounded it. The end of the tie was attached to a chain looped around the pillar, but he couldn’t cut the plastic without cutting Leo.
Tom leapt to his feet and raced across the room.
‘You bastards. You fucking bastards. Where are the keys?’
Tom turned to one of the policeman. ‘Give me your baton.’ The policeman hesitated. ‘That’s an order, Constable.’ Reluctantly the PC handed over his baton.
Tom walked towards Adam Mellor, the weaker-looking of the two. He pushed his face right up to Mellor’s and shouted, ‘Give me the fucking keys, or I’ll break both your legs.’
From across the room, close to Leo, Becky watched in horror. She stood up and raced towards Tom. The team leader had started to move too, but Tom had halted him with a warning glance.
‘Tom,’ Becky said, her voice strong. ‘Leave it.’
‘Not until this piece of shit tells me what he’s done with the keys. Butt out, Becky. You,’ he said, waving the baton close to Adam’s face. ‘I am looking for an excuse to hit you, and hit you hard. Don’t give me one.’
Becky didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to undermine her boss, but he was in danger of getting himself into serious trouble here.
She heard a groan from behind her and turned. Leo was looking at her. She wanted something, and Becky ran back to her side and fell to her knees.
‘Leo, I’m Becky. I work with Tom. We’re trying to find the keys so we can get you out of here.’
Leo tried to speak. Becky squeezed some water between her sore, swollen lips from a piece of silk lying beside a bottle of water.
Finally Becky made out one word: ‘Keys.’
‘I know. We’re trying to find them.’
Leo made a glugging noise in the back of her throat and Becky gave her some more water. She glanced up at Tom. He was waving the baton at the two men.
‘Desk,’ Leo said. At least, that’s what Becky thought she said.
Becky looked around her. The space was pretty empty, just some odd bits and pieces of broken furniture. But it was a huge space, and there were areas deep in darkness.
Becky pulled a torch out of her pocket and flashed it around. There was an alcove at the far end of the room and Becky ran towards it. In it stood an old metal desk. She frantically pulled at each of the drawers shining the torch inside. In the top left-hand drawer was a small bunch of keys.
‘Tom!’ she yelled as loudly as she could. ‘Leave it! I’ve got the keys.’ She was running as she shouted, and she saw Tom spin round towards her.
He dropped the baton on the floor and ran back towards Leo. Becky threw the keys to him as he crouched down next to his ex-girlfriend.
‘Leo,’ he said, ‘we can’t take the plastic tie off your wrist, love, because we need a surgeon to look at it. But we can detach the chain. Becky, I need you to support her hand, because if it drops and hits the floor, it’s going to hurt like hell.’
Becky watched as Tom undid the chain securing Leo’s leg, and then found the key to detach the other end to the one leading to her arm. ‘You ready?’ he asked.
Becky gently held Leo’s outstretched arm, one hand supporting it just below the elbow, the other under her hand. She could feel the throbbing heat coming through, and it was only then that she saw the sutures, pus oozing freely from around the puncture wounds; only then did she realise what they had done, and why Tom was more furious than she had ever seen him.
As he undid the chain, Leo’s arm fell like a deadweight onto Becky’s hands. Leo gave a small groan, and then Tom was by her side.
‘We’re going to wait here, Leo, until the paramedics arrive and can give your arm some support. Hang on, darling. Hang on.’
Without changing his position by Leo’s side, he swivelled his head.
‘Get those bastards out of my sight.’ Becky saw Tom look at the team leader and mouth the word ‘sorry’.
The policeman shrugged as if to say, About what? and pushed one of the two cuffed men towards the door.
Tom turned back to Leo and she heard him whisper, ‘It’s over now.’
Only it wasn’t.
62
The ride in the ambulance had been agonising for Tom. He hadn’t missed the looks exchanged between the two paramedics when they saw the state of Leo, so he told Becky to deal with the two scumbags who had put her in this dreadful state. He wasn’t going to leave Leo’s side until he knew she was going to be okay.
A forensics team had now taken over the mill, searching for evidence of the other killings. Tom wanted these two to be put away for life, but he had the horrible feeling that Leo’s abduction and unlawful imprisonment might be the only crime they wouldn’t get away with. Maggie’s abduction too, but that wouldn’t add much to the tally. He had nothing but his own personal certainty to go on that Adam Mellor and Ben Coleman were the killers.
Leo had been given something for the pain, and she had drifted off into either sleep or unconsciousness, Tom wasn’t sure which.
The ambulance pulled into the accident and emergency bay at Manchester Royal Infirmary, the very hospital where Ben Coleman had operated on people daily, and at that thought Tom vowed to have somebody check out his mortality rate. A man like him might pick and choose who lived and who died.
As the ambulance doors sprang open, Tom moved out of the way so that Leo could be carried into the hospital, and he followed close behind.
A team had clearly been alerted that she was coming in, and a doctor spoke to Tom. ‘Leave her with us for now, Mr Douglas. It would be helpful if you could let the guys at reception have some details. We’ll let you know where we’re at as soon as we can.’
‘Her arm—‘ Tom started rather uselessly.
‘We know about her arm. The paramedics called it through. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get in there.’
With that, h
e patted Tom on the upper arm and turned towards the doors that Leo had disappeared through. It felt strange to Tom to be offered comfort and support. That was usually his job.
He gave the receptionist Leo’s details and went into the waiting room, unable to sit for more than five minutes at a time. He had called Becky once, and she told him everything was in hand. Mellor and Coleman would be locked up for a long time whether or not the police could get the murders to stick. There was time to find the rest of the evidence they needed.
Becky also confirmed they had taken Maggie Taylor home. She had been in no fit state to give a statement and was so desperate to get back to Josh after all he had been through, they had decided she would be more coherent the next day. They had plenty to hold Ben Coleman and Adam Mellor in custody without relying on Maggie’s statement.
The next forty-five minutes were the longest Tom thought he had ever spent. He had no idea what was happening, but he knew enough not to go bothering people with demands for updates. The A&E department was stretched enough as it was.
The doors behind which Leo had disappeared sprang open and a trolley was pushed through. Tom could see that it was Leo, and the same doctor walked towards him.
‘Mr Douglas, we’re taking Leo up to intensive care. We’ve managed to remove the plastic tie from her wrist, but her arm is, as you saw, acutely inflamed.’
‘Because the bastard sutured her arm to the tie.’ Tom spat the words out in disgust.
‘It was brutal,’ the doctor admitted. ‘She’s very poorly and also severely dehydrated, but we’ve given her a high level of antibiotics and she’s a strong young woman. I’m sure she’ll fight off the infection, but we need to keep an eye on her. Her breathing isn’t good at the moment, and her blood pressure is dangerously low. We need to make sure she doesn’t go into septic shock.’
‘Can I see her?’
‘I can direct you to the ICU. Speak to the team there about a visit. She’ll have her own cubicle, but she’s heavily sedated so don’t expect to get any response from her at the moment.’
Tom held out his hand and the young doctor shook it.
‘It must have been a tough night for you,’ he said to Tom. ‘I don’t often see things as gruesome as that.’
Tom nodded. ‘At least she’s alive, which is more than can be said for some of the other victims of the two shits that did this to her. Take it from me, I’m not going to stop until I’ve caught each and every person who had the slightest thing to do with this.’
63
The burly policeman who was tasked with driving Maggie home was in a chatty mood. He was one of those men who was comfortable with life, and when he wasn’t talking he was humming a tune under his breath. How he managed to keep so cheerful in his job, Maggie didn’t know, and more than anything she wanted him to shut up. Every inch of her body ached from the stress of holding herself together, and if the drive had gone on for much longer she thought she might have screamed at him to be quiet.
She was desperate to see Josh and to do whatever she could to repair the inevitable damage that had been inflicted on her child that night. He had heard every word she had said to Samil, and much as she hadn’t wanted that to happen it had seemed a better option than Josh staying with her. Imagine if he had seen what they had done to that poor girl Leo? Or, Maggie couldn’t help thinking, if he had seen how his daddy had seemed quite willing to kill her. She shuddered at the memory.
When the police car pulled up on the drive of Maggie’s home, the policeman insisted on seeing her into the house, to make sure all was well there. As she opened the front door and walked into the hall, Maggie was still trying to convince him that he didn’t need to come in.
The sound of her voice must have penetrated the sitting room, because the door was flung open and she was hit hard in the chest by Josh’s bullet of a head. He was sobbing with relief.
‘It’s okay, Joshy. Everything’s okay now, sweetheart. It’s all over – they caught the bad guys.’
She hugged him tightly and then crouched down so she could look him in the eye. ‘And they caught them because of you, Josh. The police told me you were really, really brave – a bit of a superhero.’
Her sister appeared in the doorway and looked at Maggie, tears running down her cheeks. Maggie wanted to pour out her heart, tell her sister everything. But she couldn’t. That would make her sister into a criminal too, because Maggie knew she was going to have to lie to the police, and that didn’t fill her with any pride or joy.
‘Everything okay here, ma’am?’ the policeman asked Suzy with a smile. ‘Would you like me to check around?’
Maggie declined the offer. Samil and his friend were under lock and key, so they were safe. The policeman was kind, but she just wanted him out of her house so she could focus on her family, and he finally took his leave.
As Maggie closed the front door she turned to her sister. ‘Thanks for being here, Suze,’ she said, which brought fresh tears to her sister’s eyes. ‘Let’s all go in the sitting room and have a chat, shall we?’
Maggie didn’t want to pack Josh off to bed yet. He needed time to settle, and she needed time to be with him, to block out the rest of the night. She wasn’t surprised to walk into the sitting room and see Lily curled up asleep on the sofa. Maggie looked at Suzy.
‘I wanted us all together in one room. I know she should be in bed, but…’
‘It’s fine. I’m glad she’s here.’
‘Shall I make you a cup of tea or something to eat?’ Suzy asked.
‘No, but can you pour me a very large Scotch do you think?’
Suzy laughed, thinking she was joking.
‘Check my coat pocket,’ Maggie said. She’d had to beg the policeman who drove her home to lend her some money and stop at an off-licence so she could buy the whisky. Now she realised she had forgotten to give the money back to him. She felt a stab of guilt and for a second marvelled that she still had any conscience at all given the lies she was going to have to tell.
‘What about you, Josh?’
‘Could I have some juice, please?’
‘Of course you can.’
And then Josh asked the question. The one question she hadn’t yet prepared an answer for.
‘When’s Daddy coming home?’
It had taken over an hour to reassure Josh that he was safe, and although he was still anxious he was also totally exhausted, so Maggie had tucked both him and Lily into her double bed. She wanted to spend the whole night with them next to her where she could feel their precious bodies warm against hers. She read them a story to settle them and made her way downstairs for a last much-needed drink.
Suzy was still sitting where she had left her, staring into the flames of the decrepit old wood burner that had come with the house. Maggie had loved it on sight, and when filled with flames as now, it was so comforting.
‘How are you feeling,’ her sister asked. ‘I can’t imagine everything you’ve been through tonight. It’s more than anybody should have to face in a lifetime.’
If only she knew, thought Maggie.
‘The whisky’s a good analgesic.’ She tried again to smile, but she was feeling wired with adrenaline and at some point she was going to crash.
‘I thought you answered Josh’s question about Duncan well, but I could tell that you don’t know what to say. Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Duncan’s not coming back. I haven’t worked out how to explain to the kids. I need some time. But he’s not coming back.’
Suzy looked at her, and Maggie could see the understanding in her eyes. She looked away.
They were both silent for a while, and Maggie knew her sister was waiting for her to speak. She felt the words forming, and then they stuck in her throat. She couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t make her a party to all of this horror.
64
Monday
‘Is one of you Tom?’ A young nurse stood at the entrance to the waiting area. It was five in the morning
. Ellie and Max had arrived a few hours previously, but none of them had been allowed to see Leo.
‘I’m Tom,’ he said, standing up. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s a bit groggy, but she’s asking for you.’
Tom had started to cross the room towards her cubicle when the young doctor pushed his way through double pale blue swing doors and strode towards them.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but before you see Leo, I’d like to give you an update. We’re worried about her arm. When she came in we treated her with antibiotics but we were concerned about bacterial infection – necrotising fascilitis. We took a tissue sample, and the tests show that the bacteria is present, so we need to remove some of the tissue in her arm to stop it spreading. We’ll do whatever we can to save her arm.’
Ellie started to cry. As a nurse herself, she knew exactly what this meant, and understood how serious it was.
‘Go, Tom,’ Ellie said through her sobs. ‘Go and see her. I’ll be in in a minute.’
Tom swallowed and tried to fix his face into a neutral expression with a trace of a smile to welcome Leo back to consciousness. The nurse showed him into the cubicle and kept a discreet distance, checking the monitors.
‘Hey,’ he said, sitting down next to the bed, close to her face. ‘Good to have you back with us, Leo.’ He reached out a hand and stroked the hair back from her face.
Leo made a noise deep in her throat.
‘Don’t try to speak, love. It’s okay. You’re safe.’
She made a gurgling noise in her throat. ‘Got them?’ He finally made out what she was trying to say and understood why she had wanted to see him.
‘Yes, don’t worry about a thing. We’ve got them.’
He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, and as he sat back down he heard a sound behind him.
‘Tom?’
He turned his head.
Tom Douglas Box Set 2 Page 62