Child Taken: A chilling page-turner you will be unable to put down

by Darren Young

  She closed her eyes and put her head on to the wet grass and groaned. There was a noise; a car engine. When she opened her eyes, the hotel building was fuzzy and blurred.

  Then brightness.

  Headlights from a car. Forcing her eyes shut as the glare temporarily blinded her.

  It had entered the car park and was driving towards her.

  67 | Danni

  Through the rain, the blurry glare of the headlights made her blink.

  Danni tried to curl up and make herself smaller, like a mud-covered ball, but her arms and legs hurt so much she could barely move them.

  The lights got closer. Came into focus.

  They were normal headlights, she saw, not ones that looked like thin eyebrows.

  She staggered to her bare feet and stumbled forward, across slippery wet grass and then the gravel of the car park, crying out as the open cut on her toe scraped against the uneven, unforgiving surface.

  It was a smaller car; driving around the car park looking for a parking space as close to the building as possible. There was a girl inside; she could make out her shoulder-length hair as the wiper blades cleared the glass for a moment, and, as the car’s headlights hit Danni full on, the girl inside the car stared at her, not believing what she was looking at. The tyres ground to a halt on the gravel and the driver jumped out and ran towards her.

  ‘Danni?’

  She almost collapsed into Laura’s arms. The young journalist took her coat off and wrapped it around Danni’s exposed shoulders. ‘Let’s get inside,’ she said.

  Ten minutes later, Danni was in Laura’s hotel room, standing with her hands against the bathroom wall as the jet of hot water from the shower struck her body, and dirty, muddy water ran from her feet, body and hair and down the plughole. In the corner, her jeans, top and underwear lay unrecognisable in a filthy heap surrounded by a filthy puddle.

  It took several minutes before she felt warm enough and clean enough to stop the shower running and step out of it. She wrapped the large white towel, which Laura had laid out for her, around her body, and another smaller one around her head.

  Laura was waiting outside the bathroom with a cup of steaming tea.

  ‘Better?’

  Danni sighed and nodded. The water had increased the circulation in her arms and legs, and the feeling had returned to her face and fingers too. She sat down and sipped her tea while she told Laura exactly what had happened from the moment she had arrived at her father’s house.

  Laura didn’t interrupt, and the shock on her face was enough to tell Danni how it must sound.

  ‘Where do you think he will look for you?’

  ‘He’ll go to Sam’s,’ said Danni.

  ‘We need to warn her.’

  Danni nodded, then shook her head. ‘She’s not there. She’s in London.’

  ‘Well, he won’t look here, so we should be OK.’

  Laura looked at the clock which was fast approaching half-past eleven.

  ‘You should have seen his eyes. I’ve never seen him like that.’

  ‘You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.’ Laura unzipped her bag and pulled out a T-shirt and threw it to Danni. ‘Sleep in this,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got some spare clothes you can wear tomorrow.’

  Danni went back into the bathroom and came out a minute later with Laura’s T-shirt on, and her hair wrapped in a fresh towel. She took the hotel’s hairdryer from its holder and plugged it into the wall socket.

  ‘We have to call the police,’ she said.

  Laura was sitting on the edge of the bed. She nodded but was only half-listening, and trying to process what Danni had told her. ‘We’re this close to it all coming out.’ She held her fingers less than half an inch apart.

  ‘I was that close to him finding me in that ditch.’

  ‘But he didn’t. And now he’s probably making a run for it because he knows we’re on to him. If he has any sense, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know, Laura. The police—’

  ‘We don’t know what the police will do. Let me take you to High Cliffs first. We can go straight to the police from there.’

  ‘I just want it to be over,’ said Danni.

  Laura nodded. She did too, but she also wanted to get the story on the website. She felt guilty for making that a priority, but she hadn’t got this far to stop now. She took her laptop from her bag. ‘You need to rest. Take the bed; I’ll be OK on there.’ She nodded towards a sofa.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, first thing tomorrow, I’ll take you to Sandra.’

  68 | Laura

  The alarm on the phone sounded angry, a beeping jab in the ribs, and Laura silenced it quickly.

  It was dark outside; too dark, it seemed. She thought it couldn’t possibly be morning yet, despite the red digits of the TV’s clock saying it was. She picked up the phone from the floor beside her and it confirmed the TV was indeed correct. The sky outside was dark grey; almost black, with thick layers of cloud, and heavy rain was lashing against the hotel room’s window, as it had for much of the night. Laura felt as if she had not slept for more than two or three hours. She sat up and untangled her legs from the sheets and extra blanket, and glanced at the bed.

  Danni’s eyes were open.

  ‘Morning.’

  Danni half-smiled. ‘Sleep well?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really,’ said Laura, and she stood up, stretched, and took the cheap plastic kettle into the bathroom; when she came out, she put it back on its stand and switched it on at the wall. After a few seconds, a gurgling hiss came from it; while she waited for the water to boil, Laura opened her laptop and checked the news and weather.

  ‘Great,’ she said, and Danni looked over at her. ‘This rain is turning to snow later. It’s already hit most of the country.’

  The news page had several articles on it. Locally there had been a fair bit of storm damage, but over the rest of the UK snow had fallen or was falling and weather warnings were now in place, the ones that advised people to only make journeys if they were absolutely necessary.

  Danni got out of bed and yawned.

  ‘I think we should just get to Sandra as soon as we’re dressed. Before the snow reaches here,’ said Laura.

  ‘OK.’

  Laura sat with the computer on her lap and clicked on a tab at the bottom of her screen. The document she had worked on after Danni had gone to sleep was almost finished, and she began checking it, making minor amendments and tidying up the last section, the part she had been working on when exhaustion had finally beaten her and she’d rushed to complete it.

  Danni went to the bathroom, and when she came out she sat on the makeshift bed next to her. Laura jumped and clicked back to the news page instinctively.

  ‘What was that?’ Danni asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It was something.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to see it. Not yet.’

  ‘See what?’

  Laura pressed the tab and the article filled the screen. Danni began to read it.

  ‘I had to get it written so I could send it to the paper asap. If it’s true, of course.’

  Danni blew out her cheeks. Laura knew that, seeing it in writing, the enormity of what they might be about to do was beginning to sink in.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t … ’

  Danni waved her apology away. ‘This is really happening, isn’t it?’

  Laura nodded.

  ‘What do you think she’ll say?’

  Laura had thought about little else before and after the sleep she’d had.

  ‘I’m really not sure.’ And she wasn’t. Just about any outcome seemed possible at that moment.

  ‘What time do we need to leave?’

  Laura looked at the digital clock on the TV. It was almost half-past seven but still middle-of-the-night dark outside. The rain was still falling, but not as heavily now; it had begun to ease, a gentler pitter-pattering on the window.

  ‘As soon as yo
u’re ready.’

  ‘Will she be ready for us?’

  ‘She’s got nowhere else to go.’ Laura shrugged. She’d originally arranged to be there at midday, but she doubted Sandra would care how early she got there and she hoped the manager would not interfere. ‘You OK with that?’

  Danni nodded, and Laura opened her holdall and took out a spare T-shirt, knickers, jumper, leggings and trainers and threw them on to the bed. ‘I’ll wear what I had on yesterday. You can have these.’

  Danni picked them up and went into the bathroom to change. Laura quickly pulled her creased clothes on and went down to the hotel’s restaurant, where she collected a napkin full of mini croissants and pastries; when she got back to their room, Danni was dressed and had rinsed her muddy clothes. She was wringing them out over the bath and dropping them into a plastic bag. Laura doubted that they could be saved but her spare clothes fitted her well.

  ‘Lucky we’re the same size,’ she said.

  Danni smiled and dropped the plastic bag by the door.

  They ate the food and left the room to check out at the reception. The rain was heavier again and bouncing off the car park surface, and off the bonnets and roofs of the cars. They stood in the hotel’s entrance watching and waiting for a break in it to run to the car, but it was soon apparent that there wouldn’t be one. If anything, the weather was getting worse.

  ‘C’mon.’

  Laura held the one coat they had over both their heads and they ran as fast as the surface water allowed until they were inside the VW Polo parked in the far corner. Laura opened the glove compartment, took the SatNav out and found the address for High Cliffs in the ‘Previous Destinations’ section. It quickly calculated the journey to a precise twenty-one minutes.

  Danni looked at her quizzically as she put her seatbelt on.

  ‘I’ve never driven there in the dark,’ Laura said. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  Laura turned the key and the engine slowly spluttered to life, as it tended to do when it was cold. The temperature on the car’s display said it was three degrees, but it felt much colder with the strong wind. She drove slowly to the car park exit, put the validated ticket into the machine, the exit barrier lifted slowly and they rolled under it. At the junction they turned on to the main road, its white lines hardly visible under the rainwater, and as they left the village – even though the car’s clock was telling them it was fourteen minutes to eight – on the unlit sections of road it was still very dark. Laura kept to a low speed as they drove along the coast, the headlights only just showing her the way through the rain. On her left she could see a slightly lighter horizon and knew that the sea was out there somewhere but it was impossible to make it out.

  ‘I can’t believe this weather,’ she said, trying to make conversation and break some of the tension. Danni stared out of the window but didn’t answer.

  Behind them, a few hundred yards away, a car pulled on to the road. Laura didn’t see it because it had no headlights on. It was much too dark, and the conditions far too dangerous, to drive without lights but that was what it did, slowly gaining on them but holding a distance that was far enough back to remain unseen.

  Laura braked to slow down on a tight bend, and the other car also slowed, but it did so without braking, so as not to illuminate the blackness with its red lights. The next section of road was a series of tight bends, a half-mile stretch that ran perilously close to the cliff edge and which had a long set of metal safety barriers to keep drivers away from the drop beside them. Invisible to the eye, there was a seventy-foot sheer drop on to the jagged rocks that ran the length of the shoreline separating the sand from the cliff face.

  There was just enough room for two cars, but in the dark, with so much surface water on the road, it seemed narrower. Laura took her foot off the accelerator and the car’s speed fell to twenty miles per hour; she kept the main beam on, to give them as much light as possible and so that she could see the barriers clearly.

  The car behind them picked up its pace and closed the gap to around a hundred yards.

  Laura still couldn’t see it.

  Then it really began to increase its speed.

  69 | Laura

  The remaining distance to High Cliffs House was a fraction over five miles according to the SatNav.

  Laura slowly negotiated the next bend. The sky was beginning to get a little lighter, but the rain was so heavy that the fastest wiper-blade setting wasn’t quick enough to clear the windscreen for Laura to see properly, and she had to lean forward and peer out to make sure she wasn’t too close to the edge.

  Danni felt sick. Since her mother’s death, she’d tried to avoid driving on roads like this and her frequent dreams always seemed to end with her driving on the edge of a cliff, just as they were now. She closed her eyes, hoping it would settle her stomach.

  Their speed was down to fifteen miles per hour; they were virtually crawling along, and Laura hardly applied pressure on the pedals as they rolled along, the tyres sloshing through several inches of water.

  Crash!

  ‘What the … ’

  There was no warning, no sound, but a hard forward jolt as they were hit from behind, and they both let out a shocked cry at the exact same second.

  Laura’s car grazed the barrier on her left-hand side and she clung to the steering wheel, correcting it to turn them back towards the centre of the carriageway. She glanced to her right, into her side mirror, but could only see a dark shape in the blackness behind them; the raindrops on the windows and mirror blotted any detail out. She thought for a split second that they had been involved in an accident.

  Crash!!

  Danni screamed. Laura knew then that it was no accident.

  The dark shape had hit them again but much harder this time, and the momentum and the other car’s speed pushed the VW into the barrier, making a horrible grating sound as the thin metal of the car doors scraped along the thicker steel.

  Laura put her foot on the accelerator instinctively, trying to get away from whoever was behind them and pull the car away from the barrier, but her wheels spun in the water and they slid along instead, slowly zigzagging along the drenched tarmac.

  The dark shape came again, faster and alongside them, its left front corner leaning into their rear side, forcing them back into the barrier, but with more force; instead of grinding along it, this time one of the panels buckled and broke off, sailing down to the rocks below as Laura pushed her foot down again and got back to the middle of the carriageway.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Danni yelled, but Laura ignored her. She knew she had to stay in front of the other vehicle, because if she let it get alongside her again it might be her car and not a barrier that went over the edge next time.

  Crunch!

  They were hit again from behind and it almost caused the VW to spin, but its front wing clipped another barrier and Laura was able to correct her position just in time, although the barrier crumpled and snapped off at one end and was left hanging over the precipice.

  She managed to get them back towards the middle, for a brief moment, then the other car hit them again, side-on this time and much harder than before, and they smacked with a ferocious clanging into another barrier.

  Danni was screaming hysterically now.

  The VW hit one of the barrier posts, knocking it out of the ground and over the edge, and Laura tried desperately to straighten her car as the next post loomed before them, but she shunted into it and sent it flying over the cliff edge.

  ‘We’re going to die!’

  Laura ignored her, focusing her every thought and action on staying on top of the cliff.

  Crash!!!

  They were pushed back against the next barrier with incredible force, so much that Laura felt the barrier give way and one of her wheels drop over the side of the cliff, making the car start to spin to the left in a way that she knew would take it over the edge. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator as hard as s
he could and the VW lurched forward, its errant wheel finding solid ground; they moved a few yards ahead, the other driver having backed off, expecting them to go over. Laura tried to get into the middle again, but the other driver seemed to guess this time what she was going to do and the car came hard down her flank, aggressively pushing its wheels alongside hers and forcing her over to the left and back against the metal barriers again. Two more barriers came off under the force and weight of her car, and she knew that, if both her wheels went over the edge together, she wouldn’t be able to get them back on to the road the way she had when it was just one. The other car would then only need to nudge them and that would be it.

  The other driver was dictating everything, and she didn’t know how to stop them, because their car was clearly faster and bigger than hers, and, from behind, they could see her but she couldn’t see them.

  She was fast running out of ideas.

  Unless …

  She slammed her foot on the brake.

  It was desperate and she had no idea what might happen but it worked. The VW went into a sideways skid, the tyres sliding across water, but the friction as the back of the car scraped against the barrier slowed them, and then they bounced off one of the posts and spun completely before coming to a halt in the middle of the road.

  Their pursuer hadn’t anticipated Laura’s actions and their car went past on the outside, trying to slow down too but sliding in the wet, slaloming away from where Laura’s VW sat.

  Laura was now facing in the opposite direction. Danni had her eyes closed and seemed oblivious to what had happened, as if she’d accepted they were going over the cliff and was still waiting to hit the bottom. Laura looked in her mirror as the black shape, brake lights lighting up the darkness around it, came to a halt about sixty yards or so away, up against the barrier.

  She gasped. For the first time since they had been struck, she spotted a way out. She pushed the gearstick into first gear and pushed her accelerator down. Her wheels spun furiously but the car stayed where it was and she looked around, sure she had done something wrong, and then realised it was just the water. Her wheels were spinning too fast to hold on to the road.