“I think we should check it out,” he said.
“I’ll do it. Just hold the light steady.”
Before he could argue, I pulled myself up on the metal rim, swung one leg over and jumped down into the container. It smelled awful. I reached for the white box and stopped. “We shouldn’t touch it without gloves on, should we? It might have fingerprints that the police could use.”
“We don’t have any choice,” Josh said. “Just lift it by a corner.”
I nodded, picking it with my thumb and forefinger, and handing it over to him. He waited until I’d clambered back out of the skip before opening the box. Inside was a single used syringe and a small square of white cotton dressing. There was no label or print on the outside of the carton, nothing to indicate what the contents of the syringe would have been.
“Too tidy for a casual druggie,” I said. “Do you think our kidnapper left it here?” My thoughts were running faster than my words. “Oh God, they’re drugging Anita.”
“We don’t know that,” said Josh. “But we should keep it to show to the police, just in case.” He slipped it into a pocket of his overcoat. “Now what?”
“Back to the main road,” I said, already leading the way back to the front of the building. When I turned the corner, I ran straight into a man with a beard. He yelled. I screamed.
The man shoved me against the wall. “What are you doing here?” he shouted at me. “This is my place. You’re trespassing, that’s what you’re doing.”
“Back off, mate.” Josh had found his Swiss army knife, which he pointed in the man’s direction. Not surprisingly, my assailant laughed.
“You need one like this, my friend.” He pulled a knife from his pocket and held it out in front of him. It was a kitchen knife with a red plastic handle. Still, the blade looked lethal enough.
I watched Josh lower his pocket knife, but he kept it in his hand. When I looked back to the bearded man, he’d moved closer, his face just inches from mine. He pushed the point of the knife against my neck. His skin was dirty and his hair was matted. He stank. For an instant, I felt relieved. This was no kidnapper, just a homeless man. But then my relief dissolved. He might be a vagrant, but he had a knife at my throat.
“What do you want? Money?” asked Josh, digging into his pocket for his wallet.
“What would I do with money? You shouldn’t have been trespassing on my property.”
“Please let her go,” Josh said, moving a few steps closer. “We’ll move on. We don’t want to disturb you.”
“Nah,” the man exclaimed, enveloping me in a cloud of foul breath. “Second time in one night you’ve been here. You’ll just come back again.”
“We haven’t been here before,” I said. “Did you see other people here earlier? A young Indian woman with black hair? A man, perhaps more than one?”
He took the knife away from my neck, breathed on it and rubbed it against his coat. “Nice and shiny,” he said, looking at the blade.
“Please? Did you see her? She’s in danger.”
He nodded. “All that frizzy air. Lot of danger.”
“Her hair is straight…” I had a strange sensation, a tingling that ran from my head to my toes. “Wait. What do you mean? Frizzy air? You mean wavy air? Around her head?”
“Yep. Means she’s going to die.”
I leaned against the wall, dropped to my haunches. The shock took all the strength from my legs. They felt like jelly.
“Have you seen the moving air before? On other people? How long have you been able to see it?” I had a hundred questions, but the bearded man moved a few steps away from me, looking at me from under drawn brows. “What’s it to you?”
“I can see it too.”
He laughed, long and loud, the sound of it grating like chalk on a board. “Good luck with that. Look what it did to me.”
“What do you mean?” asked Josh, helping me back to my feet, keeping his arm around my shoulders.
“They did it to me in the army. Put something in my head. That’s when I started seeing them. Hundreds of ’em. Drove me crazy. I mean, it was Afghanistan. We all knew some of us were going to get shot or blown up, but I knew exactly who wasn’t coming back each day. Couldn’t stand it after a while. I got myself shot, got sent back home. I thought they’d go away but I still see ’em. I need to get this thing out of my head.”
He started rubbing his scalp, pulling at his tangled hair. Josh and I looked at each other. I felt faint, but we needed to keep moving. “Who was with the woman?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A man.”
“Just one?”
“Maybe two. No, there were three. Using my place. Bastards.”
“Did you see a car? What kind it was?”
He tugged at his ears, and beat one fist against the side of his head. “Big white car,” he said.
“Can you describe the men? Did you get a plate number?”
“One of them was a lizard.” The head bashing continued.
Josh took my hand. “We’re going now,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”
We began walking fast through the weeds to the front of the warehouse. Just as we reached the road, the man shouted after us. “Green car, big. One man.”
We walked down the middle of the road, keeping some distance away from the dark structures that loomed along both sides of the street. I hadn’t noticed on the taxi ride in, but realized now that all the warehouses were abandoned, with broken windows and weed-strewn lots. There was something disturbing and post-apocalyptic about the place. And I was still shaking from the encounter with the man who could see auras.
CHAPTER THIRTY
We came to an intersection and stopped, unsure which way led back to the main road. Without speaking, we both turned to the right. After half a mile or so, we left the derelict warehouses behind and entered a newer development of three-story, glass-fronted office buildings. Many of them had signs out front indicating company names. Street lamps revealed swathes of neatly manicured lawns and pruned shrubs, a display of normality that helped me breathe a little more easily. After another turn, we were surprised to see the twinkling lights of an all-night cafe, fifty yards up the road.
A bell tinkled when we walked into the brightly-lit cafe, where several tables were occupied by men in overalls and work boots. Two men in navy blue security uniforms ate heaping plates of bacon and eggs. A Bollywood musical ran on a TV on the wall, the soundtrack barely audible. A bald man behind the counter smiled at us. “What can I get you?” he asked.
“Just coffee please,” I said.
We carried white mugs of steaming coffee to a table for two in the corner. The wooden surface was scratched and dinged, but was immaculately clean. No one took any notice of us, but I was glad to have people around after the dismal emptiness of the warehouse. I wrapped my hands around the hot cup to warm them and to stop them shaking. An electrical storm was raging in my head. The man who could see auras. Signs that Anita had been in the warehouse, signs that she’d been drugged.
“That man…” I started. “Anita.”
“Listen, we didn’t find Anita, but at least we know she’s still alive,” Josh said. “And next time, we’ll be early, and we’ll have police back-up. You should call Parry to let him know what happened.”
I made the call and got Parry’s voicemail again. “He never answers his goddamned phone,” I complained while I waited for the beep. I left a message before taking a swallow of coffee. It was surprisingly good.
“We’ll call in the locals if we have to,” Josh said.
As if divining that he was about to be superseded by the Slough police force, Detective Parry called back right at that moment. Quickly explaining what had happened, I told him we were waiting for further instructions from the kidnapper.
“Sit tight and let me know the minute you hear from him,” he said. “Give me the warehouse address. I’ll get a team out there to take a look. Maybe we can get some fingerprints.”
> “That’s a surprise,” I said to Josh, when Parry rang off. “He’s actually going to do something useful this time.”
For the next five minutes, I stared at the phone screen, willing it to flash another message.
“Why did the kidnappers leave so quickly?” I wondered out loud.
“The homeless man probably scared them off,” Josh said. He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “That was weird, huh? Him being able to see auras?”
“Very,” I said. “I wish I could have talked with him about it. He was crazy though. What did he mean about one of the kidnappers being a lizard?”
Josh shrugged, signaled to the man behind the counter to bring more coffee.
“I just realized something,” I said, when I felt the caffeine hit my tired brain. “Most of those businesses we walked past were medical. One was surgical devices, and another was imaging. Does that seem like a coincidence or do you think there’s a connection? I mean, given that Anita is a doctor, and someone wants to get hold of patient records?”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, I was thinking about that too.”
I kept checking the phone to make sure it was on and the volume was up, but it remained maddeningly silent. After a while Josh yawned, pushing his metal chair back on the scuffed linoleum floor so that he could stretch out his legs.
“I’m sorry, I know you have to get to work tomorrow,” I said, feeling guilty that I still had a few more days off before returning to the office. “Why don’t you try and nap, and I’ll wake you if I hear anything.”
“I’ll be all right,” he said, but within a couple of minutes he was asleep. The cafe was quiet now that most of the customers had left. The bald man came out from behind the counter with a tray and a tea towel. He wiped down the tables and stacked mugs and plates on the tray. I followed him and leaned on the counter while he piled the dishes in a sink.
“Not from around here, are you?” he said, over the gurgle of water from the tap.
“No, we’re meeting someone here,” I said. “Do you know anything about the warehouses on Spring Meadow Road?” I asked. “Are they all derelict?”
“Yeah, most of them. There were some problems with water drainage out there, foundations all started rotting out and the tenants all gave up their leases one by one. Developers came in and built a new industrial estate on higher ground. Full of medical companies so there’s lots of money going around. At night we serve the janitors and security guards, and the office folks come at lunchtime. We’re famous for our rhubarb pie. Do you want a piece?”
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry. But can I get a bottle of mineral water please?”
“So, what, you interested in buying them warehouses?” he asked, turning to take a chilled bottle from a glass-fronted refrigerator.
I laughed. “No, just wondering that’s all.”
He gave me the bottle and a glass. I went back to the table and took my scarf off, folding it and tucking it under Josh’s neck so he wouldn’t be too uncomfortable when he woke up. Every few seconds I looked at my phone, but there was no message.
Sipping water from the bottle, I thought about the homeless man. I’d never met anyone else who could see auras like I could. But then I didn’t exactly go around publicly announcing my ability, so maybe there were many others, who saw and kept quiet, or who saw but never understood the significance of what they observed. To acknowledge the auras meant accepting that the universe is infinitely more complicated and mysterious than we humans would like to believe. It’s terrifying.
Terrifying enough to drive someone mad? I thought so. The homeless veteran could have lost his mind when he started seeing the auras. Or perhaps losing his senses was a natural result of the horrors he experienced in the war. Either way, I doubted he had anything implanted in his head.
Suddenly the phone buzzed and Josh jumped at the noise.
“What?” he asked before realizing where he was and coming fully awake.
I snatched the phone from the table and stared at the screen. There was a short message from the blocked number. “Wait for instructions.”
I showed it to Josh.
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “As long as we are hearing from them, that means Anita is okay, and they still want to make a deal.”
I didn’t want to think about what Anita was going through. She had to be scared and uncomfortable. She might even be unconscious if the syringe had been used to sedate her.
“What’s the time?” Josh asked.
It was just after three in the morning. He took a sip of my water. “Let’s call Parry again, warn him that we’re going to need some help when the instructions come through from the kidnapper.”
I called Parry and left a message. He rang back fifteen minutes later, sounding as though he’d been asleep, which was a perfectly normal thing to be doing at three a.m.
“I’m sending a team to meet you,” he said. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll get back to you with more information.”
It was hard to sit still. I was impatient for the phone to buzz again, desperate to get moving, to find Anita. Josh leaned over, took my phone and tapped on some keys. When he gave it back to me, the screen showed a sudoku puzzle. “Give your brain something else to think about,” he said.
I’d solved two puzzles by the time Parry called back. “Officers Grey and Ibori will meet you at the cafe in about thirty minutes. Do exactly what they tell you. They’re experienced officers.”
The door opened, letting in a rush of cold air. Four men walked in, all in overalls and boots. They were loud, making jokes, yelling their orders to the owner. I was glad of the distraction. They’d almost finished their middle of the night breakfast when the door opened again. A young man in jeans and a parka came in, scanned the cafe and nodded when he saw us. He came over to our table. “Kate Benedict?” he asked. “I’m Officer Alex Grey.”
I’d just introduced Josh when another man entered. He was black, muscular and wearing chinos and a cream-colored turtleneck, which seemed a little underdressed for the arctic night. “Steven Ibori,” he said, shaking our hands. The two officers sat down, signaling to the man behind the bar that they wanted coffee.
“Tell us everything you know,” Grey said. “Then we’ll be ready when the kidnapper gets in touch.”
I talked while they drank their coffee and had their mugs refilled. When Ibori had finished his second cup, he got to his feet and went outside.
“Sneaking a fag,” Grey said. “I keep telling him to give it up.”
Ibori came back in, trailing cold air and the smell of smoke, and rejoined us at the table. He raised an eyebrow at Grey, who shook his head. “Nothing yet,” he said. The two of them checked their watches.
“I thought that only happened in movies,” I said.
“Synchronizing watches?” Ibori grinned. “We do it all the time. Makes us feel important.”
Grey’s mobile rang. He went outside to take the call. When he came back in, he told us that Parry had sent a team out to check the warehouse. There was no one there, apart from the homeless man. I felt sad for him. He’d fought in a war and now he was sleeping in an abandoned warehouse. When this was all over, I’d go back and talk to him. For now, all my attention was on finding Anita.
I picked my phone up from the table where it lay, a useless chunk of anodized aluminium, the empty screen like a black hole, sucking in all my energy. “Say something,” I said to it. After a minute or two, Grey took it from me and stared at it, as though willing it to burst into life with a new text. There was nothing.
We waited until just after five in the morning, when a new round of customers poured in, ordering their full English breakfasts and pots of tea.
“We need to get back to the station,” Grey said. “My advice is that you two go home, get some rest. Do you need a lift somewhere?”
I looked at Josh, feeling helpless. We couldn’t stay in the cafe indefinitely, but leaving felt as though I was abandoning Anita.
“You’re right,” Josh said. “Can you take us to the train station?”
We all piled into their blue Mondeo for the drive and I napped on Josh’s shoulder, but only for twenty minutes. When Grey opened the back door to let us out, the cold jolted me awake. The street was empty apart from a road sweeper and a bus with its windows so fogged with condensation that I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside or not.
“Good luck,” Grey said. “Don’t forget. Let me know when you hear something. We’re on duty for another couple of hours. We’ll get right on it.”
“What if I don’t hear anything?” I said, concentrating on keeping my voice down even though I wanted to scream. “What if he gives up and just kills Anita?”
“He won’t do that. He needs something from you, which means he’ll try again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
After Grey and Ibori drove away, Josh pushed my hair back from my face and stroked my cheek. “The kidnapper will be in touch, Kate. It’ll be fine.”
I nodded, trying to focus on the fact that Anita was alive while I followed Josh to the platform. The early morning light was dull and flat, threatening another wintry day. I shivered in the icy blast that swept along the tracks.
Josh tackled the ticket machine, succeeding in printing out two one-way tickets just seconds before the train rolled into the station. We jumped on, happy to find that it was early enough for there to be plenty of seats. Even better, we were right next to the buffet car, where we found bacon sandwiches and fresh tea. Fortified by our breakfast, I scrolled through the news on my mobile to pass the time until we reached London Paddington. The breaking news was about a gas explosion in Portsmouth. Josh found it on his phone at the same time.
“Did you read this?” he asked, showing me the headline. I nodded, wondering why he was interested. Clicking on a link, I streamed live coverage from the BBC site. A studio announcer was talking about the explosion. “It’s not clear at this time what the cause of the explosion was, but it appears to have been a gas main. At least one person is dead and there are a number of casualties who are receiving aid from early responders. We’ll bring you more on this story as we receive information. In other news, the stock market—”
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