‘No. Thought not. This is a fucking mess. But it’s best for her I’m gone.’
‘What’s do you mean, Tina? Gone? Just bring Maisie to me and we’ll sort something out. I promise.’
She’s silent for a long time and I can hear the sound of passing cars in the distance. Then the line goes dead.
Chapter Twenty Two
I rush into the SMIT suite. I need to get Tina back on the line.
‘Keith. Get her back. Get her back now.’
The call connects and the tone rings out in the silence. The whole operational staff listen as it rings and rings. He cuts it off and tries again. Steve paces around, stopping only to look over Keith’s shoulder. It rings and rings again and then she cuts it off.
Suddenly there’s aloud ping and I feel the comms phone buzz in my hand. A text message flashes onto the screen and we all stare at it.
‘Meet me at The Summit in an hour. On your own. No police. I’ll drop the kid off with you.’
We all stare at the screen for a moment longer. I jump up and my eyes meet Lauren’s. We run for the door, Steve just behind us. I race down the stairs towards the front doors but Steve grabs my arm and swings me around.
‘Wait. Wait a minute. We need a plan. And you need to be careful.’
I pull myself free. I’ve never liked to be held down.
‘No. We just need to get to Saddleworth. You go up in the ops car with the backup. Lauren will drive me up there. She’ll drop me off at the bottom of the road. You stay at the Lewis’ and I’ll keep you informed via Keith.’
We’re nose to nose and he’s not giving up.
‘It’s risky. You going on your own.’
‘Well I am going on my own. It’s our only chance. God knows what she’ll do if we don’t do this.’ It’s a stand-off and I know what the deal breaker is. ‘And Steve, promise me you won’t get them to intercept her. Think about Maisie first. This way we’ll get Maisie first and Tina and the car later.’
I turn and hurry out to Lauren’s car. I glance up the road and the BMW’s back. But there’s no time for lying on back seats now. No time for sneaking around. Lauren speeds up the road and as we pass the black car, I try to peer through the windows to see the shady figures inside. Lauren indicates right to take the Oldham Road and I look over my shoulder. They aren’t following.
Once in Saddleworth, Steve and the others turn off at Greenfield and head towards the Lewis’s. Lauren and I carry on through until we’re climbing. Up and up, almost into the dense clouds that hang over the hilltops. I know that it’ll be easy to apprehend Tina afterward because there is one way here and one way out. Once she travels this road and reaches the highest point in the area she has to continue on the same road, or turn round and go back.
I look up and down the road and I fully expect that, by now, Steve has someone at each end. The problem is that they would be quite distant, as The Summit has a panoramic view. Tina would be able to see anyone waiting nearby from this point. I get out of the car and look around. Lauren sits in the car, gripping the wheel, for a while. I expect her to drive off but she gets out.
‘Funny place to meet.’
I lean on the dry stone wall. Not such a funny place if you know the area. It’s a vantage point, almost a tourist attraction and the road is reasonably busy. A few cars have passed us already. High up so you can see everything. Yet not remote enough to be ambushed. It makes me think that maybe Tina does want to escape. Everything she said in the phone conversation pointed to someone so unhappy and desperate that they want an end to it. I have a sudden uncomfortable feeling. She’s mixed up. A little bit out of control. Telling us that she took Maisie and found herself in the car. Unreliable. Unbalanced.
‘Mmm. Let’s see. You go back now. She won’t come up here unless she’s sure that I’m here alone.’ Lauren looks sad. She’s staring at her shoes. ‘What? What, Lauren?’
She steps forward and for a minute I think she’s going to hug me.
‘I feel bad leaving you here. You know. With what’s going on. You’re a sitting target, all on your own.’
‘Don’t worry. It’ll all work out.’
She touches my arm and then she does hug me. I smell a feint scent of her perfume and hair products. I suddenly miss my bathroom and my morning routine. When she lets go she walks to the car and drives back down the road.
What I was going to say to her was that it will all work out the way it’s meant to. But that sounds too fatalistic. She knows as well as I do that I’ll fight to the death. We all would. I’ve worked with the SMIT team long enough now to know that although we have our differences we have a lot in common. The main thing is commitment. Commitment to a case. Commitment to each other. Even with my life at risk, I couldn’t even think about ducking out. In every case each team member carries a burden of trust, and someone leaving would be a chink in the armour. So even in my situation, even though they’d all understand, I’m going nowhere.
My situation isn’t about fighting so much as about waiting. It’s a battle of attrition. All about them taking opportunities when they can. About being undetected, yet everyone being perfectly clear about what they are capable of. It’s the opposite of Magellan and their almost exhibitionist behaviour. That’s real terror. The unknown.
So I wait. I pull myself up onto the wall and watch a peregrine falcon hunting in a field below me. I’m so high up, about four hundred meters above sea level, the falcon hovers almost level with me. In the distance I can see the moorland for miles and miles, shrouded in grey clouds, sometimes dipping into the valleys. Despite the dullness and the endless bracken and heather, every now and again there is an outcrop of bright yellow furze or the whites and blues of wildflowers. I’ve been up here at this time of year for most of my life, and the wildlife is staggering.
Even when I lived in London I would drive up here in the summer. I’d pretend to myself that I was going somewhere, that this was a convenient route for me to follow. I’d travel through different areas of Britain and pretend to myself that their lush greenness and breath-taking scenery was a substitute for the moody bleakness of my moors. It’s hard to describe the appeal of the acres of marshes and scrub. It’s a corner of myself, hiding away in the recess of my soul. Embedded in my dreamscape so that everything subconscious takes place here and is connected. I’d drive from London telling myself all the way that it was the outlines of the hills and dips of the valleys I wanted. That it was the familiar roads and pathways that my childhood feet had walked over.
Underneath I suspected that it was something much more intangible. Like all children I’d spun my own stories around my local environment. The old woman who might or might not have been a witch. The garland of flowers left hanging in a tree – innocent enough, but somewhere inside I knew that it meant more than this. The rose petals I picked from my grandfather’s garden because, to me, they were perfect, but when he scolded me I learned early the meaning of being ready. I still remember their perfume to this day. The robin that came each day to see my mother and I, and the idea he was my grandfather’s spirit. Deep rooted symbols that left and imprint on my being, and connected me back to the half-light of the evening as I sat on the wall at the back of our house watching the swallows.
But really I was coming back for the love. It was as if as I drove out of Oldham and the red brick turned to stone, I could sense the comfort of my childhood hanging over me. The nearer to my childhood home and haunts I got, the stronger the sense of love and care. Even though those people are long gone, my mother and father long dead and my grandparents before them, it’s as if everything they ever felt about me has been left here in layers.
And it isn’t just the people. I can understand why Tina came back here with Jennifer. She probably knew that her mother wouldn’t be entirely present for her. But she came back all the same, just as I did. Either of us could have gone anywhere in the whole world, but we came back here, where we had been children and run free across the moorland. Stan
ding here now, I get a sense of myself as a young teenager, walking for miles across the desolate spaces, ducking behind walls as cars passed me on the narrow roads.
I just wanted to be alone. I suppose that’s never left me. Any relationships I’ve had have either fizzled out or ended dramatically, for them anyway, because I have just carried on in the isolated world I made from myself and preserved, despite being with someone. I’d always hoped that one day I’d find someone to smash that shell, to make me want to stay with them. To run to their love and care instead of hurrying back here to the layers of my past.
I nearly did find it. But in the end it was the same betrayal, the same unbalanced amount of give and take with me doing all the giving. In this case, the ultimate giving. At one point I thought I’d found a whole island of love, someone who cared, but I was wrong. So I stayed in my shell and it’s not so bad.
I look up and down the road. No sign of her yet. It might be a long wait, but I’m used to it. If I’m honest with myself, leaving London was never an answer to my dilemma. The Lando case never really went away, it just simmered in the distance until the time was right. I don’t think it ever will go away. I’m shocked at this admission to myself, yet I know in my heart it’s more of a matter of managing it. I’ll never be free. I’ll always be waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows when I least expect it, when I’m distracted or laughing or drunk. That’s when they’ll strike.
I kick up the dust at the side of the road and walk a few yards. I can see my childhood home, Uppermill, from here. It’s huddled around a crossroads, the older part of the village at the edge of the road with the newer, more luxurious homes built for Manchester commuters set farther back. I’ve stood up here on Saturday nights with various boyfriends looking down at the lights of the villages, sitting in between the hills like a string of Christmas lights, with the brighter lights of Oldham and Manchester in the distance.
There’s very little light pollution up here and even prettier than the twinkles that people make are the stars above us. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve walked up here, most recently with Kirby, and stared in wonder at the Milky Way. It’s a real leveller to see it all from this height, because you really feel like you can touch heaven. I wonder if Tina had experienced all this, just the same as I have. She knows this point well, so sure of it, or she wouldn’t have arranged to meet here.
I wonder if she’d ever laid on her back in the bracken and the moss, ignoring the insects and birds and stared at the sky. If she’d swum naked in the reservoirs, think that your heart will stop, because it’s so cold. If she’d watched the lambs in spring and sworn never to eat lamb again. If she’d rescued the baby animals and kept them secretly in the back shed until they were well enough to let go. If she had any love layers to come back to. If she really has the bottle to kill herself, because if she has, we’re in trouble.
I already know she’s in a bad way. Blaming herself for wanting her old life back. Thinking that she’s a bad mother. Feelings of hopelessness and desperation so bad that she’s already left her daughter, because she thought she would have a better chance without her. I feel sorry for her. Sorry that no one noticed how she was feeling. Sorry that she couldn’t tell anyone, not even her mother. Sorry that she considered leaving her child with Glen Wright. Sorry that she’s so messed up that she doesn’t know which way to turn.
If she drops Maisie with me now and cooperates there’s a chance that she’ll get some treatment for the post-natal depression. She’ll be referred for mental health reports and my case notes will flag it up. It’s a terrible thing, and so common. Like most kinds of depression it’s hard for people to report, because you don’t realise you’ve got it. Your world slowly slinks into darkness and the warped thoughts and desperation become normalised.
By Tina’s own admission she’d regretted having Jennifer. Yet by her own admission she loved her and was prepared to make a go of it with Glen. Even without the depression her life would be difficult. She was making an enormous but unplanned leap from front-line activist to mother. From coked-up lover to sleepless nights with a crying baby. But she’d done it for love. She’d even moved Jennifer away from Glen to try to bring her up on her own. But it would have been an uphill struggle in a life she wasn’t prepared for.
It’s sad but the courts won’t see it like this. Her background will be dredged up and she’ll be pushed into a single-parent on drugs stereotype. And her part in Magellan. Tina knows only too well what will happen. She knows that all this, as well as abducting Maisie, will cost her Jennifer. She knows this and she’s trying to put it right by meeting me and dropping Maisie off. As much as I’m trying to gain her trust, she’s trying to gain mine. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I don’t know if it’s the obsession with the dolls or the way she’s so unpredictable. The way she scrubbed her flat down as if she wasn’t coming back. How she left her own child but not Maisie. Is that because she loves Jennifer and now love’s all that matters? But she doesn’t love Maisie. She doesn’t even know her. And all this depends on how far gone she is; How much affect her condition has had on her.
I look at my phone. It’s just coming up to the hour. A few cars have passed me and I wonder if Steve’s got people driving backwards and forwards up the road. I calculate that it would take about fifteen minutes to drive the full length before reaching a turnoff that wouldn’t be seen from up here, and turning around. Depending on where she’s coming from, I would be able to see the silver Range Rover long before she got here. I look down the road towards the Lewis’. Steve would have told them what was happening. He has a policy of keeping all parties informed, that way they don’t go off and seek information on their own.
Amy and Marc had coped so well, been so cooperative. I shudder to think what I would be like in their shoes. I can picture Steve pacing around at the ages of the house, waiting for my intelligence. Lauren would be sitting perfectly still, poker faced on the outside, but as I’m coming to know here better, seething inside. She’s got a lot of stray feelings to tame before she’s top of her game. And Marc and Amy. Out of their minds with the terror they feel. Having to survive whilst every minute the underlying river of fear eats away at them.
It’s an hour now. I look down the road again. And up. Maybe she’ll come from the Huddersfield Road. Maybe she was hiding on that side, up by the abandoned farmhouses that dot the desolate area as the A635 winds out of Lancashire and into Yorkshire. Nothing. I can’t even see any cars coming either way now and I vaguely wonder if there’s a road block in place. I’m debating whether to ring Steve and ask him when the comms phone rings. It’s Tina.
Chapter Twenty Three
I let it ring three times before I answer it to give Keith a chance to put the trace on. I’m heady and a little bit giddy with the fresh air and the cold breeze numbs the bridge of my nose.
‘Tina. Nearly here, are you?’ Silence. Well, almost silence. I can hear muffled noise in the background mixed with a baby crying. And Tina’s sobs, ‘Tina. I’m up at The Summit now waiting for you to drop Maisie off. I’m on my own.’
She coughs and clears her throat.
‘Liar.’
My mind races to the surrounding roads. I swing around the panoramic view. Had Steve done something I didn’t know about? Had she seen a cordon or a line of police cars waiting to snare her?
‘Sorry Tina? I don’t know what you mean. I’m up here at The Sum…’
She suddenly screams.
‘Liar. Liar. You’re all liars. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.’
I need to get her to talk. My personal phone beeps and I read the message from Keith.
‘No movement. Same place, somewhere between Greenfield and Scouthead.’
I text him back with my free hand.
‘Get a car up here. She’s not coming.’
‘What isn’t Tina? Look, you can trust me. You can tell me what’s going on. It’s between me and you. But you need to give Maisie back. Please, T
ina, she wants her Mum.’
She’s crying hard now, sobbing.
‘And what about me? And Jennifer? Jennifer needs her Mum too.’
I have to lie to her. It’s not my style but I’ve got an ever-growing bad feeling about this.
‘And as soon as this is over Jennifer will see you, won’t she? Look Tina, something’s gone wrong here. Something’s gone wrong. You’re not well, Tina, otherwise you would never have taken Maisie, would you?’
She’s quiet for a moment and I can hear the music again. And Maisie.
‘I would. I planned it, didn’t I? But it’s different now.’
‘Yes, different. You didn’t mean to take her, it’s because you’re out of sorts. You know, it can happen to some women when they’ve had a baby.’
She snorts loudly.
‘Baby? Jennifer’s one.’
‘Yes. And it’s been getting worse, hasn’t it? Feeling worse, have you Tina? Until you didn’t know what you were doing?’
She starts to laugh. It grates against me. It’s not even a manic laugh, it’s someone who is at the very end of their tether and they don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Yeah. I suppose it has affected me. But you know, I was a bitch before I had Jennifer. A real evil bitch. I planned to blow things up, you know. And I was going to take one of their children. I was. So don’t hang all this on some poor Tina story. I know what you’re like. You’re just one of them, trying to make me think I’m off me head, so you can just get me and throw me in prison. I know that’s the fucking end game here. What did you say your name was? Jan? Jan Pearce? I know who you are. I fucking know who you are. You worked for the Met.’
‘I did. But that doesn’t mean anything now. I’m trying to help you, Tina. Here and now. I’m standing here on my own at The Summit waiting for you.’
She’s laughing louder. I can feel my blood pumping hard as I try to control my voice.
What I Left Behind (The gripping prequel to the DS Jan Pearce Crime Fiction Series) Page 21