Scare Me

by Richard Parker

“Two patrol cars, what do we do? They’re not going to let us anywhere near the place.” Weaver looked back the way they came as a siren announced another car’s arrival.

  “We shoot the apartment, find out what we can, cover ourselves here until we know where Frost is headed next.” Pope leaned in to the driver. “Can you park up and wait? We might need to leave in a hurry.”

  The cabby pulled in snug against the sidewalk and switched off his engine.

  Weaver slipped the iPad out of his kitbag and checked it. “We’re good for now.”

  Tam shivered under the lorry. He didn’t know how long he’d been hiding there, but although there was no natural light in the loading bay he knew not enough time had elapsed for it to be morning. His parents probably didn’t know he was missing yet. Even when day came, with the factory closed for hygiene checks, there was no guarantee that anyone would lift the shutter or unlock the door to the main floor.

  At the moment his only path out were the steps to the chicken house and Skinny Man was still down there. Plus it sounded like he’d locked the sliding door. He’d heard him striding back and forth along the gantry a few times. Unless he was conducting a search elsewhere it appeared he believed Tam had managed to escape over the gates.

  His neck straightened as he heard Skinny Man’s muffled phone ringing. A childlike tune he didn’t recognise. He heard footfalls on the steps and then the door opening and his progress across the gantry again.

  Tam edged backwards as the loading bay went quiet. Keys scraped a lock and the door to the factory was opened. He heard an apology from Skinny Man in his own language and then another male voice speaking quickly. He couldn’t understand what he was saying, but recognised it was tourist language and that he was telling Skinny Man off.

  The door slammed and the keys rattled before the bay fell silent again. Tam counted to fifty and then crawled slowly forward through the slick of oil. When he peered out from behind the front tyre of the lorry he quickly ducked his head back in. The two men hadn’t gone through the door, but were standing silently in front of it surveying the loading bay.

  He closed his eyes and counted onwards from fifty in his head, willing everything outside of the numbers to evaporate. At eighty-eight the men moved across the gantry again and went back down the stairs to where the girl was. Tam continued counting.

  Will came to a beaux-art statue in Washington Park called Fountain of Time. The oppressed figures of Taft’s procession of the doomed cowered from the warm daylight. Across the water, the imposing and hooded Father Time looked down at them from his pedestal. Its static participants reminded Will of the cadavers that had been composed for him. He circled it then seated himself on its low sidewall. He called Carla on the office number with the disposable phone.

  “Please don’t switch your mobile off again. The GPS says you’re heading back towards the airport…Will?”

  He could hear her breathing and leaned into the sound. He closed his eyes and took the weight of his body against the phone.

  She spoke before him. “They’ve found a child alive.” It was a development she knew he had to hear.

  The statement slowly filtered through. “Where?”

  “At the Monro place, their daughter.”

  “Monro?” His blunted senses started to revive.

  “She was found wandering in the street and the police were called.”

  “Who’s Monro?”

  “Strick’s ex-private secretary, Wesley Monro, the one he’d been accused of having an affair with.”

  “Monro is a man?”

  “Married and living with his family in the house in Bel Air.”

  “Their girl survived?” He had to make her say it again.

  “Molly Monro, she’s in police custody, too traumatised to speak. It’s on CNN.”

  Will had left the little girl behind. The implications of that jolted him deeply. But he’d searched all the rooms. Had she fled or been hiding in the house?

  “The reports are connecting the two murders because they were committed so close together. And obviously because of Strick and Monro’s association.”

  Will recalled the yellow raincoat hanging in the hallway. She’d escaped.

  “They don’t expect the girl to make a statement anytime soon, but they’re still questioning witnesses.”

  Will guessed the police officers, the old man next door and the softball kids in the street. He wondered if they’d seen anyone but him enter the address.

  “But there’s still no description of this woman.” Carla sounded frazzled.

  “I’ve seen her.”

  “At the apartment?”

  An elderly lady in sweats and pushing a shopping cart full of flattened beer cans shuffled in front of Will. He got to his feet and turned away from her. “I’ve seen her once already, leaving the Strick’s house, although I didn’t realise it at the time. And today in the apartment.” He gazed at the constituents of the statue, the lovers, the mounted soldier and the crouched, hooded figures.

  “What happened?”

  How could he begin to tell her? “I got what we needed. I glimpsed her face.” The mobile suddenly felt too small for the conversation. “Slim, long, dark hair; I don’t know who she is.”

  “It’s not a lot to go on.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anybody who’s ever come to work for us at the house?”

  “It’s just Regina now, you know that.”

  “Think harder. I’m out of ideas here.” His temper briefly spiked.

  Although the sun was starting to burn his head, fat raindrops fell.

  She waited for him to collect himself. “I’m doing background checks on everyone who’s been in our employ. They still haven’t posted any new photos of Libby and Luke.”

  Will recalled the unsettling conversation he’d had when he’d landed at O’Hare. “We shouldn’t expect them to. Listen, I want you to step up security there.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “There was another photo…you this time.” Now it was his turn to mollify. “It’s just a device to terrorise us, but I want you to take every precaution. Speak to security.”

  “Which photo?” She couldn’t disguise her alarm.

  “It was taken at the rally.”

  “So is this a caution from Motex?”

  “Seems way too heavy-handed and obvious, even for Wardour. But that open day was an ideal opportunity for someone to gather the images for the site.”

  “We shouldn’t dismiss it as a possibility.”

  “I’m not dismissing anything, but time’s running out and we need to gain some ground. There’s a reason you couldn’t reach me in the apartment.”

  “What did you do, Will?” There was immediate condemnation in the question.

  “When I arrived there I found a purse I remembered her carrying the night I ran into her in Ellicott City. I opened it. It was full of cosmetics, ordinary things.”

  “You took something from her?”

  “No.”

  “There would have been some DNA on a comb or a lipstick.”

  Carla was right, but Will had acted on a more immediate solution to tracing her. “I muted my phone and hid it there.”

  There was only a buzz from Carla’s end.

  “Slipped it into one of the makeup pockets and zipped it up.” When Carla didn’t react he continued. “We’ll be able to track her using the GPS.”

  “That was a stupid risk. What if she finds it?”

  “I haven’t broken any of her rules. But I’m two houses from home and she’s murdered everyone along the route. We need some sort of insurance.”

  “Molly Monro was spared.”

  “That could have been an accident, an oversight. What makes you believe she doesn’t plan for us to suffer exactly the same fate as everyone else? This whole campaign has been built around us. We’re the targets. I didn’t think. I just did it.”

  Carla fell briefly silent. “It’s done now.” There was reproach in
her voice. “We just have to pray it stays hidden.”

  “Can you see her on the GPS?”

  A pause. “So it’s her that’s en route to the airport. Where are you?”

  “Washington Park.” Will activated the laptop. “What’s your password for that?”

  She told him and he opened up the same tracking map. “Another flight ahead.” He closed his eyes and exhaled.

  “Look, we’ve got this far… you’ve got this far.”

  The words were familiar. It was what he’d said to her, or something very much like it, when she’d been pregnant with Jessie.

  Carla’s initial excitement at being an expectant mother in her forties had swiftly been bulldozed by severe cramps and intense morning sickness. Every step of her pregnancy had been hard won, but he’d blithely offered the same words of encouragement, never believing anything could possibly go wrong.

  They both knew the risks of being older parents, but having brought up Libby they’d been looking forward to enjoying the experience with foresight and not as the terrified couple they’d been seventeen years earlier. Even when he’d driven her to the hospital in agony, Will never expected what had happened less than an hour after their arrival.

  He remembered Libby standing at the end of the driveway when he’d brought Carla home, the part of them they’d all waited for left behind in the hospital. The complexion of the house that, until then, they’d only enjoyed happy memories in had changed irrevocably. But they’d all shared an unrefined conviction that they’d emerge the other side.

  Droplets trickled down the screen as he studied the basic façade of his next destination.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Tam’s eyes were starting to hood, but he squeezed his black nail so the pain kept him awake. The men had been downstairs for a good ten minutes, but he knew the longer he left it to try the factory door again the more likely it was they’d come back while he was in plain sight.

  He strained his ears for signs of them on the steps and when he was sure he had at least the time it would take the men to climb them, emerged from his hiding place under the lorry and scurried over to the gantry.

  He gripped its edge, using his arms to pull his body up and over the metal lip. Tam listened where he crouched, but hearing nothing padded as quietly as he could to the door leading to the slaughterhouse. He pushed on it, but it had been locked again after the other man arrived.

  He tiptoed the other way to the security cabin, but there was no telephone, only a switched off TV on a desk. Beyond it was a row of empty lockers and a dirty, wall-mounted mirror. Catching his own reflection almost frightened a shriek out of him, but he quickly bit down on it. He hesitated only to examine the large black oil stain over his orange tee shirt and his own rigid expression of fear. He opted to go back to the lorry to wait until they returned. Maybe then he could try to slip down to the chicken house and try his luck there.

  As he dangled his feet back over the bay he could hear the men’s voices arguing again. Only this time they were yelling louder than before. He coiled his legs back up and edged to the steps. Birds screeched as something landed with a thud and Tam could discern them both grunting. Sounded like a fight. Tam cracked open the door and the sound became distinct and ugly.

  He slipped through it and told himself he would only listen at the top of the steps.

  Will had given Carla the number for his disposable phone, but had told her he’d call back as soon as he’d found shelter from the rain. Again her tired brain fumbled their conversation. Will’s actions in the apartment had been impetuous. Was he right? Did they need to assert some control, however marginal? Was this the leverage they needed? It was impossible to decide between risking Libby’s life and trying to instigate something that might protect it.

  Like Pope, it was another complication that was academic. She watched the red dot approach O’Hare and felt a pang of revulsion as she considered the person moving thousands of miles from the office she was in. If the woman didn’t find the phone in her purse they could now monitor exactly where she was heading. She also wouldn’t be able to disappear after whatever endgame she’d planned for them.

  But what advantage would it give them during the critical events leading up to it? Carla could call the police now and have her apprehended, but it wouldn’t guarantee Libby and Luke’s safety in Thailand. It would probably mean the reverse. Their survival was dependent on Will obtaining what he had to from the houses. Would tracking this woman to the locations he would inevitably visit afterwards make any difference?

  She tried to imagine how Will had felt when he’d found her image on the wall of the victim’s apartment. Did it signify she was in real danger? She suspected Will had been right about one thing: kidnapping the daughter of a local protest group organiser was way too extreme even for Motex.

  She called the Ingram security guard and told him an email bomb threat had been received in the Remada ops room from a Tunisian extremist group. She requested he discreetly draft in as many staff as he needed to ensure the reception patrol was on elevated alert, but to report only to her. Then she thought about calling Pope. She couldn’t deny she’d actually been glad of his presence minutes before and considered that, perhaps, she might even need him again. She knew he would only try to extract information about Will’s whereabouts if she called now though. Carla decided to leave him to his own devices. He was sure to be in touch.

  Relaying the news about the child’s deliverance to Will had given her a significant sense of release. It was exactly what he needed to hear; the sort of words she wished she could have whispered to him the day they’d stood in the hospital chapel and seen their tiny coffin arrive.

  Her counsellor and the hospital chaplain had encouraged them both to attend a special service for the babies that had been miscarried at St Andrew’s that week. It was an opportunity to connect to some of the other bereaved parents, but Carla had been too weak to attend. They’d opted for the private ceremony a week later and Libby had laid a single white lily on the lid. It had been vital to Carla. She’d said goodbye even though she knew the loss hadn’t begun to sink in. As the coffin had been taken for cremation the ritual had at least allowed her to feel that Jessie’s existence had been acknowledged.

  Will hadn’t cried as she and Libby had. He’d barely recovered from the ordeal, was still numbed by how close he’d been to losing a wife as well as a daughter. He’d gently escorted them to and from the service and busied himself with the coordination of the day. She still caught him with the same removed expression, knew he still thought about how their lives could have been if Jessie had made it.

  It was the reason she put away the photo the nurse had taken. They would never forget Jessie, but Carla knew they couldn’t allow her absence to overshadow the future. Libby’s new baby seemed to be recompense for what the three of them had suffered, but Will remained desensitised to her impending motherhood.

  His grown daughter and her new child should have been his focus. She knew he worried, irrationally, about a repetition of events as she did. Carla was sure he would resent their grandchild if he wouldn’t submit to what had happened. He refused to talk about it, rejected the idea of professional therapy and Carla felt helpless to remove the spectre of a life unrealised.

  In the early days she’d been consumed by guilt she’d concealed from Will. He’d been hurting enough and it was months before she found the courage to betray herself. She feared she’d been responsible for the miscarriage. She’d known the risk of having a baby later in life, knew half of all pregnancies after forty-two ended in miscarriage. She’d gone ahead regardless, believing that fate couldn’t possibly remove what they seemed so entitled to.

  Will had immediately dismissed her fears and, when he’d realised the private torture she’d been subjecting herself to, had at least partly emerged from his abstraction. He spent the following months presenting her with evidence to the contrary. However many times she analysed it though it appeared th
at randomness had once more left her in its wreckage.

  She’d fought the darkness again and busying herself with preparations for Libby’s child had slowly repelled it. The pain and guilt were still there, but she’d allowed the tide of the present to wash around what had happened. Will still hadn’t. Even though the funeral had been nearly a year ago and she’d gradually removed every reminder of her. He still couldn’t put to rest a daughter he’d never known.

  As she waited she prayed for Libby, Luke and their child’s sake that it would be the hardest thing she and Will would ever have to do.

  The telephone rang and she quickly picked up.

  “So you are still there?” Anwar sounded as if he was disappointed to have an unpleasant rumour confirmed.

  Carla’s heart sank. Then she remembered she’d called Anwar after Will had asked her to pump him for more background info. Anwar had poutingly said he couldn’t sacrifice more of his time if they were both going to keep him in the dark. She looked at the taskbar and it was just after midnight. She was too exhausted to give an excuse, even if she could think of one. “Is this important? I’m waiting for a call.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s really going on there, Carla?”

  “Anwar…” She used his name as a caution.

  “OK,” he acquiesced. “Give me one minute; I’ve been doing some digging on Amberson and Strick. No Asian connection.”

  She’d almost put the handset back. “But you’ve found something?”

  “It’s tenuous.”

  “What is it?”

  “First, you tell me where Will is and why you’re in his office at this hour.”

  “Will’s at home, I’m working late,” she said, as if she had said it a thousand times already.

  “How long did we say we’ve known each other?” It was Anwar’s way of calling her a liar. He’d undoubtedly tried to contact Will at Easton Grey.

  “I know you probably believe there’s some vital insider loop we’re excluding you from, but there really isn’t. Believe me.” She emphasised the last two words.