The line moved quickly until Will was listening in on an animated conversation between the young, male Chinese check-in attendant and the pregnant girl in front. She moved away and the smile emptied out of the attendant’s face. He hitched his sand blazer up his shoulders, shot the cuffs and dubiously accepted Will’s ticket and passport. Will guessed he must look a pretty ragged spectacle by now.
The attendant’s wispy black moustache undulated while he mouthed the details of Will’s passport and checked them on his screen. He nodded uncertainly and the smile slightly returned. Will’s phone rang.
“Carla?”
“Will?”
Momentarily he struggled to identify the voice. “Nessa, how did you get this number?”
“Mrs Frost just gave it to me. Where are you?”
Speaking to Nessa here disoriented him. Carla couldn’t possibly have let her in on the situation. “Look, I’m in the middle of something…what has Mrs Frost said?”
“Nothing, but she’s allowing me to ask you if you’re OK. You are OK?”
“Of course.” He could already feel his body shrugging off the painkillers. “Everything’s fine.”
Nessa hung up and Will examined the phone with bemusement.
Nessa put the phone back on the cradle.
“Now you need to make another call.” Carla lifted it again.
“I don’t. It’s OK, I didn’t call the police.”
Carla closed her eyes briefly.
“I wanted to see how you’d react. I’m sorry.” She examined Carla’s dishevelled appearance. “I don’t understand what’s happening here, but something’s badly wrong. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes. Go home and don’t say a word to anyone, not even Keiron.”
“Checking any bags, Mr Frost?”
Will shook his head and gripped the laptop tighter.
“If you’d like to make your way to the lounge.”
Somebody was at the boy’s ear. An older, taller Chinese man who only seemed to say one word to him. He was dressed in a blue shirt, but there was no ID badge clipped to his breast pocket like the others. The check-in attendant nodded quickly and looked past Will to smile at the next passenger while the new man gestured Will aside.
The man briefly examined his face, contemplatively chewing gum as if Will were the flavour. “Would you come this way?” It was polite, but it wasn’t a request. He scraped up Will’s passport and ticket and nodded towards a door behind the desk.
“What’s the problem?”
“Would you come this way?” He didn’t alter his intonation and looked at Will’s throat while he waited.
Will followed him behind the counter and the man led him through the exit to a cement corridor that jarred with the modern gloss of the terminal. A row of red doors stretched along the right side of the passage. The man opened the first one they came to and gestured for him to step inside.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Will was in a large room that smelt of fly spray. There was only a low table with two empty noodle cartons on it flanked by two stuffed, green chairs. He tried to remain calm. Was it standard practise to detain passengers at random? His appearance was probably pretty alarming.
The man quickly patted him down, said nothing else and left with Will’s passport and ticket, closing the door behind him.
He couldn’t dismiss the sight of the armed officers in the terminal and the possible reason they were there. His face was on the World Wide Web. How long since he’d left Chicago? He calculated just over twenty-four hours.
Will listened for the sound of the door being locked. He only heard the man’s receding footsteps.
An older Chinese man wearing the same clothes as the last entered. He was paunchy, had white hair and winged eyebrows. He said nothing, but gestured to Will’s laptop. Will placed it on the table.
“My flight leaves soon. Can you tell me what this is about?”
Winged Eyebrows nodded, snatched up the computer and left the room. Will felt panic throbbing through the vein at his temple. One of the last sites he’d hit was Ren’s. He’d been searching for his name immediately after he’d been murdered.
He waited, checking his watch every few seconds. Over ten minutes had passed since he’d been taken out of the check-in line. He would miss his flight if he were held up any longer. His back ached, but he couldn’t sit down.
Winged Eyebrows re-entered the room minus the laptop. “This way, please.”
Will followed him back into the corridor and they turned left, heading away from the door that led to check-in. Two girls standing in one of the doorways were chatting in low voices that lowered further as they passed. Will’s legs felt like they were wading through a snowdrift.
Winged Eyebrows opened another door and gestured him through.
He found himself the other side of the metal detectors that led into the business lounge. His laptop was just emerging from the x-ray machine. Winged Eyebrows handed it back to him with his passport.
“Thank you, Mr Frost.”
Will didn’t feel secure until they’d boarded. The plane’s take off was delayed, the doors remaining open while Will entertained every conceivable reason for them sitting on the runway. Had they halted their departure while they hunted for a murder suspect?
But when they were finally sealed in and rolling back he felt the last dregs of hope dwindle. He was about to be launched away from Libby, the gap between them growing ever wider.
The wheels lost contact with the runway and it felt as if he’d cut her loose.
Pope and Weaver had slept for the majority of the flight and wandered blearily through London Heathrow while their faculties slowly re-engaged.
Pope checked his phone. Two missed messages from Mrs Frost; he didn’t want to speak to her just now. She’d want to know exactly where they were. “Let’s ask at information about renting some wheels.”
Weaver dragged his camera bag like it was a corpse. “I still think we should be getting on a connecting flight.”
“We’ve been over this. It’s futile following them to Dundee. We won’t know what we’ll be walking into until after the address is posted.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t just misplaced sympathy with the Frosts?”
“How close could we get without putting everything at risk? What we do know for sure is where the last house is. At least, we know from Carla Frost’s online campaigning that she’s fighting a local battle in Hanworth. How big could an English village be? We’ll rent a car, drive out there, ask round and get an idea of the terrain. We’ll have to know every possible escape route their unwanted visitor could take before she arrives.”
Weaver didn’t respond.
“Then we’ll check into the nearest hotel and wait there for the GPS to tell us exactly when she does.”
“If she does, we don’t know if she’s definitely heading there.”
“It’s the last house on the site.”
“Yeah, but who’s her target?”
It was a good question. “We know Frost will have to return there. Who knows what she’ll have waiting for him.”
“Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to be his daughter.”
As soon as they were in the air, Will opened the laptop, but knew there’d be no further instructions until he’d landed in Dundee. Carla was booking his connecting flight from Gatwick. It was approximately six hours, which meant he would be arriving there around five in the morning.
He tried to focus on the screen as he cross-referenced the other victims’ names with his new location, but the painkillers and his own exhaustion were eager to catch up with him. As the sound of the aeroplane cut out and his mind wandered, a face slipped into his thoughts. It was the man with shoulder length white hair he’d encountered as he’d fled the Chicago apartment, but in a different context.
It was an album cover. He looked like Jimmy Farina Jr, the 70s lounge crooner that Carla listened to. She had a couple of his old CDs in
the summer house. That was why he’d looked so familiar. The surreal solution to a minor enigma amongst so many larger ones was his last semi-rational thought before he lost consciousness.
He awoke sporadically, glancing around the cabin expecting to find the woman’s anorexic figure sitting nearby. She shared shifts with the crab, its disintegrating body going faster round the bottom of the pot.
He’d stayed alone on the beach watching over it, even after it had stopped circling. Its motionless dark blue body had been mottled with the flakes of paint it had scratched from the sides of its cell. The ugly gull had continued to hover, but he’d buried it deep enough so the bird couldn’t dig it up. He’d pulled the sand over it, wet clothes clinging tight to his body while the wind had blasted rain into his skin.
He never usually wanted to ascend the hundred and thirteen steps back up to the house after his visits to the little cove. That afternoon he’d realised it was nothing to do with the climb.
Before they’d left him on the beach, he’d turned and found his father still standing there. His mother was already heading away with the picnic things and the billowing blanket, her back to him as she hurried for the steps. But it was his father’s contemplation of the captive in the pot he remembered more vividly than anything else.
His mouth was clamped to his pipe and he’d studied the animal with resigned antipathy. Will realised it was exactly the same way his father studied him.
He felt then like he’d dropped unwanted into his father’s life, as helpless as the animal he’d buried on the beach. From that moment to the day Will had seen his body lying on top of the bed in the hospice, his father never gave him any reason to doubt it.
When his fingers had made contact with the back of his hand he hadn’t recoiled.
His father had left too early. Will had wanted to show him how he could do things his own way.
“Put it back in the water, Will. Let it crawl under a rock to die.”
Tam gently flexed his legs in the ropes again. He’d been doing it every time he woke before exhaustion overcame him once more. There was some give around his ankles now. Maybe he had enough strength to crawl to the unstapled wire and squeeze out of the cage. He shifted his body a quarter turn so he could squint through the shadows
Skinny Man was still sitting there, watching.
Whatever they’d done to the girl he was sure they’d want to do it to him. His father had warned him about the night-time people, just like he’d warned his sister. But they’d both ignored him. Something had happened to Songsuda after she’d been with them. She was never the same when she came back.
He didn’t like to think about how frightened Songsuda had made him when she’d seized him and whispered those words, those strange lies he could sometimes convince himself had been part of a bad dream. Songsuda had told Tam his mother had deceived him and that she was his real mother. She’d held his face in her hands, creamy spittle at the sides of her mouth and looked deep into him when she’d said it. Then his father had struck her hard. His mother had beaten his father with her tiny fists and everybody had cried before Songsuda had been dragged out.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Although it was August, Will felt the colder climate of the UK bite at him as he descended from the plane. As he walked through baggage retrieval the shivering intensified and he realised it was a symptom of something else other than the change in temperature. During the flight he’d found that sleeping with his knees raised had eased the ache in his back. But after thirteen hours in one position his sudden mobility was sending his system into shock. He just made it to the bathroom in time to vomit. It felt like the pain had outgrown him.
His mobile rang.
“You depart at 10.40am. You should just make it. She registered on the GPS for an hour before her flight, but now she’s in the air again.” Carla relayed the information.
Will leaned a shoulder on the cubicle wall, his body still quivering but his face burning hot. “Which terminal?”
“A.”
Neither of them wanted to acknowledge the fact he was back in the UK.
He emptied the last of the painkillers into his mouth, his jaws grinding four tablets as he snapped upright. “Another six hours…” He considered what he was flying to and what was to come afterwards. “The reception’s hopeless here. I’ll have to hang up.”
Will rang off, feeling poisoned, desperate for sleep.
Seven hours later he was standing in the driving rain outside Dundee’s modest airport. The sign told him it was gateway to the home of golf. It was 5.18am and the ash coloured clouds hurriedly plastered up each crack of white daylight as soon as one emerged. The droplets bounced off the pavement as he waited under an empty shelter. He leaned one hand against the fibreglass and the wind dented the leather jacket he’d zipped tight around himself. No sign of a taxi.
“I’m here, but it’s over,” he said, registering that he couldn’t hear the imprisoned birds when the call was answered.
Water ran off the back of the shelter and splattered noisily behind him.
“I’m sick and need to get to a hospital. I don’t believe Libby’s alive anymore. What you did to that boy…” He inhaled and his breath wavered with anger. “You can go on with this, but I won’t. Not until I know she’s alive. You know this number. Call me back with proof.”
“Speak.” A male voice, the word was almost indiscernible.
“Say again.” Will thought he’d misheard and jammed the mobile closer to his ear. He blocked the other with his finger and squinted his eyes as he tried to zone out the rain.
“Who’s this?” The female voice was stoned and emotionless.
“Lib?”
“Dad?” Her voice sounded like it was passing through several filters, but its familiarity immediately blurred his vision with tears.
“Lib. Are you OK?” He anticipated the call being terminated.
No reply. Then he realised she was crying and the choked sobs were struggling to register. “Speak to me, Lib. Have they hurt you?” A warm tear dropped from his eye onto the wet pavement.
Noise ruptured the call, feeding back on itself.
“Lib?” He crouched low, flattening his ear to the mobile. “Keep talking.”
He halted everything, breath, circulation, pain; he suspended it so he could decipher what clear words bubbled up.
“…treating me OK. They haven’t hurt me.”
These were the only decipherable words to emerge from the churning static.
“Try to speak louder,” he pleaded.
The last sound was a long, metallic squeak and an impact, like a hinge straining and a door slamming shut.
The call ended and rainfall rushed back into his ears. He realised his knees were against the wet pavement, another waterfall from the shelter splashed noisily beside him. A taxi pulled up to him, headlights burning through his closed eyelids.
The rag was crammed back into Libby’s mouth and the hood tugged down. Two hot palms shoved against her shoulders so she was lying on her back again. Had her Dad’s voice been a hallucination?
She didn’t know how long she’d been subdued and had only recently started to wake in a different place. Even through the hood she could smell the rug she was lying on. It had an overpowering aroma of creosote. She also realised the door to her prison was metal because she’d heard it squeal as it slammed shut. She could vaguely discern faint traffic, but knew she didn’t have the strength to yell loud enough through the gag.
There were no birds and the air and the floor beneath her felt warm. Her thoughts were in disarray and she didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed. Her limbs felt like they needed to stretch, as if she’d been asleep for a long time. Libby registered her hands were bound in front of her now, her ankles tied firmly together.
She’d wanted to tell Dad about what had happened to her. But she knew how helpless it would have made him feel. Libby refused to let her captor have the satisfaction of that, to use the
pain they’d inflicted on her to secure what they wanted.
Had she really spoken to him?
The weight of her thoughts exhausted her, but she heard laboured breathing other than her own. Libby had thought whoever had slammed the door was outside it. Now she felt them touching her. They were locked inside. She clenched up again and screwed her eyes tightly as their rubber fingers traced the bite mark on her shoulder.
She remembered the wet snout of the boar as it had compressed her against the toppled bricks, recalled the sound it had made when she’d caved its head in. She knew it could be her last chance to defend herself. Libby thrust herself upright, her face connecting hard with a chin or elbow. She heard a grunt through nostrils and sprang from her sitting position so she was crawling forward on her knees. Aim for the doors. She knew they were somewhere ahead of her.
She held up her bound hands, shins grazing metal as she took short steps with them and dragged her trussed ankles behind. Her body hit the doors and they bowed, but didn’t open. Her nails scratched steel as her tied hands scrabbled for a lock. She slammed herself into them harder, her already injured shoulder mashing with the impact. This time one hinged outward.
Fingers were around her waist, but she jabbed backwards harshly with her elbow and felt it connect. The hands released her and she fell headfirst through the doors. Her temple hit concrete and her right eardrum went dead, but she kept scrambling forward.
But, as she put more and more distance between herself and her captor, Libby realised why they didn’t pursue her. It was unnecessary. They were in no hurry.
Flashes of white at her chin, the hood was loose. As she crawled, she shook her head violently from side to side. The hood slipped off. Cool air and light swamped her senses. She squinted around the room and looked back the way she’d crawled. A figure strode casually towards her. His hand held a black nightstick.
Scare Me Page 27