by J. S. Spicer
“She’ll be back here quicker by taxi anyway. By the time I tackle the rush hour and get back we’ll be losing the light. Once Carrie’s set up here, she can coordinate things centrally and we’ll make our move.”
Lorraine nodded, but was chewing her bottom lip; a sign of concern.
Max glanced at their handy work.
“Hey, we may not find him tonight. But at least we’ll have eliminated an awful lot of prospective hideouts.”
She gave him a small smile. A few minutes ago she’d been back to her former self, oozing confidence and vitality. She walked across the room, leaned against the window sill.
“I’m just worried we’ve missed something,” she muttered. “Again!” The bitterness still simmered beneath the surface. Max guessed she was thinking about Melissa Austen-Brown.
He stepped up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently. He’d expected to be shrugged off, but instead she let her head drop; he felt some of her tension slip away. He squeezed again, lightly kneading her shoulders with the tips of his fingers. She leaned back, leaning into him, only a fraction, but it was there. Max, listening to the stillness of the room, moved only his hands, his fingers, in small, circular caresses. When he moved his thumb to stroke the back of her neck, Lorraine breathed the smallest murmur of pleasure.
**
Jennifer fumbled with the latch on the front gate, her excitement making her all fingers and thumbs. As the gate finally gave way she looked up, scanning the house, relishing the delicious thrill of surprising her boyfriend.
Then she saw him.
Max.
Jennifer’s lips stretched a little, anticipating the broad smile that was lurking, ready to spring into being. Weaving through the narrow opening, she raised her free hand, the other already starting to close the gate behind her.
He hadn’t seen her.
He wasn’t alone.
Jennifer’s steps faltered, she squinted to make out the other person through the window. Low, slanting, rays bounced confusingly off the glass as dusk crept in. Moving along the path, shadows cast some clarity as she neared the house, dispelling the splintered reflections. Soon enough both of the people inside were clear for her to see.
She’d never met Lorraine, but she’d found some old photos on Max’s phone. Jennifer had no doubt that’s who it was, as she looked at the tall, lean, blonde woman standing next to Max. Standing very close to Max.
Jennifer’s excitement shrivelled to a sick feeling; a foolish, envious, slightly enraged, nausea. She stopped halfway down the path. To continue to the front door would mean having her view of the window obscured by a crooked piece of trellis. She halted, eyes fixed on the window, uncertain what to do.
Rationally she should just take those last few steps and hammer on the door. But she didn’t move. She saw now that Max had his hands on Lorraine’s shoulders. He was standing so close to her, Jennifer couldn’t see daylight between their bodies. Lorraine’s eyes were shut. Max’s head dipped, very close to her neck.
Like a victim in shock she watched, caught in the horror of the moment, knowing what was about to happen but doing nothing to prevent it.
She had to know.
In the back of her mind a small part of her was surprised Max hadn’t seen her. She was mere feet away, standing in his front garden. But he didn’t notice her, didn’t see anything or anyone except Lorraine.
Jennifer heard her own muffled sob as she watched Max gently grip Lorraine’s shoulders and turn her into him. She felt hot tears prickling the corners of her eyes as she watched him enclose her in his arms, lowering his face to hers.
Seeing Max kissing another woman was like a kick in the gut. Jennifer actually gasped, stumbling backwards a step or two. She dragged her eyes away from the sight of them draped around each other, letting her gaze drop to the ground, staring at the parched grass, the broken path, not really seeing. Until she found herself staring at a large, smooth stone. A few lined the pathway; an out of character attempt at decoration. The stone that caught Jennifer’s attention was larger than the others.
It was in her hand before she had time to consider what she was doing. She felt its heft, felt the damp, muddy underside that had rested in the earth, but most of all felt the searing rage shooting from her core, and guiding her arm as she flung it with all her might.
The stone struck the glass with a thunderous smack, reverberating through the quiet evening air. She saw her own reflection shimmer violently with the shock of the blow. A few cracks immediately snaked across the surface of the window, slender fractures emanating from the impact point.
Cracks scarred the window, but it didn’t smash, it didn’t break. Inside though, Max and Lorraine pulled away immediately, unravelling from each other, springing apart like they’d been subjected to an electric shock.
For a second, through the splintered glass between them, Max and Jennifer locked eyes. She saw surprise, shock, and she saw guilt. When she saw his mouth move, saying something she couldn’t hear, she turned and fled. She couldn’t listen to any of his bullshit, not now, probably not ever.
By the time Max made it out of the house and to the end of the garden path, Jennifer was already in her car, already tearing away from there as fast as she possibly could.
“I should go.”
Lorraine had followed him outside. She looked as guilty as he felt. Worse, she looked just as keen to bolt as Jennifer had been.
Max stared at Lorraine for a moment. Embarrassment flamed in her pale cheeks. She was fiddling with the strap of her handbag, avoiding eye contact. Trying to catch the thoughts flying round in Max’s head was like a juggling act. At any moment something would slip from his grasp. If that happened he dreaded the consequences. He pushed backwards, to the moments before the stone hit the window. Think about the case; that wasn’t going away, and they couldn’t ignore it. But then he thought about the kiss. It shouldn’t have happened. It was his fault, he knew that. Worst of all, he was glad he’d done it.
When he replied he hoped he sounded more in control than he felt.
“Don’t. We’ve got too much to do.”
Lorraine nodded, the action brisk. She smoothed the front of her shirt, a little shaky still. Getting back to the job was the best way to stop her leaving.
“Look, Carrie’ll be back in a minute. Then we can finalise…”
Max’s mobile interrupted. He resisted the urge to ignore the call, since it was Heritage. Swiping to answer he put the phone to his ear.
Hearing their boss’s voice raging on the line Lorraine finally found enough dignity to look Max in the eye. Her heart iced over as she watched every drop of colour drain from his face.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
It was getting dark. She could smell the earth, the grass pressed into her cheek, damp with the first evening dew. The air between the trees was quickly cooling; with the fading of the daylight, the temperature was falling away quickly. Blinking against the gloom, Carrie became aware of the splitting pain in her head, a hot slice of agony. She tried to move her arm, tried to touch where it was so sore and tender, to check for damage. Her arms, hands, they wouldn’t, couldn’t cooperate.
That’s when she realised she was tied up.
Panic and terror rippled through Carrie. Her gasp of shock revealed another restraint; she was gagged. Her discomfort increased with the fear, not helped by the hot tears blurring her vision or the cloying snot stuffing up her airways.
For a few moments she frantically strained against the bindings secured so tightly around her wrists and ankles. Her efforts served only to chafe the skin, biting into her flesh, leaving it feeling exposed and raw. The bindings felt rigid, hard and unyielding. She pulled her knees up, straining to see.
Cable ties. She was bound with plastic cable ties. They wouldn’t be easy to break.
Twice she tried to stand. Both times she fell back to the ground. With bound feet and her arms secured behind her back balance was tricky, m
ade worse by her disorientated state. She wondered if the blow to the head was a factor too.
Unable to stay upright, instead she began shuffling awkwardly on her side. Fallen twigs and knots in the ground grazed and snagged. Something sharp dug into her hip when she landed too heavily in her efforts to hurry.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know where she was going. But as long as she could move at all, she had to keep trying. She wriggled, wormlike, throwing weight forward, curling her legs up after her. Feeling sweat gathering beneath her clothes with the effort she paused to take stock. She was in a mossy clearing, surrounded by trees, the spaces between them darkening by the second as evening lowered its weight onto the world.
Carrie had been reacting to her primal, instinctive autopilot, but now reason burrowed its way in. She recognised this clearing. She’d seen it earlier that very day, staring for hours at the photos in Jasmine Burke’s album. This was the next dump site.
Rationalising her situation was no comfort. Her body began trembling uncontrollably as she realised the truth. Felix Vine had brought her here.
Felix Vine would murder her here.
She listened to her own feeble, rasping sobs, muffled against the gag in her mouth. For a moment she gave into despair.
Then she thought about her parents.
She’d promised them she’d be fine, be safe. She couldn’t leave them; couldn’t give up, not without a fight. Carrie took a moment, focussed on breathing in and out slowly through her nose, tried to quell her trembling limbs.
Before the light completely failed her she struggled into a kneeling position. Swaying drunkenly, tear tracks lining her dirty cheeks, she took a good look around. She dug into the deepest recesses of her mind, trying to apply reason, intelligence, strategy. It all just looked so hopeless. She thought of the photograph she’d seen, the one taken in this clearing of the carefree, smiling children, one of whom was now hell bent on her annihilation.
How could the picture help? It was taken more than twenty five years ago. She remembered one particular tree, a wide, gnarled and ancient oak, squatting stubbornly against the tides of time. She recalled there was a carving made into the bark; a crude heart shape containing unreadable initials. It took a moment but she found it. In daylight the tree would have dignity, inspire reverence. But lost in shadows it seemed twisted and scary, its old limbs creaking against the darkening sky.
Carrie felt despair rush back in.
So what if she’d found the tree with the carving? Blackbridge had a lot of trees. She’d checked all the local maps thoroughly that very afternoon. Her best guess had been that the clearing in the photo was somewhere inside the old Blackbridge woods, which lay to the south of the town. She even recalled checking the satellite imagery, showing a gap amongst the trees that might be the very same clearing and how far it was from the road. But without knowing which direction was which, she was hopelessly lost, floundering, afraid and alone, as night swallowed her up. Besides, these were just guesses made from the safety of her desk. An intellectual exercise. Now that reality had crashed down upon her she suddenly saw the folly of her own supposed cleverness.
Desperately she tried to quiet her harsh breaths, to listen, hoping a sound would carry on the darkness, maybe the sound of an engine, of tyres rushing over tarmac.
Nothing.
Nothing, but the rustling of creeping things, the groaning weight of branches overhead, the mournful sigh of a breeze skimming the canopy of leaves far above.
The world turned black all around as night-time shadows inhabited every corner of the woods. Carrie finally chose a direction, at random, there was no right or wrong choice. Bound as she was, she just had to get as far away from the clearing as she could. There was no way to know where Felix Vine was, when he’d be back, but she didn’t want to be there when he returned.
Clumsily, half sitting, using her hands as support behind her and her legs to propel her body, she scuttled along the woodland floor.
A bright star poked out above the trees. Carrie kept it in her sights. Time and space and direction were all lost to her, confused by darkness and fear. She may be going entirely the wrong way, but the star was still a fixed point for her. Hopefully, by steering towards it, she wouldn’t go round in circles and end up right back where she didn’t want to be.
**
There was no doubting the CCTV images.
The grainy figure standing in the centre of the screen was easily recognisable as Carrie. She was checking her phone, head down, shoulders hunched as she concentrated on what she was doing. A bulging bag hung lopsidedly from one shoulder. At her feet rested a laptop bag, also looking full to bursting. Max had already watched the feed once, but felt the tension squeeze his insides as a shadow crept behind Carrie. Forcing himself to watch he saw the raised arm, the blunt instrument, a heavy torch they thought, and then, even with the poor quality image and distance from the camera, the blow inflicted onto the back of Carrie’s head conveyed shocking force. Max found himself blinking rapidly with fear and rage.
She’d slumped to the ground immediately, the bag on her shoulder dropping to the floor. Carrie’s limpness scared Max the most. Her attacker disappeared from view for a couple of moments. In the time he was gone she never moved, not so much as a twitch.
His absence was explained when the car pulled up. Large, new, shiny, four-by-four. Felix Vine, now easily identifiable as he turned towards the camera in his effort to get a better grip on Carrie. He grabbed her beneath the arms and heaved. It took him a couple of attempts to haul her into the back of the car. Carrie wasn’t the lightest of girls, and knocked senseless – at least Max hoped she was only unconscious – Vine strained and struggled, before finally stuffing her into the vehicle.
As they came to the last part he felt others crowding close; other officers, Lorraine, and the Chief, whose rage had reached such new heights Max genuinely feared he might have a heart attack right there in the briefing room.
It was the car they were focussing on. After an officer had found Carrie’s bags abandoned on the street outside, knowing of the threat to her and her family, no time had been wasted checking local cameras. The shock of her abduction was a blow, a blitzing hammer strike that had winded those closest to her. Quickly they rallied, and procedure seeped back in. Knowing it was Felix Vine got them nowhere. But the car, that might be a lead. It was high-end, expensive and looked new. Unfortunately, although they could make out that it was a Range Rover Discovery, at no point was the registration plate visible.
It was being followed up anyway. Vine had stolen cars before to suit his purposes. After the first viewing of the CCTV images the details were already fanning outward, calls being made, connections formed, in-roads quickly made into the police database.
Lorraine was overseeing. When an officer approached her, pale, fearful almost, with that recognisable pallor of failure, Max didn’t know who to feel sorrier for. In the end he just kept Carrie in mind. She would be OK; he had to keep telling himself that, over and over, until he could believe it.
“What do you mean, not reported? Look at it. Someone would miss a car like that if it was stolen.” Lorraine was trying not to lose control, but the veneer was suffering from a few cracks now. They’d taken too many hits, experienced too many failures. Having Heritage’s eyes boring into the back of her neck as she spoke to the officer wasn’t helping her composure.
“Check again.”
The officer hurried away.
“Maybe they haven’t discovered its missing yet,” Max offered, trying to sound reasonable under these very unreasonable circumstances. “That car from the car park near the bridge wasn’t reported right away, remember.”
Lorraine rubbed one hand across her brow, as if scrubbing away doubt and frustration. “True. Let’s expand the area,” she shouted across the room at the retreating officer. “He may have stolen the car miles from here, just to make it more difficult for us.” She began pacing. “Without the regi
stration he’s difficult to track, even in a car like that, there are still a fair few on the roads.”
“Does it really matter,” Max said. “We know where he’ll go.” He grabbed Jasmine’s scrapbook from Carrie’s bag. “He’s following a set pattern. We need to get to the woods.”
“Agreed.” It was Heritage. “But which woods? That photo could have been taken anywhere. Hell, it’s just a lot of bloody trees!”
Max stared dumbly at his boss for a second, feeling suddenly useless, impotent. When they needed information, it was always Carrie he turned to.
Carrie.
He looked again at her bags. She’d collated a lot of information in there. Max, not even bothering to respond right away to Heritage, dropped to his knees and started pulling out files, skimming Carrie’s own notes for something useful.
He felt curious eyes on him; he probably looked slightly unhinged, scattering papers across the floor, but he didn’t care. She’d never let him down yet. Now he hoped she’d be the one to provide the information crucial to her own survival.
“Bingo!” He brandished a print-out of a map where Carrie had circled a gap in the trees. “Blackbridge Woods. This is where he’ll take her.”
Heritage had stepped close until he was standing right over Max and the smattering of files surrounding him. His grim face was cautiously impressed.
“OK, Max, lead a team. Lorraine, keep on the car. There’s still a chance we can head him off before he gets there.”
“Right,” she agreed, but looked unhappy. “I just hope the bloody owners aren’t away on holiday or something.” She muttered. Max was already on his feet, hurrying to gather officers to accompany him to the woods. Time was moving. Every second that passed was liked the blade of doom closing in on poor Carrie.
He was halfway to the door when Lorraine’s words hit home.
“Holiday?”
She was a few yards away, about to make a phone call. She stared dumbly at Max. “What?”
He pulled out his own mobile, speedily scrolling through until he found the number he wanted. When Bryan Doyle’s PA answered he babbled the question so fast she couldn’t understand. He took a breath, repeated himself, more slowly.