by Sue Fortin
The slight shake of the head by Kate and mouthing of the word ‘sorry’ from across the road at her said all that needed to be said. Kate wasn’t here of her own free will.
‘Stay here,’ said Ben. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve got to go to her,’ said Ellen.
She felt Ben’s hand tug her arm. ‘Wait! You’ll get yourself run over.’ He nodded at the bus heading their way.
Kate and Toby stood at the edge of the pavement; Kate’s eyes still on Ellen, Toby’s on the bus. Kate began to struggle, trying to wriggle her arm free of his grip. Toby looked across at Ellen. The sneer was of evil proportions as he held firmly onto Kate’s arm. The bus was only metres away. Toby curled his lip in a primeval way.
In a split second, Ellen knew without doubt what Toby was about to do. She opened her mouth to shout … to shout what? A warning to Kate? A plea to Toby? A command to Ben? Whatever, no sound came out. Ellen watched in total despair as Toby released Kate from his grip and propelled her out into the road.
The scream that followed was inhuman. The thud sickening. Tyres screeched. Gasps sounded out. Ellen felt Ben pull her face to his chest, shielding her eyes. She felt small hands grapple around her legs. Izzy. Please don’t let Izzy have witnessed that.
The smell of hot brakes on rubber flooded the air. Ellen fought her way from Ben. She needed to get to her friend. She must help her. Kate. Darling Kate. Her friend for so many years.
‘Ellen! Stop!’ Ben was in full command. He pulled her back against the flint wall. ‘There’s nothing you can do. Nothing. I’m sorry.’
Ellen looked beyond him at the scene of panic playing out on the other side of the road. The bus had stopped but, of course, not in time. People were rushing to the scene. One woman was crying, people were shouting, the bus driver was in a serious state of distress. Through the legs of the rapidly gathering crowd, she caught a glimpse of a shoe. A black ballet pump; the sort Kate always wore. Pandemonium reigned before her. All she could think of was Kate’s face as she had mouthed sorry.
The next sob she recognised as her own. The one after belonged to Izzy.
‘Oh, darling,’ said Ellen, scooping Izzy into her arms. The poor love must have seen it all. How awful.
‘Ellen!’ cried Izzy, pulling back from the embrace and wildly hitting Ellen on the shoulder.
With Izzy still in her arms, Ellen turned just in time to see Toby, now on their side of the road, swinging something black in his hand towards Ben’s head.
Ben was already turning but wasn’t quick enough to throw up a defence. The full force of Toby’s fist and whatever he was holding hit Ben on the temple. It must have knocked him out immediately. Ben fell to the ground, limp and lifeless. Toby knelt down beside him and rummaged in his pocket, pulling out his mobile phone. He looked up at Ellen. His eyes narrowed as his mouth set a firm line across his face. A second later he was on his feet and striding towards her.
Ellen screamed. She had to get away from Toby. Holding Izzy close to her body, Ellen began to run towards the duck pond. How she thought she was going to outrun him, she didn’t know, not on her own, nor while she was carrying Izzy. Even if she put Izzy down, the little girl wasn’t going to be able to run fast enough. Not even Ellen could. It was pointless running, yet the instinct to flee took over.
She had only made it a few metres before she felt his hand clasp the back of her neck and yank her backwards.
‘Don’t be silly, Helen,’ came Toby’s voice. Moving his hand to her arm, he turned her around. Ellen gulped. There in his other hand was a small handgun. No wonder Ben had dropped like a stone. Ellen pulled Izzy closer into her. ‘I wasn’t bargaining on you having company. My fault. I didn’t make sure Kate told you to come alone.’
‘You…’ hissed Ellen, stopping herself from swearing in front of Izzy.
‘Tut, tut, Helen. Not in front of the children.’ Holding tightly on to her arm, he poked the muzzle of the gun into Ellen’s ribs. ‘Shall we go for a ride, darling? My car is parked over there.’
Ellen put Izzy down and held the child’s hand. ‘This is my friend, Toby. We’re just going to go for a nice ride in his car.’ She wondered whether she would be able to break free once they got nearer to the car or possibly attract someone’s attention. There was quite a crowd gathered now.
The look on Izzy’s face told Ellen that her acting skills were far from Oscar standard. ‘I don’t want to,’ said Izzy, coming to a standstill. ‘I want to go home. What about Ben?’
‘Ben will be okay. Come on, Izzy. Be good for me, please.’ Ellen ran her hand over Izzy’s head and down through the dark hair which was tied back in bunches.
‘That’s it, Izzy, be a good girl. We’re going to have lots of fun.’ Toby smiled at Ellen. ‘Oh and so you don’t try and do anything clever, like call Donovan, I’ll have your phone.’ He held his hand out. ‘Come on, pass it over.’
Reluctantly Ellen took her phone from her handbag and gave it to Toby. She wanted to cry. It was the only way she thought she’d be able to let someone know where she was and what had happened to her. ‘Please, Toby. Let’s not do this,’ she said. Maybe if she tried to reason with him, she could get him to see sense. He clearly wasn’t in his right mind. Even by his own overbearing, controlling standards, kidnap, was way off the radar.
As they approached his car, Ellen didn’t dare try calling out to anyone. Toby dug the gun further into her ribs as a reminder. She desperately tried to make eye contact with someone, but they were all too preoccupied with the accident. Ellen retched as she thought of Kate and what had happened.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said.
‘Shut up and get in the car.’ He shoved her in the back.
‘Can’t you leave Izzy here?’ Ellen knew she had a pleading tone in her voice. Petrified as she was, she knew that Izzy didn’t deserve to witness whatever it was that Toby had in mind. ‘She’s only eight, please, let her go.’
Toby laughed. ‘Don’t think your whining and pleading is going to make a difference. If you’d only done as you were told in the first place and come alone, then we wouldn’t be in this position, would we? Whatever happens now is your fault. Remember that, won’t you?’
Fear rippled through her but Ellen drove down the nerves. She needed to stay calm for Izzy. Again, she gently ran her hand over the child’s hair. This time, she managed to free the red ribbon from the band and she let it flutter to the ground.
Chapter Thirty-One
Donovan didn’t like it one bit. Not only was Ellen’s phone going straight to voicemail, but Ben’s was doing the exact same thing. He had even tried the house phone but that had just rung out to answerphone. He toyed with the idea of contacting Amanda and Izzy to see if they knew anything but quickly dismissed that notion. It would only give Amanda something else to hold against him at a future date.
As he pulled into the drive of his house, he was even more alarmed to see that the little Fiesta was not in its usual place.
Donovan tried to ignore the voice at the back of his mind telling him that the very fact the car was gone and neither Ben nor Ellen were answering their phones meant that something most definitely wasn’t right.
Maybe Ellen was sleeping and Ben had gone out in the car. It had, after all, been a stressful week. But then again, he’d left strict instructions that Ben wasn’t to leave Ellen alone. Dumping the flowers he had bought for her on the hall table, he took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor. He tapped on Ellen’s door and when he got no answer, called out her name.
Pushing the door open, he knew he shouldn’t be surprised to see she wasn’t there. A sense of dread embedded itself in his bones.
‘Donovan!’ A voice called out from downstairs. ‘You here, Donovan? It’s Ken.’
Donovan yelled out an acknowledgement and tore down the stairs. The look on his friend’s face told him it wasn’t a social call. ‘Ken?’
‘You left the door open. Not like you.
’
Donovan looked distractedly at the door and then back to the DCI. ‘Is it Izzy?’ He didn’t need soft talking. He liked things straightforward. ‘She’s with her mother. Has something happened to her?’
Ken gestured to the living room. ‘A drink?’
‘Just tell me, Ken. What’s this about?’ Donovan stood his ground. Fuck the drink. He needed to know what was going on.
Ken drew a deep breath in. ‘Ben was found up by the duck pond with a nasty blow to his head. He’s alive but unconscious. At this stage, we’ve no idea what happened. The Fiesta was parked up on Middleton Road.’
‘And Ellen?’
‘That’s what I was coming round for. To make sure she was all right?’
‘She’s not here.’ Donovan was aware of the dryness invading his throat. ‘I left her here with Ben.’
‘Is it possible she would have gone off on her own somewhere?’
Donovan pulled his hands down his face. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’ He began pacing backwards and forwards. ‘Didn’t anyone see what happened to Ben? Have you asked? Maybe they saw Ellen with him.’
‘It seems that at around the same time there was another incident. A young lady was hit by a car. It wasn’t Ellen, that much I do know, so dismiss that thought straight away. She’s not a local, apparently. Holiday-maker they think. Everyone’s attention was on that. Brought the village to a standstill, as you can imagine. It wasn’t until afterwards that someone spotted Ben.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Suddenly a drink sounded like a good idea.
‘You don’t know what Ben was doing there or if Ellen would have been with him, do you?’ asked Ken taking the tumbler of whiskey offered by Donovan.
‘No idea whatsoever. I can’t get hold of her on the phone. I don’t like the sound of this, Ken.’
‘She hasn’t left you a note or anything? Perhaps saying where she has gone.’
Donovan scanned the living room for any sign of a note. If anywhere, Ellen would have left it in the kitchen. He hurried down the hallway. The sight of paint pots, brushes and paintings turned his throat even drier.
‘What’s up?’ asked Ken, coming to stand beside him.
‘Izzy went out with her mother this morning. She was staying overnight.’
‘And?’
‘She didn’t do any painting before she went. She must have been back.’ Donovan walked over to the table and picked up a picture of a tank. ‘Looks like Ben was here too.’
Ken dabbed his finger on one of the paintings. ‘The paint’s pretty much dry. I’d say they were all sat together painting.’ He dabbed a couple more pieces of paper. ‘Whatever took Ben up to the village, my guess is, took Ellen and Izzy too.’
‘So where the hell are they?’ Donovan pushed his hands back through his hair. Now wasn’t the time to go into headless-chicken mode. He needed to stay calm and focused. With as much control as he could muster, he began sifting through the paintings, looking for any kind of note. Nothing.
‘I’ll get on to the station and report them missing. We’ll get a search party out. Any ideas where they might have gone?’
‘Toby must have something to do with this. Ellen wouldn’t have just gone off. She knows how worried I’d be. She would have got a message to me.’ Donovan could feel his heart beginning to pump faster.
‘We’ll send someone round to find Toby,’ replied Ken, taking out his phone. ‘Keep calm, mate. We’ll do everything we can to find them and bring them back safely.’
Donovan was conscious of the fact that Ken was making no promises. It hung in the air like a guillotine.
‘You thought you were clever, didn’t you?’ snarled Toby. He pulled the rope tightly around Ellen’s wrists. ‘Changing your name. Getting a new bank account. Having all your post sent to Kate. Even getting a new job organised.’
Ellen winced as he gave the ropes a tug. Already they were pinching her skin. ‘Please, you don’t need to tie Izzy up,’ she said. ‘She’s terrified. Please, Toby. Don’t.’
Toby gave a small laugh. ‘And leave her free to escape and get help? You really do take me for a mug.’ He prised Izzy’s hands away from Ellen and, clasping them together behind her back, began wrapping the rope around the child’s wrists. Izzy began to cry.
‘It’s all right, darling. Please don’t cry. It will be okay. Daddy will be here soon,’ said Ellen.
‘Do you really think Donovan is going to rescue you?’ Toby let out another laugh. ‘You are such a fool, Helen, you really are.’ He inspected his handiwork and then roughly pushed Izzy into Ellen. ‘You think you’ve been clever planning everything but you haven’t been clever enough and neither was Kate. You should have picked your ally better.’
‘You pushed her, didn’t you?’ Ellen’s voice trembled as she spoke. Tears trickled down her face as she thought of her friend.
‘It was her fault. She was trying to run away.’ There was a patronising tone to his voice that made Ellen shudder. In the past this had so often been the prelude to his violence. Toby continued. ‘If she hadn’t wriggled, she wouldn’t have fallen into the road. Mind you, she was getting a bit tiresome. It took me quite a long time to convince her to make the trip down here and to arrange to meet up with you.’
Ellen thought back to the bruising on Kate’s face. She knew only too well how he must have convinced her friend. The bastard. Complete and utter bastard. Her fear was rapidly turning to anger. How dare he do this?
‘Do you really think you can get away with everything you’ve done?’ She almost spat the words at him. ‘What are you actually trying to achieve out of all of this?’
Ellen flinched as Toby raised his hand. When he gently caressed her cheek, she wondered what frightened her more. The violence, she knew how to deal with, but this faux tenderness was scary.
‘Don’t be worrying about details,’ he spoke softly. He checked his watch and sat back, studying her and Izzy as if he was working out his next step.
Ellen wanted to delay any change. At the moment they weren’t in any immediate danger, albeit they were tied up in one of the old beach huts at Old Point. They were so close to Donovan, yet there was no way of letting him know. Surely they would be looking for her and Izzy by now? Someone would have found Ben and raised the alarm. She thought of Ben lying on the path, blood seeping from his wound. She hoped to God he was okay. Right now, though, she needed to concentrate on stalling for time.
‘What are you hoping to achieve by all this, Toby?’
‘You. That’s what I’m going to achieve.’ He shuffled forwards to her and rested the palm of his hand against her cheek. ‘You’re with me until I say it’s time to go.’
Ellen held her nerve. Now was not the time to become flaky. His touch repulsed her but she tamped down the reaction to shy away. ‘You only had to ask.’ Her voice was soft and betrayed her emotions. She needed to be clever; to get him on her side. If she could make him believe she wanted the same thing, then she might stand half a chance of getting herself and Izzy out of this unscathed. ‘You didn’t need to bring us here. In fact, you didn’t need to bring Izzy at all.’
‘She wasn’t supposed to be with you. I didn’t want to bring her but I had no choice. You should have come alone.’ His hand cupped her chin and she felt the pressure increase. ‘You’ve been away too long. I couldn’t trust you just to come at my request. Don’t take me for a fool. I know you will need time to realise that I know what is best for you.’
‘That’s okay. I understand,’ she lied, ‘but please let Izzy go home to her father.‘
‘All in good time, sweetheart.’ He gave her face a squeeze. ‘Remember, I’m in charge. Not you.’
A feeling of hopelessness coiled itself around her. Toby’s mental stability was on shaky ground. She didn’t want him to contemplate her and Izzy’s fate; this might force him into taking some sort of drastic action. She needed to deflect the conversation away. ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.
‘That was easy. I
f anyone was going to know where you were, it was Kate.’ He released his hold on her and settled himself on the floor, his delight apparent now that he literally had a captive audience to whom he could boast about his detection skills. ‘I called round there several times. Credit to her, she stuck to the story that she had no idea where you were. I was even beginning to believe her myself. But then I called round there unannounced, just to see if I could catch her out.’ He grinned, his eyes wide open. ‘And I did. It was an envelope on the table, addressed to Ellen Newman. Now, I may not have paid that much attention to it, but you see, dear Kate tried very discreetly to move it. I knew then, it had to be important and what was the one thing Kate wouldn’t want me to see? Of course, anything to do with you. Despite the different name, I knew it was you. I mean, Paul Newman was one of your Hollywood idols. And what with the message on the back of the postcard. It didn’t take a genius to work it out. It all tied in nicely with the name on the letter Kate had tried to hide. Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, Helen. Your friend didn’t give you up straight away.’
A look of amusement and self-satisfaction matured on his face. Ellen had to ask, ‘How did you get her to tell you?’
‘She thought she was so fucking clever. Told me she believed me when I played the nutter card. You know, the one that I played on Donovan? About your delusions – your mental illness.’
‘She would never have believed you. She knew the truth. She saw what you did to me.’
‘I underestimated her. My mistake. At first I thought she had fallen for it but then she tried to be clever, didn’t she?’
‘What did she do?’ Ellen needed to know. Her best friend hadn’t given her up. Dear Kate had paid the ultimate price for her loyalty and belief in her.
‘She prepared an email to you saying she wanted to meet you, that it was important.’