Dead Silent (A Dylan Scott Mystery)

by Wells, Shirley

  The third door opened into a bedroom. Apart from a single bed and two drawers, it was empty. There was another door leading off the bedroom, a flimsy door in an equally flimsy wall. He tried to turn the handle but it was stuck. No, it was locked.

  He’d already smashed a window, albeit one that was already broken, so he may was well go for it. To hell with it.

  He charged at the door. The door remained locked in its frame, but the frame parted company with the thin plastered wall. Flexing his shoulder, he charged again.

  “Holy shit—” The door flew open to reveal three figures. They were each gagged and chained to a metal bolt attached to a crumbling stone wall. And they were terrified.

  He held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Don’t be scared. I can help.”

  He carefully pulled a length of thick black tape from a small girl’s mouth. She took a deep breath and screamed in terror.

  “It’s all right,” he shouted above her screams. “I’m here to help.”

  She made even more noise if that were possible. Undaunted, Dylan took the gag from her companion. She tried to soothe the crying girl by speaking in a language that he didn’t understand. He’d guess at Hungarian or Romanian.

  The other girl was thin with short dark, almost black hair. She was barefooted. He removed a strip of tape from her mouth too.

  “Quick!” This one was English. Her voice was hoarse and shaking. “Oh, please, be quick!”

  There was something about her voice.

  “Quick!” She pointed to the plaster and wood splinters on the floor. “He kept the keys above the door. They’ll be on the floor somewhere. For fuck’s sake, hurry up. He’ll be back any minute.”

  There were three keys, one for each girl, each padlock.

  The youngest girl, still screaming, was first to be set free. Her companion was next.

  “Run!” the English girl yelled at them. “For fuck’s sake, I don’t know which planet you’re from, but surely you know how to fucking run.”

  Dylan turned to look at her. The long red hair had gone, the freckles weren’t visible beneath the dirt—

  “Sam?”

  She backed away, eyes wide with terror.

  “It is you, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer, but she pushed herself as close to the wall as she could, clearly frightened for her life.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  He soon had her free. The chains were thick, but the padlocks were small, cheap and easily undone.

  Dylan’s leg was bleeding from his argument with the window, but it was nothing compared to the state of the girls’ ankles where the chains had rubbed their skin raw.

  Sam was already at the door, not caring about running in bare feet.

  “He’ll be back any minute.” Panic turned her voice into a squeak. “Run!” She punched the taller of the other girls in the back. “Fucking run!”

  There was a panicked scramble to get out of the building.

  “My car’s at Rackwick,” Dylan said. “Do you know the way?”

  Sam didn’t bother to answer, preferring instead to set off down the hill like a gazelle.

  “Come on,” Dylan urged the other two.

  They raced after Sam and, after a mile or so, Dylan recognised his surroundings. The best part was that it was all downhill from here.

  On and on they ran until, finally, Dylan spotted his car. He caught up with Sam and grabbed her hand. “This way!”

  Gasping for breath, he stopped by the Morgan.

  The foreign girls stared at him, clearly frightened. Sam stared at his car.

  “This is yours?” She traced a grubby finger over the paintwork.

  At any other time, Dylan would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation. She looked half-starved, she was terrified and filthy. Tears had made white tracks down her dirty face. He still had no idea how he’d found her. Yet she could admire his car.

  “It is. If I’m rescuing damsels in distress, I want to do it in style.” However, there wasn’t room for three passengers. Correction. There had to be room. “Get in.”

  “Who are you?” Her teeth were chattering despite the warmth of the day.

  “It’s a long story. It’ll keep. Come on.”

  Somehow, and Dylan never knew how, the girls, amid much cursing from Sam, managed to pack themselves in the car.

  He had two towels and an overcoat and he did his best to hide them.

  They had to wait for over an hour for the ferry but when it finally moved out onto the open water, Sam burst into tears.

  Dylan couldn’t blame her.

  He stood out on deck for the crossing, his back against the Morgan’s passenger window to hide the bulk of his surprising cargo from prying eyes.

  He sent a quick and urgent text message to Frank asking his friend to find out all he could about a bloke named Sullivan. As the ferry made its way slowly across Scapa Flow, Dylan sent Frank another message that he wanted translating into Hungarian and Romanian.

  When the ferry berthed, Dylan didn’t stop to think. He drove straight to Balfour Hospital, the only hospital in Orkney. It was small, not the sort of place you could get lost in, or more important, lose someone in, but it would have to suffice.

  As he stopped the car, Frank’s messages came through.

  Dylan carefully wrote what he hoped was his message in Hungarian and then Romanian. It was supposed to say: You can trust me. I want to help you. You must sit here until someone comes to take care of you. He hoped it did.

  He uncovered his passengers, all of whom seemed happy enough to remain hidden, and gestured for them to get out. They could hardly move, but they managed.

  “Sam,” he said, “I want you to stay in the car. I won’t be more than a few minutes, but I’m going to lock you in, okay?”

  She nodded, not, he suspected, because she trusted him but because she could think of no other option.

  “Here.” He took her locket from his pocket and handed it over.

  “Where did you get that?” Her eyes were dark with suspicion.

  “Outside the cottage. I’ve got to go, but I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He urged the two girls toward the hospital’s entrance. The older girl was studying the note he’d given her. She nodded, which was promising.

  Once inside, he pointed to some chairs. The girl nodded again. Grabbing her young companion by the arm, she led her to the chairs where they both sat.

  Dylan didn’t want to abandon them, but he had little option. They would be safe here.

  Satisfied that was the case, he walked out and back to his car. He drove about half a mile to a public phone box and called the local police. “There are two girls, Eastern Europeans, at Balfour Hospital. They need help.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  Dylan cut the connection and returned to his car.

  It was time to check out of his hotel and smuggle Sam back into England. First, he needed to buy her some clothes and footwear.

  Then he had to talk to Marion Roderick. He had a lot of questions for her, and he needed answers. Fast.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Tears stung Sam’s eyes as Dylan Scott drove off the ferry and onto the Scottish mainland, but she wasn’t about to let them fall. Ever since he’d found her, she’d been bawling her eyes out. He said it was shock, and he was probably right, but he must think her a complete moron.

  He didn’t seem to mind though, and he hadn’t forced conversation yesterday. After calling at the ferry terminal and booking them on the next available sailing, he’d driven to his hotel and taken her to his room.

  “We can’t get out of here until the morning,” he said, “so we’ll spend the night here. Sorry, but I’m going to lock you in. Answer the door to no one. I mean it, Sam. No one. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll get you some clothes and something to eat.”

  “What about those girls?” she’d asked.

 
“They’ll be okay at the hospital. Someone will help them—the police and hospital staff. I couldn’t take them to the police station. There would have been too many questions to answer. Now, remember, open the door to no one.”

  He’d been out for about an hour, but he’d returned with jeans and T-shirt which were about three sizes too big, a pair of trainers which were too tight, and best of all, fish and chips. The gesture had touched her and she’d eaten every hot, tasty morsel.

  She’d then locked herself in the bathroom for a couple of hours until she’d felt clean for the first time in months.

  All he’d told her was that he was a private investigator and that her father had employed him to look for her. He’d said nothing else. Probably because mention of her dad had had her blubbering like a baby.

  She was better this morning though. She was going home. She still couldn’t believe that. Too many days and nights had been spent believing she’d never go home.

  Photo ID was required for all ferry passengers, so he’d kept her hidden until the car was actually on board.

  “I think you’ll be safe to come out now,” he’d said.

  She’d sat on a plastic seat on the upper deck as the ferry had taken them ever closer to the Scottish mainland.

  It had taken an age to get off the ferry but, finally, they were on dry land. Sam could have wept.

  He’d only driven a couple of miles from the ferry terminal before stopping to fill up with fuel. When that was done, he dangled the keys in front of her.

  “Do you want to drive for a while?”

  “Me?” The unexpected kindness had her blinking back fresh tears. “Well, yes, please. Are you insured for any driver?”

  “Yes.” He seemed to find the question amusing.

  “For someone under twenty-five?”

  “Come on, let’s be reckless!”

  It was ten months since she’d been behind the wheel and she’d never driven a Morgan. Never. Yesterday, she’d been chained like an animal, knowing someone wanted her dead. Today she was holding the keys to a 1956 Morgan.

  Her heart was racing, her nerves were ragged, but she scrambled into the driver’s seat and fired the engine. The Morgan purred with pleasure and she closed her eyes to thank God that, hopefully, her nightmare was over. Hopefully. She felt safer with Dylan Scott, but she wouldn’t be able to relax until she was home.

  She moved the car off the forecourt and drove.

  The Morgan gobbled up the miles and her hands slowly released their tight grip on the steering wheel. The car was a joy to drive. It handled better than she’d expected and was more responsive too.

  “The shocks need looking at,” she said.

  “Yeah? It’s just as well I know the person to do it then.”

  She smiled at that and wondered if he’d known she’d needed to drive. It was impossible to tell because his expression was unfathomable. She detected anger. He wasn’t angry with her, he was kindness itself, but there was a tightly controlled fury there.

  Even the Morgan took four hours to reach Inverness. Sam didn’t care. She simply followed the signs for the south, knowing that every mile took her closer to home.

  They were almost at the border for England when he suggested they stop for a coffee and to stretch their legs.

  The sun smiled down on them and they took coffee and blueberry muffins to a wooden table that nestled beneath an old tree. Sam kept expecting to see the towering figure of the Hulk, as she’d taken to calling her captor, but she liked the feeling of safety Dylan gave her. It was a feeling she hadn’t known for a very long time.

  “Are you up to talking?” He stirred sugar into his coffee.

  “Yes.” She’d expected him to wait until they were home. “And I’m sorry I’ve been so—you know. It was the shock.”

  “It’s okay. How about you tell me what happened?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t really know.” She blew across the top of her coffee and inhaled deeply.

  “From the beginning,” he suggested. “One day you were working on cars, the next you’d vanished.”

  She nodded, but it seemed a lifetime ago. “One morning, and it was the same as any other morning, I had breakfast and then—I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember leaving your father’s house? Or walking across the field at the back of the house?”

  “No. I remember having breakfast. After that, it’s a blank.”

  “The police found a scarf that they thought belonged to you,” he said. “It was in the field at the back of your father’s house.”

  “Really?” It was strangely reassuring to know that people had been looking for her. “I lost that the day before.”

  “Ah.”

  “What does that mean, ‘Ah’?”

  “Nothing, carry on. What else can you remember?”

  “I had breakfast,” she said, “and the next thing I knew, I was being bundled out of a van and into a house in Glasgow.”

  “Glasgow?”

  “Yeah. I was locked in a room on the third floor of an old house. I only knew it was Glasgow because I recognised the bridge, the Clyde Arc. There was a programme on TV about it, and I remember someone saying that locals call it the Squinty Bridge because of the way it crosses the river at an angle.”

  She could tell Dylan had never heard of the bridge.

  “How long were you in Glasgow?” he asked.

  “About a month. At first, he was good to me—”

  “Sullivan?”

  “I never heard his name. He was a big bloke, very strong, and I used to think of him as the Hulk. Anyway, at first he looked after me quite well. I was a prisoner, yes, but I had my own bathroom. He even brought me some books. The food was crap, nothing hot, but he said I’d only be there for a couple of weeks at the most and then I’d go home.”

  Things hadn’t been too bad. She’d believed she was being taught a lesson, thought someone wanted to make some money out of it. She’d known her dad would pay any ransom demand, and she’d thought it only a matter of time.

  “A couple of weeks turned into a month,” she said. “There must have been a mix-up with the ransom. I don’t know.”

  “Ransom? You believe Sullivan—the Hulk—kidnapped you?”

  “He must have, mustn’t he?”

  Dylan shrugged at that. “Carry on.”

  “He became more and more angry. After about six weeks, he dragged me out of that room, bundled me into the back of a horsebox and took me to Orkney. Except I didn’t know it was Orkney until I heard him on the phone to someone. I was in a house by the sea.”

  “The one I found you in yesterday?”

  “No. Something happened. We only arrived at that one the afternoon before you turned up.”

  “Where were you before then?”

  “It was quite a modern place, but it had a hateful cellar that was wet and cold. Everything smelled damp. It was right on the shore. And on a different island. I’m fairly certain it was Westray.” She only knew that because she’d seen an Ordnance Survey map of the island and there was a mark on it that she thought matched the sweep of the coastline she could see from one of the windows. “At first, I was locked in a room that had a view of the sea. On the rare occasions he had company, I was gagged, tied up and put in the cellar. After a couple of weeks though, I spent all my time in that cellar.”

  She could smell it now. The floor had been damp, soggy earth.

  “Okay. So you were taken from your home and arrived in Glasgow. Had you been drugged? Knocked out? What?”

  She wasn’t sure. “You know that feeling you get when they give you anaesthetic in hospital? Like you have to tell them you’re still wide awake and then you realise you’re too weak to move or speak? It was like that. I suppose I was drugged.” She bit into her muffin. “I woke up properly when he was getting me out of the van.”

  “And you never heard any names mentioned?”

  “No. I heard nothing when I was in Glasgow. When I got to tha
t cottage, the one that I think was on Westray, people sometimes visited. I heard them talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. I never heard anyone use his name.”

  The fear refused to leave her, as did the smell of that cellar.

  “Three days before you found me,” she said, “something happened. I heard stuff and I know two things. One, it had something to do with Alan Roderick. He’s my mum’s husband. Sorry, you’ll know that. And two—” this she hardly dared to believe, “—he’s dead. Alan Roderick is dead.”

  Dylan wasn’t surprised by this news. “Yes. Murdered, to be precise. What made you think it was connected to him?”

  “The other night, I heard him—the Hulk, as I called him—talking to someone. There was a huge panic on because someone was dead and they had to, and I quote, ‘get the girls out.’ I didn’t know which girls he was talking about, whether I was one of them or not. I wasn’t though, because he started talking about Glasgow. He said the filth—that’s the police—would be crawling all over Glasgow.” She stopped. “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing really. I used to be filth myself.”

  “You were a policeman?” He didn’t look like one.

  “Yes. I was booted off the force. Sorry, carry on.”

  “It was only later that I realised they were talking about Alan Roderick. They didn’t mention him by name, but said he’d dropped the two girls off in Glasgow as arranged but had been murdered. They mentioned a lorry, then they mentioned Taylor’s, where he worked. They said the filth would be crawling all over his lorry. I knew it was him.”

  She took a sip of coffee. “It was the same night they talked about me. Called me a liability and said I was surplus to requirements. He—the Hulk—well, the way he spoke, I think he was being paid to keep me. No, I don’t think it, I’m sure of it.”

  “Ah.” There was a wealth of understanding in that word. “Yes, you could be right.”

  “It was Alan, wasn’t it? He was paying the Hulk to keep me out of the way. When they were talking about me, they said they hadn’t bargained on keeping me for so long, that it hadn’t been part of the deal, and that really, they could—” she swallowed hard, “—dispose of me.”