Everything seemed to slow down for a brief moment in time. The terrified girl, the wood-clad surroundings, the white clock face, the raindrops plinking on the roof. Rex snapped to and instructed Alistair to call DCI Lauper’s contact in Colchester.
His friend paced the few steps to the back of the caravan as he spoke on the phone. A white curtain, used to partition off the two pairs of beds, was draped to one side. The girl bent over her knees to unbind her ankles, her silky brown hair sweeping forward as she did so.
“Have you been here the entire time?”
She nodded fearfully. “He only ever let me out to use the showers. He took me out at night with my hands tied and, once inside, there was no way to escape.” Her voice came out muffled as she attended to the task of freeing her feet. She sat up, her face flushed, and pushed her hair back behind her shoulders, pausing as she did so. “He brushes my hair and calls me Amber. It’s dead creepy.”
“His father mistreated his sister,” Rex said. “He may in his own mind be trying to make amends, but he’s dangerous and unpredictable. We need to get you away. You can call your parents from the car.”
The girl flinched at the mention of a car.
“It’s okay. We’re advocates,” Alistair told her, returning his phone to his coat pocket.
“What’s that?”
“Scottish barristers,” Rex explained. “We prosecute criminals. Anything you need from here?”
“My schoolbag.”
“Any luck with the local police?” he asked Alistair.
“On their way, but we should get out of here. Do you have a jacket?” he asked Lindsay.
She opened a wardrobe and extracted a crimson blazer, which she hastened to put on over her tracksuit. She pulled out a black leather book bag and strapped it to her shoulders. She was still wearing slippers.
“Where are your shoes?” Rex asked.
“I don’t know. They’re not in here.”
“Never mind.”
They filed out of the caravan into the rain, Alistair leading the way and Rex closing the rear. Night had all but fallen and pinpricks of light dotted the campsite, but nobody stirred. He picked Lindsay up in his arms and ran after Alistair across the soggy grass. The girl weighed little enough, but jogging with her in his heavy coat provided him with an unaccustomed work-out on top of his earlier sprint to the lake.
When they reached the Jaguar, he put her down thankfully, and she clambered into the back seat. He shrugged out of the coat and got in beside Alistair, his throat tight and parched and his heart thumping fast.
Thirty-Six
As they drove off, Lindsay broke into tears of relief. Rex passed her a roll of paper towels from under his seat, and she tore off a wad and blotted her hair dry. Alistair turned up the heat in the car and she removed her damp blazer. Something fluttered from her sleeve.
She picked it up, clearly not wishing to litter Alistair’s immaculate interior.
“Is that a stamp hinge?” Rex held out his palm and carefully placed it in his wallet.
“It was caught in the cuff of my sleeve.”
“Those pesky little hinges.” Alistair glanced round with a smile.
“He has an album with stamps from different countries, which he’d let me look at. They reminded me there was a world outside the caravan and made me think I might never get to see any of those places.”
“Now you will,” said Alistair.
Rex surmised that if Sutter had the album, he had probably taken the other items as well. “What sort of watch does he wear?” he asked Lindsay, checking his own, amazed to see how little time had passed since they had left the Masthead, in spite of all the ensuing action.
“A gold-plated one with a stretchy gold bracelet. Why?”
“A watch and stamp album went missing from a house in Canterbury.”
“He did more than burgle the house, didn’t he?”
“Perhaps.”
“He killed that girl in Edinburgh.” She began to cry again.
“Tell me, Lindsay, did he say anything else on the subject of the other girl?”
“Only that he forced her into his car as she was walking home from school and took her to his basement flat. He had to get rid of her, he said, because she wouldn’t be quiet and do what she was told, and he dumped her body in a dark alley.”
“Skinner’s Close. It made national headline news, but you’d have been too young at the time to remember.”
Alistair turned onto Victoria Place where the buildings and shopfronts glistened and the lights showed blurry in the rain. They had not gone far along the road leading out of town when a lone police car sped by in the opposite direction, tyres swishing on the wet tar and siren wailing. Alistair slowed down.
“Keep going, please don’t stop,” Lindsay urged in a strangled voice from the back seat. “I just want to get far away from here.”
Alistair kept going.
“He took my phone. I need to ring my mum,” she pleaded.
Alistair gave her his mobile while Rex called the police on his to explain that they had rescued Lindsay Poulson from the campsite in Brightlingsea and her abductor, Dan Sutter, was possibly in one of the local pubs. While Lindsay spoke to her parents, alternately crying and reassuring them, he told the dispatcher where exactly the caravan and repainted van were located, in case the police car they had passed had not been responding to their emergency after Alistair’s call.
They parked in a layby and waited in the event Sutter tried to leave in the van by the main road out of town. After an emotional exchange with her younger sister Christie, Lindsay passed the phone back to Alistair and wiped her teary face with her sleeve.
“Dan Sutter can’t have been here all the time,” Rex said to her. “He was in Edinburgh two weeks ago.” At Pruitt’s flat.
“The first Sunday, he left for two days. An elderly woman came to guard me. She had a Scottish accent too. She didn’t say much. She brought me a pork pie and heated up some baked beans on the gas hob. The rest of the time it was just toast and Marmite. She never took me to the communal facilities, and I had to use the porta potty. She said if I tried to escape it would mean trouble for me, and for her.”
“I have some bottled water and date bars if you’re hungry,” Alistair said, glancing into his rear view mirror. “We had no idea we’d find you; we came looking for Sutter on another matter, so I’m afraid we came ill-prepared.”
“I’m not hungry, thank you. I just want to go home.”
“I know, and you will soon,” Rex promised her.
He imagined her family rejoicing back in Dover, and yet anxious to see her and make sure she was all right. He could still scarcely believe that she was safe. Pale and no doubt more traumatized than she let show, but not physically hurt, it appeared.
“Did you happen to notice if he kept a spare tyre in the van?” he asked.
“There was one in the back. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I kept thinking the police were bound to find me because someone must have spotted his ugly brown van.”
“Two witnesses came forward, but he whitewashed it.”
She took a deep breath. “What if he gets away?”
“Unlikely,” Rex assured her, twisting around in the front passenger seat to face her. “We sabotaged his van.”
She responded with the shadow of a smile, the first.
It would take a while for Sutter to change his tyre once he discovered it was flat. First he would go searching the campsite for Lindsay, imagining perhaps that she had managed to get free on her own. On the other hand, he might borrow or steal a car.
“What should we do aboot the wee creep in the motorhome?” he suddenly asked Alistair, having forgotten about him in the excitement of saving Lindsay.
“Let the police find him and his stash of illegal DVDs.”
“No, it was just Danny and the woman.”
“His mother, I believe. How did he snatch you? Take your time; he can’t get to you now.”
She blew her nose noisily. Rex and Alistair exchanged paternal smiles, relishing the calm before the storm. There would be the police and an onslaught of publicity to contend with soon enough.
“I was walking home from school, just like the other girl,” Lindsay began. “He was parked by the pavement. There was a brick wall on my other side. He was opening the back doors of the van when I went by. I didn’t think much of it. I was on my phone. He grabbed me, ripped it from my hand, and bundled me inside. There were no windows in the back compartment, just a pile of mouldy old blankets. When I realized I couldn’t get out, I started to cry. He told me he wouldn’t hurt me if I was good and didn’t try to escape. He said he was protecting me.”
“From what?” Rex asked.
“My father, he told me later. I don’t know why. My father’s never done anything wrong in his life! I don’t think that man Danny is all there.”
A swarm of squad cars with flashing roof lights converged at the turning to Brightlingsea and set up a road block. Rex got out. The rain had stopped and a sliver of moon glimmered ethereally in the murky sky, reflected in puddles on the road.
He informed the first officer he came upon that Lindsay Poulson was in his colleague’s car and not in need of immediate medical attention as far as he could tell.
He prepared himself for the inevitable series of questions and statements at the police station, only too happy to comply. His only concern was that, in spite of what he had told Lindsay, Dan Sutter might still escape.
Thirty-Seven
While giving their statements at the station, Rex and Alistair learned that Sutter had been spotted by a helicopter sent in to conduct a sweep of Brightlingsea. Fleeing on foot, he had reached the housing estate on the inland side of town and had ducked out of sight.
An hour later, a police dog tracked him to a garden shed where, heavily outnumbered and surrounded by a tactical support unit, he had been smoked out and had resisted arrest. The shed belonged to his great aunt, who had not appeared unduly concerned when he was taken into custody. His mother had already left on the bus to the train station, apparently to return to her post in Canterbury.
It transpired that Annie planned to take care of her aunt on the understanding she would inherit the house when she died. Aunt Fifi made it clear to police that she did not approve of her great nephew’s criminal record and had refused to let him stay with her, and so he rented a caravan at the campsite.
Rex wondered what would have happened to Lindsay by Tuesday, when Tims had said Sutter was vacating it. Moving her to another place would have been risky. He had already kept her for over two weeks. Rex did not fancy her chances, considering what had happened to April Showers.
Now headed back to Canterbury, he sank into the padded seat while Alistair drove. He found himself squinting in the glare of oncoming headlights and closed his heavy lids. Lindsay was on her way back to Kent to be reunited with her parents and sister, who were driving out to meet her halfway. Alistair had put on the seat warmers, and Rex felt the length of his spine finally begin to relax after sitting in an uncomfortable chair at the station for what had seemed like ages.
His friend set some classical music on low, as though anticipating Rex’s desire to think events through. And think he did as they regained the A12.
The private investigator had said Sutter senior had died in a homeless shelter two months before, from liver complications. Dan’s sister had left home at fifteen. That left his mother, who had unaccountably agreed to keep Lindsay captive. Annie might be an elderly woman, but Rex felt little compassion.
He called Phoebe and asked whether she had returned yet.
“I don’t think so. I’ve been upstairs working on some new curtains to keep my mind off things. Did you find him?”
“Aye, he’s been holed up at a campsite in Brightlingsea. Annie’s been staying at her aunt’s house there. Did you not see the news?”
“No, why?”
“Sutter is the man who snatched Lindsay Poulson from Dover.”
Phoebe gave a small scream. “Are you sure?”
“We found the girl in his caravan. I think he might have been thinking of fleeing to France but could not resist another abduction before leaving our shores.”
“Another abduction?”
“Lindsay told us he had taken another girl, in Edinburgh. I’m almost certain it was April Showers.”
“So Richard Pruitt was right about him. Oh my goodness, this is a lot to take in, Rex. Are you still in Essex?”
“We’re approaching the Dartford Tunnel and then we’re going straight to Canterbury Station to meet Annie off the train. If it’s the one we think she’s on, we might just make it. Ring me if she turns up in the meantime, and just pretend you don’t know anything. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try. I think I need a stiff drink.”
Rex hoped Phoebe would stick to only one and not make it too stiff. She needed to keep her wits about her. As did they.
Thirty-Eight
The train was just pulling into the station when Rex and Alistair arrived. Fortunately for them, it had been delayed. However, their plan to intercept Annie before she returned to St. Dunstan’s Terrace depended on her not having been warned of her son’s arrest and taking off somewhere else.
Alistair left the car illegally parked close to the station entrance and they went to meet the incoming trickle of passengers from the platform. Annie was not among them. And then, just as Rex was about to turn away, he spied her at the back, wearing a headscarf and tweed coat and pulling a small suitcase on wheels. She looked surprised but not panicked to see him.
“Can we give you a lift home?” he asked. “This is my friend and colleague, Alistair Frazer. He has his car right outside.”
He took her suitcase before she could object, and Alistair escorted her to the Jaguar and opened the front passenger door. She seemed amazed to be riding in such splendour and unaware of events unfolding back in Brightlingsea. Apparently, no one had contacted her.
Rex got in the back, well pleased to have Annie McBride in his grasp. He wished to have a few words with her before he turned her over to Kent Police, who worked closely with the Essex force. He asked after her daughter and grandchildren as they drove the short distance to Phoebe’s house.
“Grand,” she said, and added that she had enjoyed a nice quiet weekend with them.
Alistair said he was an old acquaintance of Mrs. Wells’ and explained that he and Rex were staying overnight on a brief business trip.
“It’s nice she has a bit o’ company,” Annie commented.
They pulled up in front of the house and Alistair hastened around the bonnet to open the car door for her while Rex retrieved her suitcase. While Annie let herself into the house, Alistair gave Rex a conspiratorial wink. They followed her into the hall as Phoebe was descending the staircase.
“Ah, I see you have all returned safely,” she declared with a natural smile.
“These gentlemen gave me a lift from the station,” Annie said, as though edified by the experience and not at all puzzled by the fact they had just happened to be there.
Rex offered to take her suitcase downstairs and did so without waiting for a response. “I don’t know aboot you, Annie, but I fancy a cup of tea.” He filled the kettle at the sink.
“Och, let me make it,” Annie said, removing her coat.
He let her prepare the tea and then invited her to sit down at the kitchen table, saying he had a few questions and requesting her cooperation. She did so submissively, her face betraying no anxiety, nor even much
curiosity.
“The questions relate to your son.”
She glanced up from her mug of tea, her face finally registering shock. She had never mentioned her son to Phoebe and now clearly wondered what was afoot.
Rex set his phone to record and placed it between them. “I came here to informally assist Mrs. Wells in a case involving some missing items and other suspicious circumstances surrounding her father’s death. My inquiry led me to Dan.”
“Danny never killed the old man,” Annie insisted without prevarication. “He had a heart attack when he saw him. The judge sent him down for ten years. Ten long years! It broke him.”
“And where were you at the time of the judge’s death, Annie?”
“At the cinema wi’ a friend,” she replied, sounding rehearsed.
“I know that’s not true,” Rex gambled. The waddle under her chin trembled. “You were waiting by the gate on New Street, were you not?”
“Aye.”
“To make sure no one saw your son enter the house by the window.”
She nodded, her throat wobbling in earnest.
“Please answer for the recording.”
She glanced nervously at Rex’s phone. “Aye, I did.”
The answers were coming more easily than Rex could have hoped. She made no effort to defend herself, perhaps because she was accustomed to succumbing to someone else’s control.
“And you must have left the upstairs window unlatched before you left for the evening, ostensibly to go to the cinema. A random housebreaker would not have known the window would be unlocked.”
Annie gazed at him with the frightened, vacant stare of a rabbit.
“You planted the hair clasp and glove fragment in Judge Murgatroyd’s room to throw me off the scent. You used your employer’s nail varnish to further mislead me and perhaps even to implicate Mrs. Wells and make it look like she had made everything up.”
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