‘True again,’ Burnley said. ‘Although she says she locked all the doors and Gil doesn’t have access to the keys.’
‘Gil’s story stacks up, though. Whether he was there or not, we know that two people left the pub on the motorbike and—’
‘Doesn’t mean two people were on it when it crashed,’ Burnley said, scratching his chin.
‘Fair play,’ Lorraine said. She couldn’t believe she and Adam were actually brainstorming with the man she once hoped she’d never see again. ‘My theory about the girl on the bike being Abby didn’t stand up to much scrutiny. It’s just those sandals . . . And Lana said she was wearing Converse trainers when I asked her what she had on that night.’
‘Surely the sandals aren’t unique,’ Burnley suggested.
Lorraine had to agree. ‘True. But the ones Abby was wearing looked expensive,’ she said. ‘They were real leather, designer I think. Where would a homeless girl get the money to buy them?’
‘Charity shop?’ Adam said.
‘Or the donations bags that came into the shelter?’ Lorraine felt a little stab of excitement. ‘The Hawkeswells have been having a big clear-out recently.’
‘Which would fit with Lana’s story of her being on the bike if they were once her sandals,’ Burnley said, folding his arms.
Lorraine sighed. ‘There were a dozen or so dustbin sacks of clothes and boxes of bric-a-brac at New Hope when I visited a few days back. Some were for the charity event Sonia’s organising, and I think some were to give to the homeless.’
‘Then we need to speak to Frank,’ Adam said.
He glanced at his watch. Another day was fast slipping away.
‘One step ahead,’ Burnley said with a satisfied grin. ‘A couple of my officers went out to see him yesterday. Not about the charity donations, of course.’
‘And?’ Lorraine and Adam both said it at the same time.
‘Turns out he had a son once.’
‘Once?’
‘He disappeared aged fourteen. Frank Butler was arrested on suspicion of his murder.’
Jo and Malc were deep in conversation when Lorraine and Adam arrived back at Glebe House. Lorraine dumped her bag on the kitchen table and Stella rushed up to her, clearly unsettled by Freddie’s continuing absence.
‘We’ll stay here tonight now,’ Lorraine said, stroking her daughter’s hair as she leant against her, arms wrapped around her waist.
She filled Jo and Malc in on the news, especially about Frank’s arrest. ‘It happened twenty years ago and a body was never found.’
‘He’s always given me the creeps, if I’m honest,’ Jo said flatly.
‘Why don’t you go and find the chessboard, Stella?’ Lorraine thought it best to change the subject. ‘I bet your Uncle Malc will give you a game.’
A moment later, Stella yelled out from the living room that she couldn’t find it.
‘I’ll go,’ Lorraine said, walking across the hall flagstones and into the big room at the other end of the house. It seemed cold and desolate, reflective of the family’s situation. ‘I know what your searching’s like,’ she said, giving Stella a mini-tickle.
Stella pouted. ‘The games always used to be kept in this cupboard,’ she said, ‘but it’s all changed.’
‘You’re right,’ Lorraine said, poking about in a mess of papers and photograph albums. A shoe box fell off a shelf and spilled its contents. ‘Oh great,’ she muttered, gathering up the bits of paper. They were mostly cards and letters, plus a few newspaper cuttings and saved recipes. ‘Look in the bottom drawer of the bureau,’ she told Stella, pointing across the room.
‘Found it,’ Stella said a moment later. She held up the chessboard and a wooden box of playing pieces Lorraine remembered using as a kid.
‘Take it through while I clear up this mess.’
Lorraine was on her knees, gathering up the cards, resisting the temptation to peek at the messages. One, however, caught her attention. It was a poem, unsigned, written on a floral postcard, dated only weeks earlier. A few phrases stood out – simply adore you . . . can’t live without you . . . please don’t end it . . . you make my heart beat . . .
‘How very sad,’ she said to herself, thinking. She guessed they were Malc’s desperate words of love to Jo, and that he’d sent the poem soon after leaving the house.
She was about to put it back in the box with the others when something made her look at the card again. She stood up and took it over to the window to study it in the light, trying to recall what Bill from Central Forensics had pointed out to her about spotting specific similarities and differences between scripts, especially the unique traits and quirks of an individual.
‘What is it, love?’ Adam was suddenly beside her.
Lorraine glanced at him. ‘Just a poem.’ She sighed. ‘But look at the flourishes on the Ys and the Fs. And there, too.’
She gave the card to Adam to read.
‘OK. What about them?’
‘As far as I remember, they’re identical to the letters on Lenny Jackman’s suicide note.’
35
FREDDIE HAD NO idea how long he’d been gagged and tied up. He ached all over, his right shoulder still agony from where he’d been dragged along by the arm from Gil’s cottage. He reckoned it was dislocated.
‘You fucking pig!’ he’d screamed when he’d first been shoved in the barn.
The bastard had clamped his hand over his mouth, taken his backpack from him, and tipped out the contents.
‘Is this the computer nicked from New Hope?’ he’d growled.
‘Fuck you,’ Freddie had said.
Another blinding pain had ripped through him as his shoulders were wrenched back, and his wrists bound up tightly with twine.
‘Keep quiet, or you’ll feel this around your head,’ the man had said, brandishing a shovel a few feet from Freddie’s face. ‘I asked you if this was the computer nicked from New Hope.’
Freddie cowered back into the pile of straw he’d been shoved into, and nodded. ‘But it wasn’t me who took it,’ he cried. He squirmed, feeling he was going to pass out. ‘Oh God . . . look, this is agony . . . please untie my hands. I think my shoulder is broken or dislocated . . . please untie me. I won’t escape.’ He was choking on the sobs now.
‘Nice try, son. Now shut the fuck up, or I’ll make you.’
Freddie smelled his sour breath, felt the cold metal of the Swiss Army knife blade against the skin of his neck. Then a pain in his thigh as he was kicked hard.
‘Shouldn’t go around snooping into business that’s not yours, should you?’
Freddie ducked to avoid being hit round the head.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he sobbed. ‘Please don’t hurt me any more.’
Freddie thought of his mother at home in their kitchen. He’d do anything to be back with her.
‘You’ve no idea what you’re messing with, you fucking idiot.’
It was true, although Freddie was beginning to work it out. Getting Lenny to nick the computer had felt like the right thing to do at the time, but seemed plain reckless now, after what he’d found. Surely only the police had those kinds of photographs? He felt sick thinking about what had happened, what it all meant – and it had taken place in this very barn, too. By the time he’d pieced it all together, seen Gil’s drawings and figured it out, it was too late. He’d been caught.
Freddie had then been tightly gagged and hauled by his legs into a dark corner. The barn doors had slammed shut and he’d been alone ever since, dozing fitfully. It was still daylight, but he’d been grabbed early in the morning so he could have been lying there for five hours or seven hours, or longer.
He woke to a noise – doors opening and shutting. Someone was coming.
Him.
Freddie watched on in horror as the man walked in and began dragging bales of straw from their storage place into the middle of the barn. He made a choked sound but his throat was so dry, the gag so tight, he could hardly be hear
d. He heard grunts and curses as the precarious stack of bales grew. As each one was shifted, clouds of dust filled the dank air. Freddie’s lungs burned as he watched the tower get taller.
Just minutes later the man was cutting his gag away and he was gasping for breath. He opened and shut his stiff jaw, rubbing at his cracked lips.
‘What are you doing?’ he begged, feeling terrified.
‘Stand up.’
Freddie’s heart hammered in his chest as he stared up at the tall structure. He pushed himself further back towards the wall, his feet scuffing frantically on the floor, trying to get away even though it was futile. He was shaking, had no idea what to do.
‘I said fucking get up.’
He was yanked up by his bad arm, and even though the pain was excruciating, it didn’t compare to the fear he now felt inside, for he had seen the rope – thick, coiled, trailing along the floor, one end knotted and looped. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.
‘What are you doing with that?’ Freddie said, praying his text had got through to Lana and she’d understood his garbled words and would somehow find him. ‘Please, just tell me what’s going on.’
His heart thumped in his chest and his limbs felt icy cold from adrenalin. He scanned around, searching for a way to escape, but was dragged towards the stack of straw, the grip on his arm vice-like.
‘Everyone knows you’re a miserable little fucker. And lovesick, too, I would bet.’ The rope was right in front of him now. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at her.’
Freddie tried to shake his head, pull back, but he was frozen.
‘So no one will be very surprised to find’ – he picked up the rope by the noose, looked up at the thick cross beam above – ‘that you decided to end it all.’
‘What? What are you on about?’ Freddie’s eyes were saucers as the loop, wide and gaping, was slipped over his head. ‘Stop it! I don’t want to die!’ he shrieked, but the knife came up to his face, threatening, and the rope pulled tight around his neck.
‘Get up on the bales. Now!’
Freddie wanted to run for it, make a dash for the door, but he’d have to get the rope off somehow first and his hands were still tied.
‘You’re crazy. You can’t do this.’ He wriggled, but it was no good. ‘Help!’ he yelled, fighting as much as he could. ‘I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die . . .’ His voice was buckling now, cracking like a fourteen-year-old’s. ‘Please, God, someone, help me . . .’
A vicious kick to his knee dropped him to the floor. His face was suddenly in the dirt, and almost in the same instant he was hauled back up by the neck like a puppet, his screams of pain mercilessly ignored. He watched in horror as the long end of the rope was slung over the beam above the stack of bales and pulled tight. Then he was being shoved towards the tower and made to get on to the first tier with a sharp kick up his backside.
The scent of straw filled his nostrils as his face hit the bales – perhaps the last thing he’d ever smell, Freddie thought. It was almost impossible to climb with the taut rope throttling him, but he was forced to scramble up using his legs alone. If he didn’t, he’d be strangled instantly. One of the lower bales gave way when he was ten feet up and he felt himself drop. He’d never felt so terrified or alone in his entire life. He tried to scream, but couldn’t.
‘Keep climbing!’
Freddie’s only option was to do as he was told.
Finally, he reached the top. The rope was still tight and the beam directly above him now. Another bale fell out of the now leaning tower, making him hardly dare breathe, let alone move. If the whole lot fell, he’d be hanging, dead within minutes.
Briefly, the photographs he’d found of Simon flashed through his mind. He could see quite clearly now what had happened. Simon hadn’t killed himself, just as he knew Lenny hadn’t killed himself either. Freddie didn’t want to go the same way as them.
His ears pounded with the blood being forced into his head – a woosh-woosh in time with his panicked heartbeat – and his lips bulged and his eyeballs throbbed as the rope bit deeper. The tower swayed beneath him as he teetered on tiptoes, trying to release some of the pressure in his head. He stared down in disbelief and saw that the rope was lashed on to a metal hook in the wall.
Oh God, please don’t let me die.
Then he was left alone, and the warmth came, spreading through his trousers as he pissed himself, knowing that if one more bale slipped, it would all be over.
36
I SLAP MY head until it hurts. Freddie is gone and if he dies like Simon and Dean and Lenny it will be my fault. It hurts when I breathe, a stabbing pain in my lungs. Sometimes Sonia takes me to the hospital because of my chest but I don’t care about that now. I just want Freddie to come back.
Slowly, I open the door of my house and look out. It was hours ago when he ran away from me and charged straight into Frank’s arms. I’ve been hiding ever since, scared of what would happen. I know they went off towards the big barn. I know every sound around here. I haven’t dared go outside since.
Eventually, I step out of my house, knowing I should have stopped them. But I wasn’t sure how. That’s why I hid. Tony would tell me that I was a coward, that I should be ashamed of myself. He’s right and that is why I am going to get Freddie. I have got some courage now.
Smudge pads across the gravel with me. I wish Sonia was here to help me.
I go around the edge of the courtyard towards the barn, keeping my back close to the wall, weaving between the shrubs, creeping along the rotting wood of the garage doors until I have to go out into the open to get across the grass to the barn. I am shaking, praying no one will see me, because then they would ask questions and my voice wouldn’t work.
I peer through the barn window and my fingers sink into the spongy wood of the rotten windowsill. Thick cobwebs across the glass block most of my view. It’s dark inside but I can still see there’s a mess in there. I go round to the big doors at the end and pull them open.
‘Hello?’ I say nervously, going inside.
Something touches my ankles and I jump. When I look down, it’s only Smudge. He makes a croaky meow.
‘Is anyone in here?’ I call out, going further in.
The heavy doors swing shut behind me and everything goes darker again.
It’s as though someone’s been fighting. Sonia will be cross when she sees all the straw stacked up in the wrong place. All her tools for taking care of the horses’ hooves have been tipped out of their box too. I gather up the picks and the files and put them away neatly and then I see the knife sitting on the crate. It’s the one Sonia uses for cutting the twine on the bales. It used to live in the kitchen drawer but now it lives out here. I pick it up slowly, turning it over and over, staring at the razor-sharp blade. This could kill someone, I think, putting it back down again.
‘Freddie?’ I call out, a bit louder now, venturing round the other side of the big stack. ‘Are you in here will you come back with me because I want to keep you safe and we can have another omelette?’
‘Help . . .’
The voice is small and weak and coming from up high. I stare up, going right round the tower of bales, accidentally kicking one.
‘Get back . . .’
Around the other side of the bales I see Freddie balanced on top of them. He has a rope tied around his neck and his face is purple. He can hardly speak.
‘What are you doing up there, Freddie?’ I ask, frowning. ‘Don’t you know that’s dangerous?’ Sonia always tells me to learn from my mistakes. I learnt that I shouldn’t do my exercises up high any more. ‘You are silly and need to get down right now.’
‘Please . . . get me . . . down . . . help me . . .’
‘It serves you right if you are stuck,’ I say. ‘Though I will help you because you are my friend and I would like you to come back to my house and we can cook more food together.’
I go back and get the knife from the crate and stare up, frowning at the st
ack of bales. They don’t look very safe, but I will have to climb up there if I’m to save Freddie. I give the bottom one a kick, to see how sturdy it is, but then some straw breaks away and it half caves in. Freddie drops down a few inches, his legs writhing and kicking, searching for something to stand on. Finally, he gets his feet back on a bale again. He’s making a funny noise in his throat.
‘Wait Freddie, I am coming up,’ I say, hoisting myself up on to the first bale.
He’s trying to speak but I can’t understand him. It’s hard to climb with the big knife in my hand, and I’m worried that someone will hear me, or Frank will come back and then when I think of that my chest hurts again and I get frightened.
A bale gives way.
‘Watch . . . out . . .’ Freddie gasps.
His bulging eyes stare down at me as I get closer. It feels as if we could topple over at any moment.
‘Don’t worry Freddie,’ I say, nearing the top. There’s not much room for us both up there but I need to get all the way up to cut the rope. ‘You mustn’t do your exercises like this any more.’
I am panting and my arms are tired. I stretch my leg up to the final bale, but a chunk of the one I’m standing on falls away, making me grab the twine of another. That slips too, and I drop down a few feet.
Freddie is sobbing as I haul myself up again. I’m finally at the top, and it’s just as I’m standing up, wobbling, trying to get my balance, the knife only inches away from Freddie’s neck, that I notice the face staring in at the window.
37
LANA HAD RATTLED the door handle hard, close to tears. Everything was her fault, and she didn’t know how to make it better.
‘It’s locked,’ she’d said to her mum, wishing they’d come to look for Gil sooner.
They pushed through the weeds to get round to the window. Lana rubbed at the glass with her sweatshirt sleeve. ‘I can’t see him,’ she said. A sinking feeling gripped her from the inside out. ‘Freddie’s text message this morning . . . you don’t think he meant that Gil had got him, do you?’
Before You Die Page 25