Remember Me

by D. E. White

  I wasn’t sure what to do, but as I stood undecided, Jesse stumbled towards me. He called out, something about having been looking for Ellen. He was totally out of it, so instinctively I pulled him in for a kiss – my ultimate distraction technique, and one that has always worked with Paul. He was shocked, I could tell, but he kissed me back, because his brains were addled with chemicals and alcohol, or maybe he’d always had a thing for me. To our left, the body lay on the path, sprawled for anyone to see, but I kept kissing Ellen’s boyfriend.

  It was Rhodri who first discovered the body, who yelled at us to help him, and Rhodri who picked her up and ran back towards the firelight and the safety. Jesse and I ran screaming after him, and there were real tears pouring down my cheeks. I could taste the salt, and suddenly I was shaking uncontrollably.

  Jesse, his hood thrown back now, was still crying as she tried to wake her up. Leo was shouting that there was no pulse, like he was a doctor or something. Ellen was gone, and they were panicking.

  The arguing, the shouting, turned to hushed whispers. Huw, backed by Leo, was telling them what to do. It seems utterly ridiculous, the decision they made, we made, now, but at the time, it seemed entirely sensible. We would get on with our lives as though nothing had ever happened, and there would be no police, no parents, no explanations or accusations. Huw was always a big boy, muscular and brutish. His entire large family of brothers, cousins and random relations lived down in Lower Street, and he would threaten anyone who crossed him with ‘his family’. Many of them had a history of brushes with the law, and we were terrified of them.

  So when Huw, angry, and probably more terrified of what his family would say to him than what the police might do, was backed by Leo’s charm and manipulative persuasiveness, we were swayed.

  It was nothing to do with me, but fate had interceded to change our lives, and to save Uncle Alf from retribution. I was puzzled at the time, but now it all makes sense. Fate was keeping a dice roll for him alone, and it means far more than a few years in prison. Uncle Alf exists in his own personal hell, from which the only escape is death. He is bewildered that I hurt him, just as I was all those years ago when our positions were reversed. As for that night when Ellen died – it was done, and I held the balance of power. I decided, after much thought, not to tell anyone what really happened. It gave me more control, and I enjoyed seeing them all so terrified, creating their own stupid nightmare that would haunt them all for years to come. Because nobody else knew that there were nine of us in the wood that night. I kept my evidence and waited.

  Chapter 36

  ‘Hi, Ava! Are you okay?’

  Ava wiped sweat from her forehead and spun round. ‘Shit, Pen, you scared the life out of me.’ The six-mile run from Leo’s house down to Big Water had been hard, but the snow was packed tightly so for much of the way her trail shoes had been able to get enough grip for a reasonable pace. She had fallen a couple of times, into innocent-looking drifts that were actually a couple of metres deep, but she was in good shape. The bait she had laid earlier had been taken and the final stages of the game could commence.

  ‘Sorry, I came down with the Land Rover, but I had to leave it at the top of the track. It does well in the snow, but there is a massive drift down by the gate. We’re missing about thirty sheep, so I’m out looking this side of the hill, and Dwaine, he’s the shepherd, is out the other side. Sometimes the daft beasts come down this way because it’s lower, and a bit warmer, but if they huddle they can get trapped in the snow and… I don’t have to remind you, do I? You lived here!’ Penny’s blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her cheeks slightly pink from the walk up the hill. She had a green waxed jacket with big pockets, and she carried a small red rucksack over her shoulder. ‘I heard the snowplough out early this morning. Paul’s at the hospice until four, so I really hope they clear it by then. Ava, is something wrong? It’s not those freaky text messages again, is it? Have the police said anything about the suspect?’

  The two women stared at one another, and Ava could feel the tension stretching between them as she didn’t answer immediately. She would wait for Penny to make the first move, and hope that her knowledge would be enough to keep her one step ahead. Had Penny really come on her own, or was Paul hiding somewhere?

  ‘Yes. I had another message, and I think I might know where Bethan is. It’s just over the hill.’

  ‘Just over the hill? Surely that was already searched.’ Penny snuck a wary glance across the white landscape, and shoved a hand into her pocket. ‘Ava, I know you’ve been really stressed out lately, and I can see why, but this person is dangerous. We can’t go trying to rescue Bethan ourselves.’

  So, she was still playing the happy wife, still pretending. Ava mirrored her, answering as though she too believed that Penny and Paul had nothing to do with Bethan’s disappearance. ‘I have to. Penny, she could die! That’s if she hasn’t already.’

  * * *

  Ava had waited and waited, as the feeble stabs of morning light crept across the darkness, for any sign that the police were on their way. In the end, frustrated beyond reason, she had called Sophie, who told her curtly that the road was still blocked and the helicopter was rescuing a couple of climbers off the side of Naddglyden.

  For another hour she had paced Leo’s silent house, checking her phone for updates on the road. But the local authority website and social media feed merely informed her the road into Aberdyth was still blocked. She would wait, she would not do anything to screw up Bethan’s chance of rescue. And then the next text came in, again in Welsh, and this time accompanied by another photograph. With an effort, she translated:

  ‘If you leave a flower without water for too long, it starts to die. If you leave it too late, and the sun comes out, there is nothing but blood on the stone. Time’s up, Ava Cole.’

  Naturally she had scanned the photograph for signs of life, but Bethan was stripped naked again in this one, hands and ankles tied tightly, and the cave was bare of any supplies.

  ‘Sophie, I’m sending you a message and pic,’ she had told her quickly. She waited on the line for the DI to look at the message contents.

  ‘Fuck! This bastard is really playing for fun today, aren’t they? Okay, we’ll be maybe another hour. The hill is unstable, so it’s tough going for the road team clearing the snow. The good news is, the helicopter crew just cleared from their last job, so they’ll be up here as soon as they’ve refuelled. Just keep me updated.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Ava had rung off and got ready to go out. Remembering the conversation, the sheer sweat-dripping frustration in Sophie’s voice, weighed against the horror she had felt at doing nothing to save Bethan, Ava shivered, suddenly aware of her cold feet, her numb hands. Her running gear was designed to keep out the cold, and yet let her body breathe, and it was expensive kit. Bethan had been naked in the photographs…

  * * *

  Penny frowned. ‘Ava? What makes you think you know where she is?’ A weak ray of sunshine slid through the layered grey cloud and sliced a path of gold through Penny’s hair.

  ‘I had another weird message, I told you. Come on.’

  The two women started up the hill, Penny swinging her red rucksack onto her back.

  It was tough going. The snow here had blown up into great hard-packed ridges, and by the time they crested the hill, they were both panting. Ava’s stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since last night.

  ‘I need to rest a minute – sorry, Ava, I’m exhausted. Paul was in a lot of pain last night, and then the stupid sheep missing this morning… Paul’s been so vile the last few weeks, I really do think he’s struggling with it all more than he lets on.’

  Wary, Ava looked over her shoulder and reluctantly slid to a halt as Penny unzipped her rucksack, but she still seemed so normal, and there was no sign of anyone else on the hill.

  ‘Here, I’m going to pick up Stephen after this, and I made this for him, but hell, if we find Bethan, I’m
sure he’ll understand. He’s been going out of his mind with worry, poor love. I think they have a snowplough and gritters trying to clear the main road, so I suppose the other contestants will be driven back to the hotel in Cadrington. Are you all right, Ava?’ Penny took a blue and silver flask from her bag and unscrewed the cap. ‘Beef soup. I made it this morning. Go on, you might as well, and I know how much you liked that stew the other night. I’ve got biscuits too.’

  Hesitating, her smile frozen on her lips, Ava realised how hungry she was, but also how stupid she would be to accept the drink. Her mind flashed back to the spiked drink at the pub. Who had done it – Penny, Paul, or even Huw? But Penny was watching her, her own smile lighting her face, waiting for Ava to take the cup. ‘Actually, Pen, I’ve had a bit of a dodgy stomach the last couple of days, so I might stick with the biscuits, if that’s okay?’

  Penny shrugged. ‘Of course, lovely, all the more for Stephen. The amount teenagers eat these days is shocking. I’ll have to get some extra food in for when he comes home.’

  Ava stayed alert, muscles tense, scanning the daisy meadow. At this time of year, and covered in snow, there was no trace of the idyllic pocket of flowers, but she could gauge the area she needed to search, and it wasn’t large. Somewhere under the snow, if she had guessed correctly, Bethan was dying. If she had to tear every tussock out by hand she would find the girl and bring her home. Meanwhile, what to do about Penny?

  The blonde woman opened a tin of biscuits and offered them to Ava, before pouring herself a cup of soup. She was still smiling, still chattering about Stephen, and how she really hoped Bethan was okay. There was no urgency in her voice or mannerisms. ‘Do you remember how I had that little leather book for pressing flowers? We brought it down here, didn’t we, for the beautiful daisies.’

  Ava did remember, and the memory stuck in her throat, clogging it with emotion at the image of three children picking flowers. How had it come to this? It was tough, but to keep her going, and to appease Penny, she ate a couple of flapjacks, and was just about to swing the conversation around to the daisy meadow again, when her phone rang. She glanced down. ‘Sorry, I need to get this.’

  ‘I got your email about the latest message. Sounds like it’s nearly time to finish the game,’ Jack said. His voice was faint and the weak signal made the line buzzy and indistinct.

  ‘Yeah, I got that too.’ Ava kept one eye on Penny, who was munching happily, and clearly not in a hurry to get on and rescue Bethan. Her own heart was thundering against her chest, and her breathing was short again, the icy air almost painful as it hit her lungs in sharp, anxious bursts.

  Jack continued. ‘Right, I have some more… information that might help, and although I have Sophie’s details, I thought I’d call you first…’

  ‘I’m listening. You’re really faint, the signal is so bad up here.’ In her mind’s eye she saw the bloody daisy chain, coiled like a snake in the tissue paper. Was it Bethan’s blood, or the killer’s? If it was the killer’s that would mean they had identified themselves, and after all their cleverness, it must be deliberate. Did they want to be caught? Was that how the game ended? She moved a little way down the hill, away from Penny, but she could feel her friend’s eyes on her.

  ‘So, Zack told you we traced the person who was putting the photographs up. We’ve got more now. It was slightly odd in the end, almost as though this perp started off trying to cloak their identity, but then led us along a trail right to their own website. It’s a whole site dedicated to sick porn, and snuff videos. All kinds of fucked-up shit.’ Jack hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’ Ava indicated to Penny that they needed to get on, rolling her eyes in an attempt to convey boredom at the person on the other end of the phone. But this mattered, she could feel it, and the sweat on her forehead wasn’t just from the climb up the hill. ‘The site is linked to Penny’s Bakes and Makes. She’s Paul’s wife, isn’t she? All the emails and photographs linked to him, but this is a direct hit on her.’

  Ava froze, heart hammering, and then covered her reaction quickly, zipping her running jacket up tighter, stamping her feet. She dragged up a picture in her mind of Penny’s bright colourful site, and heard her light, pretty voice explaining that Paul made the website because she didn’t understand technical things… and Leo did the photographs. ‘Tell me how.’

  Jack sighed. ‘So, the tech guys tell me this kind of site often lives right underneath a legitimate site. Hard to describe, but imagine an island – your wholesome sand and palm trees on top, but underneath you got a load of sharks and weed…’

  ‘Very lucid. I get you,’ Ava said dryly, desperately trying to process this new information.

  ‘This dark web site feeds off the same images as the legit one, JavaScript, and whatever – not my thing as you know. You go onto the legit site, you click a specific image selection – in this case, it’s a photograph of a cake, and then an icon – and it takes you down below to the sick shit. A couple of things that stand out – it’s her site, but the website and all the email accounts are registered to her husband. Did you…’

  The signal gave out and she swore, apologised to Penny and explained it was a work call. She rang him back, hoping it would connect… Fuck, she was going to have to stop the soft approach and hammer Penny. All the time she tried Jack’s number again, she was scanning the hill below for signs of Bethan. Underground. There must have been a hidden cave entrance they had missed when they explored up here as kids. Or perhaps an old mine entrance had opened up in the years between her escape and now. It did happen. She remembered that there had been a big news story a while back about a whole house disappearing into a sinkhole, because so many mines were never mapped.

  Jack was back, and she gripped the phone so hard it hurt her palm through her glove. ‘Lost you for a minute. Now, it could be that they are in this together, or he could be using her as a front. You said he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer? It could be the trigger that started all this off. Say he was responsible for the rape and murder of your friend, and say his wife doesn’t know, but suspects…’

  ‘Oh really? Well, maybe. Look, I need to call you back later, I’m right in the middle of something.’ Ava’s mind was racing. Could it be Paul, or was this a team effort between husband and wife? Had they brought her back for this all along?

  ‘Are you with someone?’

  ‘That’s right – just a girlfriend.’

  ‘Paul might or might not be your perp. You’re with her, aren’t you, the wife?’ Jack said sharply. ‘Does Sophie know where you are? Do you want me to update her?’

  ‘Yes she does, and yes please, as soon as you can. Thanks, speak later,’ Ava said quickly. Penny? No way, and yet it fitted in so many ways. But she wouldn’t be doing it alone. If Paul was involved, it must be because he attacked Ellen that night. Fuck, Penny… She felt nausea creeping up her stomach into her throat, and beside her, the blonde hair shone in the sun, the pale green eyes fixed on hers…

  ‘So. who was that?’

  ‘It was just my boss back home. We’re halfway through a tricky case and he wanted my take on it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you remember the daisy meadow, Penny?’

  Her face lit up. ‘Yes, I do… It would be right below us on the side of this hill, wouldn’t it? Do you think Bethan is there? That would have been searched, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes it was, but I think she is being kept underground.’ Ava met Penny’s gaze. Again, there was nothing but a pretty farmer’s wife, a soon-to-be-bereaved wife. Her childhood friend. ‘Penny, we need to find her!’

  Still no reaction from the blonde woman, so Ava started to climb. She could hear Penny following her but didn’t look back. They slithered down the hill, grinding to an unsteady halt approximately halfway down. This side of the hill, as they sank beneath the snow, was matted with bramble cables and bare scrubby vegetation, and the usual muddy ruts that caught unwary boots.

  Ava jumped onto a ledge o
f jutting rock. Nausea made her head swim, but she brushed the feeling away. There was nothing obvious here, after the fresh fall of snow, and yet she was sure this was the place.

  ‘Could the place be a bit further over?’ Penny asked doubtfully, dumping her rucksack on the ledge next to her friend.

  ‘I don’t know, it might be. What do you think?’ Ava challenged her, her voice sharpening. ‘Where do you think Bethan might be, Penny?’

  ‘I don’t know. How could I? It’s you who have been getting the messages, isn’t it, lovely, so it must be up to you to find her.’ Penny was smiling blandly, charmingly, with no hint of fear or sadness.

  So that was it. She glanced quickly down to check her phone, which was now displaying the ‘no signal’ icon, but still displayed the map she had saved earlier. ‘I’m thinking a natural fissure in the rock that is well hidden from the outside, or possibly even an entrance to some old mine workings. We need to check every bramble patch, and every ledge from here downwards. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, I think you’re pretty clever to have thought of that,’ Penny said softly and started moving to the right, shoving aside clumps of snow, parting the scrub, scanning along the rocky outcrops. ‘Let’s see now…’

  Ava let her lead, whilst she was pretending to search further up. Penny wanted her to find Bethan, so she would trust that if she couldn’t find the cave, her friend would guide her. They searched for a few minutes when Penny suddenly shrieked. ‘Oh my God, Ava, get over here!’

  Elated, Ava abandoned her search area and ran towards her friend. The nausea returned, making her head spin. She forced the feeling away. Gut instinct had been right. Unless it was an extreme coincidence, which she didn’t believe, Penny had rung last night to gauge how things stood. Penny and her husband had decided she would come down and meet Ava after the last message, and pushing towards an unknown end goal, Penny would show Ava where Bethan was. The question was, now what?