Long Time Lost

by Chris Ewan

  And today, for the first time, despite everything that had gone against them, he could begin to see a way to believe that four years might be enough. Provided, that was, he could end this latest threat for good. Supposing, also, that with Kate’s help he could find some form of redemption for failing to protect his family by saving those clients he’d unwittingly placed in harm’s way.

  He hurried on through alleyways and passageways, pursued by his grief and regrets, making his way back to the wide, charmless boulevard of Karmelitská, where a tram teetered towards him, blue sparks arcing from the web of overhead lines. Across the street, the light spill from the pet-shop window was a lurid, chemical green, similar to the water in the fish tanks at the back of the store. He looked up at Darren’s unlit apartment, at the deserted pavements and the shuttered businesses, then finally turned his head, his gaze sweeping past the closed doughnut shop and settling on the entrance to a three-star hotel.

  The hotel was where he’d stayed with Sarah and Melanie. It was the main reason why he hadn’t wanted Darren moving here, to the same street. Whenever he visited Darren, he found himself gaping at the slowly revolving glass doors, remembering passing through them back then, thinking of walking through them once more, as if, somehow, he might be magically whisked back to a time before everything fell apart.

  But not tonight – not ever – and so tugging the penlight and keys from his pocket, his fingers bloated with wetness and cold, he crossed to the pet shop and popped the lock and swept inside.

  And noticed something.

  The alarm didn’t sound.

  Was Darren back early? Or was Wade waiting for him here?

  He stood very still, listening to the burble of aquarium pumps, the squeak of a hamster on a wheel. There was a strong odour of sawdust and animal hair and meat paste. Spilt nuggets of dried cat food crunched under his boots as he crept past the counter towards a spinning rack loaded with squeaky toys and a low animal pen in which a rabbit thumped its hind leg fitfully.

  He drifted by the wall of aquariums at the rear and on into the darkened stockroom, where he shone his penlight over the alarm control panel and could find no obvious signs of tampering.

  His anxiety dampening down a little, he climbed the stairs to Darren’s apartment, aiming the beam of his penlight ahead of him, the disc of light skimming over the treads.

  As he reached the top, he saw that the door was partway open, tapping against the jamb. His penknife was in his trouser pocket and he fumbled it out, tearing a nail as he tugged a blade free. He gripped the knife in his right fist down by his waist, the penlight held overhand by his left shoulder.

  The door bounced off the frame once more, then started to swing back, and Miller moved with it, barging it aside, striding into the unlit room, his senses heightened to such a degree that he felt the slightest breeze against his face.

  There was a faint shimmer to his right; the play of moonlight on net curtains. The nets drifted inwards, billowing and lifting, revealing a pair of glass French doors flung wide open.

  Miller crept nearer, pushing the curtains aside, stepping through on to a balcony that looked down over the alley running behind the building and the entrance to the veterinary surgery below. The door to the surgery was thrown back, spilling a wedge of light on the ground.

  Something cracked beneath his feet. Not cat food this time, but glass. He turned and saw that a door panel had smashed. Dropping to his haunches, he cast his torch around, catching the oily reflection from a slick of blood amid the glitter of shattered beads.

  Leaning forwards, gripping the iron railings, he peered down into the alley and spotted a dumpster toppled on to its side, its wheels in the air, spewing yellow plastic bags branded with some kind of medical hazard symbol.

  Something grazed the back of his neck and he spun fast, knife raised, into a tangle of curtain.

  Nobody there.

  Batting the fabric away, he looked down again and spied an abandoned shoe just beyond the dumpster. It was a Converse trainer, dirtied and worn, exactly the type Darren might wear. Miller pictured him limping away, his foot twisted, his ankle broken or sprained, after leaping off the balcony into the dumpster.

  He must have been seriously scared to risk a fall like that. Which made all kinds of sense where a man like Aaron Wade was concerned.

  Miller rocked back and raised his eyes to the blur of rain clouds overhead, asking himself if Darren could have got away, and if he hadn’t, where Wade might have taken him. And right then he was struck by a terrible thought.

  Patrick Leigh. The construction crane in Manchester. Wade had strung Patrick up from the tallest structure he could find, and the highest point anywhere close to him now was the giant green cupola of St Nicholas Church, rising in a great swell just beyond the roofline of the buildings he was looking towards.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The church was undergoing renovation and was surrounded by scaffolding concealed behind a tarpaulin shroud. The tarpaulin was pale brown in colour and featured an outline drawing of the Baroque exterior of the landmark beneath.

  At ground level, the perimeter of the building was shielded by temporary metal fencing set several metres back into the street, secured with industrial padlocks. The site was unlit and appeared to be empty and unguarded. Miller paused at the mouth of an alley near the rear of the church, scanning his surroundings. There was nobody behind him, nobody ahead, darkness all around.

  He picked up his pace, breaking into a run, and lunged for a fence panel, grabbing hold of the top edge, springing from his toes. Which turned out to be a bad move. The metal was sharp and Miller was heavy. The panel cut his left hand. He hooked an elbow over the top, hoping to spread the load, and felt his skin break as the panel shook and flexed beneath him, threatening to tip until he heaved a leg over and dropped down on to grit and sand.

  His palm was bleeding. The wounds weren’t deep, but blood was creeping through his shirtsleeve from where the ragged metal had sliced into his arm. He flexed his fingers, testing his movement, wincing at the stretch and sting.

  There was a cement mixer near to him with a shovel resting against it. Beyond the mixer, a wooden ladder had been lashed to the scaffold.

  Miller craned his neck and looked up. He couldn’t see any movement or hear any signs of a struggle. But the tarpaulin was thick and the scaffolding very high, and if Wade had forced Darren to climb to the top, they could be concealed from view.

  He stepped forwards and grasped a sand-crusted rung, then climbed as far as the first floor of scaffold, where he switched to another ladder.

  The cuts on his hand were sucking in grit and sand. On the next level of scaffold, he found a ratty piece of fabric tied loosely around a horizontal pole. It was a vest top. Perhaps it had once been white but now it was grimy with dirt and sweat.

  Miller used his penknife to slice the vest in two, wrapping the fabric around his palm and tying it off with his teeth. When he was done, he flexed his fingers again. His movement was restricted but the pain was muffled. Tucking the knife away, he stepped over to the next ladder and climbed on.

  The light wind that had buffeted him at ground level built steadily the higher he climbed. Strong gusts blasted the tarpaulin, making the scaffolding shake and rattle.

  He passed stained-glass windows and carved masonry and gargoyles. He didn’t see or hear Wade, and he couldn’t spot Darren. Eventually he found himself on the very top deck, the rain spitting in his face, the wind blustering. He could see right across the night-time city, far beyond the roof of the hostel where he’d gazed from earlier. Stepping forwards and seizing hold of a scaffold pole, he leaned out and looked down over the cobbled square at the front of the church, where a few pedestrians scurried to and fro.

  Miller had never liked heights, and certainly not on this scale. Maybe it had something to with his size, his bulk. He was big and rangy, prone to tripping.

  A gust of wind slammed into him and he backed off from the ed
ge, moving round the turquoise cupola, beneath the twin bell towers, craning his neck, searching out threats.

  He was beginning to think he’d been mistaken. He seemed to be alone and forgotten up here. None of the passers-by down below were stopping and pointing. Nobody was standing back or screaming or giving any indication that they could see someone in trouble.

  And yet somebody was in trouble, out of sight, at the very rear of the cupola, where Miller found Darren strung up by his ankles, his hands tied behind his back, suspended from a metal chain and dangling way above the spiked roof of the main church building.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Darren’s shins were bound with duct tape and the metal chain had been coiled around them, stretching up to be wrapped once around the horizontal pole Miller was leaning against, then tied off multiple times on an upright pole several metres back that was clustered with knots and tangled with drooping chain loops.

  Miller couldn’t reach Darren. The length of chain was too long, the distance down to him too far. He leaned out further over the abyss, stretching his arm and shouting Darren’s name, the horizontal pole digging into his gut. He thought of trying to hoist Darren up but he doubted he could do it. Darren was thirteen, maybe fourteen stone. Factor in the way Miller’s hand was shredded and the strong possibility that Wade was close by, and he decided on a different approach.

  He hurried down a trio of ladders to a lower deck. The tarpaulin masked his view but he could see an indent where Darren’s body was pressing against the material. Folding out the blade on his penknife, he pierced the canvas and began carving a long, ragged slit to Darren’s right. Which was easier said than done because the blade wasn’t particularly sharp and the tarpaulin was damp. Miller pulled the blade out and stabbed a line of holes, ripping at the material in between with his hands. Then he switched to a saw-toothed attachment on the penknife and worked it to and fro until the gap was big enough to force his head and shoulders through.

  Darren was facing away from him, wriggling against his restraints, his movements fast and desperate.

  Miller stuffed his knife into his back pocket and reached for Darren’s knees, triggering a muffled howl and some furious bucking, then spun him towards him, grabbing him by the belt and raising him up until he could look in his inverted face.

  His eyes were bloodshot, his nose was broken and he was bleeding from an ugly cut on his temple. Two strips of duct tape covered his mouth in an X shape and his cheeks bulged as he tried to shout.

  ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’ Miller hauled him closer, trying to ignore the mighty drop to the peaked church roof below.

  But Darren kept moaning, kept nodding his head.

  ‘I’m going to pull you through. Stop fighting. Stay still. Hey!’ Miller reached out with his free hand and balled Darren’s sweater in his fist, glaring into his fear-blown eyes. ‘Work with me.’

  For just a moment, he relaxed. The muscles in his face slackened off. His pupils seemed to clear.

  But just as rapidly, a new stimulus altered his response.

  The fear returned. It spiked. Darren moaned and flailed, jerking his head. Miller barely had time to process the warning before he felt one hand thump against his back and another dig into his hair.

  There was no real pause and certainly no reprieve, and before he could defend himself or even turn, he was pitched forwards and thrust out.

  He fell hard and heavy, flipping right over, his legs cartwheeling around, the light-streaked cityscape rotating with him.

  His wrists flexed and extended, fingers digging in to Darren’s belt and sweatshirt. Then his weight bore down and he tightened every muscle and tendon, wrists smarting, fingers loosening as he slammed against Darren’s upturned body, his knee crunching off his jaw.

  He clung on and looked up. Above him was only wind and whirling darkness and the fluttering tear in the tarpaulin until, many fearful seconds later, he heard a whoop and saw Wade lean his upper body out over the top deck of the scaffolding, his big, square head slashed by a frenzied grin.

  Wade ducked out of sight again and Miller eyed the split he’d carved in the tarpaulin, asking himself if he could climb up to it, when there was a sudden clunk and a slackening of the chain and the two men plummeted a fast and terrifying ten metres.

  The chain tightened off, almost jerking Miller loose. The metal was so taut it seemed to hum. The links cut in to Darren’s shins and he screamed from behind his gag, wriggling in an attempt to get Miller off him.

  But Miller wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t.

  He looked down and around, searching for a way out, but Darren’s writhing was becoming wilder and more unpredictable, the chain spinning and swinging. He stuck out a leg, failing to hook a foot around a pole behind the canvas. Wade was shouting at him, taunting him, and Miller looked up into his flat, wide-apart eyes, his gaze almost bovine, blissed out, amused, only to see him clench the chain and begin to shake it some more.

  Miller loosened his grip on Darren’s sweater and grabbed for the bunched chains between his legs, then above his ankles. Darren screamed harder. Miller gritted his teeth and freed his other hand from Darren’s belt and planted one foot on his chest as he leapt up, the metal links carving into the cuts on his hand through the padding around his palm.

  His grip failed on the rain-greased links and he slipped, but reached up and kept scrambling, kept climbing, heaving his upper body clear of Darren until only their feet were entangled below.

  Wade tipped his head to one side. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  He jolted the chain.

  Miller clung on, the wind and rain whipping against him.

  ‘This won’t hold much longer,’ Wade shouted. ‘Or maybe your strength will fail first.’

  Miller pressed his face against the fragile metal, intensely aware of the tension running through it, of the thin air that surrounded him, of his own lumpen weight and the give in his arms and the gaping hole in the canvas high above.

  ‘You want Anna,’ he shouted back. ‘You need Anna.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Lane does.’

  ‘Mr Lane isn’t here. And I’d like to see what kind of a mess you make when you hit that church roof.’

  Wade jangled the chain. Darren whined forlornly through his busted nose and taped mouth.

  ‘What do you think Lane’s going to do to you if I fall?’ Miller shouted. ‘How will you find Anna then? I have a team behind me. They’ll carry this on.’

  Wade stilled for just a second. Maybe he really did think about it. And a second was all it took.

  Miller lowered a hand and plucked his knife from his back pocket, opening a blade with his teeth, springing off the chain, holding on with his feet and ankles as he stabbed the blade into the tarpaulin. It popped the canvas, slipped, tipped back, the knife beginning to loosen just as Miller forced his free arm through the frayed gap up to the elbow and grasped for the pole behind.

  He stabbed at the canvas again and again, punching furiously, then forced his head through, and afterwards his shoulder and his other arm, clutching the pole in both hands, heaving with the last of his strength, his hips snagging, the tarpaulin puckering round him, dropping on to a dusty scaffold deck.

  His arms were numbed and aching, his fingers so stiff with muscle strain that they’d curled into claws. He levered himself on to an elbow, his entire body seeming to buzz and convulse.

  Then he heard the fast shuffle-zip of the metal chain unravelling and he whipped his head round to see Darren drop once more.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Julia Summerhayes unlocked the rear door to Manchester Town Hall, took a detailed look at Lloyd’s warrant card, then led her through the dark and echoing building to an office in a far corner of the fourth floor.

  The coroner was dressed stylishly in a black pencil skirt and a beige silk blouse. Sliding into her office chair, she swept aside a half-eaten packet of crisps and an open drinks can that bore
all the hallmarks of a vending-machine dinner, and invited Lloyd to take a seat across from her.

  ‘It’s good of you to see me so late.’

  Lloyd felt suddenly nervous and out of her depth, though she wasn’t sure why exactly. Perhaps it was because she didn’t know quite what she was looking for or hoping to hear, whereas the coroner had an air of professional certainty about her. Then again, she was the only one who knew what she was about to say.

  ‘Oh, I had paperwork to catch up on anyway. And now,’ she added, ducking for something on the floor by her feet, ‘it seems I have even more.’

  She lifted two box files and placed them carefully on her desk with their spines pointed towards Lloyd. The name Sarah Adams was written on one of the files, together with the date of her death and what Lloyd took to be the number of her case file. Lloyd could see the same information about Melanie on the second file.

  ‘You said there was something you wanted to show me?’

  ‘“Want” is a strong word.’ The coroner tapped a nail against the file on the left. ‘These are Sarah’s records.’

  She pushed the file across the desk and Lloyd reached for it. The box was heavy. A stack of papers slid around inside.

  The coroner said, ‘On a quick inspection, the records for Sarah are full and complete. My assistant checked, and according to our system, nobody has requested access to them.’

  ‘That sounds like something you could have told me over the phone.’

  ‘And I would have done, if it weren’t for this.’

  Now she slid over Melanie’s file. Lloyd weighed it in her free hand. It was much lighter.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’