Unforgiving

by Nick Oldham

  ‘OK, Dad … Oh, Dad?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘How did it go today?’

  ‘It went well, Dan, very well.’

  A surge of relief went through Danny at this news. ‘That’s great, Dad.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  ‘And Dad?’

  ‘Yeh?’

  ‘Sorry for being a plonker.’

  ‘Hey …’ Jake’s voice cracked. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Well, anyway, love you.’

  ‘Love you, too.’

  ‘Now let me call the taxi people, and I’ll get back to you.’

  Jake turned to Anna. They’d got partway home up the M6, but had then detoured on to the motorway services at Forton, south of Lancaster, where they’d sat for a long time in the café overlooking the motorway, with coffee and cakes, and had a long talk about the future. Ultimately, they’d decided to give Kendleton a proper try, even though the children were not happy with it.

  Talk, somehow, had then moved on to Jake’s infidelity.

  That was an uncomfortable half-hour for him, but he thought he’d come out of it well, a bit like a job interview, saying – and meaning – all the right things.

  Danny had called at that point and interrupted.

  Hanging up, Jake said, ‘Good and bad. Danny says sorry for being an idiot, but Emma isn’t home yet.’

  ‘I gathered that much. I’ll try and call her; you call the taxi guy.’ She fished out her mobile phone and called Emma whilst Jake called KountryKabs.

  They finished their calls at the same time and said, ‘No reply,’ in unison.

  Jake tapped his head and thought. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I’ll call the school.’

  ‘I’ll call Danny back after you do.’

  ‘Danny, it’s me … Has Em landed yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, your mum’s talked to the school, and they say she left on time, wasn’t doing any extra-curricular activity … Look, mate, I’m sure it’s nothing, but I can’t seem to get through to the taxi place in Thornwell to see if they picked her up, or whatever …’ Jake wracked his brains. ‘Tell you what – make your way down to the Tawny Owl and see Henry Christie, yeah?’

  ‘Right,’ Danny drawled dubiously.

  ‘I’ll call him now and tell him to expect you. We’ll see if he’ll be good enough to drive across to Thornwell with you and knock on the taxi office there … In the meantime, we’ll keep trying Emma’s phone. I’m sure it’s nothing; she’s probably just gone into town with a few mates and completely forgotten to let us know. She’s reaching that age, you know?’

  ‘So, Henry Christie?’ Danny asked, seeking confirmation.

  ‘Yeah … He won’t bite your head off.’

  ‘OK, whatever.’

  As Jake made that call, Anna had been trying Emma again, but without success.

  Jake suggested, ‘Let’s go to the pick-up point in Lancaster, just in case she’s still there … I know,’ he said, seeing Anna’s ‘as if’ expression. ‘But just in case. If she isn’t there, we’ll head home.’ Anna nodded, and Jake said, ‘Be nothing, just a teenage thing.’

  They stood up, collected their belongings, then hurried out to the car park, not noticing the man in the café, who had arrived only moments after them, stand up and follow them.

  Before leaving the house, Danny had the good sense to find a piece of A4 paper and scrawl on it in big, fat, felt tip letters: ‘EM – CALL ME OR MUM URGENTLY.’ He signed it and Sellotaped it to the front door, before pulling on his zip-up jacket and trainers to jog down to the Tawny Owl to see Henry Christie, who was already hovering at the front door of the pub, waiting for him.

  ‘I’ve spoken to your dad,’ Henry said quickly, pulling on his jacket. ‘He’s put me in the picture … I’m sure it’ll be fine, usually is … So I’m going over to Thornwell, and I take it you’re coming with me?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Henry led him to his battered Audi coupé. ‘Hop in.’

  ‘Didn’t realize this was yours,’ Danny said, folding himself in. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It got assaulted,’ Henry explained mysteriously. ‘Long story, but it still works, and I’ve fixed all the leaks.’ He fired it up, skidded off the car park and turned towards Thornwell.

  ‘She always answers me.’

  ‘I know,’ Jake said.

  ‘Could she have had an accident?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘It’s not like her.’ Panic was starting to make Anna’s voice tremble.

  ‘I know, but you and I both also know from experience that when kids go missing, the parents always say, “It’s not like our Johnny,” because they simply don’t know the half of little Johnny’s life. And kids can be very, very secretive. She might have a boyfriend we don’t know about.’ Jake sighed. ‘It happens.’

  Anna nodded, but was not convinced. She was certain she knew all the ins and outs of Emma’s life, and even if she didn’t and Emma was starting to lead some sort of double life, her daughter wouldn’t be stupid enough to not answer the phone, arousing suspicions.

  Jake came off the motorway at Junction 34 and turned towards Lancaster. To make it as easy as possible in the traffic snarl-up that was the city, the usual arrangement was that Danny and Emma walked from their respective schools down to Parliament Street. This meant the taxi driver did not have to battle the one-way system, but could simply loop around and pick them up, then head back along the A683 towards their home.

  So far that plan had worked.

  As Jake approached the north of the city along the A683, the road forked, and at the first set of proper traffic lights he bore right, so he was effectively coming back on himself on Parliament Street, where Emma was supposed to have been waiting.

  There was no sign of her as Jake stopped. Neither of them spoke, and they could not prevent that horrid sensation of parental dread – normal, they knew, when children were unaccounted for – from engulfing them.

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ Jake said hopefully.

  Anna’s face creased worriedly. ‘It’s just not like her.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he conceded as that pit-of-the-guts feeling started to shred his insides. It was an almost indescribable terror.

  He tried to control his breathing and the dithering shake of his hands.

  ‘Call her again,’ he said to Anna.

  ‘I just have done.’

  ‘Do it again.’

  Anna’s thumb did a little dance on the face of her iPhone and redialled Emma’s number.

  It went instantly to voicemail. Anna looked at Jake just as a text landed. She looked at the screen. ‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘It’s from her.’

  She slid a fingertip across the screen to open the message, which she read, and then could not stop an animal-like utterance escaping from her mouth. She clasped a hand over her mouth and said, muffled, ‘Oh my God,’ into the palm of her hand.

  ‘What?’ Jake snatched the phone from her, read the text.

  There were just two words:

  Help me.

  Henry drove quickly over to Thornwell with Danny alongside him, lost in worried thoughts about his sister. Henry wanted to make small talk, but decided against it. One of the most irritating things a person can do to another when they’re fretting about something is chatter away.

  The journey took about eight minutes, and he soon was driving past the Swan’s Neck and on to the road beyond, where KountryKabs had their office. It was actually on a small, fairly decrepit industrial estate, the office being in a small unit in a row of similar ones. There was a roller door, next to which was an office door with a sign over it bearing the name of the firm. From his previous dealings with the firm when Laura Marshall had gone missing, Henry knew that, inside, the unit was set up as a garage/repair shop for the taxi cabs owned by the firm, of which th
ere were about six in operation, Henry seemed to recall. The firm, run by a creepy guy called Owen Overwall, seemed to have cornered the rural market for taxi rides. Overwall also ran a couple of coaches and minibuses from the unit.

  The place was in darkness as Henry drew up on the forecourt.

  Henry also knew that around the back end of this industrial estate was the abattoir owned by Spencer Bartle – behind which was Bartle’s farm, although Bartle himself lived in a house in Thornwell. Henry had visited the abattoir and Bartle’s home a few times, and had even searched the places, whilst investigating Laura’s disappearance. He had not been happy with Overwall backing up Bartle’s alibi for the night in question. Overwall had said that he’d picked up Bartle in a taxi from outside the Swan’s Neck and that they had actually passed Laura’s police car on their way to Lancaster. Because of Overwall’s evidence, Henry hadn’t been able to break Bartle’s alibi.

  ‘Bugger,’ Henry said, sighing when he saw the office was obviously closed. Nevertheless, he got out of his car and went to the office door, rapping on it loudly. The sound of the knocking echoed beyond. Danny was behind him. ‘No one home.’

  Henry got out his phone and called the taxicab number, which was still on his contact list. It was a mobile number and went straight through to voicemail, which, he thought, was not great practise for a taxi-firm.

  ‘Must be busy, out and about,’ Henry mused. He tried the office door, through force of habit. It was locked, as was the roller-shutter door which he also rattled and tried to drag up.

  ‘We need to speak to them, to see if Emma was at the pick-up point,’ Danny said.

  ‘Yep,’ Henry said, thinking. ‘Let’s head back, Dan. I’ll drop you off at home, then I’ll come back here and sit outside the place until something happens one way or the other.’

  ‘Why should I go back?’ Danny asked as they got back into the Audi and set off.

  ‘Just in case Emma does turn up. I think it would be better if someone was there.’

  Danny shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Your mum and dad might be home now, anyway, and if they are, we can work out what to do for the best,’ Henry said as his mobile phone rang. It was back in his jeans pocket, and he had to contort to fish it out and answer it.

  ‘Henry, it’s Jake.’

  ‘Yeah, you got any news?’

  ‘Yeah … got a text from Emma.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Henry said, glancing at Danny and giving him a smile and a nod, but at the same time he could hear the tension in Jake’s voice. ‘I take it she’s OK?’

  ‘No … no, I don’t think so. The text said, “Help me.” We called her back, but couldn’t get through.’

  ‘Right – where are you now?’

  ‘Halfway between Lancaster and Kendleton.’

  ‘OK, I’m more or less back in Kendleton with Dan. There was no sign of life at the cab firm … I’m thinking of dropping Dan off at your house then heading back to Thornwell and sitting outside KountryKabs until someone shows or I hear anything different. I think getting the taxi firm’s story is the key to this, the starting point, and then we can take it from there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake agreed. ‘If they went to pick her up and she wasn’t there, why haven’t they told us? And where the hell is she?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a pause, then Jake asked Henry, ‘D’you think we’re reading too much into this? Overreacting?’

  Henry didn’t have to think for one second about his response. ‘No. If it’s all OK and she turns up safe and well, bollock her … If it’s otherwise,’ he said bleakly, ‘let’s not be playing catch-up.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that,’ Jake said with relief.

  ‘I’m at yours now,’ Henry said, pulling up outside the police house.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Still in darkness.’

  The man had easily followed Jake and Anna from the motorway services. He was curious as to why they had come off the motorway, driven to the outskirts of Lancaster and looped around, before heading back under the motorway, going first towards Caton, and then, when they were beyond that village, cutting right towards Kendleton.

  Curious, but not concerned. All he had to do was keep up with them until they arrived home, wherever that was.

  As soon as they were there, he would allow them to settle before moving in for the kill.

  Henry went into Jake’s house with Danny just to have a quick check, even though it seemed obvious that Emma wasn’t home. He did a few cursory searches, watched by a slightly bemused Danny.

  With Danny’s permission, he looked in Emma’s wardrobe and under her bed, and repeated the process in Danny’s bedroom, then Jake and Anna’s. Anywhere a slim teenage girl might fit.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Emma,’ Henry said. From experience he knew that any missing person inquiry, if this was going to be that, had to start at home. He had known too many instances where a police officer taking an initial report of a misper had circulated details countrywide only to find the person had been hiding at home. As a uniformed PC, Henry had once attended the report of an eight-year-old girl missing, and before he’d even begun to fill out any forms he had insisted on looking around the house. He found her playing with her dolls in the garden shed, the door of which had somehow slammed shut and locked her inside. She had not noticed because she’d been too engrossed in serving tea to Barbie. ‘Bread and butter basic,’ Henry had said.

  He looked in the shed too now, but Emma wasn’t in there playing with dolls. ‘You have to check these places,’ he explained.

  ‘I get it,’ Danny said.

  ‘OK, Dan, I’m going back to Thornwell. You stay here, and if she turns up, be nice to her.’

  ‘Can’t promise that.’

  ‘I know. You’re her brother. Brothers are nasty to sisters.’

  ‘And the other way round.’

  Henry left him on the threshold at the front door and drove away.

  The roller-shutter doors were descending the last few inches when Henry drove on to the forecourt of the taxi unit on the industrial estate.

  He heard the door clatter on the ground as he got out of his car and could see a line of light along the bottom. He slammed his car door and walked to the shutter, slapping it with the palm of his hand, making it rattle loudly.

  The light inside went off.

  Henry stood back, then kicked the door, making it rattle even more loudly.

  He heard footsteps from inside.

  He banged again, then walked along to the office door and rang the doorbell and kicked that door also at the same time.

  He heard the door being unlocked, a bolt being slid back, a chain being released, then the door opened a fraction.

  ‘What?’ came the voice from inside.

  ‘Need a word,’ Henry said to the one eye he could see.

  ‘Sorry, closed.’

  Henry jammed his foot in the door just in case. ‘Need a word, I said.’ His tone of voice dropped an octave.

  There was an audible sigh, then the door opened to reveal the man Henry recognized as Owen Overwall, proprietor of the taxi firm.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked Henry wearily, adjusting his rimless glasses.

  ‘Remember me, Mr Overwall …?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Henry Christie. I spoke to you with regard to the disappearance of PC Laura Marshall, if you recall?’

  Overwall gave a non-caring shrug.

  ‘Need to speak to you again.’

  ‘As I said, we’re closed.’

  ‘And as I said, I need to talk to you.’ Henry smiled at him, enjoying himself in spite of the scenario. ‘And isn’t it a bit odd being closed? I thought you were a taxi firm … It’s still only just after tea time.’

  ‘My business is out on the road, not in here.’

  ‘Let me come in, and let’s have a chat,’ Henry insisted fairly politely. He was now getting annoyed b
y this man who, when he had interviewed him previously, had not impressed him. He placed a hand on the door, and that, plus the foot in the door, made his intentions clear.

  ‘No, I don’t have time,’ Overwall insisted.

  ‘You need to make time … I want to talk to you about another missing girl.’ Henry looked at Overwall’s face, but saw nothing flinch.

  ‘I thought we’d already had that discussion?’

  ‘Like I said … a different one,’ Henry said.

  With great reluctance, Overwall stood back and opened the door.

  Henry’s ‘thank you’ was sarcastic.

  They stood in the corridor. To the right was the door for the taxi office; next along was a door to a toilet; then at the far end was the door leading into the garage/workshop. Next to Henry, on his left, was a large window that looked into the garage. Henry could see four cars parked up, fairly tightly packed, but with some space available, including the white Skoda which Overwall must just have driven in. Henry recognized it as the same vehicle Overwall had allegedly picked up Spencer Bartle with and then driven him into Lancaster on the night Laura disappeared.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ Overwall asked dully and without interest.

  ‘You were due to pick up Emma Niven from Lancaster this afternoon, three forty-five p.m. in Parliament Street. Part of an ongoing contract.’

  Overwall nodded to this statement. Henry shrugged to encourage a response, which, when it came, was: ‘Yuh.’

  Overwall was small, rodent-like, with a pinched face and harsh features, his eyes like black holes.

  ‘And?’ Henry said. ‘Look, don’t mess me around, just answer the question. It’s not exactly hard.’

  ‘She wasn’t there.’

  ‘And – again?’ Henry pumped him.

  ‘And what? She wasn’t there. What am I supposed to do about it?’

  Henry nodded thoughtfully. ‘Can I have a look at the car?’ He pointed through the window at the white Skoda. Overwall shrugged, and Henry took that as a yes. He walked along the corridor into the garage, followed by the taxi owner, who was close behind him as he walked around the car. Henry said, ‘You are contracted to pick her up from home, take her to school, pick her up from school, drop her at home. Am I right?’