by Penny Grubb
Annie stood dumbfounded. The trailer had disappeared. She stared into the blackness of the surrounding scrub, the thin lines of trees. It couldn’t be hidden anywhere here. In the time she’d been gone, someone had driven it away. She turned and crept across to the house. It lay in darkness. At the big window, she pressed her face to the glass and peered in. A clock face glowed back at her and she could just make out Pat, still sitting in the same chair, strangely motionless. She tried to see into the corners of the room. No movement, but it was impossible to be sure. She risked tapping on the glass, softly at first and then louder. Pat didn’t move.
With sudden misgiving, she grasped the handle. It wouldn’t budge. The key hung tantalizingly the other side of the door. ‘Pat!’ she shouted, banging hard on the glass pane.
No time for subtlety now. She picked up one of the stone pots and swung it into the glass. It was a thick double-glazed unit. Her first assault cracked the outer pane; two more attempts smashed through both. For a fraction of a second she paused as her ears rang with the deafening crash of breaking glass. Her gut told her there was no one left in the house bar Pat. Now she was sure of it, unless Vince still lay between life and death in the room upstairs.
Taking care to avoid the razor-sharp edges, she reached in and turned the key. ‘Pat.’ She rushed to the woman’s side and shook her violently, relief flooding her as Pat groaned and half-roused before slipping back into unconsciousness. She wasn’t as far gone as Christa had been but there was no way Annie could carry her any distance, let alone all the way to the car. ‘Pat, you have to wake up,’ she shouted into her face.
Were they alone? No heavies here, but what if someone else had been dumped like Pat; someone now cowering at the sounds of her breaking in? She had to be sure. Fighting against an urge simply to turn and flee, to leave Pat, to leave them all, she made for the door that led to the rest of the house. She ran through, pushing open the doors one by one, flashing her torch around and closing them again. Up the stairs two at a time. The room where Christa had lain was empty. She sprinted up the short flight to Vince’s bedroom. This, too, was empty; the bed neatly made, the medicines out of sight.
She ran back down to Pat, and shook her again, watching her half rouse and then sink back. She felt over Pat’s clothes and found her phone. It was off. Why had Pat betrayed her? She still didn’t know. If anyone came now, they’d find Pat drugged, Annie’s car deliberately hidden and clear signs of forced entry. They had to get out.
‘Pat,’ she pleaded. ‘You have to wake up. I’m going to get the car. Wake up!’ She took the shortest route through the big front door, stumbled as fast as she could over the rough surface of the driveway and back to the car, which she started up and threw gravel in all directions skidding it round the big house and as close to the smashed door as she could.
Pat had raised her head. She groaned as Annie dived back into the room. ‘The car’s just outside. Come on. Half a dozen steps, that’s all. Come on, Pat. You can do it.’
Hooking one of Pat’s arms over her shoulder, she hauled her to her feet. Shouting at her, staggering under her weight, she guided her to the open door, almost fell over the small step and pushed Pat into the passenger seat of the car. Pat was semi awake now but shivering uncontrollably. Annie ripped off her jacket and bundled it roughly round her colleague before leaping round to get behind the wheel. In seconds she had the car skidding back round the house, but just as they gained the top of the driveway Annie gasped and stamped on the brake. Ignoring Pat’s moan as the sudden stop banged her into the bulkhead, Annie flipped the switch to leave them in darkness. Through the trees, in the direction of the road, she saw blue flashing lights.
They couldn’t get to the entrance … couldn’t go back …
She set off as fast as she dared, judging the turn by memory, hearing the scrape of bushes against the car door. Just a few more metres and she’d be back at the tangle of bushes. In the blackness, she almost overshot it. No doubt now that those blue lights were coming their way. She reversed the car, forcing it into the bush, then leapt out, grabbed an armful of detritus from the ground and threw it over the front of the car.
Back behind the wheel, she kept the engine idling and reached across Pat to pull her seatbelt on. Pat lay back, her breathing high and shallow. Annie sat, immobile, staring through the lacework of leaves and branches, making out the shapes of the vehicles turning in at the bottom of the drive. She heard the crunch of wheels on gravel. Two cars and a van. They were taking this seriously. Should she stay and make herself known? It would mean trouble and explanations that wouldn’t look credible, but Pat would be looked after.
Instinctively she crouched lower as the first car flew past. Its flashing blue light lit the interior of the vehicle behind. From her hiding place in the tangle of undergrowth she saw a man in the front passenger seat crane his neck away from her, casting his glance towards the copse where Carl Sleeman had parked when he’d brought her here, a prisoner in her own car’s boot. Whoever it was knew this place; knew that copse as an out of the way spot to leave a vehicle. It was a momentary glance, then he turned back to face the front, his expression grim. He was in her line of sight for no more than a second. It was enough. She’d never known him well. He’d aged in the years since she’d last seen him, but she remembered his face. He’d been a PC then, but he wasn’t in uniform now.
Rob Greaves.
Annie felt herself sink lower in her seat and hold her breath willing them on, beyond the bend in the drive. She heard the spray of gravel, the screech of tyres. They’d made straight for the back of the house. Before she lost her nerve and whilst their vehicles were still skidding noisily about, she eased the car forward. No lights. A bump up out of the shrubbery that elicited a groan from Pat. Hanging out of her window to track the indistinct boundary between the drive and the adjacent rough ground, she kept the revs low, as quiet as she could and crawled the car towards the big gates.
Thankful for the continued breeze that rustled the high branches above them, Annie turned the car out on to the road, resisting the temptation to speed up. The breeze might mask the sound to some extent but she knew how far sound could carry at night. Once beyond the next bend in the lane, she risked dipped headlights and eased the accelerator down gently, concentrating hard on the line of the road ahead. The tarmac ribbon had frayed at the edges; farm traffic wouldn’t have helped but that huge trailer had probably left its mark, too. If she’d had time she might be able to get out and work out which way it had gone. Beside her, Pat groaned and wriggled in her seat.
‘You’ll be OK,’ Annie told her.
‘Got any coffee?’ Pat slurred.
‘No, but we’re going to get some.’ Now that they were away from the farmhouse and she could use her main beam Annie pushed the car as fast as the narrow road would allow her. From here, it wasn’t that far to the racecourse. She’d get Pat settled in one of the overflow rooms; get something to eat and drink for them both, then she’d find Scott.
She looked across at Pat, who lay back in the seat, her features con torted in pain. ‘Pat … Pat. Are you with me yet?’
‘Oh God,’ Pat groaned. Then she stirred herself and pointed. ‘Go that way.’
Annie looked at the turn Pat indicated. ‘Why? I want to get to the main road.’
‘It joins it about half a mile east. There’s a truck stop. Twenty-four hour. Coffee.’
That sounded good. As Annie turned the way Pat indicated she glanced at the car’s clock. It showed 4:56 am.
‘Over there. Lay-by.’
The road was otherwise deserted but Annie pulled across and up to a white catering van. Its shutters were closed. ‘Go knock,’ said Pat and gave a poor imitation of a laugh. ‘He won’t get many customers for coffee at this hour.’
Annie took her jacket from Pat and reached into the pocket, but Pat raised her hand, saying, ‘Don’t pay the bastard. He owes me. It’ll be crap, but I’ve got to have something.’
An
nie tossed her jacket on to the back seat, climbed out and walked towards the van. She banged on the shutter without much hope, but it creaked open almost immediately and a man with a lined face looked out suspiciously. ‘Yeah?’
‘Can you do me a couple of black coffees?’
He looked at her as though she were mad. ‘Coffee? D’you know what time it is?’
‘Getting on for five o’clock. Sun’ll be up soon. Can you do us any coffee or not?’
He peered past her at the car. ‘Is that Pat Thompson? You should have said. She looks rough. I can do better than coffee for her. How about—?’
‘Just coffee,’ Annie cut across him. She carried the paper cups back to the car, passed one to Pat and took a mouthful of her own.
‘Yuk!’ She gagged on the lukewarm, insipid liquid and took another more cautious sip. At least it was warmish and probably had some trace of caffeine in it.
Pat grabbed the cup and gulped hers straight down. Almost at once she sat up, grabbed for the handle, pushed the door open and staggered out into the night, collapsing to her hands and knees at the road’s edge. Annie watched to be sure she wouldn’t tumble into the roadside ditch, then turned away, clicking on the radio to drown out the sounds of Pat losing the coffee and, she hoped, some of whatever she’d been fed back at the house. She reached into the back to fish out her phone from her jacket and tried Christa, but the call rang through to voicemail. A couple of minutes later, Pat returned on wobbly legs, looking white and shaky, but more compos mentis. Annie put her phone away again. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, that feels a bit better. What the hell did they feed me?’
‘Not the same as Christa,’ Annie said, as she pulled the car back out on to the road. ‘She’s still spark out as far as I can tell.’
‘They injected her. I saw the syringe. I got whatever I got in my drink.’
‘But why did they drug you?’
‘Don’t know, just to keep me out of the way, I suppose. I told you it was a bad idea to go out there. I saw it coming. Leah said she’d make me a drink. I tried to ring you … in fact, I did ring you, I remember. But then I had to cut it short when she came back. I saw the mug … don’t remember much else.’
‘I called you back, but your phone was off.’
‘They must have done that.’
‘What did they give Christa?’
‘No idea,’ Pat shrugged.
‘Pat, why did you tell them you’d seen me?’
‘I had to. I’d have had a knife between the ribs if they’d caught me out. I realized I was talking to people who knew you were still around. I thought you were there, right there, outside. It never occurred to me that that loopy colleague of yours had got into the back of my car. How in hell did she do that?’
‘Christa’s been twocking cars since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, but in this case I think you let her in.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Do you remember in the hospital car park, a gang of kids crowding you?’
Pat nodded.
‘There was one did the same to me at the same time. I’ll bet you’d just clicked your key fob, opened your car. I’m not sure Christa knew which one was yours. I was following you, too, but she had them on to me as well. I got hassled just as you were getting to your car so I didn’t see Christa.’
‘What’s happened to her?’
‘Long story. She’s safe enough. We have to figure out where Vince is and let someone know. Scott’ll listen if I can get to talk to him. Where would they have taken Vince?’
Pat looked puzzled. ‘But they’re back at the house.’
Annie gave her a swift summary of her arrival and of finding the place deserted. ‘You were the only person left in there,’ she ended.
‘And the coppers arrived, you say?’
‘Yes, quite a force. I don’t know if it was to do with my call to Scott’s wife. I wish he’d call me back. Did they clear out because I’d been there or what?’
‘Why wait till now?’ said Pat. ‘Christ! My head. Have you any paracetamol in here?’
Annie shook her head. Pat had no idea she’d been in the house and now wasn’t the time to tell her. ‘I don’t know that you ought to take anything just yet. Look, I’m going to get us back to the racecourse. I’ve a key to the building where the grooms stay overnight. We’ll get something to eat and if you can keep it down, you can probably risk taking painkillers. There’s a medicine cabinet. They’re bound to keep something in there. Haven’t you any idea where they’d take Vince?’
‘Maybe back to the clinic. That private place he’d been in.’
And why the sudden evacuation? Was it because she’d found them? Who knew that she’d been out at the farmhouse? If it were an unplanned getaway, they wouldn’t be so hard to track down, not by people who had official channels at their beck and call. What could Greaves do? Sleeman couldn’t have the whole of the local force in his pocket. She glanced at Pat, a miserable wreck in the seat beside her. The sooner they could get to that small kitchen and eat, the better.
Carl must have assumed Pat had dragged Christa out of the room where she’d been dumped. He’d grabbed Christa from the lion’s mouth just as he promised her he would, but he saw the state she was in and knew full well she hadn’t climbed those stairs by herself. Vince Sleeman was on a harsh deadline with death stalking close. He’d looked to her as though it might already be too late, but what did she know? And anyway, Vince wouldn’t let that stop him. He’d make them try; make them kill the woman from the sea. She recalled something of the conversations she’d eavesdropped whilst under the bed. They didn’t fit the pattern she thought she’d worked out, but she pushed them aside. She’d worked out the big picture, that was what counted for now.
‘That woman’s his donor, isn’t she?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Pat. ‘Truly. After they tested all of us, Leah said he’d gone on the transplant register, but it’s not a kidney.’
‘No, I’d figured that. He needs a liver donor.’
‘And if you donate a liver …’
‘You die. Yeah, I’d figured that, too. So the transplant register wasn’t going to come up with anything quick enough, I suppose.’
‘He wasn’t even going to try. I told you before, he took himself off it, but then he took a real turn for the worse and that’s when Leah took him home. There was no point trying to keep him in hospital and they’ve money for round the clock care.’
‘I didn’t see much round the clock care.’
‘When? When were you there to see anything?’
Annie waved it aside. It would take too long to explain and it wasn’t important now. ‘Something Carl said,’ she murmured to sidestep the question. ‘So what do you know? Who’s going to do this operation?’
‘I think they were going to go abroad,’ Pat said, uncertainty behind her tone. ‘I don’t know what stopped them. Then Vince went into hospital … in and out a time or two. There was a private clinic in the Midlands somewhere. They’d done business with them before.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘Drugs, I suppose, but there was talk that they’d found donors for people, found a way round the waiting lists, I mean.’
‘What happened back there? Why did you go alone? We were going to go together.’
‘I wasn’t taking you with me. That would have been suicide for both of us. I had to go alone. Huh! So I thought. But anyway, I went to the loo and I found some paperwork. I was just nosying about.’
Annie thought back. She remembered Pat leaving the room for a few minutes. ‘Upstairs or down?’
‘Down. Why, what difference does it make? Anyway, I had a look round because I knew something was up. You could’ve cut the atmosphere with a knife. They didn’t want me there. Didn’t want anyone seeing Vince. I knew what I’d found. I recognized it from the paperwork I’d seen when we’d all been at the clinic that time. Tissue matching and that. I didn’t understand the
medical stuff, but it wasn’t hard to guess what it was about. And it had her name on it, Leah’s au pair. Vitoria something or other.’
‘Was it after that when you rang me?’
‘Yes, that dozy mate of yours crashed the party so I assumed you were around, too. I wanted to warn you. I didn’t know they’d go that far. I knew he was on the way out, but he’s had his time. No one’s going to shed tears and he wouldn’t want them to, anyway. To start with, I didn’t take a lot of notice. Vince and his tantrums. I thought it was all above board, routine stuff. And you know Vince, he won’t have anyone fussing. He hated doctors of any kind, but I guess he had someone on board.’
‘Hassan?’
‘No, I reckon Hassan was legit, but Vince targeted him for some reason.’
‘Maybe if he’d lost his original team he’d have needed a last minute sub. He’s desperate. I suppose you’ve no idea if he found anything on Hassan?’
‘We can ask Babs. She’s back with us now. I’m surprised she didn’t turn out to be a match for Vince. She acts just like him. She’s been threatening to discharge herself, too.’
‘I’d no idea she’d recovered that far. That’s good.’ Annie felt her mouth curve to a smile as she pulled the car off the main street and on to the road that headed for the racecourse. She’d felt a measure of responsibility for what had happened to Barbara because it was her call that had prompted it. ‘Try Christa’s number for me, will you?’
Pat tapped the number into her phone and put it to her ear, but after a moment, said, ‘No, it’s rung through to answer-phone. Shall I leave a message.’
Annie shook her head. ‘No point. I just hope she’s OK. Right, we’re here. We’ll get in and get something to eat, then I’m going to see if I can track down Scott. Oh hell!’
‘What?’ Pat sat up, alarmed.
‘Nothing, sorry. It’s just that I can see a horse in one of the stables. That means there’ll be grooms here. Not to worry, the place isn’t full. We’ll get in through the back.’
She pulled the car round behind the stable block and led Pat through past the indoor stalls. A single horse swung its head round to watch them. That was good. A single horse probably meant a single groom, or at most two, if it were a very valuable horse. She looked it up and down and thought it rather muddy for an expensive animal, but what did she know?