When she feels that the coast is clear and Christine is down in the kitchen, Kate slowly unlocks the door, opens it, and peeks outside. She can hear her heart beating hard in her ears, until it seems to block out all other sounds. She takes a deep breath, and tiptoes down the stairs, stopping at the bottom. She sees that the door at the end of the hall, leading to the kitchen is ajar. Inside, she can hear Christine chopping vegetables, and the radio is on, too. The sound is alien to Kate. She hasn’t heard a radio in so long, and the strangers’ voices seem to call out to her, and offer strength. They are the first voices she has heard besides Melvin’s and Christine’s in forever, and are a welcome reminder of the life and freedom that exists outside of this house. She doesn’t waste any time and quickly walks over to the shelf and finds the key. She tries to stop her hands from shaking as she puts it in the lock. It fits! A rush of adrenaline courses through her as she unlocks the phone and lifts the receiver to her ear.
47
Lydia and Brian have just come home after a long morning meeting at the station. The police now have a media team who are dealing with the campaign to find Melvin Todd and his wife, with the hope of finding Kate too, and nationwide support units are ready to strike if a member of the public calls in with information. The campaign is hours away from kicking off, and soon the images of Melvin and Christine will be on every television screen in the country.
Brian is silent, and walks slowly up and down the kitchen, tapping the table gently as he passes it, over and over. Both he and Lydia know the enormity of what’s happening; if someone recognises Melvin and Christine Todd from the photographs, it could mean they might know where Kate is, very soon. But it’s a dangerous operation. If the Todds see their images on television, and know the police are looking for them, they could do something drastic, and it might make Kate’s situation worse, assuming she’s still alive.
‘Dad, you should try to get some sleep. I know you didn’t sleep a wink last night. Have an hour’s nap. Nothing is going to happen for a while, anyway.’
Lydia didn’t sleep last night either, but the least she can do is pretend that everything is going to be okay.
‘You want one of my sleeping pills?’
Brian smiles weakly, and shakes his head.
‘I’ll see you in an hour, sweetheart. I’ll go and have a lie-down. You were so brave today, by the way. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Lydia smiles back at her father; their relationship has changed so much in the past seven months. On her nineteenth birthday in August, it had seemed like she had gained a decade. Her father seemed more like an equal and a friend than anything else. Kate’s disappearance, and then her mother’s breakdown had meant they had to become a team, just the two of them, and had to be honest and open with one another. Lydia felt guilty for not telling her dad about Jared. In fact, if it had been up to her, she would have shared it with him, but Jared was adamant that if anyone found out, he would be in serious trouble, and at the very least, be taken off Kate’s case entirely.
Lydia walks to the sofa, and curls up next to Molly, who is sleeping soundly on one of the large navy-blue cushions. She texts Jared quickly, and then strokes Molly’s head; the dog opens one eye, and sighs happily at seeing Lydia so close. Lydia is filled with emotion all of a sudden. What she wouldn’t give to have her sister here with her, right now. Then, Lydia is flooded with warmth, and as if Molly senses the shift too, she opens both of her eyes, lifts her head and looks around at the open door. Hairs stand up on Lydia’s neck. She can sense her sister’s presence. She almost falls off the sofa when she hears the telephone ringing in the hall. Molly is up, barking, and running towards the phone, and Lydia’s first thought is that it’s the hospital, and something has happened to her mother, then she thinks maybe the police need them to come in again or have found some new information. She gets to the phone on the fourth ring, and can hear the door to her parents’ bedroom creaking open; her dad must have heard it too. Kate’s voice greets Lydia as soon as she says ‘Hello’. Lydia clutches the receiver with both hands, and presses it to her ear. This moment is something she had imagined so many times. She gasps in shock and disbelief at what she’s hearing. The phone suddenly becomes a precious, fragile thing, and Lydia’s whole world shrinks down to the size of it. She wants to climb inside, and pull her sister out.
‘Kate? Kate! Oh my God. Where are you?’
Tears stream down Lydia’s face, and she bends over double in disbelief, and strains to hear her sister’s response. Kate’s voice is calm, and much quieter than hers.
‘I don’t know where I am, but the people who kidnapped me, call themselves Melvin and Christine, and they’re American. They are part of some sick cult. And... I’m pregnant Lydia.’
Lydia is trying to take it all in, but her mind is racing. She doesn’t know what to do. Her dad is next to her now, and trying to grab the phone. Lydia pushes him away.
‘Can you leave? How can we find you?’
‘I don’t know, Lydia. Can you trace this call? I assume the police can trace it, and come find me. Tell them there are two dogs here, and I’m on the first floor, the bedroom with the blue door, we’re in the countryside, near farms and things...’
Brian grabs the phone.
‘Kate?’
‘Dad!’
‘Darling! Oh, my darling girl! Where are you? We love you and we miss you so much. Oh God, Kate.’
Kate is keeping an eye on the open door leading to the kitchen, and can see Christine’s reflection on a glass-fronted painting in there. She’s coming. Kate quickly tells her dad she’s got to go, puts the phone down, turns, and runs to the stairs. She takes them two at a time, and just as she gets to the top landing, she turns to see Christine staring at her from below; her face twisted in rage. She puts one foot on the first step, and grabs the bannister, glaring at Kate, she shouts:
‘What are you doing?’
By the last syllable she’s almost screaming, and her face is bright red with anger. Kate doesn’t have a plan; she can’t blame fever this time. It’s obvious she’s trying to escape.
‘I... I... please... I just wanted to see what you were doing and I thought...’
Christine isn’t buying it, and she shakes her head furiously, muttering something to herself, then, turns around and surveys the hall and front door. She is trying to figure out if Kate was close to escaping. What would she tell Melvin when he got home? He was going to hit the roof. Kate winces as Christine’s eyes land on the phone. She didn’t have time to put the lock back on, and the key was on the table next to it. It was obvious what she’d done.
‘Please, don’t tell him! I didn’t do anything I swear! I don’t want to upset anyone. I just wanted to hear my sister’s voice, okay!?’
Kate can’t hold it in anymore. She falls to her knees and starts to sob uncontrollably. Hearing Lydia and her dad made everything seem more unbearable for some reason. The parts of her heart that she had to harden since being here were thawed out now she had the chance to speak to the people she loved. Suddenly, Kate is aware that Christine is talking to someone. Melvin must’ve come back for some reason. Could he know what had happened? Kate slowly gets to her feet as Christine walks out of sight and towards the front door. Kate looks towards Melvin and Christine’s bedroom; her mind racing with thoughts of trying to escape. This could be the end for her. If Christine tells Melvin what she did, there’s no way they will ever trust her again. Who knows what he might do to her, and the baby. She finds herself walking into their bedroom. The air is dead and musty in here, and there’s a faint smell of stale alcohol, and something like menthol. The curtains are drawn, but there’s enough light for Kate to see books on the shelf, and some photographs of Melvin and his family or fellow church members. She doesn’t know what she’s looking for exactly, but she pulls the curtain back, and finds a locked window. She tries it a few times and looks around for the key. Downstairs, she can hear Melvin’s raised voice, and Christine’s
pleas. She needs to think fast; she needs a weapon to be able to defend herself against him. She will not end up like that other girl. Kate opens the top drawer of the dresser by the window, and within seconds, her hand discovers it; a knife wrapped in a heavy, blue leather case. She feels like she was meant to find it, and without hesitating takes it, leaving the case, and runs back to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Then, she takes the piece of metal from her pocket and starts to turn the large safety lock on the door so it looks like she never left the room. She can hear shuffling downstairs now, and Christine shrieking; he must have guessed what happened and seen the phone. Kate tries to stay calm, wraps the knife in a hoody, pushes it under her pillow, gets into bed, and picks up the bible from her bedside table. She can pretend to be reading that.
Kate lies in bed for the next half an hour; listens to the arguing below, and hears a loud thump, and then another. Like something is being banged against the wall. Then, footsteps on the stairs.
48
While Kate was about to sneak downstairs, Melvin had popped into a hardware store to pick up some glue to fix a cupboard handle in the kitchen. That’s when he saw his photograph on the television behind the counter, felt the blood drain from his head, and his heart begin to race. He watched as photographs of he and Christine filled the screen. His hand went to his mouth as he tried to figure out how anyone could know it was him; they had been so careful with their movements, and always used false names when they were outside. The house, car, or phone line wasn’t in their names, either, and they didn’t have any friends who weren’t church members. Then, his thoughts went to Barbara Stone. Maybe she had guessed it. Would the police have listened to her after all these years? Surely, they would need some proof before doing something as drastic as this? The news piece showed a photograph of Kate sitting on a garden swing, underneath were images of Melvin and Christine with ‘WANTED’ in large red letters, and a telephone number to call with information. Melvin’s face had gone bright red, he dropped the glue on the counter, and shouted goodbye to the shop worker at the back of the store who was helping another customer with some tins of paint. He knew he couldn’t stay in Southam. It was too dangerous now; anyone in the village could be watching this, and the police could be on their way. He needed some advice. He needed to make a call.
By the time he got to the front door at the farmhouse, he already knew what he had to do.
49
Jared arrives at the Latters’ cottage in Banbury, Oxfordshire at around 11.45AM. Someone needed to let them know that the people they believed kidnapped Kate Stone may be connected to Melanie. He couldn’t tell them about Ida’s visions and the fact that they drew Lydia and him to make the connection in the first place, but he could prepare them in case they discovered something about their daughter, or were approached by members of the public who knew something after seeing the news today.
Jared has been at their home before. A few days after Melanie went missing back in 2015, he had been asked to help out on the case, and went to interview the family, as well as a few friends of Melanie’s. Just six weeks previous to that, he had tracked two missing girls down at a drug den in Coventry, and at the time there was every chance Melanie had been trafficked in the same way. He needed to be there to spot any possible connection. Nobody seemed to be able to offer any explanation about where she might be back then, but her family did say that she’d been much quieter in herself before the night she went missing. Jared had wanted to know if she might have had any friends or boyfriends that they didn’t know about; that was usually the case with situations like this; girls fall for an older guy, get groomed, and isolated from their friends and family. Melanie sounded like someone who might be targeted. She was beautiful, but not popular, and her mother said that she liked spending time on her own much more than her siblings.
Today, Jared feels the same familiar pang of guilt and empathy when Annie opens the door as he did in 2015. He feels like he had failed her then; given hope, then disappeared. Now, he sees a broken woman before him. Annie’s large, sunken eyes are darker and emptier than he remembers, and the light in them has almost gone out. He has seen too many heartbroken mothers in this line of work, and it only fuels him to keep on trying to save as many victims as he can. But, now Jared thinks Melanie wasn’t sex-trafficked at all. If their theory is proved right, it seems like she was caught up in a twisted, deluded fantasy that was spawned from the mind of a mad man. Before Kate had been taken, Melvin had more than likely lost patience and decided to take another girl that looked like her, instead. Or maybe he was practising his kidnapping skills, and wanted to see how it felt to overpower someone else, before he got his disgusting hands on Kate.
‘Mrs Latter... I need to let you know that we are looking for a man and woman at the moment, in connection with another missing girl: Kate Stone. I wanted to show you their photographs in case you recognise them. There’s no evidence whatsoever that they are connected to your daughter, but we thought it was worth checking.’
Annie nods in response and seems eager to see the photographs.
‘Please. Of course. Show me. I know Kate Stone, well I know about her and I met her parents once at this special London event about missing people. I always thought that she and Melanie could be sisters.’
Jared nods at her in understanding.
‘There is a definite likeness. I would have to agree with you there.’
Jared can see that Annie is getting anxious; her hands are shaking. He takes the paper folder containing the photographs of Melvin and Christine Todd from his briefcase, and gently places them on the table in front of her. Annie stares hard at the images, picks them up, and scrutinizes their faces.
‘Who are these people?’
Jared isn’t sure how much he can tell her. He clears his throat, and awkwardly adjusts his watch.
‘I can’t say much I’m afraid, but we have reason to believe that they wanted to harm the Stone family in some way. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more right now, Mrs Latter.’
Annie accepts his explanation. She nods to herself. Her glazed-over eyes stare at the carpet.
The House In the Woods Page 14