by Danuta Kot
One knot of worry untied itself.
As they walked up the path, Shaun stopped abruptly. ‘What’s happened to your car?’
The garage was open, and the car was gone. They’d wrecked her house, and taken her Beetle. Why would they steal her tatty old car? Then she realised what must have happened.
She knew Becca had been here. Who else would let themselves into her house and eat cheese and ketchup sandwiches? Becca knew where Kay had kept her keys in the Leeds house, so it wouldn’t be hard to find them here. She had no idea why Becca would take her car, and right now, she couldn’t be bothered to work it out, but she didn’t want Shaun getting militant on her behalf. ‘Do you know, I completely forgot. It’s in for servicing. I’d better give them a ring – they’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’
‘Well, don’t worry about it. I can take you down to Scarborough. And stop to pick up the dog. Milo,’ he added quickly.
‘I could easily—’
‘I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ll wait hours for a taxi. What’s the point?’
He was right. She was being stupid, and anyway, a taxi driver wouldn’t be willing to take Milo. Sliding back into the leather comfort of the car was a relief. She waited while he put her things in the boot. Much more of this, and she’d get used to it.
‘OK. Let’s go and pick up Milo.’ She yawned – despite what she’d told the doctor, and Shaun, the fire had taken its toll. Claiming fatigue hadn’t been an excuse – she was knackered. ‘Do you know where the vet’s is?’
‘Yes. Do you want that coffee now? There’s a thermos in the glove box.’
She laughed. ‘Shaun, you’re a hero.’
He grinned, looking pleased. ‘There’s two cups – pour me one as well, will you?’
She took out the flask and poured two cups, putting one in the cup holder on the seat between them. The comforting fragrance filled the car. The coffee was hot and rich, just what she’d been wanting. She could forgive a lot of Shaun’s over-protectiveness for coffee as good as this.
Shaun glanced at his watch. ‘What time does the vet close?’
‘It’s an all-night place, but I don’t think they do discharges after six.’
‘OK. I’m a bit low on fuel – we’ve got time to get a fill-up before we collect the dog if that’s all right with you?’
‘That’s fine. Drink your coffee.’
She was feeling pleasantly drowsy as they drove through the darkening streets. Where was the best place for him to get petrol in Whitby? There used to be small garages everywhere where you could refuel, but these days you needed a supermarket or a motorway services or . . .
She and Matt used to travel miles on their motorbikes – a bike could go all week without refuelling, could go from John o’ Groats to . . .
Everyone said John o’ Groats when they talked about long distances. John o’ Quotes . . . John o’Boats . . . John o’Stoats . . .
Milo saw a stoat once when she and Matt were . . . she couldn’t remember. Her mind was all over . . .
‘Matt . . .?’ she said.
‘It’s fine,’ he replied. ‘Everything’s fine.’
Chapter 55
Jared woke shortly after six. The storm had blown all night, rattling the tent, the rain drumming down on the canvas, but now everything was quiet. Becca’s head was pillowed on his arm, her hair moving slightly with her breath. Carefully, making sure he didn’t disturb her, he eased his arm out from under her and she murmured in her sleep, burrowing herself deeper into the sleeping bag.
He stretched, testing his body. Knees? Sore. Back? Ditto. Aching joints and limbs? All present and correct. General feeling as though he’d been run over by a train? Right here and ready for duty. So why did he feel as if he could run a marathon? Two marathons.
Today, despite everything, he felt good.
It was still dark. He switched on the lamp, keeping the brightness low. Becca’s face was a pale circle on the pillow, shadows of exhaustion under her eyes. The scar that ran from the side of her nose to her lip stood out and he wondered, not for the first time, what the story behind that was.
Last night, Becca had been close to collapse. She was cold, exhausted and hungry, and when they got to the tent he’d got her into one of the sleeping bags and given her some hot soup and a couple of doorsteps of bread. She hadn’t managed to eat much, but the soup and a mug of tea revived her a bit. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ he asked.
‘Not now.’ She shook her head, looking puzzled and lost. As he moved across the tent and knelt down beside her, he could feel the tension in her. Very gently, he moved the hair away from her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
She turned and looked at him. ‘I – people aren’t always what they seem, you know?’
He did know. He’d learned some hard lessons himself, but maybe not as hard as the ones Becca had faced. ‘Listen. You don’t ever have to worry with me.’
She held his gaze for a long time before she nodded and held the sleeping bag open by way of invitation. There didn’t seem much else to say, then.
An hour later Becca was asleep, her head on Jared’s arm, the sleeping bag rumpled up around them. Moving carefully, so as not to disturb her, he straightened it out as best he could and pulled the other sleeping bag over them.
Even though he was tired, he hadn’t been able to sleep and had lain awake, watching Becca, thinking about the events of the past twenty-four hours, and trying to anticipate what the next twenty-four would bring. At some stage, he must have fallen asleep as well, and he’d slept deeply and dreamlessly until morning.
Now, sitting in the tent awning with a mug of tea in his hands, he tried to make sense of the past few days. Becca had come into his life with the Furies at her heels and since then she’d lost her job, almost lost the woman she thought of as her mother and made her way back – without transport, communication or money – from York to an isolated place like Kettleness. And she was still standing, still swinging punches.
If he was going to help her, he needed to work out what was going on. He was starting to make sense of it. There was a connection between Becca and Kay, and between Kay and the girl who had been attacked.
Those parties at the caravan site – he should have thought about this before. GBH had jumped down his throat when he’d mentioned them – they had to be something to do with all of this. Drugs? Sex? Both? You could get away with a lot at that site in the winter.
And in the summer, who would go there? Even if they tarted it up a bit, it still wouldn’t offer much compared to other sites on the coast. Jared suspected there was some kind of land-sale scam at work – run the value down, then let a dummy company pick it up for a song, get the tax break on the loss – it was how these things worked. But in the meantime, GBH had to make a living.
And there was a marketable asset in the town – the kids who came with homeless families to the B & Bs, or the kids who came on their own – a community of the vulnerable. They were a commodity. You could – what was the word? – monetise them. Offer them cash, offer them drugs – shit, affection was probably enough – and get what you wanted in return.
Sex.
And anyone who stepped out of line – Jared had seen what they did to them.
But why mutilate them like that? A quick slap would do it with most of these girls. And how did Becca and Kay fit in? Why the fire, the dedicated pursuit? His father would have told him to follow the money. But how much would anyone make from sex parties in a caravan on a site near Bridlington? Not enough to risk a murder charge. It didn’t make sense.
The pale grey of the clouds began to appear on the horizon and the sky became a deep purple that faded into blue as the light of the rising sun bled into it.
He had to decide what to do. The sensible thing would be to tell the police what he’d found at Kay’s, then he and Becca could both get the fuck out, head off somewhere miles away and sort themselves out. He was feeling better already, and in a few
days he’d be over the worst of his withdrawal as long as he could keep off the pills. He’d done the right thing, chucking them. If he had any here with him now, though . . .
Or a joint, or his whisky.
All back in the car.
He had to do something to take his mind off it. He thought about the video. Their original plan had been to come back here and try and locate the cave.
Maybe it was time to get started on that.
He looked back into the tent. Becca was still asleep. There was no need to wake her up – she’d probably still be asleep by the time he got back. He had his boots, his helmet and a spare, head torches, some rope and a few bolts. It wasn’t much, but it should be enough.
He scribbled a note for Becca – 7.30 Gone for a walk – then headed off towards the crumbling cliffs of the Ness, the light from his torch illuminating the uneven ground. There were places on the Ness where the remains of the old mine workings could be seen. They weren’t readily accessible. The path down the cliff had long since been washed away and there was just a rope to get you onto the beach.
As he walked towards the point, the shadows faded in the dawn and he could see where the land fell away and the low scrub thinned. Soon, his boots were crunching on shale. The cliff dropped away, and he had to lean into the slope and make sure his footing was secure as he moved across the cliff face.
Like something long forgotten, the rat inside him stirred, and Jared welcomed it like an old friend.
Right now, he needed the rat.
There was evidence of workings here – lines of stone, the remains of a wall, then – he was getting close – a buried arch falling off the cliff edge. He closed his eyes, bringing the video back into his mind. The camera went up a slope, and then down into a gully . . .
There was a slope to his left. He scrambled up it and found himself on a narrow ledge that dropped down a bit, and then . . .
It was there.
There was a low arch hidden by the undulations of the cliff face. It had probably been buried like the other one, but someone had dug it out, opening up what must have been the entrance to a mine. It was invisible from the beach, and from the clifftop. The only way you would find it was sheer luck – or if, like him, you suspected it was here.
Jared slid down the slope and shone his torch into the hole. From the video, he expected to see water, but all he could make out was a tunnel that slanted down, half full of rubble. He shone his torch up at the roof: first question if you see rubble – where did it come from? But the roof was intact. He didn’t like the look of it, though. It wouldn’t take much to bring it down. But it wasn’t roof fall that had blocked the tunnel.
Now he had to decide what to do. His first instinct was to go in and recce, but the memory of what had happened – and what had almost happened – in the side tunnel a few days ago remained strong. And if the whole lot came down on his head, or if he hurt himself and got trapped, Becca would have no idea where he was. From her point of view, he would just have vanished. She might even think he had run out on her. What had he left behind after all? Just a scruffy old tent and some bits and pieces. He’d promised her. You don’t have to worry with me. He wasn’t leaving her to face Greaseball Harry and whoever else was working with him on her own.
This was Becca’s story. He had to go back, tell her, see what she wanted to do. He was going in there, no question, but he wasn’t doing it until he’d told her what he’d found.
Chapter 56
Becca sat in the entrance to the tent, waiting for Jared to come back. Gone for a walk? Yeah, right. Who did he think she was? Some kind of moron? He’d gone hunting for the place in the video. Part of her wanted to go after him, but another part, a stronger part, was happy to sit here with her hands round a mug of tea, gazing out at the winter landscape.
It was nothing really – just a grey field, a lot of sky and the sea – no sand, no sun, no ice cream or candy floss. The grey of the tent flaps seemed to blend into the surroundings. A motorbike was parked up by the tent – she hadn’t seen it in the night. Jared must be using it for transport after his car was damaged. She wondered vaguely where he’d got it from, but it wasn’t a big deal. It was peaceful here, and after the struggles of yesterday, peaceful was good. She checked her phone. Not having it had been like being blind in one eye, or deaf in one ear.
There was a text from Kay. She felt the tight band of worry that had been there since she left the hospital loosen. If Kay was texting, then she must be better. Becca looked at the message:
--Out of hospital. Fine. Staying with a friend. Come and see me. I’ve got something to tell you. xxx.
There was also a Whitby address.
Kay was the only person she knew who texted with punctuation – but she’d sent kisses. That wasn’t like Kay. She must still be feeling rough, but at least she was OK. That was one worry off Becca’s mind, but now there was another.
Her and Jared.
All her life, after Him, she’d had to be on her guard. In the secure unit, on the streets, in foster care, there were always men who said they were like your dad, or your brother, or your boyfriend, and you had to just . . . Becca saw what happened to the kids who didn’t watch out. She had a bad feeling that Paige was one of them, that Paige, for all she seemed to know her way about, had let her guard down.
Last night, Jared had got closer to her than anyone ever had. She realised she trusted him, though she wasn’t sure why. Jared was a fuck-up and a pill-head – he admitted as much – and he did stupid things. He was likely to kill himself one day. She didn’t want to be so close to him, then lose him.
She’d lost too many people. Her mother. Matt. Kay, almost.
Halloween in Leeds. There was her and Ashley and the rest of the crowd, and they were going clubbing all dressed up in witchy stuff and they were all a bit high. She and Ashley were walking arm in arm, and they were chanting something – she couldn’t remember what it was or what had started it, but she could remember the sense of belonging, the sense of being enclosed within a group.
And now Ashley hated her, the rest of the crowd didn’t want to know her. She’d probably never see them again.
She realised she didn’t mind too much. Whatever happened, she didn’t want to go back to that life, to college, to clubbing, to planning careers and places to live and all of that shit. Despite the discomfort and the difficult times, she was enjoying the random life Jared lived.
She couldn’t make her mind up about him. There was something eating Jared the way there was something eating her. It made her wary about trusting anything. Even Kay, sometimes. She just couldn’t. And it made Jared do the crazy things that that had almost killed him.
Maybe that’s what he wanted.
And what did she want? The same as Jared? To always keep moving?
To die?
She wrapped the blanket round her more closely. It was almost nine o’clock. She emptied her mug onto the grass and stood up. She could see someone walking along the cliff path, coming from the headland. As she watched, the anonymous figure resolved itself into Jared in boots and a fleece, carrying a backpack, which he hitched off and dumped on the ground beside her as he came up to the tent. He tugged her hair gently as he sat down beside her. ‘You OK?’
She nodded.
‘Any of that left?’ he said, pointing at her mug.
‘I’ll make some more. Did you find it?’
‘How did . . .? Never mind.’ He sat down and waited as she boiled the kettle again and made some coffee.
She listened as he described the opening into the mine, halfway down the cliff face.
‘Why would they build a mine on the cliff face?’
‘They didn’t. When it was built, there was more land. The entrance would have been at ground level. But the cliff’s fallen since then. There used to be a village here – the whole lot fell into the sea, hundred or more years ago. There’s just the opening now.’
‘So . . . what are we going to do?�
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He sighed, running his hand through his hair as he thought. ‘I’m not sure. It’s hidden – you can’t see it until you’re on top of it. I don’t think it would have been left open like that when the mine closed – it’d have been filled in with shale to block the entrance, you know? Someone’s dug it out, and fairly recently by the looks of it.’
‘Yeah. OK.’ He was going all around the houses with this.
‘It won’t be safe, is what I’m saying. Look, I can go in there – I’ve got the equipment, I know what I’m doing . . .’
‘Is that how you put yourself in hospital, knowing what you’re doing?’
‘That’s right. I know what I’m doing and I still put myself in hospital. Let me go in and check it out. Then if there’s anything there, if it’s safe, you can—’
She stood up. ‘Bullshit. You’re going, I’m going. Paige is my friend. She gave the video to me, not you.’
He looked as if he was going to argue some more, then he shrugged. ‘OK. It’s up to you. But you’re not going in if you haven’t got the right equipment. I can fix you up with a helmet and a torch, but you’ll need waterproofs, something warm and some decent boots.’ She could tell from his face that he thought he’d just won the argument.
It was true, her feet were still killing her, but she’d gone back to Kay’s car and found what she expected in the back – Kay’s walking gear.
Half an hour later, scrambling across the cliff face, she looked down the uneven slope to the rocks on the beach far below and wondered if this was such a good idea. But it was too late to change her mind now.
Chapter 57
Jared looked at the arch uneasily. It was low with almost no curve, which meant the roof of the tunnel would be shallow. Tunnels were supposed to form a perfect arch that balanced all the different forces working on them. This place had not been constructed with safety in mind. After all, who cared about a few miners getting buried? And it had had no maintenance for decades. The structure wasn’t stable, not like the railway tunnels, and the cliff itself was collapsing, which meant that the tunnel was changing constantly.