by Danuta Kot
And after some time, maybe a few seconds, maybe an hour, there were sirens and blue lights flashing. Paramedics eased her away from Kay’s side and knelt down where Becca had been. Two of them were over by the car, and then one came across to her and helped her over to a low wall, helped her sit. Asked her questions about what hurt and where, if she could breathe.
Another man joined them, ‘You were driving?’ he asked.
She nodded.
He made her blow into something – and that was when she realised the police were here. She had to tell them about the dead girls in the cave, about Greaseball and the caravan parties. Jared had been right. They should have gone to the police straight away. But if they had, Kay would be dead.
Oh God, Kay.
‘He was going to shoot her,’ Becca said. ‘I had to stop him.’ She kept trying to explain about the mine, about coming to see Kay, about Paige and Liam, but it all came out in a confused babble, and she could see the familiar look of suspicion on the man’s face.
He didn’t believe her.
And where was Jared? He’d been right behind her on the bike, hadn’t he? But there was no sign of him. She reached for her phone that she’d dropped onto the gravel. ‘I’ll call him.’
‘You’ll have to leave that there for now. They’re checking the area. We need you to come with us, Becca.’
‘I can’t. I won’t. You’ve got to find Jared. He was here!’ She pointed at the man who had been talking on the phone when the other man was pointing a gun at Kay. ‘He saw it!’
‘If this Jared did anything, we’ll find him.’
‘Not Jared. He didn’t do anything. He knows what’s happened. He can explain. He’s on his way. He’s coming.’ She tried to stand up. She had to find Jared.
‘Becca, just stay here. You need to tell me what happened. Now—’
‘I told you. Kay—’
‘Listen to me. Listen. You drove up the drive. Now tell me from there.’
‘I saw him. He was going to kill Kay! I had to!’
‘What did you have to do, Becca?’
‘Stop him. I had to stop him.’
‘OK. How did you stop him?’
They were lifting Kay into the ambulance. She was lying very still but there was a mask over her face so she must still be alive. They didn’t put a mask on you if you were dead, did they?
She swung round to the man questioning her. ‘I have to go to the hospital with her. My mum . . .’
‘She’s in good hands. You have to come with us.’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Fuck that! Kay’s hurt. I’m—’
The policeman shook his head. ‘Rebecca Armitage, I’m arresting you on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
She stared at him, her mouth falling open. She hadn’t planned to kill Greaseball – there hadn’t been any plan – she just had to get him away from Kay. And she’d told the police – he was going to shoot Kay like Jared saw him shoot the girl in the mine. ‘What about everything I told you? What are you doing about that? What about Jared? You’ve got to find Jared, he’ll tell you. They tried to kill Kay! His gun must be here somewhere. He had a gun. That’s why I hit him. With the car.’ She had to get away, had to find Jared so he could tell them what happened.
She saw the man who’d been on his phone when she first drove up. He was talking to one of the other policemen, all serious, shaking his head, talking, talking. But he knew what had happened. He’d been there.
‘He knows!’ Becca shouted. ‘Ask him!’ The policeman was holding her arm as she struggled to get free. She kicked back, felt her foot make contact, then her legs were swept from under her and she was down on the ground, her face pressed painfully into the sharp stones. She could barely breathe. Fuck them! Fuck them!
‘I have to go with Kay!’ she screamed, struggling, but the words wouldn’t come out and her mouth filled with fine gravel and dirt. She felt her arms held in an immovable grip and then the cold touch of something going round her wrists, and she was trapped.
She heard footsteps, then saw feet – the man who’d been on his phone, the man who had been there when Greaseball was holding a gun on Kay.
‘Officer, I know this girl,’ he said, his voice level. ‘She’s Mrs McKinnon’s foster-daughter. She’s a very troubled young woman but Bill . . .’ His voice choked. ‘My God. He was a good friend. I can hardly believe she’d kill him.’ For the first time, his gaze moved to Becca as she glared up at him. ‘You might be able to pull the wool over Kay McKinnon’s eyes,’ he said to her, ‘but I’m not such a pushover. Officer, this is the second time in just a few days this girl has tried to harm Kay. Two days ago there was a fire at Kay’s cottage. She was lucky to escape with her life. Your people think this girl was involved, and Kay thought so too.’ He looked at Becca. ‘Well you’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?’
Becca was pulled to her feet. She spat at the man and he recoiled.
‘Liar,’ she screamed. ‘Fucking liar.’
‘That’s enough of that.’ The policeman pushed her down into the back of the car where his colleague sat waiting behind the wheel.
She could see the man watching her as she was driven away.
The expression on his face – it had been all concern as he talked about his friend, as he talked about Kay, but now . . .
Now it was triumph.
Becca tilted her head back so the tears wouldn’t spill over. They weren’t going to see her cry. They pulled away from the house and Becca kept her silence during the drive, forcing herself not to cry. They wouldn’t see her cry.
She started telling her story as they booked her into the custody suite, told them again and again. Asking over and over about Kay, asking where Jared was. She never thought about what would happen next.
Until they pushed her into a cell and locked the door behind her.
That was when she started screaming.
Chapter 69
The motor cut out suddenly. One moment, Jared was moving smoothly along the road, Becca in his sights, the next, the engine stopped, and the bike rolled slowly to a halt.
Jared leaped off, swearing. The fuel gauge was registering zero. What the fuck? Then he saw the fuel line hanging loose, detached from the carburettor. It hadn’t been like that when he started – no way he could have missed it, so it had worked loose while he was . . . but that didn’t happen. Unless . . .
Liam standing by the bike, checking it out as they talked, his parting shot. And you won’t be following us, right?
Liam hadn’t been offering advice, but making a statement of fact. Jared and Becca wouldn’t be following because their vehicle had been damaged. It would have only taken seconds to loosen the screw, let the tank start to drain.
Fucking hell!
He had to do something. Becca probably hadn’t noticed he’d fallen away – she had been speeding, too set on getting to this Kay woman to see much at all. He was angry with her for her stubbornness. They should be with the police now, telling the part of the story they’d managed to piece together. Instead, they were driving – well, she was, he was stuck – through the countryside to get the blessing of some old biddy Becca was fixated on before they could go to the police.
Some kind of fucked-up cavalry charge this was.
He took out his phone and called her number but it went to voicemail.
Fuck! The battery. He’d taken the battery out himself to stop Liam tracking them. The sea was on his left, grey and restless, and behind him in the distance, he could see Sandsend Bay and the dark bulk of Kettleness looming behind it.
He closed his eyes and pictured the route he’d seen on the satnav after Becca had keyed the address into it. He thought they might be pretty close. There was a turn off – probably the next one, then maybe another half mile to another tu
rn off, the same distance again to the actual location – middle of nowhere.
If he followed the satnav route, he’d have to go round three sides of a square, but on foot, he could cut across the fields. As the crow flew, it was probably not much over a mile.
He pulled the bike up onto the verge – there was no way of making it safe if someone wanted to nick it – and climbed over the wire fence and into the field beyond.
As he crossed the rough ground, he tried to put the information they had into some kind of order. OK, it starts out as small-time prostitution in Bridlington, taking advantage of the displaced kids shipped out there for the cheap accommodation. Then someone sees the potential and moves in, taking control, bringing in more girls, from further away. More girls with no one to look out for them, no one to ask questions on their behalf.
Start small, with a brothel in a caravan park in the off-season. Move into bigger properties, with more girls. Make more money. Bring over even more girls.
And then you come up with a very special line in hardcore videos, and that’s when you really start minting it. And if the girls kick off?
No one would ask questions about missing girls if no one knew the girls were missing.
But the brutality of the murders. Why would they do that? Why would they tear their faces off, leave them to die, trapped in a mine in the middle of nowhere? Because to them, the girls weren’t people – they were just commodities who had lost their value.
He was halfway through the field when he heard the sound of a siren. It was hard to locate which direction it was coming from, but it was getting closer. Then there was a second one coming from the same direction, following the same route. He stopped to listen. They were both converging on the point he was heading for.
Jesus. Becca.
He started running – a slow jog was the best he could manage across the rough ground. It was like one of those dreams where you try to run through treacle, but worse, because he wasn’t going to wake up. After ten minutes of painful running, a road came into view, and then a house, standing by itself; a big stone house with a red-tiled roof. He was on slightly higher ground, and he could see down into a drive and a turning space. The sirens had stopped wailing some time ago, but he could see two police cars and an ambulance parked in the space, and lights flashing, and people milling round.
And – oh Jesus – there was a car smashed into the house wall. What the fuck had happened? It looked as though it had hit with real force. And there was . . . His binoculars were in his pocket. Moving into the shadow of a tree, he crouched down to steady himself and slipped them out to take a closer look. Vague grey shapes blurred his vision, then the scene jumped into focus.
It was as bad as it could be.
The car rammed against the wall was the car Becca had been driving, and there was worse. A figure was slumped over the bonnet; a figure the paramedics were doing nothing about. They were loading someone into the ambulance. Becca? Jared focused. It was a grey-haired woman, who seemed to be unconscious.
Jared’s glasses swung back to the crashed car. The figure slumped over the car bonnet was all too familiar.
GBH. Becca must have driven her car straight into GBH.
He’d promised to look after her. He should have been in the car with her – if he couldn’t stop her going to see this Kay woman, then he should have been with her, instead of following behind.
And then he saw Becca – she had been on a low wall, that’s why he hadn’t seen her at first, she’d been surrounded by police. Now she was on her feet, was fighting the police, and as he watched they threw her down onto the ground. He jumped to his feet – she needed him down there – and then realised he was too late.
Far, far too late. He was too far away. Even so, he started moving again, more of a slow stumble than a run. Every part of him hurt. He’d never get there in time. Slowly, painfully, he began to make his way down the hill towards the house, watching as they hauled Becca off the ground and bundled her into the back of a police car.
Then they were gone.
Jared leaned against a tree, trying to get his breath, then he lifted the binoculars to his eyes again.
A uniformed figure was putting tape around the crash site.
Because it was a crime scene. A murder scene.
There was one more person there, besides the police; a man dressed in a suit who was pacing backwards and forwards, a phone pressed to his ear. He stopped to talk to a police officer; they seemed friendly. Like mates. There was something familiar about him. Then the man turned and looked in Jared’s direction. His face jumped into focus, and Jared almost dropped the binoculars.
It was the man who’d been walking up the hill with GBH that night they had tried to kill him – tried to run him down in the road. Oh, Jesus, Liam had hinted at important people being involved. This guy had been chatting with the police like . . . like best mates or something. What if he was involved with the police? What if he was some kind of senior officer?
That would explain what had happened to Becca in York. He’d turned the police against her because he was police.
She’d been right – going to the police was the wrong thing to do. But even going straight to Kay meant she’d walked into a trap that neither of them had seen and now she was under arrest. And all she had was an impossible-sounding story that she had no way of supporting. She had the photograph of Maireid, but it wouldn’t be enough, not on its own. The only solid proof of what they had found lay in the mine, and GBH had brought the roof down as he left.
He should have listened to her.
He’d fucked up. Again. He had to do something. Now.
He turned and jogged back towards the road. Every step hurt. But he had one idea: he had to get to Whitby, to an internet café. He had almost no money, no wheels . . . it would take him about half an hour to walk into Whitby, and that was too long.
As the road came into sight, he saw there was a bus stop on the opposite side and for once, luck was with him. A bus was approaching.
He put on a burst of speed, his body screaming in agony, grabbed his backpack as he raced past the bike, sailed across the road in front of the bus that was about to pull away and leaped on board. He gave the driver what amounted to half his remaining wealth and the bus trundled down the hill towards Whitby.
Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe there was still time.
Chapter 70
Kay opened her eyes, rising up out of blackness into a strange room.
Not again!
‘Where am I?’ she heard herself say. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s all right, Kay,’ someone said in a soothing voice. She turned her head. She was lying on a narrow bed and everything was bumping and rattling. There was a man strapped into a seat beside her head. He smiled at her. ‘You banged your head. We’re just taking you to A & E to give you a bit of a check over.’
Kay looked at him in bewilderment. Banged her head? Where had she been? What had she been doing?
He was asking her questions now – did she know what day it was? Did she know what year it was? Did she know who the Prime Minister was?
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t think there’s much wrong with you, Kay. Still, better get you checked out, eh?’
Her head was aching, but something else was wrong. What was the last thing she could remember? Lying on a bed in a strange room with the same sense of where am I? And before that . . . a fire? There’d been a fire and she’d ended up in hospital.
Becca. There was something about Becca . . .
Legal advice. Shaun said she needed legal advice. He’d been so helpful, but her stomach clenched with dread when she thought about him. Why?
There was something she needed to do, something urgent, and time was running out. She closed her eyes and tried to remember.
It only took ten minutes for Jared to get to Whitby. He jumped off the bus outside the station and looked round.
The things
he needed to do – now; there was no time to waste – crowded in on him. He needed an internet connection. There were a couple of cafés down near the river where they had Wi-Fi – he could just go there, talk them into . . . No. If they said no, that would waste time.
He had to get some money.
The station? A bank? He dithered, then saw a Co-op across the road. They sometimes had ATMs. He ran across and yes, there was a machine; a woman was using it. He waited with barely concealed impatience behind the woman, who put her card in, took it out, stared intensely at the screen for what seemed like hours before she finally completed her transaction, and glared suspiciously at Jared before she walked away.
He threw himself towards the ATM, shoved his card in the slot and keyed in his pin. His fingers were clumsy on the keyboard and his first request was rejected because he’d entered it wrong.
Get a grip! Get a fucking grip! He started again, making himself concentrate. He asked for fifty pounds. There was a long pause, then the words appeared on the screen: Insufficient funds.
Shitfuckhell! His credit-card bill must have gone through. He leaned his forehead against the wall, thinking fast. How much did he need? The price of a cup of coffee would get him an internet connection. OK. He tried again, this time asking for ten pounds, sending up a silent prayer as he waited.
A ten-pound note slid out of the slot. Jared released the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.
He went into the first café he came to, which had a wireless sticker on the window.
‘You’ve got to order food,’ the girl behind the counter said when he asked for the Wi-Fi code.
‘Oh for . . .’ He looked for the cheapest item on the menu. ‘Chips.’
She took his money, counting out the change slowly, then finally gave him a small card with the code on it. He found a quiet corner where he could set up his tablet without anyone looking over his shoulder. OK. Think carefully. No more fuck-ups. Becca needed him to get this right.