by D. S. Butler
Mackinnon was glad he didn’t live in the Towers Estate, but there was something about Drake House he didn’t much like either. The million pound apartments were incredibly well-designed and fitted with all the latest, luxurious fittings and furnishings, but Mackinnon found them soulless.
The last time he’d visited the Watsons’ apartment it had struck him as odd that they had so few personal items on display. It was more like a show apartment than a real home.
He told the doorman he was there to see the Watsons. The doorman had been questioned by Tyler earlier and was eager to know if there was any news. Mackinnon simply shook his head. If there had been any news, he wouldn’t have shared it with the doorman before speaking to Ruby’s parents.
The doorman called the apartment and announced Mackinnon’s arrival, and then watched Mackinnon as he headed for the lift. As the lift ascended, Mackinnon took a quick look at the image he’d printed out of Benny and the girls. This wasn’t going to be easy. He was going to have to show this picture to Mr and Mrs Watson and they would immediately assume the worst, but that couldn’t be helped. If they knew Lila George or Benny Morris that could help the police unravel the motive behind this kidnapping and could be crucial in solving the case.
He folded the printout in half and put it back into his pocket as he reached the front door to the apartment.
He lifted his hand to ring the doorbell, but the door opened before he could do so.
“Is there any news?” Claire Watson demanded.
Mackinnon shook his head. He didn’t want to give her any false hope. “I’m here to ask a few more questions, and I have a photograph I’d like you to have a look at.”
Claire Watson seemed to deflate before his eyes.
“I see,” she mumbled.
She turned away and walked back into the living area of the apartment, leaving the front door wide open.
Mackinnon closed it behind him and then followed her.
Peter Watson was pacing in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows. He looked furious and Mackinnon sensed he was going to be looking for somebody to take that fury out on. He had a feeling that the next ten minutes were going to be exceedingly difficult.
“Have you managed to track them down yet?” Peter Watson demanded. “I can’t understand what’s taking so long. How can someone just disappear in this day and age? Why did nobody see anything?”
“Peter, come and sit down. He wants to ask us more questions and show us a photograph,” Claire said wearily.
Photograph seemed to be the magic word. Peter Watson rushed over, his eyes searching Mackinnon for the photograph. “Where is it, then?”
Mackinnon fished it out of his pocket and laid it flat down on the coffee table so both Claire and Peter could see it.
“Do you know this girl?” Mackinnon asked, pointing to Lila George.
The Watsons poured over the picture and Claire Watson’s breathing grew ragged. Mackinnon knew it was because she’d seen the image of Benny Morris talking to the girls. He wished there was something he could do to make this easier, but there wasn’t.
“The girl,” Mackinnon repeated. “Do you recognise her?”
Peter shook his head. “I’ve never seen her before. Is she a friend of Ruby’s?”
“Her name is Lila George. We know she was a work colleague of Ruby’s.” Mackinnon paused for a beat before delivering the worst news. “She has also gone missing, and her parents received the same text message.”
Claire Watson gasped, and her hands covered her mouth as she shook her head. She was still looking at the photograph. She couldn’t take her eyes off Benny Morris.
“Did… Did he take them?”
“We know that Benny Morris used the community centre and he knew your daughter and Lila. We are currently tracking him down and…”
Mackinnon’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out to silence it, but as he did so, he saw a message from Charlotte.
No answer at Morris’ address. Getting a warrant.
Mackinnon shoved his phone back in his pocket.
Claire Watson shook her head. “I don’t understand. So Ruby actually went to the community centre but she didn’t go to work?”
Mackinnon nodded. “It looks that way. Both girls got as far as the community centre but then they walked away.”
Claire Watson looked up at him, her eyes wide with horror. “They walked away… With him?”
Mackinnon nodded.
Peter Watson couldn’t sit still any longer. He stood up, curling his hands into fists at his sides. “Have you spoken to him yet?”
“Officers have visited his address, but he wasn’t home. We’re getting a warrant and…”
“There’s no time for that,” Peter Watson said, his hands clawing through his hair. “We don’t have time to wait for a stupid warrant. Give me the address and I’ll go myself.”
Mackinnon didn’t bother to tell Peter Watson to calm down. There really wasn’t any point and it would only make him angrier.
“I have to stress that Benny Morris was known to be a friend to both of the girls, and there’s no indication he would have harmed them. All we know is he was the last person to see them before we lost track of the girls on CCTV. That’s why we need to speak to him. We need to find out what happened next. I know it’s not easy, but try not to think the worst. This is positive news. We have a fresh lead and somebody we can talk to about what happened to Ruby.”
Peter Watson snorted in disgust and turned around, walking away as though he couldn’t bear to look at Mackinnon or the photograph any longer.
“Sorry to interrupt, here’s the tea.” Kelly, the family liaison officer, put the tray down on the coffee table. Her eyes flickered over the photograph and then she looked at Mackinnon and gave him a small smile.
Kelly knew better than anyone how hard it was to deal with victims of crimes when they were angry and the only person they could direct their fury at was the police officers helping them.
The mugs of tea sat on the coffee table but nobody touched them.
Mackinnon had got what he came for. It was his job to find out whether the Watsons had known Benny or Lila George, and it seemed to be quite clear that they didn’t.
He felt sorry that he was going to be leaving Kelly to deal with the aftermath his visit had caused by showing the parents the photograph, but it couldn’t be helped.
Mackinnon was just about to get to his feet and excuse himself when he heard a noise behind him.
He turned and saw Ruby’s brother, Curtis, in the open plan kitchen. Curtis opened the cupboard and shut it again noisily, pulling out a bowl and setting it on the kitchen counter.
He pulled out a box of cereal from another cupboard and began to whistle as Mackinnon watched him. He took a carton of milk from the fridge and poured it all over the cereal and then began to eat.
There was something very odd about that boy, Mackinnon thought.
While he was here, he decided it might be a good idea to talk to Curtis again. “Curtis, I’d like to have another quick chat with you, if that’s okay?”
Curtis smiled. “Sure,” he said, waving his spoon around. “But I’d better eat this first. I hate it when my cornflakes go soggy.”
Chapter 10
Ruby Watson’s mind was going around in circles. How could this have happened? She kept thinking of things she should have done differently. There must have been something she could have done to escape.
They’d snatched her at eight a.m. in central London.
She’d felt safe. Safe enough to follow Benny without any alarm bells ringing.
She had been completely oblivious to any danger until she and Lila had followed Benny across the cobbled square and into the quiet alleyway. That was when the first alarm bells had started to jingle.
But it was some stupid sense of politeness that stopped her refusing to go with him. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and she’d been with Lila. She hadn’t considered an
ything truly bad could happen to them in broad daylight a few metres away from the community centre.
But as they’d walked further down the alley, the brick walls seemed to close in around her, and alarm bells rang louder with every step she took.
Her palms had grown sweaty, and she’d glanced over her shoulder, looking back longingly at the safety of the children’s play area.
“Maybe we should do this later,” she had said, trying to smile and act like she wasn’t afraid. “I don’t want to be late for work.”
Then she saw the other two men in front of them, and Ruby knew she was in serious trouble.
One wore a baseball cap pulled low, shading his eyes, but she could see his smile, a cruel, twisted smile.
There was something evil about the man who loomed in front of them. Something inherently bad.
She’d tried to step back but crashed into her friend. Trying to get away, she’d reached out, grazing her arm on the rough brick wall. The path was too narrow, and Lila wouldn’t move. She hadn’t sensed the danger yet.
She’d seen the bemused expression on her friend’s face turn to panic as realisation dawned on her. She opened her mouth to scream, but the man in the baseball cap was too quick. His fist collided with the side of her face, and Lila crumpled to the floor.
Ruby had pushed off the wall, preparing to run. All her senses were on high alert as adrenaline flooded her system.
Her scalp burned as he yanked on her hair, pulling her head back. He slapped her with the back of his hand, not as hard as he’d hit Lila, but hard enough to leave her dazed for a moment. She hadn’t seen it coming.
She turned and staggered, still stunned from the blow.
She heard the man in the baseball cap laughing behind her, and Benny telling him to stop.
Yes, she thought. Yes, that’s right, stop. Let me go. Listen to Benny.
But he didn’t. She felt his sour breath against her ear as he reached up and pulled her hair again, yanking it down and making her cry out in pain.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.
She wanted to turn away. She wanted to see her friend get to her feet and run. At least one of them had to escape and get help.
But she couldn’t see anything apart from the evil eyes of her captor, staring down into hers.
She bucked against him, kicking out hard, and she knew that her blows were hitting home because he huffed and grunted as her heel connected with his shins.
His grip loosened a little, and she managed to jerk herself free, but he grabbed onto her arm, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh.
She kicked out again and hit him back with her free hand.
“Feisty one, isn’t she?” he asked, chuckling. “I thought you said she’d go quietly.”
Not a chance, Ruby thought. She knew if she didn’t escape now, there was a chance she never would. She clawed at his face, but his hand tightened around her neck, forcing her back against the wall. Her head hit the brickwork with a sickening thud. He stuffed a rag in her mouth.
At first, she thought she’d been knocked out because everything went black and then she realised he’d pulled something over her head, something that smelled bad… stale and musty… a hood.
He’d lifted her upper body and ordered his partner to grab her legs. She felt his arms encircling her torso and somebody else reaching for her ankles. She’d kicked out and felt her foot connect with something soft. That earned her a fist in her stomach.
She’d gagged and gasped for air, winded by the blow. She still struggled as hard as she could, but it was no good, they held her tight and carried her away.
It had seemed to take forever until all of a sudden they’d let her go, and she’d hit the floor with a metal clang.
She’d tried to calm herself down and work out what had happened. The rag they’d put in her mouth made her want to gag.
Suddenly the hood was ripped off, and as she looked around, she realised she was in the back of a van.
She stared up at her tormentor; all her fight had ebbed away. All Ruby could think was, why us? Her friend, Lila, lay unconscious on the floor of the van, beside her. The man in the baseball cap had hit her too hard. She had a trickle of blood running from the side of her mouth.
Oh, God. Don’t let her be dead. Please don’t let her be dead.
“Sit back and get comfortable, girls,” he’d said as he secured her wrists behind her back and checked the rag was firmly stuffed in her mouth. “I’ve got plenty of fun planned for you.”
Chapter 11
At that moment, Benny Morris was sitting on a hard-backed chair outside the room he knew Ruby and Lila were being held in.
He wanted to go into the room and talk to them, but the nasty man wearing the cap had locked it.
Rob had told him the nasty man’s name was Marlo. He had introduced them, and Marlo had smiled at Benny in a way he didn’t like. It wasn’t a nice smile.
Marlo was a bad man.
Benny was confused. He had once heard somebody say he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he didn’t usually worry about that. Not every knife needed to be razor sharp. As his mother used to say, everyone had their place in this world.
After their mother died, Rob had taken care of him and Benny trusted him absolutely, which was why he couldn’t understand why Rob liked a man like Marlo.
Benny knew that Marlo was a bad man no matter what Rob said.
Rob was in the kitchen with Marlo now. The door was shut, and they were talking in whispers. His brother had given him a packet of cheese puffs and a can of Coke. He loved cheese puffs, but today they tasted slimy, and he couldn’t finish the packet.
Benny didn’t understand what was going on. Rob had told him he needed to bring Ruby to Celandine Gardens. He said he was doing a bit of business to get some money together so he could buy Benny an Xbox, but everything had gone wrong.
There was no sign of Benny’s Xbox here and he knew that they’d hurt Ruby and Lila.
Rob told him to be quiet and sit still and stop asking questions. He told him the girls were fine, but Benny couldn’t believe it. He’d seen Lila had been bleeding.
Benny sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. It was horrible in the flat. There was no proper daylight because they were down in the basement.
Benny hated the dark and still slept with a nightlight. Rob had tried to get him to sleep without it, but it didn’t work. Danger lurked in the darkness. Ever since he was a little boy, his mother had forever been telling him off for leaving all the lights on in the flat, but Benny knew things could hide in the shadows and it scared him.
A few months ago, Rob had threatened to take his nightlight away. He said Benny needed to grow out of it, but if Rob took his nightlight away, Benny had a plan to buy another one. He’d seen one in a shop.
He thought he heard a noise coming from the room where the girls were being kept and tried to listen, but he couldn’t hear anything other than the hushed whispers coming from the kitchen.
Benny got up and pressed his ear to the door. He really wanted to talk to the girls and tell them everything would be okay, but Rob would be furious if he did that.
Benny sat down again and put his hands against his ears. He hated the whispering.
As he rocked back and forwards in his chair, his foot caught the half-full can of Coke, and it spilt all over the carpet.
“Oh, no,” Benny said as he leant his huge frame down to pick up the Coke can with a shaking hand.
He walked to the kitchen and opened the door to tell his brother about spilling the Coke. It was an accident so he couldn’t be angry with Benny. People weren’t allowed to be angry over accidents.
But when he saw his brother’s face, Benny froze. Rob looked very angry.
“I thought you said you could control him.” Marlo’s voice came from the other side of the kitchen.
Benny’s head whipped around, and his lower lip wobbled as he held out the empty can of Coke. �
�I had an accident,” he said.
Surely even nasty Marlo couldn’t be angry if it was only an accident.
Rob moved closer to him and put a hand on Benny’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Benny. Don’t you worry. I’ll clear it up in a minute.”
But Benny couldn’t take his eyes off Marlo.
Rob glared at Marlo over a shoulder. “Don’t worry, Benny. Marlo is just a bit on edge. I tell you what, why don’t we put the telly on?”
Benny nodded. “Okay then.”
Rob took the empty can of Coke and threw it in the bin. Then he led Benny along the hallway, past Benny’s empty chair and into the front room.
When they were alone, Benny turned to his brother. “I don’t like Marlo. He’s a bad man.”
Rob sighed and nodded. “We’ve got to put up with him for a little bit longer, Benny.”
“Why can’t we go home?”
“We can, soon, but first, we’ve got to do a little bit of business and get some money together. I’ve got to get you that Xbox, don’t you remember?”
Benny rubbed his eyes. He didn’t care about the Xbox anymore. He just wanted to leave and go home.
“Are Ruby and Lila okay?”
Rob nodded as he switched on the TV for Benny. “Oh, sure. They’re fine. I tell you what, I was thinking I’d get them some lunch. What do you think they’d like?”
“McDonald’s,” Benny said immediately.
Chapter 12
Rob left Benny in the front room watching the TV and went back to the kitchen where Marlo was hiding out.
They were holding the girls in a two-bedroom basement flat, which had been empty for a few months before Marlo had claimed it. He didn’t have much furniture. There was one single bed pushed against the wall in the main bedroom, and the bedroom the girls were being kept in didn’t have any furniture at all.