The Catch

by T. M. Logan

  ‘Ryan,’ Abbie said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  78

  Ryan

  Ryan had never killed a pregnant woman before.

  Not that he knew of, anyway. He thought at one point that Lori, his first wife, might have been pregnant when he had taken her – something about the way her hand went to her stomach when she first glimpsed the flash of his knife – but by the time the thought was fully formed in his head it was already too late to get an answer out of her. Someone else’s little bastard of course, conceived while Ryan was doing his prison time.

  The thought that it could be his child this time gave him pause.

  ‘Is it mine?’

  Despite everything, despite the knife at her throat, despite the violence of their last few moments together, she still managed to look affronted.

  ‘Of course,’ she gasped. ‘Of course it’s yours.’

  ‘Not George Fitzgerald’s little bastard?’

  ‘It’s your baby, Ryan. Your child.’

  He considered this for a moment. She could be lying of course, trying to save herself. But he didn’t think so. He knew a lie when he saw one.

  He leaned forward, rotating the tip of the knife against her jugular again.

  ‘A shame,’ he said, tensing his grip. ‘But I’ve got to be honest with you, my love. I’m not really ready for fatherhood yet.’

  He gently increased the pressure of the steel on her skin, steadying her with his other hand, anticipating the dark spray of blood.

  Ready for that perfect moment of sweet release.

  79

  Ryan

  Ryan’s vision exploded in a starburst of pain, a heavy crack that snapped his head to the side and left him momentarily dazed. He rolled off Abbie and came up in a low crouch, knife still in his hand, his head ringing with the impact. Footsteps scrambled away behind him as his wife took her opportunity to escape.

  What the hell?

  His attacker faced him across the gully. A slim figure with a large metal Thermos clutched in her hand.

  Claire.

  She held the Thermos the wrong way up, brandishing it before her.

  ‘I’ll bash your bloody brains in!’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘I swear to God I will!’

  He shook his head to clear it, the stars in his vision receding, switching the hunting knife to his left hand.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like, Mrs Collier, I was just showing Abbie how to—’

  ‘Shut up, Ryan.’

  ‘Honestly, we were practicing some self-defence techniques I learned in the army.’

  ‘Give me the knife, then.’ Her voice was firm, no-nonsense.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If this isn’t what it looks like, give me your knife.’

  He looked at the weapon in his hand as if he had never seen it before, a tiny smear of blood on its tip. Gave her a small smile.

  ‘You know what?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’m going to do that, Claire.’

  ‘No, I thought not.’

  Ryan regarded his mother-in-law with something approaching admiration.

  ‘When did you realise?’ he said. ‘About me, I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t. But when I woke up this morning with my heart going a mile a minute, something told me that I was never going to see my husband again. I’d lost him, just like I lost my son. But I wasn’t going to lose Abbie too and I knew I had to find her.’ She stared him down. ‘Mother’s instinct, perhaps.’

  ‘And what does your instinct tell you now?’

  ‘That I was right to come here,’ Claire said. ‘I followed the trail you left, the posters of Ed, all the way from the village. You put his face up everywhere and he led me here, close enough to hear Abbie’s screams.’

  ‘Somewhat ironic,’ Ryan said.

  Claire nodded. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen: you are going to leave us both alone now. You go your way, Abbie and I will go ours.’

  Ryan glanced over his shoulder, the way Abbie had run, but he couldn’t see her beyond the curve in the gully.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to do that,’ he said, turning back to Claire. ‘But I will—’

  Before he’d even finished his sentence she came at him again, swinging the Thermos in a furious wild arc up towards his chin. If it had connected it could have knocked him out cold, but instead he ducked away easily and threw a punch, a right cross that caught her high on her cheek and snapped her head to the side. As she staggered back he followed up with the knife, slashing her coat open across her chest and seeing the red bloom of blood springing beneath.

  She went down hard, crashing to the ground with a cry of pain. The Thermos rolled away and her hand went to her wound, coming away glistening red. She grunted, spat blood onto the ground, rolled over onto her hands and knees. Found the handle of the flask.

  Slowly she got to her feet again, blinking hard, her eyes never leaving his.

  Her words were punctuated with laboured breaths.

  ‘If you touch her again,’ she rasped, ‘I’ll bloody kill you.’

  Ryan switched the knife back to his right hand.

  Claire was backing away from him, moving out of the gully and up towards the open moorland. Drawing him away from Abbie.

  He would make it quick for her, then take his time with Abbie. He’d have to do a bit more digging so they could all share the same hole, at least for the time being until he could get the disposal properly organised. There was something poetic about that though. Mum, dad, daughter. It was kind of sweet in a way, wasn’t it? Like one of those family plots at the cemetery with everyone laid side-by-side.

  He moved toward her and again she swung the Thermos but he dodged back, feeling the rush of air as it passed an inch from his chin. Damn, she had some fight in her, this one. More fight than her husband had put up, anyway. Ryan stepped in and brought the butt of the knife down onto her forearm, the flask flying from her grip and rolling away into the shadows.

  He moved closer, holding the knife low by his side, all his attention focused on her.

  Claire raised her one good arm in front of her face like a boxer going to the centre of the ring, but she was already punch-drunk from blows and blood loss, swaying, unsteady on her feet. The crimson gash across her chest was fully visible now through her ruined coat.

  ‘Leave. My girl. Alone.’

  Ryan took another step forward, bringing her inside his killing radius, fingers flexing around the familiar contours of the knife’s handle.

  ‘It was lovely to meet you, Mrs Collier.’ He gave her his perfect white-teeth smile, one last time. ‘It really was.’

  He brought the knife up.

  80

  Ryan

  There was no warning. No cry of attack, no shouted curse. Ryan didn’t even hear her approaching footsteps over the rushing in his ears, the blood-frenzy taking him higher and higher, like he was spinning around the eye of a tornado. He was just suddenly aware of Abbie behind him again, a rush of air, her fist swinging in as he ducked away, the punch missing his cheek and connecting just below his jawline. His ear ringing with impact of her knuckles.

  A punch. Just a punch.

  He circled away, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. Holding the hunting knife high to keep her at bay, deciding to kill both of them quickly now. It had been fun while it lasted but it was time to end this.

  Abbie stared back at him in horror. She staggered to her mother, half collapsed on the ground now, and stood over her, hands extended to ward off any further attacks.

  There’s something else, Ryan thought vaguely. His shirt was sticking to him. Rain? No.

  The throbbing pain from the punch spreading higher and lower.

  Ryan gave his wife a little smile, a nod of appreciation. That was a hell of a punch. It was a shame that things had to end this way.

  A hell of a punch.

  No. Not a punch.

  His shirt plastered to his chest.

  She’d hit him wit
h something. A rock?

  He looked down.

  His shoulder, his chest, his right arm, dark with blood. His blood.

  Not a rock. A blade.

  Still there, the handle sticking out just at the edge of his vision.

  He reached with his left hand and pulled the little knife from his neck, feeling the warm guttering of blood cascade down his chest and shoulder as the blade slid free. Staring at this knife, this other knife, this cheap piece of tourist crap, four inches of steel slick with gore. The handle splashed red too, the engraving there dark with it.

  The engraving.

  Grand Canyon.

  Squinting, his vision beginning to fail, he turned it over in his hand, already knowing what was etched on the other side.

  #1 Dad.

  Abbie had known it too, when she saw it in Ryan’s backpack an hour before. Of course she had. Because she was the one who had bought it, on a family holiday for her father’s fortieth birthday.

  A souvenir of a souvenir, Ryan thought vaguely. But I shouldn’t have kept it. Shouldn’t have left it in my backpack.

  He dropped the little knife to the ground and pressed his hand to the jagged stab wound in his carotid artery, the throb of blood jetting hard and fast though his fingers.

  Ah. Yes.

  So this is what it is like.

  Everything was shading into grey, his vision fluttering. He fell back into a sitting position, the big hunting knife dropping from his numb fingers.

  It was a kind of ecstasy, the feel of his lifeblood pulsing from his neck with every weakening beat of his heart. Heavy and thick, coppery and sweet and beautifully warm, beautifully real.

  Life is a city of crooked streets, death the marketplace where all men meet.

  Yes. The darkness was coming.

  It was almost euphoric.

  It was—

  ONE YEAR LATER

  81

  Abbie

  Abbie carried flowers, red and yellow, up the hill.

  Two bouquets, of tulips and roses, up the winding path to the highest point where you could see the whole city spread out below. She had scattered memories of coming here with her mum and dad when she was little, allowed to wear her prettiest dress but her mum always crying. She remembered that, because she had cried too, and then they hadn’t gone there anymore. Not all together, anyway.

  They would be all together today.

  It was her brother’s birthday.

  Her mother arrived, pushing the pram. Slower than she used to be, but insisting that she was perfectly capable of coping with a little hill, thank you very much. Not wanting to relinquish the pram for anything, or anyone. She was just as tough as Joyce, her own mother – who had defied all the doctors’ expectations and was now in remission from her cancer.

  Claire had never been able to explain properly to her daughter why she had driven up into the Peak District that day. She said she had been sitting with her phone, waiting for it to ring. Knowing in her heart that there would be no call from Ed, while dreading a call from the police. But then, something else.

  I just got a feeling that something wasn’t right, she’d said later, recovering in hospital.

  It was a gut instinct, I suppose. Like your father had.

  I just knew.

  Following the trail of missing person posters up the track out of Edale and up onto the moor, stopping the few people she met and asking if they had seen a young couple out walking together, showing them Abbie’s picture on her phone. Wandering, lost and alone, until she’d heard her daughter’s screams.

  Both of them staring at Ryan’s blood-soaked body once it was over, not believing that he was really dead, almost waiting for him to sit up at any moment. Abbie crawling to her mother, holding her tighter than she’d ever held anyone. Promise me you won’t die. Promise me you won’t die. Hugging each other, both beaten and bruised, cut and bleeding. Binding their wounds as best they could, staggering off the moors and begging the first person they met to raise the alarm. By the time the air ambulance delivered Claire to Manchester Royal Infirmary she was minutes from death.

  The police had found Ed’s body on the second day of digging.

  A post-mortem confirmed that he had died from a single stab wound to the heart, the wound consistent with a large hunting knife. No defensive wounds, no signs of a struggle, all the evidence suggesting his killer had taken him by surprise. The bitter irony of that fact would never fade, Abbie thought. Not when her dad had suspected Ryan right from the start.

  Using dental records they also identified the remains of Eileen Johnson, Ryan’s foster mother, and his first wife, Lori Fowler. Two other bodies – which had also been there some years – had defied identification because in both cases the head and hands had been removed.

  All of them were unearthed close together at Ryan’s killing ground, the little hill with a concave top where he had lured multiple victims to their deaths. Only a couple of hundred metres from the spot where Ryan himself had taken his last breath before bleeding out into the dark moorland soil.

  George Fitzgerald’s remains had not yet been found.

  Souvenirs – believed to be from each of his victims – were found in Ryan’s house, in a locked steel box under the spare bed. A broken pair of glasses. A dirty and threadbare toy rabbit. A woman’s lacy black bra. A brown leather purse. A silver necklace with a crucifix. A leather bracelet. The wedding ring that he’d taken from Ed’s finger. Alongside the souvenirs were a selection of drugs, neatly compartmentalised – amphetamines and modafinil, the date-rape drug GHB, Rohypnol, the sleeping pill Ambien, opiate-based painkillers – plus spare battery packs for Ryan’s night-vision goggles, four other knives, a taser, plastic snap ties, rope, masking tape, syringes, a balaclava, two pairs of new leather gloves and a half-empty box of disposable surgical ones. His killing kit, one of the detectives had called it.

  Abbie laid the bouquet on her brother’s grave, yellow and red tulips fresh from the florist.

  Next to it, Claire laid the second bouquet, of roses, beside a new stone. The clean white marble almost sparkled in the summer sunshine.

  Edward John Collier

  Faithful husband and devoted father

  Claire wiped a tear from her cheek.

  ‘I still can’t quite believe that he’s gone,’ Abbie said quietly. ‘That he’ll never get to meet his grandson.’

  ‘Your dad would have gone absolutely gaga for this little man,’ Claire said, smiling at the baby in the pram. ‘He would have spoiled him rotten.’

  ‘I just wish he’d had a chance to hold him, just once.’

  ‘We’ll tell him all about his grandson. We’ll come up here and we’ll tell him, make sure he knows everything.’

  Abbie brushed her own tears away. ‘Dad never knew how it ended. That we made it through.’

  ‘He knows,’ Claire said softly. ‘And wherever he is, I know he’s happy – because you’re safe. That’s all he ever really cared about.’

  Abbie nodded, unable to reply. Instead she looked down into the pram, feeling the overwhelming pulse of love for this tiny person, the tidal wave of emotion that had swept her away in the hospital and every day since. The baby stared back at her, blinking lazily under the hood of the pram. Big dark eyes holding hers, perfect orbs of brown surrounded by beautiful white. Eyes that said: I will always be yours, and you will always be mine.

  His father’s eyes.

  Acknowledgements

  I learned something very important in the writing of this book: if I ever need ideas on where to bury a body, my father-in-law is the right person to ask. So, my thanks to John Ashmore, who first told me about the Dark Peak and whose knowledge of the Derbyshire Peak District gave a whole new dimension to the story of Ed, Claire, Ryan and Abbie. The Catch is a story about extended family and in that spirit, it is dedicated to my in-laws: to John and to Sue Price, to my mother-in-law Jenny Ashmore and to Bernard Robinson. Thanks for always having welcomed me and for never puttin
g a GPS tracker on my car (as far as I’m aware).

  Thanks to my wife, Sally, and my children, Sophie and Tom, for putting up with me, answering my weird questions and being a sounding board for all kinds of random author stuff. Particular thanks (and apologies) to my daughter Sophie, who was a part of the inspiration for this story. I *promise* not to follow Ed’s example.

  I’m very lucky to be represented by Camilla Bolton of the Darley Anderson Agency, who has an unerring eye for story and for what makes characters tick. Thanks, as ever, to her excellent colleagues at the agency, Mary, Sheila, Rosanna, Kristina and Georgia. I’m immensely grateful to my editor at Bonnier Books, Sophie Orme, whose input makes the books better every single time, and to the stellar team at Bonnier – particularly Kate Parkin, Francesca Russell, Felice McKeown and Katie Lumsden.

  To Charlie Spicer, my US editor at St Martin’s Press – thank you for bringing my stories to a whole new audience in North America. Likewise, to all my international publishers, editors and translators, you help to make the world of books go around. That goes too for all the bloggers, reviewers and readers around the world who give up their time to spread the word on social media about the novels they love. The book world is a better place with you in it, and I sincerely hope you keep on doing what you do.

  Massive thanks to Richard & Judy and their wonderful Book Club, for selecting my previous thriller The Holiday as one of their summer picks in 2019. They really are as nice in person as they are on the screen, and it was a joy and a privilege to be part of the club. My thanks once again to Dr Gillian Sare for sharing her medical knowledge, and to Sara Russell of Nottinghamshire Registration Services for her guidance on the booking of wedding ceremonies, and the legal and practical requirements involved.

  Finally, a word of thanks to you for picking up this book – I hope you enjoyed it. Publication of The Catch marks three years since I took the plunge as an author, leaving my regular day job behind and making a go of being a full-time writer. I’m loving the journey so far, and it’s great to have you with me. I can’t wait to see where it takes us next.