by Louise Voss
He wanted Andrea.
He wanted his mother.
The silence became like a blanket of fear pressing down on him. They must be in deep countryside. Why was he being moved? And to where?
They proceeded at a slow, bumpy pace for what seemed like miles, up and down inclines, mostly over grass but once or twice across what must have been gravel paths. There was a level of unreality that Pete was vaguely aware of – he was in a wheelbarrow, for fuck’s sake. His legs were hanging over the handles and his neck bent uncomfortably backwards, perilously close to the wheel when the barrow was tipped up and pushed.
What a way to die.
He thought of all the things he’d never done: been a husband, a dad. Never even owned a dog. If he got out of this, he’d bite the bullet and do online dating. He would enter his furniture into design competitions like Meredith was always telling him to. Maybe he could persuade her to go travelling with him. Backpacking around South-East Asia. Was that weird, to want to go travelling with your sister?
It didn’t really matter, whether it was or not.
The barrow slid down a small slope, and his head banged painfully against a hard surface at the bottom. A door creaked open. Pete thought of deserted beaches at sunset, cold beers, fine, pale sand between his toes.
The temperature and humidity changed. He was inside, somewhere damp and cool. A sudden inversion and he was tipped out onto a chilly stone floor, like a pile of horseshit being dumped into the corner of a stable.
It felt a bit like a stable, in fact, although it didn’t smell of horses. Pete struggled to roll over and right himself, his head and arm still hurting more than anything he’d ever injured before; even more so when Rolli grabbed him by the elbow of his bad arm, getting him into a sitting position.
The cloth was ripped off his eyes but it wasn’t any lighter. For a moment Pete wondered if the blow to his head had knocked out his sight, but then a dim blue light appeared – a phone screen – followed by the bright white glare of the phone’s torch function, shining right into his face.
‘Home sweet home,’ Rolli said in his strange, high-low voice, putting the phone down. Torchlight shimmered like a laser beam across a rough tiled floor and Pete could see walls, which might once have been whitewashed, and lighter areas that looked like boarded-up windows. He was in some sort of big shed, maybe. But there was a bench seat running around the walls, about a foot from the ground. Pegs attached, higher up. An old changing room? Was he in an abandoned school or something? It wasn’t big enough to be a public baths.
Rolli approached him again, this time holding a length of rope, which he looped through something behind him and then attached it to whatever had restrained his wrists.
Oh God, Pete thought. Please don’t leave me here with my arms tied this tightly behind me. I’ll die. The pain was unbelievable, pulsing in waves up his arms and into his neck and head.
‘Right. We’ll be back tomorrow…’
Back? We?
Those words were chilling enough, redolent with threat, but what Rolli said next was what made Pete howl through his gag, struggling futilely against all his restraints, not even caring that it made everything hurt even more.
He’d failed. Failed Andrea, failed Ralph, failed himself…
‘…with your sister. And that’s when the fun starts. Sweet dreams, Pete.’
The phone was picked up. The door opened and closed again, the barrow wheel squeaking as it was wheeled away. The man was gone.
Sobbing and choking, Pete slumped forwards to try and relieve the pressure on his arms. Most of all, he’d failed Meredith.
46
Graeme
Graeme sits waiting in the van, parked in the small car park outside the dental surgery, heart banging painfully against his ribcage, thick hands shaking as they grip the steering wheel. His nails are filthy from the dirt he rubbed on the van’s number plates this morning.
No matter how many times he’s done it, it never feels any less stressful, even though everything has gone smoothly this time – so far anyway. But it’s not a fear of danger he feels; it’s a fear of messing up, of risking Catherine’s displeasure.
Catherine used to say she loved his hands, how strong they were. Now they’ll be together as a couple, will she say it again?
Graeme looks down at them, thinking back on some of the actions his hands have performed, the power they have wielded, the lives they’ve changed.
He doesn’t often get this philosophical, but this is a big day, with so much at stake.
A very big day. In fact, it feels as if this moment is the pinnacle of his life. All the planning, all the worrying, his secret fear that something will go wrong and he’ll be back inside too, or that he’ll fuck it up like last time – that stupid man out walking his stupid dog. It took Catherine years to forgive him for that. But now he has another chance. They both do. There can be no mistakes this time.
In the event, he didn’t need to be so stressed about it. It couldn’t have been easier. All those months and years of prep, and now here Catherine is, in the back of an old red Honda that is just pulling into the car park. Graeme doesn’t recognise the female driver – must be a new nurse – but the one sitting chatting to her on the back seat is Penny, a small plump Sister that Graeme knows Catherine gets on well with. Will that make it harder to hurt her?
Silly question, Graeme thinks. Nothing makes it harder for Catherine to hurt anyone.
Catherine and Penny get out of the car, Catherine holding her jaw as if in great pain, but cracking some kind of a joke, because Penny’s laughing in a scandalised way. She leans down and speaks to the driver, tapping her wrist, presumably saying she’ll call her when they’re done. Graeme catches the words, ‘…and small fries please.’
Tut, tut, thinks Graeme with a slow smile, they both ought to be coming in with Catherine. But it bodes very well that they aren’t. The driver waves and drives out of the car park, crunching the gears as she exits.
Catherine looks in his direction, and Graeme raises his eyebrows, but Catherine gives an infinitesimally tiny shake of her head when Penny isn’t looking. They’ve agreed that Graeme will only get out of the van if needed. Less chance of being spotted on CCTV.
Catherine and Penny begin to stroll across the car park. The only other pedestrians in sight are an old lady tottering out of the surgery entrance with a Zimmer frame and her carer, or daughter, opening the door for her.
Catherine’s almost level with the space that Graeme has parked in. Graeme, in the driver’s seat, pretends to be scrolling through his phone with one hand, but he keeps his eye firmly on them, and his other hand, out of sight, grips the heavy motorcycle chain that is his current weapon of choice. Go on babes, he urges silently. We’re so close. Get on with it, or I will.
Violence ignites in his belly, raw and hungry like the craving of a recently reformed smoker when someone lights up next to them. For a moment he forgets who he’s meant to be saving the rage for, and he wants to jump out of the van and stave in Penny’s skull, imagining her dull-brown curls all matted, the blood pooling out around her…
Just as the two women are level with the van’s bonnet, Catherine crouches down. ‘Stone in my shoe,’ Graeme hears her say.
Graeme forces the ball of anger down, loosens his grip on the chain, starts the van engine and leans across to open the passenger door. This is the sign.
Penny is waiting, still chatting away, while Catherine pokes around inside her shoe. Then, instead of straightening up in the normal way, she pushes herself away from the ground with the energy of a swimmer doing a racing dive off the side of a pool, her clenched fist swinging forcefully upwards and straight into the underside of Penny’s jaw, a flawless uppercut.
The blow sends the woman flying backwards in an almost cartoonish fashion. She lands flat on her back, a stunned expression on her face as her skull smacks the tarmac hard, blood spraying out of her mouth. Is that a tooth, flying off in the opposite direc
tion?
Catherine has jumped into the van and Graeme has driven out of the car park before she’s even had time to get her seatbelt on.
Graeme drives steadily, nothing flashy, nothing to draw attention to them. Even if there is CCTV in the car park, there is nothing to identify the van. His hands have stopped shaking. A huge beam spreads across his face, even though they aren’t high and dry just yet.
‘We did it!’
‘I did it, you mean.’
‘Yeah, babes, I know.’
Conciliatory as always, Graeme does know. But he also knows that it has been all these months and years of preparation on his part that has got them to this stage. Making sure Catherine took her meds, back when she was still in Rampton; urging her not to blow her top whenever someone wound her up. Both of them knowing how crucial her good behaviour was.
Catherine has behaved herself for the last three years. It’s a record.
But then, when Catherine really, really wants something, she’ll do anything to get it. Graeme likes to think that Catherine’s good behaviour was due to his influence – and perhaps too the fact that he persuaded the board to let him be Catherine’s advocate. All the dozens of Care Plan Approach meetings he’s attended on her behalf, feeling like a proper responsible citizen.
The joy they both felt when it was deemed that Catherine’s condition was finally stable enough for her to be moved from high-security Rampton into this medium-security place in Surrey … The plan was working, he thought. For the first time in his life, Graeme had a purpose, a mission. Not to mention all the other planning he had to do, to set everything up for Catherine. Convincing the CPA board to consider transferring her hadn’t been easy, but they’d done it. Graeme had insisted it was because he’d got a new job, as a gardener, and he wouldn’t be able to continue driving up to Northampton to visit Catherine. They wanted to be closer to each other; that was fair enough, wasn’t it? They were a couple.
And the board bought it, not having a clue why Graeme had got a gardening job at that particular venue.
Graeme remembers with glee the day three years ago when he discovered that the Pop Bitch – PB – lived in Minstead and worked up at the house. He was boarding a bus in Kingston after a visit to his parole officer, and he saw PB walking to the next bus stop. Nobody else would ever recognise her; she looked completely different these days. But Graeme would have known her anywhere, even with the very short blonde hairstyle. Catherine had made him study so many photos of her that the woman’s features were indelibly imprinted on his mind. Graeme immediately jumped off his bus and followed PB onto hers, sitting so close behind her that he could see the short, fine hairs sticking to the back of PB’s collar – she’d obviously just had it cut. Why was she travelling by bus? Surely someone like her had a car? Maybe it was in for a repair or something.
Graeme sniffed the air in front of him, trying to see if PB was wearing the same perfume as she had when he’d met her last. He could still remember how she’d smelled; before the scent of her piss and fear and blood overpowered everything else.
That bus ride took at least thirty-five minutes, out into the arseend of nowhere in the Surrey Hills, a place Graeme didn’t even know existed. PB – and Graeme – finally alighted somewhere called Minstead House – a massive yellow place, where Graeme stalked her to that stupid shop full of overpriced pottery and other shit that posh people and ignorant tourists threw their money at.
He couldn’t wait to tell Catherine that he had, completely by chance, found Pop Bitch, and that she worked in a shop. It was the biggest stroke of luck he’d ever had.
They gave themselves two years to work out phase two of the plan. Two years to start to put right what had gone so wrong last time.
And now here they are.
In the van, Catherine clips in her seatbelt. ‘How did it go last night?’ she asks.
‘Like clockwork. Everything in place.’ Graeme can’t help the note of pride in his voice. He thinks of the man’s eyes meeting his, his pain and fury and bewilderment. In that moment he almost felt sorry for him, for he was as much of a pawn as Graeme himself was.
‘Good. Knew I could rely on you.’
Graeme smiles, all thoughts of pity forgotten.
‘Let’s get over there now.’
‘Now?’ Graeme has assumed Catherine would want to have a quiet night in first. See the flat, unpack, maybe even go to bed. The thought of Catherine’s warm, pale body in his arms again makes him feel woozy with delight.
‘You’ve got him. What if someone finds him? We need to get her there too, before they notice I’m missing.’
Graeme sighs. He knows Catherine is right. Obviously, when it’s discovered that Catherine has escaped, Graeme will be the first one they’ll call. But they thought of this too. Graeme has given a false address in Surrey, and has already ditched the SIM card of the mobile that is on Catherine’s records as her next-of-kin contact number. The van will be well hidden.
‘This time tomorrow…’ Catherine says gleefully.
Graeme looks across at his beloved and feels a brief metallic twinge in his teeth, another little thrill of joy, to see her smiling so widely as she gazes out of the window at trees and fences speeding past.
‘I know!’ Graeme says. ‘We’ll wake up together. Our new lives start here. I can’t wait for you to see the flat. I tidied up special.’
Catherine gives a dismissive wave. ‘Yeah, yeah, that’ll be great. But I’m not thinking about that.’
Crestfallen, Graeme indicates left onto a dual carriageway. ‘Oh. What was you thinking then?’
Catherine turns in the passenger seat to face him, clasping her knee with excitement, rocking slightly, Graeme notices, in time with the fuzzy-felt cartoon air-freshener dangling from the rearview mirror.
‘This time tomorrow, I’ll finally be quits with Pop Bitch. She’ll have suffered as bad as I did, all these years. A life ruined for a life ruined. Only fair, isn’t it? And all this will have been worth it!’
Graeme wonders why his heart sinks. After all, he knows that this is at the heart of it all; has always been. But why can’t Catherine just be happy that they are finally together?
47
Emad
Later that day, Emad messaged Gemma to say he wanted to run something by her, so they agreed to meet for a quick drink at 7.30 p.m., in the pub round the corner from the station. The Prince of Wales was not usually frequented by cops because it was generally deemed too upmarket, with its ostentatious flower arrangements, coir matting floors and uniformed bar staff, but, as Gemma said, eyeing the tweedy clientele, ‘We can go posh just for one. At least we can hear ourselves think in here. Meredith’s been spending the day with Pete’s neighbours at the marina. I’m picking her up about nine and we’ll go back to her place together.’
Emad wished it wasn’t just the one. He wished they were going out for a romantic dinner, followed by a cosy nightcap, followed by going back to Gemma’s flat and a night of passion. It was the second time they’d had a drink after work, just the two of them, and each time they met they got a little more relaxed and jokey with each other. He tried not to wonder if her heart skipped a beat whenever she saw him. He suspected not. And she looked particularly stressed today.
‘So, what’s so urgent?’ she asked, when they were settled at a table with a pint of IPA for him and a Diet Coke for her.
Emad was bursting to tell her. ‘I just got back from a call-out to Ashworth – you know, the mental institution near the A3?’
‘Oh yeah? Natives revolting, are they?’
Emad took a gulp of his pint, swallowing a hiccup and putting a hand over his mouth, embarrassed. Gemma laughed, but not meanly.
‘Not exactly, but someone escaped this morning.’
‘It’s low security, that place, isn’t it? Can’t they pretty much come and go as they please anyway?’
‘Medium security. And they definitely can’t. Anyway, this one did, and she’s not the sort of
woman we want on the outside, not if she’s not taking her meds.’
‘Well, surely she can’t be that dangerous if she’s in Ashworth?’
‘The governor told me that she’d calmed down massively in the past couple of years; that’s why she was moved over there from Rampton. Long-term inmate – first went in when she was in her twenties. History of extreme violence, manipulation, coercion, you name it. Has tried to kill other staff and inmates on several occasions over the years, but not recently. Several suicide attempts – the most recent five years ago when she made a swallow dive head first off her bunk onto the concrete floor. Smashed her nose in and gave herself severe concussion.’
‘Ouch. How old is she now?’
‘Mid-fifties.’
‘No spring chicken, then.’
‘No, but she managed to knock out a nurse with no difficulty – the woman’s in hospital. The nurse had taken her for a dentist’s appointment, and the prisoner did a runner in the car park. She had a getaway driver.’
Gemma didn’t seem overly interested, so Emad thought it was time to play his trump card: ‘Thing is, Gemma, there’s a connection to Meredith Vincent.’
‘What? How?’ Gemma had a slight habit, Emad had noticed, of not concentrating on what he was saying, looking over his shoulder or, occasionally, fiddling with her phone – but he had her full attention now.
‘I went to look at the woman’s room in Ashworth, and when I got in there, one wall had bits of Blu Tack all over it. When I asked what she’d had up there, the nurse who took me in said – and you won’t believe it – “Oh she was obsessed with some band from the eighties … Funny, she must have taken all the pictures with her”.’
Gemma’s glass stopped en route to her mouth. Her jaw dropped. ‘You’re not going to tell me it was Meredith’s band? Cohen?’
‘Yup. Took the nurse a few minutes to remember, but when she did, she was sure. And she said that it was a bit weird, because Catherine had a few CDs on a shelf as well – but none of Cohen’s. The nurse said it was a bit of a joke because Catherine had loads of pics of the band, particularly the lead singer, and yet she couldn’t stand their music. They said they used to think it was funny – not that they’d ever have dared say that to her face.’
