by Louise Voss
‘Phone’s showing as moved. It’s now there. Looks to be about—’
She was interrupted by the deafening and unmistakeable crack of a gunshot, from what sounded like very nearby.
‘Send backup, air support and ground unit, out to beyond the old pool house on the Minstead Estate, south of the main house, NOW!’ Emad yelled down the phone. ‘Gunshot heard. Hostage situation likely,’ and without hesitation or consultation they both ran out into the black night in the direction of the sound.
52
Meredith
By the time Caitlin had forced them off the grass and onto a small dark path through the woodland, dimly lit by Graeme’s torch, Meredith had changed her mind; acceptance had evaporated and was replaced by a nugget of something small and determined. Her bare feet were studded with small stones, her thighs scratched by brambles, whippy twigs snatched at her face, and it felt as if the universe was telling her to get a grip. She didn’t want to die. And there was no fucking way these two psychos were going to hurt Pete any more than they already had.
‘Down the next hill, head for the far side of that field,’ Meredith heard Graeme mutter to Caitlin.
Right, she thought. By her reckoning the far boundary of the Minstead Estate was at least another five minutes’ walk. Graeme had obviously done his homework. Meredith felt her newfound survival instinct wobble. It couldn’t be more remote. If Caitlin shot them, cleared the pool house of their clothes and left their bodies by the fence down there, it could be weeks before they were found.
But that’s not going to happen, she thought, gritting her teeth, welcoming the pain in her toe as a sharp stone pierced it. There’d be nothing to fear anymore, because if she survived, it would mean that Caitlin and Graeme would either be dead – Meredith’s preferred option – or back in prison.
She, Meredith, would finally be free.
If – when – she survived this, everything would change. No more paranoid hiding away, pretending to be someone else, moaning to herself about being lonely. She’d travel. Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia – she hadn’t even been on a plane since the days of touring with the band. Maybe even try and meet someone, have a relationship finally…
As she limped along, she felt the hard moulded plastic of the knife’s handle in her armpit, reminding her that she had to seize her moment, and soon.
How to do it? Think, Meredith.
Caitlin. She had to go for Caitlin, get the gun off her, before Graeme had time to react and pile in. It would be two against one, because Pete wouldn’t be able to help.
Pete was staggering along next to her like a zombie, worryingly glassy-eyed and silent, just the rasp of his laboured breath and the fact that he was still just about upright convincing her that he was still with them. His arm hung at a weird angle away from his body.
‘Stay with me, Pete,’ she muttered.
‘Shut it,’ snapped Caitlin.
The moon suddenly came out from behind a cloud, illuminating them in a chiaroscuro of shadow-dappled branches. Meredith had a flash of an image – a pencil drawing of two naked children, a boy and a girl, hand in hand, walking into woods that welcomed them and whispered encouragements in the breeze lifting the leaves. Minstead was embracing all the ghosts of everyone who’d ever loved the place like she did.
Graeme and Caitlin were still behind them, the torch illuminating their own feet but not Meredith and Pete’s – but this was good. It meant that Meredith could discreetly pluck the penknife tool out of her armpit and flip it open. She turned to try and catch Pete’s eye, and to her astonishment, he flashed a stare back, first at her and then down at the knife, his focus sharpened for the first time since she’d seen him curled up on the pool’s tiled floor.
His eyebrows shot up and in the moonlight she was sure he gave her a tiny complicit wink and a nod of his head – nothing that anybody else would ever have caught, but magnified by their twin telepathy. At that moment he was the spitting image of their father, how Meredith remembered him on the sidelines of her numerous races at sports day, smiling a smile just for her, not jumping up and down and almost aggressively urging her towards the finish line like the other dads did, but a calm, encouraging presence that gave her that final burst of strength – that helped her to give it her all; to not quit, to stay focussed on the goal.
And now Pete was giving her that signal.
This was it.
She was about to turn and run at Caitlin and Graeme, yelling, hoping that the element of surprise would give her that split-second advantage, but before she did, Pete suddenly groaned, stopped walking and collapsed on the roots of the pine tree they’d been passing beneath, lying motionless. Everything in Meredith instinctively wanted to run to him – but then she remembered the wink. He’d done it on purpose as a distraction.
Graeme was slightly behind Caitlin, holding the torch. Caitlin’s arm – the one holding the gun – dropped very slightly as she exclaimed with surprise.
‘Oh, for—’ she began irritably as Meredith spun a hundred and eighty degrees on her heel and charged her, holding up the curved tool like a claw, screaming a banshee-like howl and launching herself at her, stabbing blindly with the claw until she saw the gun slip out of Caitlin’s hand. Caitlin too sank to the ground, growling with pain and fury.
Meredith and Graeme simultaneously lunged for the gun, but luck was on Meredith’s side – it had dropped very slightly closer to her than to Graeme. She was able to grab it and aim it right in Graeme’s face, stopping the confused, angry man in his tracks.
Graeme and Caitlin must have both assumed that they would meet no resistance from the twins, Meredith thought; that she would be just as fearful as she’d been the time before in the van. A moment of triumphant adrenaline surging through her as she backed away towards Pete’s prone body, to get out of reach of Caitlin’s arms, where the woman lay flailing like an upended turtle.
In the moment before Graeme switched off the torch, Meredith saw that Caitlin was covered in blood: face, chest, head. For a moment she couldn’t believe that she had done this; she didn’t remember being that frenzied, but the preceding moments had been a blur of rage and self-preservation. She’d floored her, and it felt good.
Then they were plunged into darkness, and Meredith’s bravado faltered. The woods were silent, a briefly complicit enemy, the stillness only broken by Caitlin’s bubbling breaths and Graeme’s furious curses. For a moment they were caught in a tableau of hunters and prey, although it wasn’t clear who was which. Meredith forced her frozen hands to grip the gun, finger on trigger; the cold iron centre of her world, determiner of who lived and who died.
She heard a rustle, footsteps stealthily approaching in the darkness, the same footsteps that had creaked up her staircase all those years ago and kicked a hole in her door, in her psyche, in her future.
Not this time.
‘FUCK YOU!’ she screamed hoarsely, and fired in the direction of the footsteps. The noise sent sleeping birds flapping skywards in panic, and in the split-second flash from the gun Meredith saw Graeme’s body jerk up as if it wanted to join the birds, before hearing it crash to the leafy floor.
‘Pete,’ Meredith croaked, and heard his whispered, ‘Here,’ in reply.
At that moment, the almost-full moon came out from behind a cloud and cast the scene in shocking, ice-blue light, both Graeme and Caitlin lying motionless, Caitlin’s neck glinting with the blade of the gardening tool still sticking out of it.
‘Jesus,’ Meredith said, dropping to her knees and crawling over to Pete, wrapping her shaking arms around his cold, naked body. ‘I killed them both. Fuck, Pete, I killed them.’
‘You saved us,’ he whispered. ‘You saved us, Mez.’
From somewhere up near the house, they heard a faint shouting – a woman’s voice, drifting on the night air: ‘Meredith! Pete! Meredith! Pete!’
‘Thank God. I think that’s Gemma,’ Meredith mumbled. ‘She must have heard the shot. I can’t shout back. I’m
too tired.’ She held on to Pete’s back, wrapping her arms gently around him, not knowing where or what – or how bad – his injuries were.
Another sound superseded the shouting; the whump, whump of helicopter blades, shortly followed by the sweep of a searchlight beam. ‘You won’t need to,’ said Pete, with effort. His voice was becoming fainter. ‘Not sure how much longer…’
‘Don’t say it,’ Meredith said fiercely. ‘You have to hang on. I’m not going through all this to lose you now. Don’t even fucking think about it. Promise me, Pete. They’re coming for us.’
53
Gemma and Emad
Gemma would never forget the sight that greeted her when she and Emad finally reached the spot where the shot had come from. Her chest was heaving and her breath coming in pants as they crashed through the woods, trying to avoid roots and trunks, the light from her and Emad’s phone torches both illuminating and wrong-footing them as the duel beams jogged up and down confusingly.
One shot, she thought. One person dead, possibly. Why only one? Had Catherine Brown killed Pete in front of Meredith, part of her extended revenge plan?
Oh God, she thought, stop speculating and just get there. Emad was ahead of her, fleeter of foot and more agile. He’d been like that at school too, she recalled, a flash of a sports day memory coming to her. Sweet, doe-eyed Emad.
For the first time it occurred to her that they too were in serious danger, running full pelt through dark trees towards an insane person with a gun, their only weapon the handcuffs that she’d clipped to the belt loops of her trousers earlier. Two insane people, most likely, as Brown must have an accomplice. She didn’t escape until the morning after Pete went missing, so someone else must have taken him. And she’d had a getaway driver.
If anything happened to Emad, she would feel responsible. He was a rookie; this was his first life-and-death shout – and he wasn’t even on duty.
‘There’s the chopper,’ Emad panted over his shoulder. ‘Looks like they’ve found them with thermal imaging.’
‘Straight ahead then.’ Gemma felt like she’d gone into a sort of trance, her whole being focussed on getting there, like the time she ran a half marathon; one foot in front of the other, keep deep breathing … ‘Nearly there.’
What the hell do we do when we actually get there? she thought.
Even though she’d seen their clothes lying by the empty swimming pool, it was still a shock to see the twins stark naked, lying under a tree like two overgrown fairy-tale characters abandoned in the woods. Hansel and Gretel, Gemma thought. They’d been siblings too. There was something so primal about the sight – and that was before Emad’s torch beam landed on the bloodied body of who Gemma assumed was Catherine Brown and a bulky man lying motionless next to her a few feet away, like two harpooned whales.
‘Jesus,’ Emad yelped.
Catherine Brown had a number of visible stab wounds all over her face and torso, and an odd little curved blade sticking out of her neck, whereas the man was completely covered in blood from what looked like a shot to the chest. That must have been the shot they’d heard.
‘Meredith!’ Gemma called, running over to her, peeling off her stripy cotton jumper and laying it over the middle of Meredith’s pale torso.
Emad wished he hadn’t left his leather jacket in Gemma’s car – he was only wearing a shirt, but he stripped that off too.
Meredith was still clutching the pistol, her whole body shaking so much with cold and shock that Emad worried she might accidentally pull the trigger again.
Gemma was cooing at them in an unsteady voice. ‘It’s OK, love, you’re all right; you’re both safe now. Help’s on its way. Pete, can you hear me?’
‘He’s badly hurt,’ Meredith managed, her own voice bubbly with panic. ‘I don’t know how he managed to walk this far. I think he’s got a broken arm and bad concussion, maybe a fractured skull. Please, help him.’
Gemma gently removed the gun from Meredith’s grip, holding her hand instead, stroking it as Emad draped his shirt over Pete’s motionless frame. With Gemma’s help, Meredith slowly pulled herself up to a seated position and tried to lay the stripy jumper over Pete as well, but Gemma stopped her. ‘You’re freezing. You put this one on.’
Meredith ignored her. ‘He’s passed out. Don’t let him die,’ she begged.
‘Shhh,’ Gemma soothed, while Emad hopped uselessly from foot to foot. ‘Just a few more moments. The helicopter crew will have life-support equipment and a stretcher for Pete. They can get him straight to hospital. Lift your arms up for me…’
Finally, Meredith permitted Gemma to help her into the jumper, raising her arms like a submissive child, and Emad couldn’t help the relief he felt that Meredith’s breasts were now covered. He knew he shouldn’t be having such puerile thoughts, but he also felt very self-conscious that he was standing there without his shirt, and relieved that Gemma had been wearing a bra – it was weird enough to see her in just that. He wasn’t sure he could have coped with seeing her chest completely bare as well as Meredith’s.
The police helicopter was noisily landing in a paddock a few metres away, rendering further conversation impossible.
Thank God it got here so fast, thought Emad, glancing at Pete’s lifeless body. And thank God I didn’t have to try and immobilise either of them. The dead guy was built like a brick shithouse.
He was just looking at his phone to call through to the station with an update, when a sudden movement caught his eye, illuminated for a moment by the chopper’s lights shining through the trees. Unnoticed and not heard over the din of the chopper’s blades, Catherine Brown had managed to stagger to her feet. She was pulling the small curved knife out of her neck and brandishing it over her head as she lumbered towards Meredith, who was seated with her back to her. Brown was about to bring it down…
Shit! Emad thought in panic. Why hadn’t they checked that she and her sidekick were actually dead? Mavis would kill him. And then the adrenaline kicked in and he no longer had any conscious thoughts other than protecting Meredith and Gemma where they sat. With a yell he dropped his phone and threw himself with full force at the bloodied woman, just as she started to plunge the knife down, knocking her to the ground sideways, relieved to see the weapon fly out of her blood-slick hand.
Brown screamed with weak fury as Emad tried to roll her onto her front and sit on her, but she was so large and heavy, he couldn’t shift her before she managed to headbutt him, his nose exploding with pain and blood that he could feel running down over his mouth and neck and making a sticky, matted nest in his chest hair.
Gemma had leaped up and run across to him, yanking at the handcuffs attached to the waistband of her trousers.
‘Get her feet,’ she barked, kicking Brown over onto her front and holding her down with her foot until she could wrench the woman’s arms behind her back and cuff them together.
Emad kneeled on Brown’s thrashing feet, trying to ignore his busted septum, every movement she made under his shins sending pain stabbing through his skull.
They finally managed to incapacitate her, Gemma pressing the woman’s face into the loamy forest floor, harder than was strictly necessary. Lights and shouts could be seen and heard through the trees. Backup was here.
Meredith, bare-legged with Gemma’s jumper just about covering her hips, had got to her feet and made her way over to where the three of them variously sat and lay. She crouched slowly down next to Catherine, reaching out and pushing Gemma’s hand away from the back of the woman’s head, replacing it with her own, seeming to not care that she was still naked from the waist down. She grabbed a handful of Catherine’s hair and yanked it, until Catherine’s doughy, bloody face was revealed, now covered with rotting leaves and soil, looking as though she had just been dug up.
Meredith locked eyes with her as the footsteps and bobbing lights grew closer. Catherine’s glare didn’t flinch away, a last gesture of defiance. Meredith smiled, slowly, her voice sounding stronger an
d more menacing than Emad had ever heard it.
‘You failed, Caitlin. Again. What a waste of your life, eh? What a waste of Ralph’s life, Andrea’s life, Andrea’s baby’s life. But you still failed. You didn’t get me, and you didn’t get Pete, and now we’re going to be free of you forever because you’ll never be free again, not now your little puppet is dead. You spent the best part of thirty years trying to make my life a misery, and it hasn’t worked.’
‘It was all for Sam,’ Brown whispered, all defiance extinguished, and Meredith laughed bitterly.
‘Sam never gave a shit about you, or me. And I don’t think you believe that, anyway. You just wanted someone else to blame for your psychopathic behaviour, and so you decided it was all my fault.’
The armed-response team crashed through the trees, at the exact moment Meredith spat in Brown’s face. ‘You’re pathetic.’
Epilogue
A year later
Meredith
The plane was poised at the top of the runway, at that specific moment in time where it seemed that the thrumming anticipation of the passengers was all that would propel it into the sky. Meredith had forgotten what this felt like. Last time she was on an aeroplane had been on the final tour Cohen did in Japan, in 1994. She wasn’t nervous, though. She was looking forward to it so much that she felt she could probably fly unaided.
‘Welcome to Flight BA352 to Ankara,’ intoned the captain over the tannoy.
‘Look at us, going on holiday like normal people,’ she said to Pete, whose long legs were sticking out ahead of him in the bulkhead.
‘About bloody time, too,’ he said. ‘Can’t imagine anyone’s ever needed a holiday more than we do.’
