The roads had been gritted and she started the ten-minute journey home on autopilot, planning to raid her freezer for a ready meal and open a bottle of beer to keep it company. As she indicated to turn right onto her street a hand slipped round her throat from behind her seat and a voice hissed in her ear.
‘Keep going. You’re not going home tonight.’
‘What the fu–?’ Kate tried to turn her head but the hand around her throat tightened.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve got a knife and I’m willing to use it.’
Kate felt something cold tap her ear. A blade.
‘Keep driving,’ the voice continued. ‘I’ll tell you where to turn.’
Mind racing, Kate followed the instruction. She recognised the voice now. It had taken a few seconds to suppress her fear and start to think logically again. ‘Caroline, I don’t know what you’re planning but I can tell you it won’t work. I’m expected home and if I don’t turn up…’
A laugh from the back of the car. ‘Expected home? I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you. I know you live alone. There’s nobody expecting you. Keep driving.’
The last of the daylight faded as Kate followed Caroline’s instructions, taking care not to hesitate for too long or to miss a turn. She knew most of the roads around Doncaster and had a good idea of where she was being taken, but not why. What could Caroline Lambert gain from killing her? She would probably just disappear again but what would be the point? Kate had done nothing to her, she hadn’t even been able to track her down, so it wasn’t like Caroline was in danger of imminent arrest.
Two more turns and Kate found herself driving down a darkened lane that she vaguely recognised. She passed the last streetlight and watched in the rear-view mirror as it disappeared into the gloom – a last beacon of hope. She was trapped in the dark, at the mercy of the woman holding a knife to her throat.
‘Pull in here,’ Caroline instructed.
Kate was able to make out a gravel parking area lit up by the twin beams of her headlights. She drove across it, the crunch of tyres unexpectedly loud in the silence, and pulled in.
‘Now what? You’re going to stab me and leave me here?’ Kate tried to inject the words with a tone of bravado that she didn’t feel, hoping to throw the other woman off balance. If Caroline didn’t know that Kate was afraid, she might stand a chance of out-thinking her.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Caroline spat. ‘I need you to listen to me and I need you to pay attention.’
‘So why not call the police station? Why not send an email? Why the dramatics with the kidnap and the knife?’
The blade at her throat suddenly pricked her skin.
‘Because I know what you’ve done. I know that you’ve planned that funeral to spite me. Or to trick me into turning up. What did you expect? That I’d march down the aisle like a jilted lover at a wedding determined to speak now rather than hold my peace? If you knew, you wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Knew what? Knew that your father killed Jeanette? Of course I know. Your friend Julie was only too keen to fill us in on the whole story.’
Silence from the back of the car. Had Kate’s tone been too much? She was trying to taunt Caroline, to make her rethink whatever plan she’d hatched, but one false word and Kate could end up with a knife in her throat. Suddenly the pressure of the knife lessened and the rear door opened. Before Kate could even think about engaging the locks, Caroline was next to her, pulling open the driver’s door, knife close to Kate’s face as she leaned over and undid the seat belt.
‘Get out,’ Caroline said, her voice a whisper of suppressed anger.
‘And what? Let you throw me in the canal like you did to Maddie Cox?’
The knife was back, under Kate’s chin this time, forcing her to look up into eyes that were black with rage.
‘I said get out of the fucking car! You want to know why I’m doing this, then listen to me.’
‘I can listen to you in the car. It’s freezing out there.’
Caroline grabbed a handful of Kate’s hair and hauled her from her seat, dragging her from the car and throwing her down onto the gravel where she lay sprawled on her back, temporarily blinded by the Mini’s headlights and stunned by the other woman’s physical strength.
‘I don’t give a shit how cold it is. I want you away from the car, away from your phone and your radio or whatever it is you lot carry around with you. We’re going to talk without interruption.’
She reached down and grabbed Kate’s sleeve, pulling her to her feet. Keeping one hand wrapped tightly in the fabric, she stepped behind Kate, raised the knife to her neck, and said. ‘Now, walk. There’s a gap in the hedge. Go!’
Kate’s eyes adjusted to the darkness as they walked beyond the range of the headlight beams towards the hedge. A half moon was rising in the clear sky, illuminating the canal bank as she was pushed towards the lights around the black-and-white lock furniture. Caroline manoeuvred her around until she was sitting on the edge of one of the lock gates with Caroline behind her, the knife still uncomfortably close to the tender flesh beneath her chin. All it would take was one hard shove and she’d be in the freezing cold water; Caroline wouldn’t even need the knife.
‘Right,’ Caroline breathed close to her ear. ‘Now listen and listen carefully. My sister cannot be buried with that man. I know that you know what he did but you don’t know everything.’ Kate felt the blade tremble against her flesh as Caroline took a deep breath and told her story.
35
It was the third time in the last few days that Jeanette had been home late. Her dad would go mad – again. He was always accusing her of being off with the lads but she just wanted to hang about with her friends. Julie had got a new radio cassette player and she’d taped the Top 40 so they could sit out in her garden and listen to their favourite songs. And then it had got really late and Jeanette had tried to run home but she’d broken the heel off her shoe and ended up limping slowly back up the street.
The house was already in darkness as she reached up and took the spare key from its hiding place in one of the hanging baskets that flanked the front door. She eased it into the lock and held her breath. There was no sound as the mechanism slid back and the door opened inwards. She closed it behind her and slid the bolt noiselessly. Now for the stairs. The second one up was loose on the right-hand side so she stepped carefully to the left and then tiptoed up the rest of the flight in silence. Her little sister’s door was ajar and, in the moonlight seeping through the landing window, she could make out a small pale face watching her. Jeanette made a shushing gesture – putting her index finger to her mouth – and her sister smiled,
The last few steps were the most dangerous. Her parents’ bedroom door was half open, the darkness beyond absolute. Three more steps and she’d reach the safety of her own room. She raised one foot, about to take a step when she spotted a movement. Thrown off balance she almost cried out in alarm. She didn’t see the fist until it smashed into her face.
Behind her, Jeanette heard her sister’s bedroom door close with a muffled click and then she was falling into nothingness.
‘Caroline, get out of bed and help me. Now!’
Caroline pulled the blankets higher, covering her head, trying to blot out the sounds coming from outside her bedroom door.
‘I said now!’
She didn’t dare disobey. She’d seen the consequences of Jeanette’s disobedience and there was no way that she wanted her father to turn the full force of his anger on her.
She crept out of bed and opened her door, just a crack at first, hoping that he would have managed without her but he was standing at the top of the stairs glaring at something below him.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I need you to help me with your sister.’
Caroline stepped out onto the landing and followed his gaze. Her sister, Jeanette, was lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs next to the front door. She wasn’t moving.
‘She’s had a bit of an accident,’ her dad said. ‘I need to move her out of the way. Get the blanket off the top of your wardrobe. It’s in the big suitcase that we took on holiday.’
Mechanically, Caroline followed his instructions; she pulled her desk chair over to the wardrobe, climbed up and managed to get the case down without overbalancing. She flicked the latches on the case and the lid popped open revealing a threadbare blue blanket which she gathered in her arms and took to her father.
‘Now go back into your bedroom,’ he ordered.
‘Is she going to be all right?’ Caroline asked. ‘Is she cold?’
‘I said go back to bed!’ her father yelled.
Caroline scuttled back across the landing, closed her bedroom door, and buried herself beneath the covers until morning.
The next day, Jeanette was gone. Their dad explained that she’d run away after her accident but Caroline knew that he was lying. Jeanette couldn’t have run away because Caroline had seen that one of her legs was broken. It had been twisted at a strange angle the night before, almost as if it had been taken off her body and put on backwards. Caroline’s mum wasn’t feeling well and had decided to stay in bed so Caroline had to get her own breakfast while her dad fixed something in the bathroom. When he’d finished, he’d asked her if she remembered anything about the previous night. She remembered everything and told him so but he said she was wrong. He said that if anybody asked she had to tell them that Jeanette hadn’t come home otherwise her sister would be in a lot of trouble. Caroline couldn’t work out why this would be the case but her dad was a grown-up and he knew best.
The police arrived later that day. They asked her dad a lot of questions about when he’d last seen Jeanette and then they asked her and she told them her dad’s lie. Her mum stayed in bed through it all.
There were a lot of visits from the police after that. Her dad kept telling them the same story and her mum kept saying that she’d not been very well and didn’t know anything about where Jeanette might have gone. Caroline knew that her mum was poorly because she kept holding her tummy and her face was a funny colour as if she’d been sunbathing but just on one side.
Jeanette didn’t come home.
After the visits from the police had finished, Caroline’s dad decided that he would make the garden nice for her mum, to make her feel better. He dug new flowerbeds and then made a clear space in one corner for a greenhouse. Caroline wished that he’d finished working in the bathroom first because there was a bad smell that her dad said was the drains and that he’d fix it when he’d finished outside.
The greenhouse arrived on the back of a lorry. It was like a pile of empty window frames. Her dad put it together and it looked like the climbing frame in the park. When she said this to her dad though, he shouted at her and told her that she’d better not try climbing on it. He worked every day, putting in panes of glass and sealing them with putty that had a funny smell like Sunday dinners and bleach mixed together. Eventually all that was left to do was the floor which he was going to cover with concrete.
It was a hot night and Caroline woke up thirsty. There was a plastic beaker on the bathroom sink that she could use if she needed a drink after everybody had gone to bed but she lay awake trying not to think about water. She didn’t want to go in the bathroom because the smell was really bad and she was worried that it might have soaked into the plastic of her cup and would make the water taste bad. Eventually she knew that she wouldn’t get back to sleep without a drink so she got out of bed and opened her bedroom door. The light on the landing was on and there were noises coming from the bathroom. She slowly pushed open the door and saw her dad squatting on the floor. He’d taken the panel off the side of the bath and was dragging something out from behind it.
Caroline watched as he wrestled with a large package, finally pulling it free. She couldn’t quite see what it was. There was something wrapped up in the plastic. Something brightly coloured. It wasn’t until her father stood up, allowing the light to fall on the whole of the object that Caroline realised what she was looking at.
She screamed as she recognised the face of her sister pressed against the plastic.
Her father grabbed her and slapped her hard across the face, twice, but she couldn’t stop sobbing. She kept trying to ask him what had happened but she couldn’t get the words out between her sobs.
‘Get back to bed and keep your trap shut!’ her dad yelled at her but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave her sister. When she managed to gasp the words out her dad laughed like a villain in a film and told her that she might as well help him then.
He sent her down to the greenhouse in her pyjamas and told her to make sure that the hole he’d dug was deep enough. She followed his instructions as though she was in a dream even though she didn’t know what he meant by ‘deep enough’ and she was standing in the greenhouse when he arrived carrying the bundle of her dead sister in his arms. She watched in silence as he placed Jeanette’s body in the hole in the greenhouse floor and then covered her with soil.
‘Right,’ he said when the hole was filled in. ‘You can help with the cement.’
He tipped up a bucketful of grey slop out on top of the soil and showed her how to level it with a length of wood, leaving her to complete the task while he went outside to mix more cement. It felt like hours before the floor was finally finished. He’d put in a wooden bench over where Jeanette was buried and cemented the feet into the floor and Caroline had to kneel down to smooth around the edges.
‘Get that last bit done,’ he told Caroline. ‘Then get back to bed and never tell anybody what you’ve done. If you do, the police will lock me up and they’ll lock you up for helping me. You’ll never see your mum again.’
Caroline had to pass the wooden block across the cement three times before she managed to erase the tracks of her tears where they’d spilled over her sister’s body. As one final small act of rebellion, or remembrance, she’d found a nail and written Jeanette’s initials as small as she could in the corner of the greenhouse floor where her dad might never find them. Jeanette might not have a proper grave but at least Caroline had marked where she was buried.
36
Kate could feel Caroline’s breath against her neck as she told her story, her words becoming almost inaudible as she described how she’d tried to mark her sister’s grave.
The knife point had slipped and was resting against Kate’s collarbone; she could feel it clearly through her coat, sense its coldness and purpose. She struggled against her rising panic – images from the previous summer, of a different knife and a different attacker, threatening to overwhelm her.
‘I still don’t understand why I’m here,’ she said to Caroline, forcing herself to stay calm; hoping not to antagonise her captor too much until she could work out a way to get free from the loosening grip. ‘I get that your dad was a complete bastard who killed your sister and screwed you up but what’s the point of all this?’
She felt Caroline sigh against her.
‘I’m so fucking tired. I had a plan but it’s going wrong, coming unravelled. I wanted to be able to walk away, to start again but you won’t let me do that, will you? You’re going to hound me every day. I thought I might be able to get you to stop the funeral, if I could talk to you, explain everything, but I know that’s not going to happen. If I let you go you’ll just ring your work and somebody will come and get me. So now I’m in another mess and the only way out is to get rid of you. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt anybody else but I can’t seem to stop what I’ve started. It’s his fault. I can feel his poison in me, flowing through my veins. I wouldn’t have been like this if it hadn’t been for Dennis. I could have been happy; I could have had a life.
‘I just needed somebody to know what he was like. What it was like for us after we buried Jeanette. My mum didn’t know the details but I’m sure she guessed. She never used the greenhouse and she
had no interest in the flowerbeds that he put in. And I was terrified for years. Terrified of him. Of his fists and his feet. Terrified that somebody would find out what we’d done and I’d be put in jail. He’d torment me with it, you know. He’d say that there was a police car on the street or that they were on the phone. He enjoyed making me afraid; enjoyed the power that he had over me. I was a complete mess until I did my GCSEs.’
‘What changed then?’ Kate asked, trying to keep the woman talking. If she stopped then Kate knew that she was as good as dead.
‘I saw a way out. I knew that if I was clever enough I could go to university. My grades were excellent so I put in another two years’ hard work and got my A Levels.’
As she listened, Kate saw something on the towpath. Lights. Probably a quarter of a mile away, bobbing up and down and definitely heading in the direction of the lock. Somebody was coming towards them. She made a play of trying to struggle free, shifting position on the wooden arm of the lock gate, angling herself so that Caroline wouldn’t be able to see the lights if she wanted to keep hold of Kate’s arm.
‘Just. Sit. Still.’ Caroline said, twisting round with her, away from the direction of the lights.
‘What about your mum?’ Kate asked, breathing heavily from her exertions; buying time.
‘What about her?’ Caroline asked.
‘Did she really kill herself?’
Another heavy sigh. ‘Yes. I know she did because I got her the sleeping tablets. I told the receptionist at the doctors that I’d lost her last prescription and they believed me and gave me another one. We wanted to make sure that she did it right. It was what she wanted and I helped her. I couldn’t do it until I was eighteen – we knew that the chemist wouldn’t give me the drugs if I was underage. She couldn’t live with him any longer. He made her life a misery and nobody knew except me. Everybody on the estate thought he was a fantastic husband and father; that he looked after us both when Jeanette disappeared. He didn’t – he terrorised us.’
Merciless: a gripping detective thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book 2) Page 26
