Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Her knee, face and arms hit the pavement.

  ‘Whoops,’ said George, reaching for her too late, not realising that she had hurt herself. For a few silent seconds she lay still on the pavement, silent.

  As she looked up, George put two hands over his face. Her nose was bloodied from the fall and she was crying, a string of spit between one lip and the other.

  He took her arms and lifted her to her feet, but she pulled away from him. She was crying so loudly, her face smeared with blood and tears and holding her arms out from her body, as if she was a puppet.

  ‘Hush,’ he said to her, bending down and trying to thumb a tear from her cheek, but she only cried louder. He looked at his hand and saw a spot of her blood. He glanced around nervously in case anyone was watching. She was making so much noise and he realised that it would look as though he had done it. There was no one in sight.

  He knelt on the pavement. ‘Hush, I know it hurts, but you’re OK.’

  She was trying to speak to him through her tears, but he couldn’t understand. Above her cries, he heard a single pulse of a siren and looked up to see a police car two hundred yards away at the junction.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He scooped her up in his arms and put her back in the car, then locked the door and ran around to the driver’s seat.

  Inside the car her cries seemed louder and George was suddenly full of panic. He tried to keep his speed down on the narrow roads but headed straight for Olrig Street on the A9. He kept his eyes fixed on the mirrors, wondering where the police car had gone. He was driving a stolen car with a bag of used banknotes in the boot and a young, hurt child at his side, and George knew that could only go badly.

  She stopped crying suddenly and dabbed at her nose with the fingers of both hands.

  ‘Put your seatbelt on, eh?’ said George, preparing to accelerate as soon as they were on the main road.

  ‘Where are we going? Take me back.’

  ‘I can’t take you back just now, button.’

  She began to cry again. It sounded different this time, no longer the low wail that came after she hit the pavement. Now it was quick gulping sobs. She sat up on her knees and began to slap the window with her palms.

  He pulled her back into her seat. The tyres screeched against the tarmac as he turned on to Olrig Street.

  ‘Put your seatbelt on,’ said George, but she was crying again and couldn’t hear him. She tried to open the button lock on the door once or twice but George reached over and took her hand away, driving one-handed for a while with his left hand pinning her hands in her lap.

  ‘Would you calm down?’ he shouted, and she quietened, looking up at him, still crying, her bottom lip curling.

  ‘There’s no need to make such a fuss.’ It was as if she wasn’t listening to him. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead and ran a hand through his hair.

  He had to think what to do, but could think of nothing with the noise she was making.

  6

  Angus Campbell

  Wednesday 2 October, 1985

  Angus was sitting in his office typing up a story about a sponsored sing-along by the Caithness choir, which had raised five hundred pounds for the Thurso care home. He had a radio scanner on his desk, which he had tuned in to the police radio frequency. Highlands Police occasionally barked updates on their day as he laboriously typed with two fingers. Angus had bought the scanner a month ago in the hope of discovering a scoop. He had already lost interest. Highlands Police only talked about food and TV, except on the odd occasion when someone shoplifted in Inverness or someone else was glassed in Fort William.

  At work, Angus was focused and professional. He didn’t make coffee for colleagues or indulge himself from the box of Milk Tray that had been left open after Jennifer’s engagement. He was better at his job than most of his contemporaries, because his horizons were wider. He was not merely punching the clock or passing the time. Angus was improving himself and educating the readership of the John o’Groat Journal. He wasn’t just collecting a pay cheque, he was a journalist: it was a calling of messianic proportions.

  He was five foot three but he had always wanted other men to look up to him. There were some in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland who considered that Angus’s profession was worldly, if not blasphemous. Angus was frustrated at the John o’Groat Journal, but he felt that the true journalism to which he aspired was fully aligned with his beliefs. Journalism was evangelism. He only needed the right story. The right story could bring Angus Campbell’s vision to the world.

  He pulled the pages from his typewriter and read them with his corrector ready. Suddenly, over the airwaves, Angus heard the sentence that he had been waiting his whole life to hear: it was a soul-completing sentence. Hearing it was like being born: being born again.

  ‘Attention all units: Suspected abduction of a female child from Ravenshill Primary School in Thurso. The suspect is a tall man with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a dark suit and a light shirt. Car make and number plates are unknown, but it is a dark-coloured hatchback, possibly red, brown or black. The child’s name is Molly Henderson, and she is seven years old, with long dark hair, an eyepatch, and was last seen wearing her school uniform.’

  Angus submitted his article on the sing-along and then jumped into his car. It whined when he turned the ignition but started on a second try. It was a thirty-minute drive from Wick to Thurso. He drove straight to Ravenshill Primary School, fixed his tie and inspected his teeth in the rear-view mirror, dusted his jacket, slipped it on and then walked into the school, notebook in hand.

  Angus knew Betsy Clarke in the school office from church. Her husband, Thomas, often led the hymns. Angus asked for Betsy as soon as he arrived, but she was on her tea break and so he waited, on a chair made for a child, his knees to his chest, considering the questions that he would ask her. He wrote down several points on his notepad and underlined each one heavily in biro.

  Betsy came for him the minute her tea break ended. She was wearing a tweed skirt with a Fair Isle jumper. At church, unfailingly, Betsy wore a navy suit with white collar and cuffs and a felt navy hat with net detail.

  Betsy took him into the office, made him a cup of tea and offered him a digestive biscuit, which he accepted. He flicked over the pages of his notebook.

  ‘It’s a terrible business,’ Betsy began, brushing a crumb from her ample bosom. ‘You never think it’ll happen here. I mean, that wee lassie, just the other day I was talking to her…’

  ‘You know her and the family?’

  ‘The Hendersons.’ Betsy nodded with her mouth closed, dimpling her chin. ‘He’s the big boss at Dounreay. They don’t want, that’s for sure… They live in the big detached house on Rose Street.’

  Angus’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Rose Street.’

  Betsy nodded.

  Angus made a note that Molly’s father, Mr Henderson was the managing director at Dounreay nuclear plant, just five miles west of Thurso. Looking back at the notes he had made so far, he said, ‘The police have a rough description of the kidnapper… so there were witnesses?’

  ‘Three girls in Molly’s class say they saw Molly go off with him. I think the girls were all walking to school together. The police are questioning each of them and their parents.’

  ‘Do you know who the girls are?’

  ‘I do,’ said Betsy, her eyes widening, ‘Sandra Tait, Pamela McGowan and Sheila Tanner.’

  ‘And do we know the reason he took her and not the other girls?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe the other girls were warier – I heard the girls said that Molly went with him… arm in arm.’

  ‘And what’s Molly like? Is she wild?’

  ‘Oh no, the opposite. She does well at school but she’s quiet as a mouse. I’m always telling her to speak up. I think she’s shy and she gets picked on a little because of her lazy eye.

  ‘It’s a terrible business. I don
’t know for sure, but there’s a rumour a police car was in the area following up a different disturbance. It’s like she was snatched right under our noses, but under the police’s nose too.’

  ‘And this description of the attacker…’

  ‘It’s from the girls. Silly wee girls, I don’t think they were very exact.’

  Angus nodded, lips closed.

  ‘What about the Hendersons?’ he said. ‘Are the family believers?’

  ‘The mother’s a lapsed Catholic but I’m not sure about him.’

  ‘And Molly’s their only daughter?’

  ‘Their only child.’

  By the time Angus pulled up on Rose Street two police cars and three news vans were sitting outside a stone villa set back from the road. A hack with an STV badge was chain-smoking beside the Hendersons’ hedge. There was a nip in the autumn air and Angus shivered, zipping up his anorak as he approached the man.

  ‘Are the police still inside?’ he asked, straining to read the man’s badge.

  ‘Aye. Are you a neighbour?’

  ‘Angus Campbell, John o’Groat Journal,’ he said, offering a hand, which waited between them until the man took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled, ‘John Burns.’

  Angus pursed his lips and put his hand back in his pocket.

  ‘Has anyone spoken to the parents?’

  Burns narrowed his eyes and took a drag of his cigarette, as if considering what to tell Angus. ‘The police have been in there for hours interviewing the family, but a neighbourhood search has been organised and there’s a police plan in place with lookouts on the main junctions leaving town. The word is that there’ll be a press conference in an hour or so. A sorry business.’

  ‘Is there any suggestion of a motive?’

  ‘What do you think? Here we go again. I’ve spent most of my career on these cases. It’s only a couple of years since Tracey Begg went missing, and that murder has been linked to Charlotte Martin previous. He takes his time and has a break between killings. It’s the Moors murderers all over again. Sick bastard.’

  Angus didn’t approve of the man’s language, but he sympathised with the message. ‘I have a daughter myself.’

  ‘Well, keep an eye on her. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Molly’s father’s out there with the search party right now, combing Lady Janet’s Wood. Useless if you ask me. If that sick bastard’s got her, he’ll be long gone. Down south, I expect. The police aren’t going to say anything at the press conference, but I have it on the QT that they’re already comparing this abduction with the other murdered girls’.’

  Standing on the pavement with the damp sea air seeping into his bones, Angus watched the shadow of Molly’s mother at the window, pulling her cardigan around her. He went back to the car and drafted details of his story until the police came out and informed the waiting journalists that a press conference would be held in the Royal Hotel.

  At the press conference, Angus was three rows from the front but could still feel the heat of the lamps that the television crews had installed. It felt like his time. There was a warm, buoyant feeling in his stomach. The page of his notepad was clean and fresh and waiting for him to mark it. Even although he was in the audience, Angus felt as if he were on stage. The spotlight had finally found him, like the finger of God calling him forward. He loosened his tie as the sweat broke at his hairline. He saw it clearly now: like the crusaders, Angus had been called upon to protect the sacred. A Thurso child had been snatched and his role was to find the person responsible, even if the child was gone. He would not give up; he would be relentless in his quest.

  He took a few moments to bask in a fantasy where he was recognised by the Queen for his services to journalism and the public. He imagined himself being knighted, feeling the gentle tap of the sword on each shoulder and a room full of people applauding.

  Several people took their seats behind a table covered in a starched white tablecloth. Three microphones had been strategically placed and there were jugs of water and glasses. Detective Inspector Black tapped the microphone three times and noisily cleared his throat.

  ‘At approximately 08.45 hours this morning young Molly Henderson, of 56 Rose Street, Thurso, went missing on her way to school. It’s our belief that Molly has been abducted.’

  Angus focused his attention on Molly’s mother. She was unmistakable; a blur of misery and torment. Her agonised face reminded Angus of a painting by Masaccio, of Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden.

  ‘She is seven years old,’ the detective continued. ‘A photograph has been circulated. She was witnessed talking to a tall, dark-haired, clean-shaven, blue-eyed man wearing a dark suit shortly before she disappeared. An artist’s sketch has been prepared and is also being circulated. A detailed search is already under way, as concerns for Molly’s safety increase. Molly’s father has prepared the following short statement.’

  The detective turned to the tall thin man at the end of the table. He spoke with mouth turned down and eyes focused on a piece of paper before him. ‘We miss our little girl very much and are hoping for her safe return. We ask anyone who has seen Molly to get in touch as soon as possible, because we want her home…’ The man’s face crumpled and Molly’s mother laid a hand on his arm. ‘Very much,’ the man managed, his voice broken, ‘very much indeed.’

  ‘We have one or two minutes for questions,’ said the detective, frowning into the audience.

  Every hand shot into the air, and Angus’s was among them.

  ‘Is there any information on the car the victim was abducted in?’

  ‘As yet we have no clear information on the vehicle.’

  ‘Has this abduction been connected to the earlier abductions of Tracey Begg and Charlotte Martin?’

  ‘No such connections have been made at this time, but we are investigating all possible leads.’

  ‘Are Highlands Police working on the assumption that this is a serial offender?’

  ‘As I said, no connections have been made as yet; we are in the process of collecting information.’

  ‘What is the plan for the next forty-eight hours?’

  ‘A search is under way, including police, dogs and members of the public; police across the UK have been notified. We urge members of the public to come forward with any information that they may have.’

  Angus’s hand had been raised for so long that his fingers had begun to lose feeling. The press conference was called to a close before he was able to ask his question.

  He got into his car and slammed the door. The engine refused to start until he opened the choke.

  ‘What,’ he had wanted to ask, ‘is the supposed motive for the abduction?’

  ‘Depravity’ was the answer, but Angus had wanted to hear them say it.

  Angus put his foot down as he sped home along the Highland roads, headlights on full beam in case a stray deer crossed his path.

  He felt different now that the child had been taken. He felt inspired. He had a calling, after all. ‘Thank you, dear Lord,’ he said, out loud, gripping the steering wheel and allowing a small whoop of joy.

  When he reached the farmhouse, it was after eight. Hazel had his dinner in the oven and put his plate under the grill to warm as soon as he entered.

  Angus had met Hazel through the church on Barra, at the Bible study group organised for the ‘young folk’. Angus had liked her timidity and her piousness. She was just over five feet and Angus felt tall beside her. She had been raised in the church and had always known her place. His mother had passed already when he met Hazel, but his father had approved of the match. Hazel was an only child and her father was an elder at the church. She had been a plain, nervous girl with full hips.