There was a noise below and she craned to see Nas disappear through a door. Fuck. She jumped the last few steps, pushing open the fire door into the car park. ‘Where are you going?’
Nasreen was walking across the expanse. She turned, and Freddie saw for the first time that she had something in her hand. Keys.
‘Romeland High.’ Nas pressed the fob and a navy car beeped into life.
Freddie was so shocked she stopped. ‘The school?’
‘I want to talk to Mrs Wilshire, find out if she knows who Alex Black is. She’s our best shot.’ She opened the driver’s door.
‘I didn’t know you could drive.’ Freddie ran the last few metres and let herself into the passenger seat. ‘Is this your car?’
‘No, it’s a pool car.’ Nas fiddled with the ignition and adjusted her seat and mirror.
‘Right,’ Freddie nodded. She couldn’t believe she was going to say this. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’
Nas turned to look at her. ‘I may very well have lost my job, Freddie.’
Freddie saw the pain on her friend’s face, reached out and gave her hand a squeeze.
Nas shook her off. ‘But I’m not losing Lottie: I owe Jack that much.’ She started the car.
‘Seriously, I can’t believe you never said you could drive?’
A smile flickered across Nas’s lips. She pulled a pair of black boots from her handbag and replaced her high, spiked heels. Better. She stopped the car as they reached the barrier to exit the car park and turned to look at Freddie again. Nas’s mascara had smudged under her right eye. Just a small amount, but enough to tell Freddie she’d been crying on the way down the stairs. ‘You heard what DI Saunders said.’
‘He’s a prick.’
‘He’s my boss. And he’s suspended me. I’ve already compromised myself, but you don’t have to do this.’
Freddie almost laughed. It was absurd: the rebel Nasreen. How had they got here?
Nas took a big breath. ‘I won’t blame you if you choose to walk away.’
‘I can’t just forget Lottie.’ It was ten past seven. The thought of the girl out there in danger, the clock ticking …
‘You’re sure?’ Nasreen said. Her eyes searched Freddie’s face, looking for what: fear? Freddie was shit scared, but that didn’t mean she was about to abandon her friend. She nodded.
‘Good,’ said Nas, but she didn’t look pleased. Determination coloured her face. She edged the car forwards and the barrier lifted. And then they were out on the street, driving away from Westminster, from London. Driving towards St Albans. Instinctively Freddie reached for her phone, gripping it like a comforter in her hand.
Chapter 45
Thursday 17 March
08:35
T – 55 mins
Again Agnes Wilshire’s landline rang out. Freddie Googled St Albans dentists: there were twenty-seven of them. ‘What about if I start calling local dentists – see if we can find out where she is?’ She braced as Nas sped past cars on the slip road off the motorway. She’d stopped looking at the speedometer when she saw it break a hundred.
‘Patient confidentiality. They probably won’t confirm if she’s there,’ Nas said.
She had to try. She dialled the first number; an answerphone clicked in. ‘You’ve reached the Maltings Dental Practice. Our opening hours are 9 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. Monday to Friday.’ Dammit. She tried the next, ringing off as she heard another machine click in. ‘Why does no one get up in the bloody mornings!’
They were passing gaggles of school kids now, bustling towards their day. They’d made record time, but it still might not be enough. Freddie felt sick thinking of Lottie. They had less than an hour.
Nas drove straight up to the modern school building, beeping the horn to move the blur of school kids.
‘Pigs!’ a lad shouted, and there was a clap of laughter. Nasreen gave them a cold stare as she slammed her door.
Kids had their phones out and were taking photos of the car, its blue lights still flashing behind the grille. Up ahead a woman in a long dark skirt and coat turned to look at the commotion. Freddie did a double take. Was it just wishful thinking? No: she recognised her grey hair and glasses. ‘Oh my god! That’s her! That’s Agnes! I saw her photo online!’
‘Mrs Wilshire?’ Nasreen jogged towards her.
‘Yes?’ The woman looked from the car to them.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Cudmore and this is Freddie Venton. We’re investigating a case and we wondered if we could ask you some questions?’ Was she allowed to say that if she’d been suspended?
‘Oh, of course. Won’t you come in?’ Mrs Wilshire stood aside as they filed into the reception area.
‘We wanted to ask you some questions about a pupil called Alex Black. We believe he would have been here six years ago,’ Nas said.
Freddie’s heart was pounding. Mrs Wilshire looked thoughtful. ‘Alex? That’s quite a popular name. Alex Black, you say?’
Nas nodded.
‘I’m not sure. I think I remember. Short boy. Dark hair. You remember some children so well. It can be for all kinds of reasons, but there are so many of them. People stop me in the street to say hello, and I have no recollection of them at all. I just ask them how they’re doing.’ She smiled sweetly. Freddie felt her heart drop. Possibly short with dark hair wasn’t much to go on.
‘What about a Daisy Jones? Blonde girl. She might have been in the same year as Alex.’
‘Oh, now Daisy I remember. Such a pretty thing. One of those always surrounded by friends. She had such a lovely smile.’ Mrs Wilshire looked worried. ‘Nothing’s happened to her, has it?’
‘No she’s fine, as far as we’re aware,’ Nas said.
Freddie looked around at the felt boards on the walls. The displays had been changed since they’d been in the day before.
‘Do you remember anything happening between Alex Black and Daisy Jones?’ Nas said.
‘I’m not sure, dear. I’m sorry,’ the lady said. ‘But I do remember some upset in her final year. I can’t remember what it was over. A boyfriend, probably. You know what teenagers are like.’
Freddie was staring at the board in front of her, which documented a biology field trip. There were sketches of trees and animals, graphs and pie charts, printed fact sheets and photos. It was a wood. She leant in to read one project: ‘Biodiversity in Wildhill Wood.’ The wood Chloe’s body had been found in. ‘Is this Wildhill Wood?’ she said. Nas’s ears pricked. ‘Do the school go here frequently?’
‘Why, yes it is,’ smiled Agnes Wilshire. ‘We take the Year Elevens annually. It’s a beautiful place, great fun for the kids.’
Nas’s voice had quickened. ‘Would Alex Black have gone there? And Daisy Jones?’
‘I would expect so. They were probably the last year we camped: it’s so hard to get parental volunteers that we just go for the day now.’
‘Is there a campsite in the wood?’ Nas said.
Freddie was staring at the sketches. Bats. Birds. A badger.
‘There is an education centre,’ Mrs Wilshire was saying. Freddie took her phone out. Flicked through her photos. ‘It was used as a hide and the children used to sleep there. They’d stay up and observe bats and owls in their natural habitat.’
Owls.
‘Nas!’ Freddie held her phone against the board. She’d taken a photo of the blown-up section of the wall hanging behind Lottie’s head, the elongated loops they thought might be a drawing of bananas or pencils. She held it next to a student’s drawing of an owl mid-flight. The owl’s wings were in full span, the feathers on the end forming a row of elongated loops. ‘It’s a wing.’
This is it.
‘Mrs Wilshire, do they have drawings of animals on the wall?’ Nas asked quickly.
‘How did you know that?’ Mrs Wilshire asked. ‘They had all these lovely scientific diagrams. But they lost funding and closed it a few years ago now.’
‘It’s the wing tip of an owl,’ Freddi
e said. Her voice sounded far away as blood rushed through her ears. ‘He’s got her in Wildhill Wood. In the education centre.’ She looked at Nas and they started for the door.
Chapter 46
Thursday 17 March
08:45
T – 45 mins
Freddie was running for the car. Nas was already there. On her phone calling it in. ‘Suspect is believed to be in Wildhill Wood. We are in pursuit. Suspect has one hostage and he may be armed. We have reason to believe the hostage’s life is in danger. This needs to be immediately relayed to DI Peter Saunders on the Gremlin taskforce at the Met.’
Freddie wrenched open the door as Nas did the same on the opposite side, throwing herself into the driver seat. The radio in the car crackled. Nas started the engine. Freddie pulled her belt across her. Nas flicked a button and a siren and flashing light sprang to life. ‘The controller said their full team is at the road traffic accident on the motorway. It’s a multi-vehicle pile-up. About forty minutes away.’
Forty minutes? Freddie looked at her phone. ‘They’re not going to get there in time.’
‘They’re going to try. They’ve put in a request for an armed response unit.’
‘We’ve got forty-five minutes to the deadline,’ Freddie gasped. ‘Go now!’
With the blue light flashing and the siren blaring, Nas’s unmarked police car squealed away from the kerbside. Freddie had directions to the wood up on her phone. ‘Turn left!’ she shouted.
They powered down the road, Nas circumventing cars in front of them. Freddie’s heart was slamming against her ribcage.
Their phones beeped in unison. ‘It’s him! It’s another message.’
‘What does it say?’ shouted Nas.
She stared at the phone, her hands shaking. ‘You have thirty minutes to save the girl’s life. Shit!’ The image opened on her screen: a photo of a syringe and a burned spoon. ‘Is that heroin?’ She held the phone up for Nas to see.
‘Same as the syringe found at Chloe’s crime scene,’ Nas said.
He’s going to inject Lottie, like he did Chloe. He’s going to kill her. ‘Drive!’ Freddie screamed. She was flicking between screens. They weren’t going to make it. ‘There’s a turn-off, coming up on the left. Fuck. No. It’s one way. The wrong way.’
‘Show me.’ Nas grabbed Freddie’s hand and pulled the phone into her line of sight. God, don’t get car sick now, Nas. Her own stomach somersaulted as they powered past a black car.
‘Twenty-seven minutes!’ shouted Freddie, her voice as high as the siren.
Nas exhaled as she flipped the indicator and swung the car into the one-way street. A car was coming directly at them. Freddie closed her eyes and braced. There was a jolt as they mounted the kerb. She opened her eyes just in time to see them narrowly miss a lamppost as Nas turned the car back onto the road. ‘Fuck! Now I know why you don’t drive often!’ The driver behind them leant on his horn. The loud honk ripped through Freddie. ‘We’re the police, you idiot!’
‘Time!’ Nas’s eyes were fixed ahead.
‘Twenty-five minutes!’ They were doing nearly ninety miles per hour. Houses blurred past, then Nasreen suddenly took a right and they were at the edge of the wood. It was huge, stretching on in front of them. The car bumped onto a mud track. Less than fifty metres ahead of them was a gate. Nas slid the car to a stop. Freddie was already out and running. The gate was padlocked. She shook it. No way through. ‘It’s locked!’
‘We haven’t time, go!’ Nas’s car door slammed shut behind her.
Freddie gripped the cold damp metal, one trainer on the slippy bars as Nas vaulted the gate and headed into the wood. Freddie scrambled to get up, over, slipping on wet leaves as she came down on the other side. Her breath was coming in frantic puffs of condensation. She ran down the path after Nas, the trees rising high above them. The path was narrowing, and they had to jump puddles and dodge stinging nettles. The forest was so dense you couldn’t see far in either direction. ‘Eighteen minutes!’ she shouted. They’d been sprinting for ages and all they were doing was getting deeper and deeper into a forest. This was the perfect place to hide someone. It was dark, damp and difficult under foot. She could no longer hear the cars on the road behind them. How the hell were they going to find her? Mud was splashed up both their legs. ‘Shit!’ Nas said.
She just stopped short of skidding into her. The path in front of them went in three different directions. ‘Which way? We could split, but that’s only two options covered,’ Nas said.
Freddie pulled out her phone. Signal was dropping in and out. One bar teased and then vanished. 3G and then nothing. She Googled ‘Wildhill Conservation Centre’ and found a photo of a squat single-storey building, with a lip of a hide running along the front. It looked like a portakabin. All the photos were tightly cropped; there was nothing to tell her where it was. All the trees looked the same. She looked over her shoulder. Nothing but more trees. She was disorientated.
Freddie scrolled down the images. Searching. Looking. Anything. Anything. ‘There!’ A photo of an old wooden sign pointed to Wildhill Conservation Centre. It stood at a three-way fork in the track. A sign that wasn’t here anymore. It pointed left. ‘That way!’ Fourteen minutes left. ‘Go!’ Freddie screamed.
And Nas did; her legs powerful and strong, she soon stripped past Freddie. Freddie fought to keep up, her legs screaming, her chest burning. Suddenly the track opened into a clearing and there it was: the shell of the building. Smashed windows. Dark inside but for the bare, eerie glow of technology. A blue screen. Freddie thought she might vomit. Nas hurdled over a fallen tree, she was metres away from the building. ‘Alex Black!’ she shouted. ‘This is the police. We know you’re in there.’ Freddie’s throat closed in panic. Nas signalled for Freddie to stop. ‘He doesn’t know we don’t have the whole team here,’ she whispered. ‘Show back-up where to come.’
She couldn’t leave her.
Nas took her baton out of its holster and shook it to extend it. ‘Go!’ she hissed.
Freddie turned and started to run. She had to get help. Blood thundered in her ears. A tree root grabbed at her foot. She tripped, skidded on wet leaves and fell forwards. Her hands shot out to break the fall. Her phone flew and smashed onto the ground, splitting apart. Her hands pummelled into sharp sticks. Pain radiated out from her knee. She must get help. She pushed herself up as a muffled scream came from within the Wildhill Conservation Centre, and she looked back to see Nas disappear inside. In the distance she heard the faint wail of a police siren. And Freddie Venton ran like she never had before.
Chapter 47
Thursday 17 March
09:21
T – 9 mins
Nasreen bent and stepped through the once glass-panelled door. The building was dark, with a low ceiling. She was in a corridor that smelt of piss. The floor was littered with brown leaves, fag ends and beer cans, strewn amongst the roots of trees that pushed up through the decaying wooden floor. She kept thinking of the runner’s body lying under the tree in Greenwich Park. More trees. Another forest. Another body? She listened. She could hear movement. A low murmured voice. She glanced back over her shoulder. How long would back-up take to arrive? She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes for Freddie to reach the road, ten minutes for them to reach the building. T – 9 minutes. There wasn’t time to wait.
Heading away from the smashed glass side of the portakabin, she walked lightly towards where the noise was coming from. The scratched wooden door was heavy with graffiti and swollen from water damage; it lay ajar, the catch no longer biting. She could hear movement on the other side, breathing. The sound of a door closing? She paused, held her own breath. The voice was no longer audible. Everything was still. T – 8 minutes. Nasreen gently pushed the door open a crack. There was Lottie, still in her pink running kit, arms and legs bound to a chair, a gag in her mouth. Her head hung low to her chest, her shorn hair hacked patchy at the back of her scalp, but she was breathing. Still alive. A twig snapped and Na
sreen looked up. A woman, blonde hair, also in running gear, fell forwards onto the ground. There’s another one? Another victim? She looked familiar. She was in her early twenties: the same as Nasreen.
‘Oh my god, help me! Please!’ She crawled towards Nasreen across the rubbish-strewn floor. Lottie’s head snapped up and she screamed through the gag, squirming to break free. ‘Please! He’s coming! Please help us!’ The woman stumbled up to her feet. Daisy? Mud and what looked like a scratch sliced across her face.
‘Don’t worry.’ Nasreen kept her eye on the far door; they didn’t have long. There were no signs of weapons or traps. A shelf ran the length of the front window, marking where the hide once was, and on it she saw a number of syringes. Lottie was still violently squirming, fear in her eyes. What had he done to her? ‘I need you to remain calm, Lottie. Help is on the way. You’re safe now.’
The woman on her hands and knees gave out a sob. Struggling up, she took a shaky step. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and tripped. Nasreen rushed to catch her as she crumpled, dropping her baton. Her blonde hair fell forward; Nasreen put her weight on her back foot, levered her up. She’d have to carry her out. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ the girl was saying. Tears were falling from her eyes. ‘Thank you, Nasreen.’
A cold chill ripped up Nasreen’s calves. The hairs on her neck stood to attention. ‘How do you know my name?’ The girl shifted from slippery liquid sack to solid strength, her hand in her hoodie pocket. Nasreen saw her baton on the floor and went for her pepper spray. Too late. She saw the girl’s eyes: clear, focused. The syringe flashed through the air. Lottie was screaming through the gag. Nasreen felt the needle punch into her chest, the plunger being pressed. Air forced its way out of her mouth. ‘Who are you?’ She stumbled backwards, wrenching at the plastic handle.
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