by Rebecca Heap
She looked through the images and noticed that one was lit up very brightly. She didn’t bother examining it closely before she tapped it so that it filled the whole screen. Her heart stopped beating and she sucked in a breath but found herself unable to release it. She was looking at the cellar beneath the house. All the lights were on. A man was lying on the floor. He was naked. His hands and feet were tied and he was curled in a foetal position. Dark blood was spattered on the bare floor.
She couldn’t see anyone else and her shocked brain just screamed “Daddy!” However, the man on the floor suddenly lifted his head and discredited her assumption. Even so, her breath still left her body on a loud sob. It was Michael. He no longer wore the beard but his lower face was smeared and speckled with bright blood, as if the hair had been viciously shaved off, taking skin with it. Dark bruises stood out on his face like stains and his nose looked broken. His body looked beaten but his eyes were undimmed, bright and defiant in his damaged, swollen face.
She should have been euphoric. Here was her kidnapper, clearly apprehended and defeated. But she just felt sick. A message flashed up on screen. “Audio?” it asked. She pressed it with a trembling finger. She heard her father’s voice.
“Where is my daughter? Tell me what you have done with her!” He kicked Michael in the stomach, hard. Michael grunted. Kate winced. Did her father think this man had taken her again? He must have had someone check her apartment. It would have looked disturbing with the door unlocked, no answer on her mobile and no-one there. She’d left that note under a neighbour’s door but it would not have been discovered yet. She no longer wore the locket her father had used to track her down all that time ago. Despite what had happened, or maybe because of it, she loathed the idea of being tagged like an animal, unable to be truly free or make her own choices.
She was about to race down to the cellar and assure her father of her safety, when she heard Michael reply. “Why does it bother you what has happened to her?” he asked, his voice hoarse but his words discernible. “You don’t care what happens to other young girls as long as you are making money. You didn’t care what happened to my sister. It hurts doesn’t it? It hurts to know that your loved one may be lying in the cold and dark somewhere, may be lying broken and bleeding...even dying.”
Her father let out a keening cry, the likes of which she’d never heard before, and flew at Michael. He attacked him like a lunatic, spittle spraying out of his mouth and his face demonically deformed by the intensity of his fury. Kate was appalled. She had never in her life seen her father lose his control.
Sebastian eventually pulled her father off, shouting “You’ll kill him! You’ll kill him! And then he’ll never tell you where she is!”
Michael’s face was now so swollen up, he was unrecognisable. He coughed, rackingly, and spat blood and what looked like broken fragments of tooth on to the floor. Kate couldn’t believe it when she heard him laughing. “Who would have believed you would come to my rescue!” he said to Sebastian. “You’re not the rescuing type, are you? Does Harry know you tried to force yourself on his daughter? That you caused the car accident and left her for dead? That it was me who resuscitated her?”
Sebastian glared at Michael. “Shut up, you lying prick!”
Harry was now standing, red faced and sweating and trying to recover his breath. He turned to Sebastian, “What the fuck is he talking about?”
“Ignore him,” Sebastian said. “He’s just trying to screw with your head. He’s trying to turn us against each other.”
Michael tried to sit up. “You can’t pretend you don’t know what Sebastian is,” he said to Harry. “He’s a rapist and a murderer. He killed Angela, not me. He did all the dirty work, while you sat back and deluded yourself that your sordid little empire was all light and happiness. It still amazes me that you ever trusted your daughter with this monster.”
Harry glared at Michael. “Stop twisting things! It’s you I should never have trusted her with! You’re the fucking monster! Now where is she?”
Michael ignored Harry’s question. “Twisting things? How is it twisting things? I’m making you finally face reality Harry! My sister, Brenna, was tortured and mortally wounded by one of your wonderful clients and then you allowed her to die! You ordered the murder of the one person who tried to help her and then covered it up! Is that what happened to Kate’s mother too? Did she find out what you were up to?”
Kate was still riveted to the screen. There he was accusing her father to his face. Could what he said actually be true? It occurred to her that the only reason Michael wasn’t dead was because they thought he had information about where she was. Her anger towards Michael had died, like a match flame, fierce but short-lived. She looked at his battered face and just felt a wrenching sadness. She had to make her presence known, before something terrible happened.
She ran out of the room and flung herself down the stone stairs leading to the cellar. The room had no door, only a stone archway. She was about to enter the brightly lit room when she heard her father speak again.
“I had no choice!” he protested.
“Neither did Brenna or any of the girls you groom. Do you even care what happens to them? Or are they just commodities to you?”
Harry’s voice suddenly returned to its icy tones. “You have the nerve to question me like this? You’re no better. You kidnapped my daughter and terrorised her. Where was her choice? Have you killed her? Is that your idea of justice?”
There was a hollow silence now but then Michael’s next words dropped into it like cold pebbles in a still pond. “The kidnap wasn’t planned, whatever you might think. I didn’t even know she was your daughter. I couldn’t kill her, even if my life depended on it. I’m in love with her.” There was a shattered pause.
Kate's heart plummeted and she couldn't prevent the sob that escaped from her. She had moved into the entranceway and found two pairs of wide eyes gaping at her in shock.
"Katie?" Michael rasped out. "Is that you?" he was facing her, but clearly couldn't see her. He’d either been blinded or his eyes were swollen shut from the trauma to his face. Even though she had seen him on the camera, the extent of his injuries, when seen close up, appalled her.
"Katie!" her father shouted in relief and ran towards her with his arms open. She lifted the taser. "Stop!" she commanded. Harry came to an abrupt halt. Tears were now streaming down Kate's cheeks.
An evil grin settled over Sebastian's face. He lifted a gun from his pocket. Kate recognised the compact weapon as hers. He pointed the gun at Michael's head. "Well Katherine, I’m glad you’re here. Now you can enjoy seeing this traitorous cunt finally get what was always coming to him."
"No!" Kate screamed and pressed the taser's trigger. Two electrodes snaked out and hit Sebastian in the chest. He spasmed violently and fell heavily on the large rack of wine behind him. He released a strange, gurgling scream and then fell silent. But it wasn't enough to prevent the gun from firing. The shot echoed loudly in the confined space and Michael collapsed.
“No!” Kate screamed again and ran to the fallen man. She stroked the hair back from his broken face. "Michael can you hear me? Michael, please? I haven't finished with you yet!"
She felt someone slowly draw her away. “He's dead sweetheart,” her father said. She turned on him like a scalded cat. “Don’t touch me! What have you done? This is your fault! All of this is your fault!”
Her father drew back in surprise at her outburst. How much did Kate know? She turned back to Michael's body, hunched over and sobbing.
She felt a hand scrape her cheek and opened her eyes. She gasped.
"Katie," he whispered, his eyes glittering at her from between folds of bloodied flesh, his voice a harsh wheeze. "You have to get out. There's a bomb." She was amazed when he managed to crack what could only be a smile, distorted as it was by his damaged mouth. "I mean it this time."
Kate's eyes widened and then her mouth set in a determined line. She reached aroun
d him, attempting to lift him. He groaned and she noticed now the ragged furrow on his shoulder where the bullet had gouged him. Blood flowed on to her hand. “Then you're coming with me," she asserted.
"No! You haven't got time! Please Kate. I'm not going to make it anyway. Please just go!" he begged.
"I can't leave you!" she cried. She turned to try and enlist her father's help but he had disappeared. She frowned and tried to lift Sean again, but she only succeeded in hurting him.
She moaned in frustration and finally accepted defeat. "OK,” she conceded. “You win,” but he couldn't hear her. He lolled, limp and unconscious, in her arms. She laid him down gently on the cold concrete floor.
Her tears spilled on to his upturned face. She bent and kissed his bruised lips. "I loved you, you know. Sean, Michael or whoever you are. I couldn’t help myself."
She stood and suddenly thought of Sebastian. How could the stun gun have knocked him out for so long? It was then that she spotted the broken bottles all around him and the jagged glass sticking out of his throat.
She turned and ran.
She had just reached a phone box down the road from the house when a hot blast of air knocked her flat and all the glass in the phone box blew outwards with a loud shattering sound. There was a pause, like a huge intake of breath, and then an appallingly loud explosion as the ground shook beneath her.
After a few minutes, she got shakily to her feet and looked back at the house, her ears ringing and blood from a small cut on her cheek trickling into her mouth. Car alarms were mingling with the equally strident yelps of startled dogs but Kate heard them as though through a muffler. Her awareness was completely focused on where she had just come from. A huge puffy cloud sat on the horizon like an abhorrent black spider that had just consumed a satisfying meal.
CHAPTER 27
Kate stepped on to the concourse and raised a hand to her eyes, squinting in the bright sunshine that had belatedly decided to come out of hiding from behind the thick layer of fibrous clouds. She scanned the side of the racing circuit, trying to get a fix on where she was supposed to go. Someone spoke close by and she jumped a little, caught by surprise, as she had not heard anyone approach. A short man, with dark, greasy hair plastered to his skull and reddish skin that bore the ravages of teenage acne stood in front of her.
He addressed her again, “Can I help you, Miss?” Miss? She thought. She knew she could still pass for younger than her years but it had been a long time since someone had greeted her with this honorific.
“Yes, please” she replied. My son had a birthday party here, and I think he’s been hurt?”
Kate was anxious to see Timmy and ensure that his injury was as superficial as they had assured her over the phone. She had felt so guilty about having to work on his birthday, and her guilt was magnified a hundredfold by the fact that he had been hurt. It was the half term holiday and she normally booked him into the out of school club for the week. She had tried to persuade Timmy to wait until the weekend, so she could do something with him, but he had pleaded so imploringly to come here to Burnden Racepark on his actual birthday. She had let this, and other mothers’ assurances, persuade her into giving him into the hands of these people, not to mention trusting them with her child’s happiness.
“Oh, yes. Follow me,” he instructed. Her concern must have shown on her face because before he turned away, he put a hand on her arm and said, “Please don’t worry. Your son is perfectly fine.”
This did little to put her mind at rest .She assumed he was saying this, not to reassure her, but to downplay the seriousness of what had happened and avert litigation. She followed him down to the race track, her heels echoing on the concrete, feeling out of place in her fitted skirt and jacket.
She recognised Timmy’s exuberant laughter as it drifted over to her. Some of her tension dissipated. He couldn’t be bad if he was laughing. She heard the deeper note of another man’s voice, as she approached a covered area at the side of the pit lane. The short man she had been following said, “Timmy is in there, with our main instructor. You probably haven’t heard of him, but he’s the best there is, and he’s great with the kids. Why he hasn’t ever gone into professional racing is beyond any of us.” Kate looked into the man’s shining, nut-brown eyes. His was one of the worst cases of hero worship she had ever seen. It riled her for some reason and ignited her temper. Well, if this amazing “instructor” had put the thrill of the race before her son’s safety, then she would certainly be bringing him down a peg or two.
She marched into the garage and saw that Timmy was sitting in a full size touring car and a brawny man in full racing gear was kneeling beside him. She stalked over to them, but neither of them even noticed her. She watched as the man showed something to Timmy on the dashboard, and she couldn’t help feeling her heart expand when she heard Timmy’s voice rise in excitement and saw a glow of delight suffuse his face.
Sean bent down and smiled at the eager little face in front of him. He still couldn’t get over the way this young boy captivated him. He had shown racing skill beyond his years on the track. The other children had gone home a little while ago, happy but exhausted. Timmy was still waiting for his mother to collect him from work and, what with the little fall he’d had and the long day, it would have been understandable if some of his enthusiasm had started to wane. However, he was as animated as ever and seemed genuinely interested in even the most mundane facts about racing cars. He was different to the other children. He felt an affinity with him, almost like that of a kindred soul.
Kate got nearer, eyes scanning her son’s face. She noticed a raw looking graze on his right cheek and rushed over to him, shoving the instructor rudely to one side in her anxiety. “Timmy!” she cried. “What happened?”
“Oh, Hi Mum,” Timmy replied with the nonchalance only a child can perfect. “I’m fine.”
Kate stroked her fingers over the scrape on his cheek, eyes frantically searching for any other signs of injury. Timmy’s eyes flicked in embarrassment to the man behind her. He pushed her hand away. “Stop fussing Mum! I’m OK. It was my fault, anyway. I just tripped getting out of the kart.”
She relaxed a little. “Sorry sweetheart. It’s just when I heard you’d…”
“I know Mum but don’t sweat it.” Timmy was still looking beyond her, clearly trying to impress the man with his devil may care attitude. Kate pursed her lips. The guy obviously had her son signed up to his fan club as well. Timmy frowned. Kate belatedly felt a prick of shame for how discourteous she had been. She turned around but the man was walking rapidly away from them.
“Hey!” Timmy shouted. “Sean! Where are you going?” He leapt out of the car.
Sean had stared in disbelief at the mother of Timmy, unable to rip his eyes away. Even with her face turned away from him, he had recognised her. The hair was not the same; now darker and cut in a short, bobbed style. But the soft timbre of her voice, and the quick, graceful movements of her hands, remained exactly the same. She could have been transposed into an entirely different body and he’d have known her instantly.
“Oh God,” he whispered. The desire to have her recognise him battled passionately against his reason. Common sense had been the victor. He had never been a real part of her life and he was totally remote from it now. He was dead to her. He had to go. He had to get out of there. Now.
He stopped when he heard the boy shout but couldn’t bring himself to turn around. Timmy walked in front of him and looked up at him questioningly. “You weren’t leaving were you?” he asked his tone full of puzzled disbelief.
Sean swallowed and looked into Timmy’s wide blue eyes, eyes so like those of his mother he realised now. “Yes, kiddo, I’m afraid I have to go. Keep the passion burning, okay?” He punched his fist to Timmy’s and strode off fast and purposefully down the track, cursing under his breath when he realised that there was no easy exit in this direction.
He heard Timmy running after him. A cry from the boy could be he
ard even above the wind now howling around him. “Don’t go. Please don’t go yet!”
This simple plea melted Sean’s resolve like hot tears on thin ice. He turned and Timmy grabbed hold of his hand, his face flushed and his breath coming in rapid gasps. “Why did you walk off like that? I want you to speak to my Mum and tell her how good I was! She won’t believe me, but she’ll believe you!”
Sean listened to Kate approach them, his heart begging, “Just one more time. Just let me see her one more time,” while his reason savagely reproached him.
Her face was older, wearier and had lost that look of innocence. Her sapphire eyes were still bright but sadder and markedly haunted.
She spoke. “What made you leave like that? I'm sorry if I was rude to you. I’m Kate, Timothy’s Mum.” She held her hand out to him.
Sean just stared at it and then lifted his eyes back to hers.
She stepped closer. “Look, I know we got off on a bad foot,” she said. “But I can see how much Tim has enjoyed himself. I know his fall wasn’t your fault. Thank you for making his day so special.”
Sean didn’t say anything but he did release a breath he hadn't even realised he had been holding. Thank God, he was still wearing the helmet. She hadn’t recognised him. He hadn’t done wrong after all.
She frowned and he watched indignant colour begin to flood into her face.
Timmy wisely decided to let go of Sean’s hand.
“Would you mind answering me?” she asked her voice rising and her irritation returning. “And take off that helmet, if you don’t mind. I feel like I’m talking to a crash test dummy!”
For God sake leave now! Michael’s mind urged him. But he couldn’t. It was too late. He couldn’t turn away. He was held by an immutable force. As Kate looked at him, she saw that his hands were clenched, white, at his sides and his whole body was trembling slightly.
He wasn’t about to have a fit was he? She forgot about her anger and began to be concerned. “Hey, you…” What was his name, again? “Are you OK?” It came to her. Timmy had used it. “Sean?” She reached out to take his arm.
