‘She’s not here, Dave,’ I told him.
‘OK. It’s all in hand. I’ve sent for Jeff and alerted uniformed. Task force are standing by so I’ll tell them to get here – I’m at the golf course. She’s probably fallen and hurt herself, or perhaps her knee has let her down. You stay there and wait in case she comes home.’
‘No,’ I told him. ‘I’m coming back.’ Dave’s a good pal, wouldn’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, but you don’t send for the task force for someone who’s sprained an ankle. He was daring to think what I was too terrified to consider.
Mondays are our quietest night, so three pandas were there when I arrived back, as were Jeff Caton and several others of the team. Gareth Adey, my uniformed counterpart, arrived, wearing jeans and cowboy shirt, fresh from his line dancing class. Jeff had brought the Ordnance Survey map and I tried to indicate on it the path she would have taken. Heckley Wood isn’t Sherwood Forest. It’s about one mile by half a mile, but is ancient woodland with lots of fine big trees, mainly oak, birch and ash, that must be centuries old. The ground is pockmarked with craters, the remnants of bell-pits where ancient monks mined for coal. Brambles and bracken choke the spaces between the trees, with a network of paths criss-crossing the area. In spring the wood is ablaze with bluebells, but tonight they were well past their best.
Under Gareth’s direction the uniformed boys armed themselves with torches and set off to follow her route. It was fully dark as the task force van arrived and the searchers straggled back into the car park. There were eight of them in the van, under the supervision of a sergeant. His first suggestion was to send for a dog handler. Why hadn’t I thought of that? He was with us in ten minutes, saying he needed something worn by Sonia to give the dog a scent to find. Her tracksuit was inside the car. I unlocked it with the spare key I had brought with me and handed the suit to the dog handler.
‘Find him! Find him!’ the handler urged, burying the dog’s muzzle into the tracksuit top, and the dog started running round in circles, nose to the ground, tail wagging. It zigged and zagged a couple of times before plunging off into the darkness.
‘OK,’ the task force sergeant said, summoning his troops, after I’d told him Sonia’s probable route. ‘Let’s get on with it. We’ll do a systematic search of that half of the wood first. Form your line that side.’ He turned to Gareth and asked if he could borrow his men, and Dave and Jeff said they’d join the line, too.
Gareth had sent for reinforcements and the park was surrounded, in case anybody tried to escape from it. It wasn’t explained to me, but I knew what everybody was thinking. The searchers spaced themselves at five-yard intervals and slowly moved into the wood. Their torches sent beams of light flashing on the tree trunks and illuminating criss-crossing branches that flickered bright for a moment, cutting the blackness into an ever-changing cubist nightmare of shapes. The shadows danced and swayed and closed in again behind the searchers.
‘Sonia! It’s the police, where are you?’ It was Dave, shouting her name. Their torches had vanished apart from the occasional stray beam of light as someone examined the undergrowth. A minute later he called again, fainter. The third time he was barely audible.
‘Thanks for coming, Gareth,’ I said.
‘They’ll find her, Charlie.’
‘Of course they will.’
I’ve never believed in all this positive thinking stuff. Not when it’s about events you have no control over. It’s one thing for someone like Sonia to believe that she can train to make herself the best, but no amount of positive thinking or self-hypnotism or any other mumbo jumbo will help you overcome gravity or change the mind of a madman. There was no moon. We leaned on the bonnet of my car and didn’t speak again. Away to the left were the windows of the clubhouse, and beyond the golf course we could see the orange glow of the lights on the bypass. Otherwise, the darkness was near total.
The torches appeared again, a couple of hundred yards away, and we heard the Sergeant shouting instructions. Within seconds they had vanished back into the wood. Over at the clubhouse car engines were starting. Headlights swept round, dazzling us briefly before driving away. It was going home time. Call it eleven-thirty. Sonia had been out for over five hours. Half of the clubhouse lights went out, then the other half.
I thought of her, and how I’d felt, two weeks ago as she pranced her way to victory. She was almost apologetic, while I nearly exploded with pride. La Gazelle was back! But I was just as happy about how she handled defeat, and as she’d pounded her lonely way on the last half of yesterday’s race the crowd recognised they were watching someone special, and gave her the biggest cheer. Was it only yesterday?
High above us the stars were a blazing trail across the sky and I was looking for constellations, wondering how many billions of light years they were away, when the warbling of a phone brought me back from where I was trying to escape to. I turned to Gareth but he already had it to his ear.
‘You have?’ he said, and, ‘Right. Where are you…? Yes, he’s with me… A couple of minutes. Right.’
He closed the phone and said, ‘They’ve found something, Charlie. They want you round there.’
Chapter Nine
‘What?’ I demanded, dreading the answer, not sure if I wanted to know. ‘What have they found?’
‘A shoe. C’mon, we’ll go in my car.’
They were on the road that borders the northern edge of the wood, near the park gates. The searchers were standing around in groups, waiting for my pronouncement. The dog had found the shoe, nowhere near the route she would have normally taken. It was a Reebok Premier, in her size. The lace was still tied and it was cold and wet.
‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s hers.’
Gareth and I joined the line and the quartering of the wood resumed. We moved off at the Sergeant’s instructions, picking our way between the trees and around the clumps of brambles, our torches casting giant shadows that reared and swam before us. The going was uneven and full of obstacles. Brambles dragged at my trousers, low branches hit me in the face, bracken spores made me choke. The idea is to move slowly in a straight line, regardless of the terrain, examining the ground to your left and right every stride. A pheasant exploded into flight between the next man and me, sending our pulse rates off the scale, and went clattering off into the unknown. I dropped into a bell-pit, pulling fronds of bracken to one side, and hauled myself out of it again. The pits would be a good place to rest or hide, but this one was empty.
The Sergeant was behind us, controlling the line. We were drifting to the right, he told us, and one end was getting ahead. We stopped, measured our spaces and moved off again.
Now there were clouds in the sky, building up to the west. We came out of the wood onto the golf course and the chill smell of rain was in the air. The Sergeant strode out sixty yards and formed us up again. When we were ready he gave the order and we moved slowly and purposefully back into the wood. This is what the task force are good at. It’s menial work, tedious and uninspiring, but just as important to any investigation as fingerprinting, post-mortems, or any other process we rely on. In daylight they’d be assisted by the mounted police. I said a little prayer that it wouldn’t come to that.
The going was smoother for my stretch, this time, and the trees more widely spaced, but the floor of the wood was deep in dog’s mercury and a dew was developing, so my feet were soon soaked. Orchids grew here, I remembered. They’d be out about now, if we hadn’t trampled them. I took a stride, swung the torch to my left, another stride and swung it to my right all the time willing the beam with all my might not to find anything. It worked, thank God. Maybe there is something in mind over matter, after all.
The moon had risen when we came out of the wood again, onto the road. I was wet up to the knees and I knew Gareth, Jeff and the others would be the same. The task force were wearing boiler suits and Wellington boots. They carried poles for poking about, and six-cell Maglites. The Sergeant realised the situation and ca
me up to me.
‘I appreciate your feelings, Mr Priest,’ he said, ‘but my men are more used to this work, and better equipped. Why don’t you wait in your car and let your men go home, eh? We’ll manage. If she’s in here, we’ll find her.’
I was about to say that the others could go but I was staying, when someone behind me said, ‘What the devil…’
There was something in the way he said it that cut through everything else that was going on. I turned to see where he was looking. Everybody fell silent and did the same, and fifteen torches switched on and sent a concentrated beam of light down the road.
A figure was visible, right at the edge of the pool of light, walking slowly towards us. A tall pale figure that raised an arm to shield its eyes from the glare and staggered, as if slightly inebriated.
I was paralysed. Something stopped me racing forward to embrace her, swing her off her feet and plant a kiss on her mouth. It was relief beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, mixed with confusion and embarrassment. A million questions flashed through my mind, none of them important. Torches were lowered, some switched off. I stepped forward, then strode to meet her. Sonia was limping, wearing one shoe. Her knees were bleeding, her T-shirt muddy and her face bruised, but she was alive and she was here.
I threw my arms around her and hugged her. She hugged me, great convulsions pumping through her body as she realised the nightmare was over.
‘You’re safe, now,’ I told her as she sobbed onto my shoulder. ‘You’re safe now.’
I led her to where the others were standing and a car door swung open. I helped her into the traffic car and the driver poured her a cup of something from a flask. Sonia thanked him in a squeaky voice and gulped it down, both hands around the cup. Somebody else handed a blanket to me and I did my best to spread it over her knees.
‘What happened, love?’ I asked, after I’d slid in beside her. ‘Did you fall and hurt yourself?’
Sonia mumbled something I couldn’t interpret.
‘What was that?’
I still couldn’t decipher her sobs, but I thought the word ‘attacked’ was in there. ‘Did you say you were attacked?’ I said, and felt her nod against my shoulder.
I held her arms and looked into her face. ‘Are you saying you were attacked, Sonia?’
‘Yes,’ she sniffed. I found a tissue and held it against her nose. She took it from me and had a good blow.
‘By a man?’
A nod and a sniff.
‘Did you know him?’
‘No.’
‘Is he still in the wood?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘OK. Let’s get you home.’ I made a better job with the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders, and led her back to where the team were waiting, big grins on their faces. It wasn’t the result they expected, not what they were used to. The Sergeant gave her his sweater to wear as I introduced them, and I handed him the blanket.
‘She was attacked,’ I told him. ‘We may have to do another search of the wood in the daylight.’
‘Right,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Meanwhile, are you going to…you know…’
Sonia was standing next to us, leaning on me, and what he was trying to say was would we be taking her to the rape suite for a full medical, with swabs, antibiotic injections and counselling.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We’ll see.’
I told him that I’d either go to the station with her or phone in a report, and thanked everybody for their help. Gareth shook my hand and Jeff squeezed Sonia’s arm, told her it was great to see her. The traffic car took us back to the golf club while the others set off to walk there. Sonia had stopped sobbing and shivering and was coping better than I would have thought. When we were in my car I asked her what had happened.
‘I think there must have been a trip wire,’ she told me, her voice soft and slow. ‘I was really flying on that downhill stretch where the fallen tree is. Just past there. Suddenly I hit the ground. Really hard. I think I may have been concussed. Next thing I knew I was sitting up and this man was all over me, pulling my arms behind my back. My hands were hurting like hell.’ She showed me her palms, with the skin grazed away. ‘And my knees hurt, too. And I must have bumped my face.’
‘Your cheek is swollen,’ I said. ‘Go on. You’re doing well.’
‘He tied my hands behind me, with one of those plastic things. All the time he was saying, “I won’t hurt you, I won’t hurt you.” I said, “Well you are doing”, and he apologised. It was weird.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He dragged me to my feet and pushed me into the wood. Off the path. He took me to one of those holes in the ground. He had some stuff there, as if he were camping, or living rough.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘A sleeping bag, and one of those orange bivvy bags, and some food. On the way I managed to pull one of my trainers off, thought I’d leave a trail.’
‘We found it. You were thinking well, very brave. Then what?’
‘Not much. He said he wanted to talk, that’s all. He’d seen me run, remembered me from the Nineties, was my greatest fan. It was pathetic. I said I couldn’t talk with my arms tied behind me. At first he refused, but after about an hour I said I had cramp in my arms and was in agony.’
‘You talked for an hour?’
‘It must have been at least that long. He knew all about me, knew I went out with Tony. Said he didn’t deserve me. He said you didn’t either. He said he’d written to me, years ago, but I hadn’t answered. I did receive a few crank letters. I told him that all my mail was vetted by my manager.’
‘Did you have a manager?’
‘No. Then I told him that I thought I remembered him from one of the meetings at Gateshead. He was at the presentation and had asked me for my autograph. I said I was sure I recognised him from somewhere.’
‘That was a good move,’ I agreed. ‘Have you been on the training course?’
‘No, but when it’s real you learn fast. Anyway, I said my arms hurt and started crying. After a while he said he’d tie my arms in front of me if I promised not to try to run away. Would you believe, I had to think about it? But I agreed. He cut the tie and pulled my arms to the front.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I kicked him in the face with my good shoe and ran for it. I knocked his spectacles off. It was pitch black by then and I couldn’t see where I was going, but neither could he. I could hear him shouting my name, pleading for me to come back, promising not to hurt me, but I hid in another one of those holes. After a while he went away. I stayed for ages, then wandered about. I was lost. I came out on the road and saw the lights.’
I leaned across and put my arm around her. I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. After a while I asked if she’d be able to describe her attacker.
‘He was only little. That’s why I wasn’t afraid of him. He was little and weedy, with wire-rimmed spectacles.’
I said, ‘You’re amazing, Sonia. I’m staggered by how you’re taking this, but I have to ask a few questions. This is DI Priest asking, not Charlie. Do you understand?’
‘Um, I think so.’
‘Right. I have to ask this: did he rape you?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Did he sexually assault you in any way?’
Sonia hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. He was a bit free with his hands when he made me stand up. He sort of…fondled me, but it could have been accidental.’
‘It wasn’t,’ I assured her. ‘Did he threaten to rape you, or suggest you have sex with him?’
‘No. He said he just wanted to talk. He wanted to be my friend. That’s all.’
I heaved a big sigh. Sonia is to naïve what Santa Claus is to generosity. ‘No he didn’t,’ I told her. ‘He wanted sex with you. He wanted it more than anything in the world, except that he wanted you to want to have it with him. Expected you to want it. That was his dream. It’s what happ
ens in the world he lives in. You’re attracted to someone, and there’s a universal rule that says they will automatically reciprocate the attraction. Newton’s tenth law, or something. But life’s not like that, as we both know. When you didn’t play his game, Sonia, he’d have settled for second best. He’d have raped you, believe me.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘I’ve had a lucky escape.’
‘Luckier than you’ll ever believe.’ Because, having raped her, he’d have strangled her to cover his tracks. If there was no need for a medical I could take her straight home. I turned the key and fired the engine. ‘We’ll collect your car tomorrow,’ I said. As we pulled into the drive I said, ‘The lasagne will be ruined.’
I made us both a cocoa and asked Sonia to put everything she was wearing in a bin liner. I phoned in a brief report and told them to expect me at lunchtime. It might have been smart to have the car park cordoned off to preserve any tyre marks, but I decided it would be a waste of time, and this wasn’t a murder hunt.
‘Why do you want all my clothes, Charlie?’ Sonia asked.
‘To look for any fibres left by the kidnapper.’
‘But won’t they also find fibres from that blanket and this police sweater?’ She was still wearing the one the task force sergeant had loaned her.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘They’ll just think that you’re a popular girl, that’s all.’
‘I see.’ She stretched her arms out, demonstrating that the sleeves of the sweater were miles too long. ‘Does it suit me?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. I don’t like you in it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have a rule about my private life and relationships with police women. Take it off, please.’
‘Ooh. Right.’
I said, ‘Go have a shower, love, and you’ll find some aloe vera in the cabinet. Put it on all your grazes. It’s good stuff. Put plenty on.’
Shooting Elvis Page 18
