The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  “Granddad’s taking us somewhere. He won’t talk to me. He’s in a strange mood.”

  “Put me on speakerphone. Let me talk to him.”

  There was a fumbling then the telltale expansion of the soundscape, and Judy knew Adrian could hear.

  “Adrian, it’s Judy. What’s going on? Where are you taking Jemma?”

  Adrian wasn’t in the mood for talking. She tried again though. What else could she do? “Adrian. You need to stop and bring Jemma back home. Whatever you’ve done, we can work this out. You don’t need to run.”

  When Adrian’s voice came on the line, it sounded different, less confident than the hard businessman she’d known all these years. He sounded younger. Scared.

  What do you have to be scared about, she thought? Who called you?

  “I didn’t mean to bring Jemma. She was in the car. I didn’t notice. I’ve got to meet someone. I won’t be long. We’ll still be back in time for the holiday.”

  “I can’t let you take Jemma somewhere I don’t know. You need to either come home or tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. Look at her Adrian, she’s frightened.”

  There was a pause on the phone, then the phone line went dead.

  Judy felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. What had she just done? Made it worse by the sound of it. The fogginess at the edge of her thinking was threatening to consume her rational decision making. Adrian hadn’t meant to take Jemma, that meant that Jemma wasn’t in any danger. But Adrian also said he was going to meet with someone, and it was clear from his voice that he was scared. Why was he scared? If he feared the person he was going to meet, then Jemma was still in danger, despite Adrian’s reassurances.

  “We have to call the police,” she told Faith.

  But Faith snatched the phone from Judy’s grip. “No. You can’t. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “He’s kidnapped my daughter!”

  Faith shook her head. “I heard him too. He said he didn’t know she was in the car. He won’t hurt his own granddaughter.”

  “Right now, Faith, I don’t know what he’s capable of. And I don’t think you do either or you wouldn’t have called us in a panic.”

  “She’s right, Mum. We’ve got to do something.” Lisa urged her mother inside the house and passed the phone back to Judy. “Wait a minute,” she told her, and they all went inside. “Perhaps there’s something else we can do.”

  Judy held her phone in a deathly grip, glancing at the screen, waiting to see whether Jemma would call. The sudden cut off suggested that Adrian had taken the phone from her. If that is what happened, then Jemma had no way of keeping in touch. “Wait, I can try something.” Judy opened Google Maps and chose the location sharing option, selecting her daughter’s profile picture and waiting for it to refresh. The map redrew and focused in on a section of road leading on the edge of Southport. The legend beneath the map informed that the refresh of Jemma’s location had happened three minutes ago. Judy tried to force a manual refresh, but the app frustratingly kept informing her that it couldn’t refresh Jemma’s location.

  “They’re on the coastal road, past Marshside.” That suggested they were heading out of town, heading north towards Preston. But without an updated location, the information wasn’t much help.

  Judy tried ringing Jemma again, but this time the call went straight through to voicemail. The map refresh had told her that Jemma’s phone was on 90% battery, which could only mean one thing. “He’s turned her phone off.” Judy banged a fist against the wall. “Faith, think back to the phone call, what did he say? Who was he talking to?”

  But Faith was already shaking her head. “I can’t remember.”

  “Were you in the same room?”

  “No. He’d left his phone on the side table in the hallway. When it started ringing, I brought it to him.”

  “Then you saw who was calling.” Judy kept her voice calm, but commanding. She wanted to get as much information from Faith as she could before she called the police. She couldn’t afford to let Faith forget anything.

  Faith was shaking her head. “I don’t know if I did.”

  “Think, Mum,” Lisa said. “You must have seen the display. It would have been in large letters.”

  “I don’t think...”

  “Did it say unknown number?”

  Again, a shake of the head.

  “Then, did it have a number displayed at all?”

  A spark of energy flashed in Faith’s eyes. She stopped shaking her head. The pressure lightened on Judy’s temples as she considered the possibility of getting some useful information from the woman.

  “No number. There was a name.”

  “Can you remember whose name? Who was he going to meet?”

  Lisa had her hands on her mum’s shoulders and Judy was struck by how much love there was between the two women. As much as Lisa felt she needed to know who her biological mother was, it was clear that Lisa had always been honest as to her reasons. Faith would always be her true mother.

  “Matt! The name was Matt Hodgson.”

  The delight on her face was countered by the sinking feeling in Judy.

  “Who is he?” Faith said. “I don’t know that name.”

  Lisa looked across at Judy. “That name means something to you. I can see it in your face.”

  “He works at Hosforth House as a maintenance guy.”

  “Hosforth House, where Adrian had his first office?” Faith asked.

  Judy nodded. “It’s also where you met with the agency who arranged Lisa and Phil’s adoption.”

  “You went there?” Lisa asked.

  “I wanted to see if I could find anyone from the adoption agency. Find out where they were now. Maybe someone could help us work out what the paperwork meant, see if there were more details we’d missed. There was no one who remembered the adoption agency, but I spoke to Matt. And I met him on another occasion. He was talking to your father at his new office. I caught the two of them talking.”

  “Caught them?” Faith frowned.

  “It looked like they didn’t want to be seen together. There was something off about their body language. I don’t know what. I didn’t ask Adrian at the time. Something about it just felt wrong.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me about it?” Lisa asked, her tone suggested she was offended by this omission.

  “You had enough going on, and it wasn’t as if I had much to tell you. I’d seen your dad talking to a man he used to know from his old office building. So what? Nothing that can’t be explained away.”

  “But it’s harder to explain away his actions now,” Lisa said. “He’s going to meet this Matt again, and it’s got him angry and worked up.”

  “And he’s still got my daughter in the car.”

  Judy clenched her fists. The powerlessness was something she’d vowed never to experience again. It had been there throughout her marriage to Phil. Whenever there was an argument and things threatened to get ugly, she’d be stuck, scared to leave the house with her daughter still inside, scared to take Jemma with her because she had nowhere else to go.

  But that all changed when he got his diagnosis. The power shifted then. That was the first time she’d seen him scared, the day he’d come back from the consultant with the news that he had cancer. And it was hard for Judy to hear the news as well. In that moment she had a rush of emotions. Yes, she was terribly sorry for him, sorry that he was about to go through a world of discomfort and uncertainty. But was she ever sorry that he had cancer? Hadn’t she at some point in her time with him secretly wished something terrible would happen to him to get him out of their lives?

  You caused this. Your wishful thinking brought this terrible thing to him and you know it.

  “We have to go after them. They were heading out of Southport. Maybe he’ll turn the phone on, if we head that way now, when it gets turned on, we’ll be so much closer to intercepting them.”

  Faith had scurried into the lounge and was pulli
ng open the drawers in the sideboard.

  “What are you doing Mum?”

  “Looking.”

  “For what?”

  Faith pulled and dropped a letter from the drawer. Then another. Then an entire notebook. Pens followed.

  “Mum?”

  Faith turned, in her hand a piece of paper. “It’s information about the tracker he had fitted to the Mercedes. He was paranoid that someone would take it.”

  Judy’s chest lifted. Did this mean what she thought it meant? “He’s got a GPS tracker in the car?”

  Faith shrugged. “I don’t know about that. It’s a little box that fits in the glovebox. You can use an app to tell you where the car is and can report it to the police.”

  Lisa took the piece of paper from her mum’s hand and poured over it. “Bloody hell. We just need to log into the app.” Her face dropped. “Tell me you’ve got the app on your phone as well, Mum.”

  Faith nodded. “Oh yes, he was adamant, in case he left his phone in the car and it got stolen.” She crossed to the mantelpiece and took her phone, switching it on and logging into the app. “Here you go, looks like he is on his way up to Preston.”

  Lisa put her hand out and her mum placed the phone in it.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on. This isn’t like him.” Tears started rolling and her back arched as she burst into tears. “Please, find him. Make sure he’s OK.”

  “Yes, we’ll do that,” Judy said.

  But if he harms one hair on the head of my daughter, I will make him pay.

  37

  They’d been driving for almost two hours, heading north up the M6 towards the Lake District. Half an hour ago, they’d turned off and Judy was driving faster than Lisa’s nerves could take along country roads.

  “How far ahead is he?” Judy asked, her face grim and determined and never leaving the road in front of her. Lisa didn’t think she’d ever seen her so worried.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe half an hour.” Lisa didn’t want to mention that it looked like he was getting farther ahead. That would only encourage Judy to drive faster. Lisa wasn’t sure her nerves could take it.

  “I think it’s time to call the police.” Judy said.

  “What? No. Why would we do that?”

  “He’s kidnapped my daughter.”

  “He was taking her on holiday.”

  “Yes, and this isn’t what he’s doing now. He doesn’t have my permission to take her to random places without first telling me what he’s doing.”

  Lisa knew that Judy was right, but calling the police was crossing a line they wouldn’t be able to cross back over so easily. Having outsiders inspect their family was a level of scrutiny she didn’t want to deal with.

  “Any idea where he’s going?” Judy asked.

  “No. Wait a second, he’s come off the main road.”

  “Do I need to turn?”

  “Not now. Keep going. He’s stopped. Wait, I know where we are. We’re close to the caravan site.”

  “What?”

  “He’s down the road from the old caravan site we had a static caravan on.”

  “You don’t still have the caravan, do you?”

  “No. Dad got rid of it years ago when we started moaning about having to travel. That would have been in our teens.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “Yeah, probably.” Except Lisa’s skin was tingling and she couldn’t fathom why. It was like there was something in the air, pressing her senses. Memories of events yet to happen.

  She was jolted out of her thoughts by her phone ringing. “It’s Mum. Hi, wha—”

  “Jemma’s home,” her mum said, her voice excited and relieved. “He dropped her off in town by the station with some money for the train, but he kept her phone.”

  When Lisa told Judy, the car veered alarmingly into the right-hand lane of the bypass. “Let me speak to her,” Judy said.

  “Hang on,” Lisa said, then put the phone on speaker. “Mum, can you put Jemma on?”

  A moment later the young girl’s voice came through the phone. She was talking quickly, almost excited by what had happened.

  “Mum?”

  “Hi sweetheart.” Judy glanced down at the phone. Lisa was holding it between them. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. He dropped me off at the station. Told me to get a train home. Gave me twenty quid. Told me to get some lunch as well. He didn’t seem mad at me. Just in a rush.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “He kept my phone. Said he was sorry, but he didn’t want me telling you where he was going. He’d put it in his satnav. I guess he thought I might have seen it, but I was too worried to be looking at his satnav.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just stay with your gran and I’ll be home soon.”

  “OK, Mum. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  Lisa hung up. Judy indicated to turn off at the next junction, then flicked the indicator back off.

  “What are you doing?” Lisa asked.

  “We’re not going back yet. I want to know what he’s doing.”

  “Why’s it important? Let’s leave him to it. He’ll come back when he’s ready. He probably just needed to get out for a drive.” But even as she said those words, she knew she didn’t mean them. Dad might have been many things, but he wasn’t someone who ever took himself away from a situation. He didn’t need timeouts. He was heading into something. And he was worried.

  38

  “Dad used to own all of this. He got rid of it when we were kids. I wonder what’s made him come back after all these years.”

  Judy had parked the car in front of a low bungalow just inside the entrance to Sunrise Holiday Park, a caravan site boosting such amenities as an onsite swimming pool, play area, and free wi-fi in the club bar.

  “Adrian used to own a caravan site?” Judy said, locking the car doors and pocketing the fob.

  “He used to caravan here a lot as a boy himself. When he got older, he was able to buy the place to stop it shutting. The tracker shows that his car is somewhere on site,” Lisa said. “Should I call him?”

  Judy shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I want to see where he is first.”

  “He’s not a bad person. I don’t know what got into him today.”

  “He’s behaved erratically. I’d like to see what we’re walking into before announcing our presence.”

  Lisa nodded, but it was a reluctant agreement.

  “I’ll ask at reception. See if anyone’s seen him.” Judy went into the converted bungalow leaving Lisa to her thoughts.

  The car park fed into the rest of the caravan park via a single track lane, in much better condition than she remembered as a child, with newly installed speed bumps and passing bays. The site itself had about thirty caravans amidst broken woodland. What had always set this apart from other sites had been the woods. The caravans were set amongst the trees in the wood rather than having the trees cleared to make space. You could walk through the site and still feel part of the surrounding nature.

  She looked around at the woods on either side and shivered, pulling her jacket closer around her. It might be very appealing to the older types looking for a peaceful retreat, but there was something unwelcoming about the encroaching woods on either side. The caravan they’d owned had been towards the back of the site, in the most private of pitches with plenty of room around them. Dad didn’t like any of the neighbours being able to see his kids playing, nor did he want to have any visual line of sight from sitting in the lounge of the caravan to any other caravan around them.

  This was all fine in the middle of summer when the light was high and gave them warm blankets of summer to play in, but when the nights grew short and they still came to stay, it was a different story.

  Back when they were children, the site had yet to install any kind of street lighting on the access road. if they wanted to head up to the bar, they always walked up the track with their
own torches and kept huddled together. Or dad would drive them up the path, throwing drink driving laws into the wind.

  And the woods in the winter were the worst. What were natural places of wonder during the day, became places to avoid once the light waned. Lisa never wanted to play out once the shadows stretched, despite Phil’s protestations. He was always the fearless one, always pushing her to get over her fears. But she never caved in. She never went into the woods after dark.

  Except that one time.

  Judy returned from the reception. “They say he arrived about thirty minutes ago. And there’s something else weird.”

  “What?”

  “You said Adrian sold this when you were children.”

  “Before we went to high school.”

  “They told me he’s still the owner.” Judy grimaced. “I’m afraid, I don’t know why he’d lie to you about that.”

  “Surely, they’ve made a mistake.” Lisa’s mind was racing, trying to recall conversations they’d had about this as a family. But that had all been so long ago.

  You’re not going mad. He sold it. Mum was angry because she loved coming up here. They didn’t speak for a whole week.

  Was that why he’d changed his mind then? Because Mum hadn’t approved?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Lisa continued, racking her brain. “Mum didn’t want him to sell it. They’d rowed about it. If he’d changed his mind why would she never have come up here again?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just passing on what they told me. They also said it’s unusual to see him up here at all. He normally sends someone else from the agency to inspect the site, but he comes up twice a year and supervises the inspection himself. Only it’s a little early for that they said.”

  Judy looked uncomfortable. There was more she wanted to say but was holding back.

  “What else? I think we’re past the point of trying to save each other’s feelings.”

  Judy nodded. “The woman in the office said that he normally rings ahead and books in when anyone from the agency comes to do a site visit, but he hasn’t. I asked her when he’d last been up and she said he’d already visited twice this last week. He dropped in the first time to say hello but on the second time when he didn’t come into the office, she tried to find him. Eventually, she did. There are some old holiday lets on the edge of the site. She found him up at one of these. It’s one they never let out because it’s never been refurbished. She saw him at the house talking to someone. She had to get back to the reception because a resident had just called her mobile, but she said he was talking to a woman.”