Left for Dead
Page 1
Left For Dead
Paul J. Teague
Contents
Also by Paul J. Teague
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Circle of Lies Preview
Author Notes
Also by Paul J. Teague
About the Author
Also by Paul J. Teague
Don’t Tell Meg Trilogy
Book 1 - Don’t Tell Meg - read it here
Book 2 - The Murder Place - read it here
Book 3 - The Forgotten Children - read it here
Standalone Thrillers
Dead of Night - read it here
One Last Chance - read it here
No More Secrets - read it here
So Many Lies - read it here
Two Years After - read it here
Friends Who Lie - read it here
Paul J.Teague & Adam Nicholls
Now You See Her - read it here
Morecambe Bay Trilogy
Book 1 - Left For Dead - read it here
Book 2 - Circle of Lies - read it here
Book 3 - Truth Be Told - read it here
Prologue
1984 - Sandy Beaches Holiday Camp
The blustery wind carried away Charlotte’s cries as she ran through the outskirts of the holiday camp, frantically looking behind her, wondering how long it would be before Bruce caught up.
She should have escaped from the relationship earlier. She was a feminist, for Christ’s sake. How had she got trapped? It was the first commandment of not being stupid: Thou shalt not jump into bed with a psycho, just because he’s good-looking and it’s only a summer fling.
He was closing on her now. She was such a stupid cow sometimes - it had been obvious he was getting more controlling. Ever since Will had arrived to work at the camp, her sense that things might turn sour had proved to be true. Bruce was convinced she was sleeping with Will. He was an ‘if I can’t have you, no-one can’ kind of guy. So when she and Will had argued in the bar, she should have just headed directly for Sally’s chalet - or even Will’s or Abi’s come to that. In spite of everything, even Abi would have been a better option than Bruce.
Instead, like an idiot, she’d run towards the beach, taking the fork at the half-constructed paddling pool in the middle of the camp rather than the safety-in-numbers option of the chalets.
This was the culmination of everything that had come before it: every put-down, every suspicion, every loaded remark, every threat. Her heart burned with the effort of running as she struggled to keep going. Then she shuddered to a halt as his strong hands clawed at her shoulders and he wheeled her round to face him. She gasped in fear as she looked into his face and saw the brutality there.
He sunk his clenched fist into her stomach, forcing the air out of her lungs. Choking with the sheer shock of it, in that instant she knew he was capable of killing her.
She cried out, her voice competing with the waves crashing on to the shore just beyond the stone wall which marked the boundary between the holiday camp and the beach. In the moment he took to pull back his arm, she saw her opportunity and darted away from him. All she could do was try to out-run him, to make it as far as the beach and hope a courting couple would be there to save her. But on a night like this, nobody would be on the beach; they’d be crazy to go anywhere near those waves.
Charlotte pushed open the wooden door at the edge of the camp and ran down the small grassy bank towards the beach, her feet crunching and sliding on the pebbles. The game was up; it was impossible to run on the shingle in those shoes. He was almost upon her.
Exhausted, she knew she would have to submit to whatever punishment he had in store for her.
Bruce caught Charlotte’s arm, spun her around, struck her face with his hand and pushed her to the ground. The wind and waves drowned out her screams. In any case, there was no one there to help.
He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his flies, pushing her back down to the ground once again.
‘I’ll show you, you bitch!’ he screamed at her, his face full of fury.
Bruce pushed Charlotte down to the floor, hitching up her dress and tearing off her underwear with a single movement.
‘No!’ she yelled.
He lowered himself onto her body, pushing her legs open, pinning her down, probing.
Panic rose up in her throat as she struggled against his brute force. Her hand reached out, desperate, searching for a way out, any escape from this torment.
She heard the crack of stone on skull and for a moment everything was silent, frozen in time. She held the stone in her hand, waiting and wondering. Bruce seemed to be suspended above her, neither moving nor shouting.
Charlotte struck him once again. This time he slumped immediately, a massive lifeless weight falling on top of her. She dropped the stone and turned her head to see a wave rolling in, covering it and rinsing away the blood.
She tried to roll Bruce off, pushing and twisting until she managed to squeeze out from underneath him. Charlotte didn’t check to see if he was alive or dead. All she cared about was that he had stopped, that he could no longer hurt her. She retrieved her torn underwear, now in a soggy mess, and she stumbled back towards the gate, leaving Bruce where he lay. As she looked back, she thought she saw him move. Maybe she imagined it, but she wasn’t hanging around to find out.
The holiday camp was still now, the bars and pubs closed for the night and everyone locked up in their chalets, ready for the next day of family tensions and gloomy, grey skies. Charlotte opened the door to her chalet and double-locked the door. She was relieved that Jenna wasn’t there. She had a good idea where she’d be, waiting - waiting for Bruce.
Charlotte was relieved. Slowly, still terrified, she took off her clothes, washed herself in the sink and examined the bruise on her ribs. It was only when she lay on her bed and drifted off into a fearful sleep, exhausted by the events of that evening, that she realised her necklace was missing. The necklace that her mother had given her, just before cancer had beaten her. The one with her mother’s name engraved upon it.
Chapter One
Present Day - Morecambe
‘And smile once more please…’
Charlotte’s mouth was aching already. The photographer had set them up in several ridiculous poses and she’d had enough now. Her one consolation was that they did not have to hold a large cardboard cheque, the size of which no sane person would ever use in real life. Such was the imaginative prowess of the local press. At least the kids had been spared the ordeal, Olli in particular being unwilling to get involved in the feature in t
he local press.
‘That’s all we need when we’re starting a new school, Mum. If it wasn’t bad enough you moving in the middle of my ‘A’ level year, the humiliation of appearing in the local paper will murder any chance of social acceptance whatsoever.’
That was Olli, always one for the over-dramatic.
‘Remind me again why you had to uproot us from the home we loved to take over a bloody…’
‘Olli!’ Will chided.
‘…to take over a crappy old guest house in a seaside resort which had seen better days in the seventies, let alone in the 21st Century.’
‘That’s enough!’ Will intervened, sensing that his attitude might be all Charlotte needed to tip her over the edge on a day that was stressful enough already.
‘You know why we moved. It’s a curse of middle-age, you’ll find out for yourself one day. If the robots haven’t taken over the earth by then…’
Olli had laughed. Will could always make the kids laugh. Charlotte wished she had the same skill. Instead, she just chided, nagged and made life generally dull for them. Her one saving grace was that she kept the clean clothes flowing. Her role of mother had become reduced to that. In the end, both Olli and Lucia had gone off to their first day at their new school, reluctant and begrudging.
Redundancy. That was the official reason for the move. A nervous breakdown was the unofficial reason. Only Charlotte, Will and Doctor Sutton would ever know that. Charlotte wasn’t so ill that she couldn’t see how the stigma of a breakdown might tar her with the mental health brush for the rest of her life. The life insurance premiums would go up and it could provide a problem if she ever - God forbid - returned to teaching. No, it was best dealt with quietly, in the hope that she made a full recovery. That way it couldn’t screw things up later, if the guest house didn’t work out and she had to go back to work. She shuddered at the thought, recalling the moment in Room 10a when she’d finally flipped.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d done it. Slapping Kenny Mason around the face like that and just storming out. But it had given her a sudden and massive sense of relief, even though she’d probably be suspended, charged with the assault of a minor and eventually lose her job. Kenny Mason was no minor. He was built like a brick shithouse and had the devious mind of a Bond villain.
Whatever the outcome, the look of pure astonishment on his face when she struck him was worth it. It had simultaneously shocked and silenced him. The rest of the class had given her a round of applause, but she only heard it from along the corridor as she stormed out. She’d made directly for the head teacher’s office, telling Mr Vernon exactly what she’d done. Then she left Bishopbriggs Science Academy and resolved never to teach again.
Fortunately for her, Kenny Mason’s parents also thought that he was a little shit, so didn’t press charges.
‘Stoopid idiot deserves everything he got!’ Phil Mason announced to Mr Vernon, striking his son much harder than Charlotte had. With that, the matter was closed, but there was no way Charlotte could return to education again. She’d had enough. Her mind was frayed, her confidence blown to pieces and her ability to work gone up in smoke.
‘Could you just give your wife a kiss… move along a little bit further so you’re directly under the sign. That’s perfect. Hold it there please…’
Charlotte’s mind returned to the here and now. She wondered what life was like for Nigel Davies, as a reporter working on a local newspaper in a rundown seaside resort. Back in the eighties, when they’d been students, it would have been a big deal. Things didn’t seem to have moved on that much in the fading resort since they’d been away. She wondered if it was still a cause of excitement.
‘So when will the article be in the newspaper?’ Will asked, always set on the practical. There was no disappearing into flights of conjecture, panic or fantasy for him; he always knew what to do. It had been his idea to buy the guest house. He’d run the numbers and looked like he’d hit the jackpot.
‘This place has a sixty-one thousand pounds turnover every year, twenty-five thousand pounds of which is profit. It has a housekeeper who runs the place, a family flat at the top and it’s cheap as chips compared to Bristol. All you have to do is run to the cash and carry twice a week and watch the bookings come in. Simple!’
Not for the first time, Charlotte had agreed to something that she was less than certain about. She knew that she had to bring in some money - fast - and that the thought of going back into education was unbearable. Just thinking about it made her sweat all over, her hands shaking at the prospect of going back into that classroom. Will had been as patient as anything for the first seven months, but the first time they’d missed making a full mortgage payment, he was furious.
‘We can’t carry on like this. We have to make a plan, or we’re going down!’ he’d announced.
So, there they were, smiling for the camera and hoping like hell that owning a guest house in Morecambe would simultaneously allow them to balance the books without Charlotte having to return to the workplace. Any workplace. Much as he could see they were in financial trouble, Will knew his wife well enough to understand that she was still very fragile.
‘The news story is online already,’ Nigel replied to Will’s question. ‘We can’t hold on to anything these days - the internet is like some insatiable beast which has to be fed. I’ll add the photo as soon as I’m back in the office and the full feature will get published in Friday’s newspaper. How does that sound?’
‘Sounds great to me - what do you think Charlotte?’ Will asked, desperately searching her face for some sign of enthusiasm, even the smallest glimmer of hope.
‘Yes, sounds great,’ Charlotte replied, her mind elsewhere. It was always elsewhere these days.
‘So, just to check, you’re booking guests into the first-floor rooms and still decorating the middle floor?’
‘Yes,’ Will replied. ‘It had been empty for so long when we bought it, it needed a refresh. We’ve made the ground and first floor look great, but we’ll use the income to redecorate the middle floor. That’s the plan, anyway!’
‘It’s good to see someone taking a chance on the resort, rather than abandoning it,’ Nigel replied. ‘We need a bit of hope around this town. This row of guest houses used to be Morecambe’s finest. It’s so sad to see what’s happening to the place.’
‘How long have you lived here?’ Charlotte asked, genuinely interested. She liked Nigel Davies; he had an enthusiasm that was infectious. She needed a bit of that.
‘Same as you,’ Nigel smiled. ‘I went to the university in Lancaster, met my wife and we settled here.’
‘It wasn’t quite the same for us,’ Will told him. ‘I was at the university; Charlotte was at the teaching college. We actually met in the eighties at Sandy Beaches Holiday Camp, if you can remember that? We were two hard-up students, paying off our overdrafts. We lived in Bristol for years after we left the area, but we thought it would be nice to come back to our roots.’
Not much had changed as far as Charlotte was concerned. They were still hard-up; they just weren’t students any more. And although the resort did hold many happy memories, it was also the place where a terrible thing had happened. An event that had lain buried for over thirty years. One which she’d never quite believed that she’d got away with.
Chapter Two
Present Day - Morecambe
‘So, come on. We’ve got one more day before I start the new job. How about we take a drive around, see how the old place has changed?’
Charlotte didn’t feel like a drive around. Her anxiety levels were already rocketing in anticipation of the first dribble of guests arriving later that week and it seemed a distraction too far. As usual, Will succeeded in cajoling her.
‘It’ll be good for you,’ he’d reminded her, ‘It’ll get your head out of what happened. You remember what the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy guy said: you need to be more present.’
Charlotte had heard what the CBT gu
y had said, but it was easier to read in a pamphlet than it was to carry out in real life. Her phone made the distinctive ding sound, announcing that a Facebook update had arrived.
I hate this place already. It’s a tip!
She had every sympathy for Olli and Lucia having to tear themselves away from their life in Bristol and start again. But if she and Will didn’t salvage their relationship… well, school would be the least of their problems. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, returning to the place they’d met, a town with happy associations for them. Where they’d got their degrees and married in the local register office. Where they’d both taken their first teaching jobs. When Will had put it like that, she couldn’t refuse him. After all, he didn’t know what had happened there.
‘I still can’t get used to the gears in this car,’ Will cursed as he reversed out into the narrow alleyway at the rear of the guest house.
‘Well, selling the decent cars paid for the redecoration work, so beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Yeah, I know, but…’
Charlotte cursed in her head. Maybe the CBT guy was right. She seemed to frame everything as a negative since walking out of the school. It was a cycle she couldn’t break out of. The glass was always half empty rather than half full. She couldn’t help it; her words just came out that way. Will was doing his best.