by Rob Roughley
The girl pulled the bathrobe tight around her, Jodie recognised it immediately. Steven had bought it for her when they had gone on a shopping spree to the Trafford Centre. It had been one of the best days of her life; she had felt like a WAG as they strolled through all the designer shops. Steven had picked out three stunning outfits and loads of cool underwear for her. When they’d arrived back at the apartment he’d undressed her and carried her to the huge sunken bath, washing her hair rubbing scented oils into her skin with his strong hands and then he’d wrapped her in the robe, the robe that was now wrapped around this...
‘I think you must have the taken a wrong turn, the council estate is that way.’
Jodie took a step back; she could feel her face burning with embarrassment and then it was replaced by a sudden flaring of anger. ‘Get out of my way,’ she stepped forward and the girl spread her arms blocking her path.
‘I don’t think so, now why don’t you just turn around and fuck off?’
Jodie saw red and lashed out, her hands ripping at the bitch’s hair. Rachael gasped and tried to push her away but Jodie was beginning to enjoy herself, she yanked hard dragging Rachael out of the doorway and down to her knees.
‘Bitch!’ Rachael screamed and lashed her fingernails across Jodie’s exposed midriff, spitting like a stamped-on cat.
Jodie hissed in a breath and drew back her foot, when the headlights suddenly flared both girls paused, locked together in a bizarre tableau. Then the headlights vanished and they heard the sound of a car door being opened then slammed shut. Rachael tried to twist her head but Jodie held fast, pulling hard and smiling to herself when she heard the girl hiss in pain.
Rachael had her eyes screwed shut, she could feel the grit biting into her bare knees tearing the flesh and then miraculously the pain vanished. She looked up in time to see her tormentor toppling sideways; she slammed hard into the tarmac, her head bounced off the floor with a sickening thud that made Rachael smile.
Steve looked down at her and held out a hand, Rachael grasped it as he lifted her easily to her feet.
‘Get the door, Rachael.’
She looked at him in confusion as he bent down and plucked the girl from the floor.
‘Rachael, get the door.’ He repeated.
‘Who is she, I mean, what is she doing here?’ Rachael rubbed at her tender scalp, frowning when she saw a handful of hair drift to the floor.
‘Get the fucking door!’
Rachael looked at him in shock, Steve never swore, never cursed, it was one of the things she loved about him. Now he looked panicked, his eyes flitting around the empty courtyard, his chest heaving. Turning, she pushed the door open; he brushed past her and stalked up the stairs as if he were carrying nothing heavier than a bag of feathers. Rachael looked out into the darkness and then closed the door quietly before following him up the steps.
103
Lasser had a bad feeling, ever since Medea had driven away to find Zoe Metcalf his guts had been twisted with anxiety, his nerves wound tight to breaking point. The traffic lights flashed onto red and he eased to a stop. None of this felt right, he should have listened to his head, the heart was never a good judge of right and wrong. Medea had called Bannister his friend and her words had thrown him. Bannister was his boss and had roasted him on more than one occasion. Though Lasser had to admit it had always been for a good reason, he knew he was a pain in the arse and could wind people up the wrong way. Medea had asked him why he was always so argumentative but it was simply the way he was made, the way he functioned in a job where you had to have a thick skin.
The lights changed and he moved forward past the hospital, intermittent lights shone from the windows the ever-present gaggle of smokers standing huddled beneath a small Perspex shelter. Literally, a dying breed, and if he carried on smoking the dreaded weed, then he had no doubt that one day he would be joining them, cigarette in one hand oxygen mask in the other. Shaking his head at the image he sparked up a cigarette to calm his jittering nerves and then swung right into the darkened tunnel of trees.
Bannister had said something about Rachael Sinclair and Jodie Moss being involved in some kind of blackmail plot. According to the DCI, Rachael had been playing the solicitor for years. He tried to make sense of it all, though there will still too many missing pieces, too many variables. At the mini roundabout, he swept left and zipped down the narrow lane, the headlights scything into the dark, the interior of the car looking like an opium den. Leaning over he flicked a switch and the windows began to glide down, the thick cloying smoke immediately replaced by cool clear air. When he looked up, he saw the girl trapped in the headlights beam. She was looking over her shoulder her eyes wide in terror as the car bore down on her, her dark hair whipping across her face as she tried to dash to safety. Lasser slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel. The big car ploughed through a patch of brambles, slammed up the grass verge and juddered to halt inches from a stone wall. Lasser gripped the wheel tight and screwed his eyes shut, the cigarette still clamped between his lips. When he opened them, he could see the girl looking in at him through the side window her face imprinted with fear.
‘Kelly?’ he mouthed her name in astonishment as the cigarette fell from his lips.
She took a step away from the car, shaking her head as she turned to run. Lasser slammed open the door and fought with the seatbelt. ‘Kelly, wait, it’s OK, I’m a police officer!’
She suddenly stopped and slowly turned, her hands raised as if he had told her to ‘stick em up’ her face locked in confusion. ‘Are you my father?’ she asked.
Bang! The air bag blew up in Lasser’s face.
104
Reynolds dumped the girl onto the sofa, the right side of her face already turning black her right eye swollen shut.
‘Who is she?’ Rachael stood in the doorway, her eyes drifting between the girl and the man she no longer recognised. Steve threw her a look that made her drag the robe tight around her body as if she suddenly felt ice in the air.
‘You lied to me, Rachael,’ he turned towards her, his eyes burning with dark malice.
‘I don’t know what...?’
‘Cuts and bruises you said.’
Rachael swallowed, he had never been angry with her before, never shown her anything but love and kindness. No matter what she did, he had simply smiled and told her everything would be OK. Everything she’d done with Sinclair, all the times she had felt self-disgust at the way he made her feel, yet all she had to do was come here and he would bathe her with such tenderness, washing away the stink of her disgusting stepfather until she felt cleansed, reborn. Then they would make love, proper love, real love, not the animalistic rutting that she did with Sinclair.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steve, honest...’
Reynolds walked slowly towards her and she suddenly felt as if she wanted to turn and run, but that couldn’t be right. Steve would never hurt her, he loved her they’d made plans, plans that would see them spending the rest of their lives together.
‘The house was crawling with coppers, now why do you think that is?’ he stopped a foot away and tilted his head waiting for an answer.
‘I don’t know but I swear when I left him he was OK.’
Jodie groaned and Rachael glanced towards her, Reynolds shot out a hand and grasped her face. Rachael’s eyes snapped wide in shock as he began to apply pressure. His fingers probed into her flesh, and then he yanked her forward studying her pain with curious eyes.
‘I thought I could trust you, Rachael, but it seems as if I was wrong.’
Despite the crushing pain she managed to shake her head, tears leaked from her eyes as he suddenly released her. She staggered back grasping at the doorframe to stop her from falling to the floor. ‘Please, I don’t know what you mean!’ she could taste blood; she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth feeling the ragged flesh.
‘You knew the plan, I told you often enough. Sinclair would have been made t
o suffer I promised you that...’
‘I know, but..’
‘He would have paid the money, buckets full of the fucking stuff and yet you had to go and ruin it didn’t you?’
‘But he was fine!’ she wailed, she could see the image of her stepfather looking up at her, his face cut, a dark bruise on his cheek but no more than that. ‘Maybe he was the one who called the police?’ she gasped out the words, her world cracking apart around her.
Reynolds closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. ‘So he confessed, is that your explanation? The man suddenly decided to come clean and tell the authorities that he had been fucking his stepdaughter since she was eight. Is that what you are seriously trying to tell me?’
Rachael shook her head, all the confidence, all the streetwise savvy evaporated. Over the years, she’d learned how to handle Sinclair. Steve had taught her what to say, what to do, shown her that she didn’t have to be the defenceless little girl. Shown her that she could take control of the situation, manipulate the man who had manipulated her and he had been so right. Paul Sinclair had become malleable, putty in her hands. She remembered the first time she’d slapped his face. Steve had told her what to do, how to respond and she had done it and then watched in amazement as Sinclair had been reduced to a cowering wreck. After that, it had been simple to twist the knife, to get her own back for the years of abuse and boy had she made him suffer.
‘You want to know who the girl is?’ Reynolds asked nonchalantly.
Her brain spluttered back to the here and now, her eyes refocused. ‘I don’t know.’
Reynolds smiled and reached out a hand, Rachael snapped back in fear, his fingers slipped along the side of her neck sliding into her hair.
‘Shush,’ he whispered and eased her towards him, her hands fluttered up and then he kissed her his tongue sliding between her lips tasting her blood. He cupped her right breast bringing the nipple to life as she groaned thrusting her hips forward. A sense of permanence snapped back into place. The last five minutes eradicated from her mind, all that mattered was this moment, this feeling, the sweet sensation seeped through her body. She could feel his hot breath in her hair. ‘She’s you, Rachael, the girl is you.’
He dragged her head back his fist coiled in her hair; he was still smiling, his eyes shining with perverse humour. ‘You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?’
Rachael gasped.
‘But you will, sweetheart, you will.’
105
Kelly Ramsey backed up her hands held in front of her as if to ward off a blow. Lasser stayed where he was standing ankle deep in damp grass by the side of the open car door his arms hanging loose, his ears still ringing from the blast of the air bag.
‘It’s OK, Kelly, just try to stay calm; I promise I won’t hurt you.’
She shook her head and shuffled further back. ‘Are you my father?’ she repeated.
‘No, sweetheart, I’m...’
‘Don’t call me that!’ her voice rose along with the look of fear in her eyes.
‘OK, OK, I’m sorry.’
‘He always used to call me that,’ she wiped a quivering hand under her nose and sobbed.
The headlights of the car bounced off the wall splashing at her feet; Lasser eased a step closer and then immediately stopped as he saw her tense.
‘Don’t come any nearer.’
He held up a hand. ‘I won’t.’ Somewhere in the darkness he heard an owl hoot, just over the wall there was the sound of running water as the river Douglas glided by. ‘I’m just glad you’re OK,’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she snapped.
‘You know your mother’s been going spare...’
‘I doubt that,’ she said with utter conviction, stating a fact not a notion.
Lasser frowned; he could still feel the adrenalin surging through his body. The thought that he could have run her down was too terrible to contemplate. ‘Oh by the way, boss, I found Kelly, but you see there was this accident....’ he shivered at the thought, cold sweat breaking out over his body.
‘Everyone’s been concerned...’
‘Do you know who my father is?’ The question came at him out of the darkness like a curveball.
‘Listen, Kelly, why don’t we go to the house...’
She snapped her head from side to side. ‘I’m not going there; I never want to see her again.’
‘So, what are you doing here, I mean, this road leads nowhere but home?’
She pushed a hand through her hair and he caught a glimpse of her face pale and smudged with grime, as if she had been sleeping rough.
Lasser sighed, a street kid in hundred quid jeans wearing a Rolex. ‘Why did you run, Kelly, was it something your father did?’
‘That man wasn’t my father.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It doesn’t matter who...’
‘Was it, Sophie?’ he watched as her expression fractured, she took another hurried step back, her heels caught the low kerb and she fell onto her behind in the wet grass. Head lowered, her face obscured by a mass of dark tangled hair she began to cry and then suddenly she was tearing at the foliage, fingers biting deep into the black soil. Lasser walked slowly towards her and then eased down by her side; he grimaced when he felt the moisture seeping through his trousers.
Looking sideways at the girl, he slid an arm across her shoulder; she turned and buried her head against his chest, sobbing so hard he thought she would never be able to stop.
106
Zoe sat huddled beneath the trailing branches of the huge willow looking out over the moonlit golf course with terrified eyes, her heart pounding quick and heavy as if it were trying to break free from the confines of her chest. Twice she had fallen as she ran from the house across the uneven surface of the weed-covered field. The second time she’d landed heavily on one of the tin sheets she had warned Suzanne about, the rusted serrated edge slicing into her ankle. She could feel the blood seeping into her shoe, warm at first but rapidly cooling, her sock felt sodden. Zoe began to undo her shoelace, her fingers plucking tentatively; when it was loose she hitched in a breath and slid the shoe free. Even in the pale light, she could see the strip of ragged skin flapping down, the flesh beneath raw and oozing dark blood. Zoe grimaced and wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her denim jacket.
As she ran from the house, Suzanne had called to her, her voice harsh and strident, a monster in pursuit trying to track her down trying to pinpoint her location. Zoe had thrown herself down in the tall grass clutching at the ground in fear. She had no idea where Kelly had vanished to, but she knew that Mrs Ramsey wouldn’t believe her. Her shoulders ached from where the woman had dug her fingers in. She waited, praying that she wouldn’t come looking for her because Zoe knew that the gash to her ankle was bad, knew that she wouldn’t be able to outrun her for long.
When she heard the sound of the car starting up she had almost cried out in relief. Then the headlights had swept over the golf course and for one mind-shredding moment, Zoe had been convinced that Suzanne was going to drive the big four by four straight through the thick bushes and into open ground. She could imagine the wheels tearing up the close-cropped greens, the jeep rearing as it mounted a bunker, the headlights scything this way and that spearing out into the night until they found her cowering beneath the tree. She held her breath; her lips muttering the word ‘please’ repeatedly like a mantra. Then miraculously the car had begun to move away, the red taillights had flashed twice and then disappeared.
Wiping a hand through the dew soaked grass Zoe dragged it across her forehead relishing the cool sensation. She tried to think where her friend could have gone; over the last three days she had watched as Kelly began to unravel. When she discovered that Sophie Washham had died Zoe had been forced to grab Kelly’s hands as she tore at her own hair, crying hysterically, screaming that it was her fault that her friend was dead.
Closing her eyes, she tried to think of what she sho
uld do, a moment later she was scrabbling in her pocket for the mobile, when she saw the amount of missed calls, she frowned and scrolled down through the list all of them were from Jodie. Zoe pushed a hand through her hair and pressed the call button.
107
Lasser held up a hand to shield his eyes as the headlights blasted out of the dark. He heard the sound of tyres squirming to a stop and the familiar noise of a car door being thrust open and then the night was split by a single word.
‘Kelly!’ Suzanne Ramsey screamed and then staggered into the spotlight like a drunken actor missing their cue. The girl at his side was suddenly on her feet leaning forward, shaking her head, her dark hair thrashing.
‘Get away from me!’ she spat, the words full of venom.
Suzanne kept coming zombie style, her arms wide her face enraptured oblivious to her daughter’s words, concerned only with the fact that she was here, plucked from oblivion and deposited via some unfathomable miracle in the headlights of the Range Rover.
Lasser scrambled to his feet.
‘Kelly, it’s me,’ Suzanne stopped and looked at her daughter as if she was unsure it was actually her.
‘Get away from me, I hate you!’
Suzanne looked at Lasser as if he could offer some explanation as to what was happening.
‘But...’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Kelly slid her hair behind her ears her face a confused mixture of anger and bewilderment. ‘All this time you knew and said nothing, I mean, why would you do that?’
Suzanne took a hesitant step forward. ‘We didn’t want to spoil things, sweetheart, Jonathan was your father...’
‘Liar!’ Kelly thrust out a shaking finger. ‘You knew what he was like and did nothing!’ her voice echoed beneath the trees an anguished cry that made Lasser wince.
Suzanne edged closer, hands fluttering; she kept glancing at Lasser as if wishing he would somehow simply vanish or drop dead on the spot. ‘Kelly, listen to me, your father and I were having problems but it was never anything to do with you. I love you, we both loved you...’
