Throwaways (Crime Files Book 2)

by Jenny Thomson

  Tommy and I leaned in closer.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “I pretended to drink, but when he wasn’t looking, I emptied the glass out at my feet. We drove out of Glasgow. The weirdo said he had a country pad he wanted to take us to with a Jacuzzi and a heart-shaped swimming pool. He even boasted about having stables and horses we could ride.”

  She paused, and a brief smile crossed her face. “I used to go riding when I was a kid. So did Sheena. She even has her own pony. That’s why we hit it off.”

  She started to shake, and at first I thought she was going to start crying until I realized she was jonesing for a fix. She made a face. “It sounded too good to be true, so I knew it was a load of crap. This job’s not Pretty Woman where some rich hunk puts you up in the Ritz and buys you designer outfits to wear at various social events. We’re streetwalkers. Occasionally we get a footballer and end up back at his fancy pad where we get sandwiched between him and his obnoxious mates. That’s if we’re lucky.

  “Sheena fell asleep, and I knew right away he’d put something in her drink. One minute, she’s all hyper, the next she’s conked out. People don’t drop off like that. Not when they’re working and in a stranger’s car.

  “I knew she’d been drugged, so I waited a few minutes and pretended to be zonked out myself. He’d locked the car doors the minute I’d climbed in. The second he unlocked the doors, I was gonna bolt.”

  She stopped talking and stared vacantly into the distance as though she was back in that car.

  “What happened next?” Tommy said, his voice buzzing with excitement.

  “We were on this country road when the car stopped. Except for the light from the headlights, it was dark. These headlights appeared, and a van pulled up alongside us and stopped. I could see the blue van in the car mirror. He unlocked the doors and got out. He was talking to someone, I don’t know who; it was a man’s voice. I couldn’t hear everything that they said, but I think he called him brother.”

  I didn’t want to interrupt, but I had to be certain. “Are you sure he called him brother? Could you have misheard?”

  “No, he definitely called him brother. He said it twice.” There was no doubt in her voice.

  “Sorry,” I said, “go on.”

  “He opened the passenger door, and together they lifted Sheena into the back of the van. When they were carrying Sheena, I knew that was my only chance to escape, so I quietly opened the door and jumped out and just ran like hell until eventually I was so knackered I had to hide. Nobody came after me, and I couldn’t believe it.” She was breathless now. “I had a lucky escape, didn’t I?”

  Reaching across the table, I patted her hand. Even in the heated mall, her skin felt deathly cold. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said, and I meant it. If anyone knew what it was like to feel helpless, it was me. Kim scowled at me and quickly withdrew her hand.

  “What did this Mike look like?” Tommy was straight back to business. “Did he look like this?” He held out the picture we’d found in a medical journal where Dr. Cassidy had outlined his “unorthodox” clinical methods for dealing with troubled adolescents. Somehow I doubted any of his methods involved abducting and drugging patients and doing God knows what to them, including possibly forcing them to eat a human finger.

  We eyed Kim with anticipation as she looked at the picture.

  “Yes, that’s him if you take away the glasses and the beard.”

  Bingo. We’d got him. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. There were times when I thought we’d never find Sheena.

  “Did you see the other man’s face?” Tommy said.

  I knew where he was going with this. Maybe Donald Cassidy called his accomplice “brother” as a term of friendship and not because he was really his brother.

  Kim wrinkled her face. “No, how could I see him when I was flat out on the backseat pretending to have passed out? It wasn’t like I could look out the window. I wasn’t on some fucking family holiday.”

  There was an edge to her voice, and I didn’t blame her. The police had asked me a lot of dumb questions after my parents were murdered. Of course, I knew they had to ask them, but that was beside the point. Talking about events when you were the victim is painful. You don’t want to go back there; you don’t want to go back to a time and place where you were helpless and alone.

  “All I remember is he had a Glasgow accent and Mike called him brother.” She stared at Tommy. “He definitely called him brother.”

  “Thanks, Kim,” I said, doubting that Mike was even the guy’s real name. “You’ve been really helpful.”

  She nodded. “Just find that weirdo before he takes anyone else.” Her features softened. “Sheena was a nice kid, you know. I liked her. But there was nothing I could do to help her. I had to get away, save myself.”

  Although she probably wasn’t that much older than Sheena, I didn’t doubt that she saw her as a kid.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” Tommy said. “They might have been able to track the car and find Sheena.”

  “Yeah, right,” she tutted, eying him wearily. “You don’t get it, do you? When you do what I do to make a crust, nobody cares when shit happens to you. Not the cops, not other people. You’re on your own. If I’d gone to the cops, they’d have said I was lying to score drugs.”

  Her eyes bored into Tommy’s. “That, mister, is the reality for people like me, until we’re found dead in an alley with a needle stuck in our arm, then suddenly there’s all this blubbering about drugs being a scourge when the real scourge is folk not giving a shit about people like me. We’re throwaways, disposable. Folk only care when nice girls get killed, and we’re not nice girls.”

  “Have you any idea where he was taking Sheena?” I asked. “Did they mention somewhere?”

  My heart sounded like I was listening to it on sonogram as I waited for her to answer.

  “No.” She shrugged. “They never said.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I wish I did know. I might have gone to the cops. Saved Sheena.” Kim stood up, scraping her chair along the floor. “Now, if that’s us done, I’ll be off. Things to do, people to see.”

  Tommy took the envelope with the money out of his inside pocket. There was a hefty sum inside. We’d decided that if Kim did tell us the truth, we’d try and get her to make herself scarce for a while.

  “Take this,” he said. “Go away somewhere for a week. Spain’s nice at this time of year.”

  She eyed Tommy and the money he was holding dismissively. “You can put that away, brown eyes. I’m doing this for Sheena. I liked the kid. Besides, we had a deal. You did your part, I did mine. Now we’re quits.”

  “Please take it,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for her to be found dead in a ditch somewhere, or worse, never found at all.

  This time when Tommy held out the cash she grabbed it and shoved it down her top. Then she trotted off without as much as a glance in my direction.

  “She’s off to score,” Tommy said.

  The depressing thing was, he was probably right. But it was none of our business. What she did was up to her. We’d done our best to keep her safe. Beside, we’d bigger things to worry about. We had to find out where they’d taken Sheena.

  Chapter 23

  Once Kim had gone Tommy and I stared at one another. “Brother. You told me he was an only child, Nancy.”

  “He was.” I couldn’t hide the irritation from my voice. I’d been thorough. Well, as thorough as you can be when you don’t have access to the same records the police can get at the touch of a button. I dug my nails into my scalp. “There’s got to be something we missed. Maybe his parents adopted a child. That’d explain why I couldn’t find a record for him.”

  “That’d make sense,” Tommy said. “So how do we find that out?”

  “Can’t your police contact help?”

  Tommy’s forehead creased. “Think they’ve had enough of helping me an
d are getting worried their boss will find out.”

  Great. Now we didn’t even have outside help.

  Tommy grinned. “Maybe you could use your feminine wiles to get some info.”

  I cackled. “Maybe you could offer to sleep with your police contact? Lots of stuff comes out during pillow talk.”

  Tommy held his hands up in mock surrender. “Fair enough. How can we find out if Cassidy’s parents adopted a kid without either of us using our sexual magnetism?”

  “Let me think.” And that’s what I did.

  Fifteen minutes and two hot chocolates and a slice of pizza later, I had a plan.

  Five minutes later, we were back in his car putting my plan into action.

  After punching the numbers into my phone, I heard it ring and I waited.

  “Hello,” a woman with a weary voice came on. When I asked to speak to Dr. Cassidy’s wife, the woman was reluctant to put her on, but when I gave her my spiel about owning the building Dr. Cassidy’s office was in and wanting to send a card of condolence, she relented. “Eileen’s sleeping, but I can give you the address. I’m her sister. But if this is about rent he owes, I doubt you’ll get it. I really shouldn’t say this, but Donald left Eileen in a mountain of debt.”

  She reeled off the address, and I pretended to write it down. Then I casually mentioned that Dr. Cassidy had talked about his brother during one of our regular chats. “You don’t happen to have an address for him so I can send him a condolence card? His brother was such a nice man. I’d like to pay my respects.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. “Sorry, I can’t help you there. Donald’s brother Eddie’s in an institution. He’s been there for, oh, it must be twenty years now. That’s why Donald became a psychologist. To help people like his foster brother.”

  “What was wrong with Eddie?” I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t resist it.

  “Eddie started to hear voices, when he was a teenager, a few years after he was adopted by Donald’s parents, and he’d get violent.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. Do you know where Eddie is now? Maybe I could send him a card of condolence too.”

  A pause. I was expecting her to hang up on me, but after a few seconds she said, “The last time I heard he was in Shield House Hospital.”

  Shield House was a psychiatric hospital outside Glasgow. Well, it had been. Years ago it’d been closed down. I wasn’t sure why, but it was probably to save money. These days, they preferred care in the community to institutionalizing people.

  Tommy had already typed the name into a search engine on his laptop by the time I’d disconnected the call. “The place was closed down five years ago. It says here the patients were sent to different hospitals.” He pointed at the screen. “But one patient didn’t make it to another hospital.”

  “Don’t tell me Eddie escaped?”

  Tommy nodded. “The papers have the missing patient listed as Edward Doran, but it’s got to be him. He must have kept his birth name. Maybe he wasn’t formally adopted.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.” There was a wee flutter in my chest. “And what better place to hide abducted women than a disused hospital?”

  There was a glint in Tommy’s eyes. “You do know he could be anywhere by now? Even if they did have the women there, he could have scarpered when his brother died. Ditched the girls.” He saw my disappointed face. “But we’ve got nothing to lose by checking it out.”

  We arranged for Eric to meet us there.

  Chapter 24

  My dad used to say that no matter what people did, nature always managed to fight back. Shield House was proof of that. The hospital had been abandoned five years ago, but it looked more like fifteen.

  The local health authority had been in negotiations to sell the land the hospital stood on to a housing developer, but no work had been done. There wasn’t even a demolition sign. Thistles as high as us had taken over the car park, their purple flowers standing proudly to attention in the grassy wilderness as Tommy snaked the car round them and the weeds.

  The hospital itself was set well back from the road and was on six floors. Most of the roof had caved in, and pigeons had taken over the building. The outer walls were caked in excrement. All of the windows within view were smashed.

  If you were looking for the ideal place to hide abducted women, this was it. Nobody would expect anyone to be within a million miles of here.

  By this time, Eric had joined us in his car. “Let’s check round the back,” he said with his usual economy of words. There’d been no hello or small talk.

  “Okay,” Tommy said, turning his gaze on me. “You stay in the car and act as a lookout. If anyone comes, toot the horn and drive the hell out of here. We’ll use Eric’s car.”

  My whole body shook with indignation. “Are you fucking kidding me?” After all we’d been through, he honestly wanted me to play the little woman whilst the men got on with the real work. Screw that. “I’m coming,” I said. “Are you gonna stop me.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

  For the first time I noticed the worry lines on Tommy’s forehead. “We don’t know what we’re facing, Nancy. Doran might have a gun.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I felt like saying he could have two guns and a machete and he’d still be no match for a pissed-off psycho bitch like me. Then I remembered what Eric had said about Tommy not wanting to lose anyone else, so I decided to hit him with logic. “Look, if Sheena and the others are inside, they’ve been locked up in this dump with Dr. Frankenstein and his mad assistant brother doing God knows what to them. They’re going to be traumatized, and the last thing they need to see is more men. They might freak out. Think you’re part of it. End up having a heart attack or a mental breakdown.”

  “She’s got you there,” Eric said. “And she can handle herself. She’s shown that in training.” He winked at me. “She knows how to fight dirty. In fact, she seems to prefer it.”

  A compliment from Eric at last. Throughout our training, the best I’d got out of him was “not bad” and a wee smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared after I’d broke his nose. Both were so fleeting that afterwards I doubted they’d ever happened at all.

  Tommy’s body relaxed. “Okay, but we stick together. We don’t split up at any point.” He motioned to Eric. “You take the front and I’ll bring up the rear.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering if he’d get me to wear those reins anxious parents put on their kids to stop them from straying off.

  “And bring your Taser.”

  Taser? What did he think I was gonna do, bring my lipstick?

  Biting back a catty remark, I followed the pair round the back of the hospital, noticing for the first time that they both had guns.

  Tommy caught me looking. “We have special dispensation from the home secretary to carry guns because we’re Special Forces.”

  I would have said “Oh,” but I was too busy noticing that someone had been here recently. The grass that covered the loading bay had been trampled down, and tire marks were clearly visible. Judging by the space between them, they’d come from a van.

  As we got closer, we could see that the rusty padlock on the service door that led to the basement had been cut. My heart started to beat faster. Were we finally going to find Sheena and the others? Please, God, if they were here, let them be alive.

  Quietly, Eric pushed the door open and headed inside, gun drawn. I followed.

  We’d brought torches, but we didn’t need them. The place was well lit. They must have been using the old hospital generator because surely the electricity would have been cut off a long time ago.

  The stench hit me as soon as I walked through the door, instinctively making me take a step back. I remember reading somewhere that in America they have these shutdown jails—everything is shut off including electricity and water in these abandoned jails. With all the bad air trapped inside, they stink when they’re opened up a
gain. The hospital reeked of that level of abandonment. Not even the smashed windows seemed to have aired out the place.

  A dirty brown rat the size of a cat scuttled across my foot and bolted for the door, and I felt like joining the creature. If smells could kill, this one would knock you dead.

  We followed Eric down the stairs, taking great care not to let the metal door swing behind us in case it banged or squeaked.

  Now we were inside the hospital basement, we faced a dilemma. There were three marked doors. The letters had faded, but we could make out the signs on two of them—laundry and treatment room.

  The decision was made for us when we heard a woman’s scream coming from behind the unmarked door. Eric indicated he’d go in first, and I followed him.

  “I’m phoning the police,” was the last thing Tommy said before I walked through that door.

  And that’s when someone hit me.

  Chapter 25

  When I came to, my clothes were plastered to my body with sweat and my head felt like someone had been using it to play a game of dodgeball.

  Slowly, my eyes came into focus. I was in a large room with peeling white paint and the stench of human feces. Sheena Andrews was standing over me, her eyes glazed. She was wearing a filthy dress that might once have been pink over her tiny frame. Straggly hair hung down her shoulders, covering some of her face. She reminded me of Sadako, the creepy dead girl who crawled out of the telly in Ring.

  “Sheena, are you okay?”

  My words came out scratchy. It was so hot, my throat felt like it’d been sandpapered down. Near me, someone groaned.

  Eric was on the floor, head slumped to one side, a knife protruding from his gut.

  What the hell happened?

  There was fresh blood on Sheena’s dress.

  “Sheena, what have you done?”

  Why would she stab Eric? It didn’t make sense.

  I had to help him.

  Trying to get up proved to be a mistake as the room swirled like water draining down a plughole. Instead, I forced myself to crawl over to Eric. There had to be something I could do.