The vehicle set off, bound for God only knew where, but Anca knew their destination wouldn’t be pleasant.
Mile after mile passed. Hour after hour.
Daylight was slow to come but it was visible through that small gap in their wooden prison.
Crina mumbled behind her gag. Anca didn’t have to understand the words, she knew what they would be. “I want to go home.” Those five words had become Crina’s mantra.
Anca longed for home too. She’d been too frightened to sleep, she hadn’t seen food for hours, she was battered and bruised—
She couldn’t think about that. If she did, if she remembered the smell of the man, his hot breath—no, she couldn’t think about it or she would be sick again. Instead, she would give thanks to God that no one had touched Crina.
Anca longed for home, but could think of no way of getting there. They had no friends, not one, and she daren’t speak to a stranger, even if she was lucky enough to find someone who understood her, because they would call the police. She and Crina would find themselves locked in a filthy cell for years.
The horsebox drove into a tunnel and stopped. Anca’s heart, beating fast with terror, threatened to jump out of her ribcage.
Chains clanked around them. People spoke. Men shouted to one another. Anca didn’t understand a single word. A horn sounded. A mechanised voice came over a loudspeaker system.
Within minutes, Anca realised they were at sea.
Her heart soared and plummeted with a mix of terror and hope. Perhaps they were going home after all. Something had happened. A man had died. Perhaps that’s why they were going home.
Anca could think of no other explanation.
Winters would be lived cold, wet and hungry, but at least they would be home. People would speak their language. The sights, sounds and smells would be blessedly familiar.
Whoever it was, she was glad the person was dead. If it meant she could go home, they could all die.
She didn’t know how long they were on the boat, but guessed at a couple of hours. Chains clanked again, men shouted again. Soon, Anca saw a welcome slit of daylight and could feel the road beneath the horsebox’s wheels.
Not long after, it all happened again. The daylight didn’t vanish, but she heard chains crashing against each other and she heard men shouting to each other again. Unbelievably, she soon realised they were on another boat. It must be a small one. As she could still see daylight, they must be on the deck.
The boat bobbed on the water and she and Crina kept bumping into each other as it rode the swell. Anca began to worry that they might be seasick. Their mouths were sealed. They would choke on their own vomit.
Anca put her nose to the gap and inhaled the fresh, salty air. Whatever they did, they must not be sick.
After a while, the sea grew calmer. Instead of being tossed around, they gently rose and fell with the waves.
The horsebox was driven off the boat and, once again, Anca listened to the rumble of the wheels on the road. This was a bad road, full of ruts and deep holes that jolted them.
She had to concentrate on the sounds and smells. If she thought of the man—
The vehicle stopped. All was quiet. Anca could hear birds. She also thought she could hear the sea, but that might have been nothing more than another dizzy spell.
She could cope with the nausea, the dizziness, the bruises, and even the fear. Anything was preferable to having that man force himself inside her. He’d been delighted to make her bleed, had even laughed when she’d staggered off the bed and collapsed to the floor. Yes, anything was preferable. Even a cell in an English prison.
The lid was yanked open by that brute of an Englishman. He was big and ugly with tattoos on his neck and forearms. He cursed as they stumbled drunkenly on legs that had gone numb hours ago. Shouting, he pushed and shoved them toward the door of a large house. Anca knew an urge to run, just run, but she was too weak and her legs wouldn’t cooperate.
There was no time to check out the interior of the building. They were being pulled down some steep steps and into a cellar lit only by one small bulb. It smelled damp. It was damp. Anca’s shoes squelched on the soft earth.
The lone occupant was a young woman with close-cropped black hair. She was chained to the wall by ankle cuffs but she leaped to her feet and screamed at the man in what Anca assumed was English. He didn’t answer her. She pummelled his chest but he knocked her aside as if she were an irritating fly.
The man said nothing. He yanked the tape from Crina’s mouth, then Anca’s, untied their hands and strode back up the stairs, switching off that light and slamming the door shut.
The woman continued to shout at them in English. The only word Anca understood was kill. She pointed at her heaving chest and at Anca and Crina as she said this.
Crina dropped to her knees, banged her fists over her ears and screamed.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dylan thought Jack looked wary when he opened the door of his flat. His jeans were in need of a good wash and his dark blue sweater had lost its shape long ago, but his clothes looked a lot better than he did.
“Oh, it’s you. D’you wanna come in?”
“Thanks.” Dylan stepped inside and followed him to the small kitchen where he was in the process of making tea.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
“No, you’re okay, thanks. I just called in to see what’s been going on?”
“You tell me.” Jack cursed as he spilled milk all over the counter. “Fucking police have got it in for me.”
“They say you were on Alan Roderick’s property the morning he was murdered.”
“So?”
“So?” Dylan echoed in amazement. “So it makes you chief suspect in a murder inquiry.”
Jack shrugged.
“What the hell were you doing there, Jack?”
He leaned back against the counter, a mug cradled in shaking hands. “Just having a look.”
“But why?”
“Dunno,” Jack said. “You’d come up from London asking questions about him. You kept going on about him. Then I listened to that message Sam left me again, the one where she said she’d found out something bad. I dunno. I just wondered if she’d found out summat about him. About Roderick.”
“But what—?”
“I was going to break in and have a look round, that’s all. But the bastard chased me off. I told the police that at least a hundred bloody times, but they wouldn’t listen. If that bloke hadn’t come forward and said he’d been there when I was chased off, I’d still be there now.”
“Did you see anyone else? Notice anyone you knew hanging around?”
“No.” Jack blew across the surface of his tea before taking a sip. “I wish I’d never gone near the bloody place but you don’t expect folk to be done in like that, do you?”
“Hardly.”
“Fucking police,” he muttered. “Christ, if I’d done him in, I’d have been covered in blood, wouldn’t I?”
“Unless you’d changed your clothes, yes.”
“They knew full well I hadn’t. Tossers.”
Anger emanated from every pore. Dylan knew Jack had a temper, though. For the moment at least, he was holding it in check.
“It’s a good job they have CCTV around there,” Dylan said.
According to Frank it was the CCTV that had saved him. CCTV that had captured first Jack, then Arthur Bryant delivering his newsletters, Jack fleeing from the house, Bryant walking away.
Given that, one would like to think that Roderick’s killer had been captured on that same camera. Apparently not. No one known to the police or, as far as they knew, to Roderick, had been seen. Witnesses said an old blue Transit van had been parked on the other road near Roderick’s house. There was no CCTV along there though.
Dylan was blocking the arched entrance to the kitchen. When he stepped aside, Jack followed him.
Dylan looked out at the quiet street. He would have expected reporters to b
e queuing up waiting for a word with Jack. He was glad there were none around. Jack was sure to say something damning.
“The coppers have always had it in for me.” Jack scowled at his tea.
“That’s what happens when you lock girlfriends in their flats and frighten the life out of them,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, well.” Jack shrugged at that.
“Tell me about Alan Roderick.” Dylan perched on the arm of a chair. “Everything you can think of. What Sam thought of him. Things he’s said or done. Anything.”
“Sam didn’t like him.” Jack spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “Dunno why, though. I don’t know that he ever did or said anything to her.”
“Perhaps she didn’t like seeing her mother with another man. A lot of children resent new people in their parents’ lives.”
Jack put his cup of tea on the windowsill and stared out at the street. “Nah. It was more than that. She wasn’t particularly close to her mum so she didn’t care who she was living with.”
“She never told you why she didn’t like him?” Dylan found that hard to believe.
“No. She said he gave her the creeps, that’s all.” Jack turned to look at him. “D’you reckon she found out something about him?”
“I don’t know what to think.” That had to be the understatement of the decade.
“It’s funny she found out summat and then vanished.”
“It is.”
“Especially now he’s been done in.” Jack picked up his tea with shaking hands.
“Yes.”
“She didn’t like the way he was with the kids,” Jack said. “I do know that. She reckoned it’d kill him if he saw ’em having fun.”
Dylan could believe that. Those children had been much too quiet when he’d called at the house. He wouldn’t exactly say they’d seemed nervous around him, but they were certainly well behaved. They hadn’t been playing together—not that it meant anything. For all Dylan knew, they’d fallen out that day and preferred their own company. Perhaps, if they’d wanted, they could have played together and made as much noise as they liked.
“She said once that she wished he’d stay in Scotland,” Jack said. “She said, ‘If he likes it so much in Scotland, why doesn’t he piss off and live there?’ She just didn’t like him, but I don’t really know why.”
Dylan didn’t either.
He wasn’t getting any answers from Jack. Or from anyone else come to that.
It was time for a change of scenery. If the answer wasn’t in Dawson’s Clough, maybe it was in Scotland.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Christ!” Dylan cursed as rain pelted the car like bullets. He drove into a lay-by and switched off the engine. It was like a sodding monsoon.
That wasn’t why he was lost though. His sat nav, with its usual efficiency, had taken him along close to ten miles of single track roads that, judging by the tall grass verges, were rarely used. It was also obvious that the last half hour had been spent driving round a complete circle.
He’d arrived in Scotland on Wednesday evening and had stayed at a hotel in Thurso, a few miles down the road from Scrabster, for the last two nights. He had photographs with him—one of Hunt, one of Roderick, both of which had been cut from newspapers, and one of Sam. Those photos had been shown to the small local population of Scrabster and hadn’t elicited so much as a flicker of recognition. The name Mattie had been met with equally blank expressions.
When the rain eased slightly, Dylan tried to start the Morgan. As fond as wet weather as Dylan was, the car reluctantly coughed into life at the third attempt.
It was Saturday morning and, instead of being at home enjoying time with Luke, Dylan was driving to the terminal to catch that ferry to the Orkney Islands.
The wipers swished across the screen, doing their best to cope with the rain. Madness, madness, madness, they squeaked.
Dylan should face facts. If he hadn’t seen two postcards sent to Hunt, he wouldn’t be anywhere near Scotland. Roderick had driven here, true, but he’d also taken his lorry to Hungary and Romania, and Dylan hadn’t, as yet, been tempted to race off to eastern Europe.
Once aboard the ferry, Dylan showed his photographs to every member of the crew. No one recognised the subjects or the names he mentioned, so he sat in the bar and enjoyed a drink to pass the time. The sea, fortunately, was flat calm although he’d heard that the Pentland Firth was notorious for parting travellers from their breakfasts.
The sky had cleared and was a perfect blue when the ferry docked in the small Orkney town of Stromness. Everything looked picturesque, unhurried, low-key—and small.
The population of Orkney didn’t warrant a Starbucks or a McDonalds on every street. Only around twenty thousand people lived here and they were scattered across the many islands. It seemed unlikely that Roderick had brought his lorry over here. There would be no point.
Perhaps the only reason Roderick volunteered for the drives over the border into Scotland was because he enjoyed them. Dylan had dreaded a nine-and-a-half-hour drive but, surprisingly, it had been good. Compared to England, the roads were deserted. The scenery was stunning too—lochs and mountains, even a golden eagle had soared above him, the first Dylan had ever seen. Perhaps Roderick had been equally enchanted. Maybe he’d never set foot on Orkney soil. Maybe the person who was sending those postcards to Hunt hadn’t either.
After checking in at the Stromness Hotel, Dylan strolled through the town and wandered around the harbour.
Tiredness had him yawning as he walked, but restlessness and a lack of purpose wouldn’t let him sleep for hours. Sometimes, problems solved themselves as he walked. The problem of Sam Hunt, however, remained a tangled mess in his head.
For all he knew, she could have just taken off with someone she met. It was unlikely, but possible. There was her father, her mother and half-sisters, her boyfriend, her best friend, her job and her dog. He couldn’t imagine her taking off without a word to anyone.
Dylan didn’t know her admittedly but he believed he understood the sort of girl she was. She was responsible. She knew right from wrong. She also had an overactive imagination but he supposed she couldn’t be blamed for that. No, she had intended picking up her sisters and taking them to school on that fateful morning.
The most likely explanation was that she was dead. That was no reason to give up though. If she was dead, she was in no position to bring the culprit—if indeed there was a culprit—to justice.
Dylan intended to do that for her.
Deciding he’d think better with a glass in his hand, he stepped into a pub. It was busy, crammed with people putting the world to rights, and Dylan took the opportunity of asking around and showing his photographs. Nothing.
“He’s a lorry driver,” he said, pointing at the picture of Roderick that he’d cut from Dawson Clough’s local newspaper.
People shook their heads. They apologised. The names, the faces, they said, meant nothing to them.
“He’s friendly with a man called Mattie.” He pointed to the poor photo of Hunt. “Mattie used to be in the army.”
More shaking of heads.
He spent an hour in that bar before walking slowly back to the hotel.
Apart from asking around and showing off his photos, he wasn’t sure what he could do. When he’d been on the force, he’d always been able to come up with ideas, avenues to tread, theories to test. Now he was clueless. He’d thought he was up to this job, which just proved that he’d started to believe his own hype.
Orkney was noted for various things—its history, its beauty and its lack of crime. If it hadn’t been for Jim, who’d visited Orkney to climb and had bored Dylan with hundreds of photos of deserted shorelines, fishing boats, sheep and cottages dotted here and there, he probably wouldn’t have heard of the place. To Dylan, it was simply a cluster of islands that, along with the Shetland Isles, were dumped to the side of Scotland on TV weather maps.
It wasn’t the sort of place where crimes we
re committed. Or solved.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Bev didn’t know what woke her. She only knew that her head hurt like hell if she attempted any sort of movement. No, scrap that. It hurt without the movement.
She closed her eyes, but it was no use. She needed the bathroom, followed by coffee and a couple of aspirin.
She eased herself out of bed, pulled her dressing gown from the hook and decided she was getting too old for girls’ nights in with Lucy. How many bottles of wine had they demolished?
She brushed her teeth gently but that didn’t help. God, why did they do it?
Envelopes scattered across the mat told her what had woken her. Their postman couldn’t do anything quietly. At best, he whistled as he walked round the estate. Sometimes he sang “Oh, what a beautiful morning…” He also took great delight in pushing mail through letterboxes with an enormous clatter and then throwing red elastic bands to the ground. The fact that it was before seven and most people were still asleep didn’t bother him at all. Sadistic sod.
She picked up her mail and flicked through it as she headed for the kitchen. The three circulars would go straight in the recycling bin, and the reminder that the car insurance was due would be put aside until she had time to compare more quotes. The other envelope was official and addressed to Ms. B. Scott.
She ripped it open, aware that, despite telling herself it didn’t matter one way or the other, her heart was racing.
“Oh my God—” She read the words again. We are delighted to offer— “Oh my God!”
She definitely needed coffee now.
While it was percolating, she swallowed two aspirins and put three empty wine bottles in the bin. The letter watched on. “What are you going to do now?” it seemed to ask.
Bev had no idea. At the moment, she barely knew which day it was.
She stared at the letter, disbelieving, shocked and, yes, a little proud.
Her mug was almost empty when she heard the slow pad of feet on the stairs. Lucy put her head round the door. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
Dead Silent (A Dylan Scott Mystery) Page 22
