Bring Them Home (Detective Karen Hart Book 1)

by D. S. Butler

  A uniformed officer had travelled with Cathy in the ambulance.

  ‘I think Cathy found out about Jenny Dean’s new boyfriend and the risk he posed to Emily,’ Karen said.

  DI Morgan nodded. ‘That would make sense, but how did she find out? Cathy Palmer was known to keep to herself. I can’t imagine her cosying up to Jenny Dean for a chat over coffee.’

  ‘I have a feeling we might find out the truth from Emily.’

  DI Morgan raised an eyebrow. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, I think Cathy befriended Emily and the little girl confided in her.’

  ‘But Jenny swore that Phil Carver had never been alone with Emily.’

  ‘Let’s hope Jenny’s right. But if she left the room when he visited, even just to make a cup of tea, that could have been enough time to make Emily uncomfortable or scared.’

  The window ahead of them became free, and DI Morgan introduced them both and gave the names of the patients they were waiting to speak to. They wanted to see how Cathy was getting on and find out how long they’d have to wait until she was fit enough for her psychiatric evaluation, but they also wanted to check on the girls.

  Amy Fisher had been drugged for a long period of time. Karen could only presume that was how Cathy was able to keep her presence in the windmill secret for so long. The property had been searched on two occasions and there was no soundproofing – so if Amy had been conscious, she’d have been able to call for help. Karen could only guess that Cathy had decided also to drug Emily and Sian after she had taken them.

  The reception staff were able to give them the locations of the four patients. Sian Gibson was in ICU, Emily was on a paediatric ward, and both Amy Fisher and Cathy Palmer had been given separate rooms on Lister ward. Following the directions, DI Morgan and Karen set off to find them all.

  DC Farzana Shah had been assigned the unenviable task of informing Nigel Palmer that his daughter had pushed his son to his death. Emily and Sian’s parents were on their way to the hospital after Rick had phoned and told them the girls had been found.

  Amy Fisher’s parents had moved back to the Scottish Highlands, so it would be some hours before they made it down to Lincoln. Sophie had called to give them the extraordinary news – perhaps one of the few instances when a late-night phone call would be gratefully received. Karen could only imagine the joy they must have felt at hearing their daughter was still alive. After eighteen months, had they given up hope? Or had they somehow known, deep down, that she was still alive?

  Karen and DI Morgan decided to talk to Amy Fisher first. Sian was in intensive care and Emily was still heavily sedated. It would be a while until they could speak to the children.

  The doctors were not happy with them talking to Cathy Palmer until after she had had her psychiatric evaluation. Under other circumstances, DI Morgan would have pushed this, but on this occasion, now that the girls were safe, there was no immediate sense of urgency and he knew that any information they got from Cathy Palmer now would be inadmissible.

  Amy was in a private room, and they managed to locate her doctor to have a quick chat before they spoke to her.

  He was a tall man in his mid-fifties with grey hair and a kind face.

  ‘I’m Doctor Johnson,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘I think Amy should be able to talk to you now. We’ve done some preliminary tests and are awaiting the results, but I’d guess she’s been taking heroin.’

  Karen had suspected as much but the news still left a bitter taste. She wondered where on earth Cathy had been getting the heroin. They’d thought she’d led a very sheltered life.

  ‘Amy will be in some pain and discomfort. Her other withdrawal symptoms haven’t yet kicked in, but they will very soon. We’ll have to manage her detox programme carefully.’

  Poor kid, Karen thought. As though she hadn’t been through enough over the past eighteen months. Her blood would now need to be screened for HIV and Hep C, and she’d go through hell during heroin withdrawal. Karen had spoken to addicts in the past and they’d all told her the same thing. After being hooked on the drug for a while, it wasn’t about getting a high. They’d need to take a hit to feel well.

  She exchanged a look with DI Morgan and wondered whether his thoughts were running along the same lines. Had Amy been hooked before she went missing, or was this all down to Cathy?

  The doctor led them into a small room. Despite only seeing Amy less than an hour ago, Karen was shocked. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin had a grey tinge. At least someone had made an effort to clean her up and her face had been sponged clean. Her hair was still matted, though, and she looked thin, almost lost in the big hospital bed.

  Amy hadn’t been suffering from withdrawal symptoms when Karen found her at the windmill, but now her last hit was wearing off and she was suffering.

  ‘Amy,’ Karen said, moving forward. ‘Do you remember me?’

  Amy’s eyes fluttered open and she struggled to focus on Karen.

  ‘I thought I was dreaming,’ she said. ‘Am I really out?’

  DI Morgan nodded and said, ‘Yes, you’re safe now, Amy.’

  He didn’t mention the fact that her captor was in an almost identical room just along the same corridor.

  ‘We’d like you to tell us as much as you can remember,’ Karen said. ‘I know it’s difficult, especially as you still have drugs in your system and you might not remember everything right now, but anything you can tell us will help.’

  Amy flopped back against her pillows listlessly. ‘The doctor mentioned something about giving me methadone. Do you think he’s going to let me have it soon?’

  There was a light sheen of sweat on Amy’s pale face.

  ‘I think they’re going to prescribe methadone to help you through the withdrawal, Amy,’ DI Morgan said. ‘Were you taking heroin before all this happened?’

  Amy looked guarded and her gaze flickered between DI Morgan and Karen.

  ‘It’s okay, Amy,’ DI Morgan said. ‘You’re not in any trouble.’

  Amy’s body seemed to sag. Either with relief or weariness, Karen wasn’t sure.

  ‘Not heroin. I dabbled in some stuff, took some coke at weekends, but I wasn’t an addict or anything.’

  If Karen had a pound for every time she’d heard that, she’d be a very rich woman. She waited for Amy to continue.

  ‘I shouldn’t have ever started but I just wanted to try it, you know?’

  ‘Who was your supplier?’ DI Morgan asked, and Karen was surprised. As nice as it would be to put away a drug dealer, surely other questions were more important at this point.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’d call and ask for what I needed, and he’d tell me to meet one of his runners somewhere in the city centre. Sometimes it was behind the bingo hall, sometimes near the bus station. The day it happened, I was shattered. I’d stayed up all night because I had an order I needed to get out. I wanted something to pep me up, to give me some energy. Cathy came to see me and overheard me on the phone to my dealer. At first, I panicked. I thought she was going to run and tell her father and I’d lose the studio, but she was really understanding. She offered to take the first batch of orders to the post office. When she got back, she brought me a cup of tea. The next thing I knew, I woke up in that horrible basement. I begged Cathy to let me go but she wouldn’t. She kept saying I was in danger and she was helping me. She’d drugged me using her father’s sleeping pills, but when the effects wore off I screamed for help. I think she took my mobile and used it to contact the dealer because the next time she came down to the basement she said she had to give me something to keep me quiet. I panicked when I saw the syringe.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where Cathy got the money to pay for the drugs?’ Karen asked. Heroin was not cheap and as far as they knew, Cathy had no income.

  Amy shook her head.

  ‘Why did Cathy think you were in danger, Amy?’ DI Morgan asked gently.

  ‘It was Jasper. He’d taken to hanging around the studio, trying
to chat me up. Cathy warned me about him but he wouldn’t stop coming by. I should have known something wasn’t right. I tried to avoid Jasper, but I never even considered I had any reason to be afraid of Cathy.’

  ‘Do you think Jasper or his father knew you were locked up in the basement room?’ Karen asked.

  ‘No. Cathy said she was keeping me down there so that Jasper couldn’t get to me. She thought he was going to hurt me. I tried to talk to her at first and make her see sense. I didn’t think it would go on for so long. She wasn’t violent, but she kept me tied up down there. She wouldn’t listen to reason, and when the two little girls were brought in, I knew I had to do something.’ She took a long, shaky breath.

  ‘She said she had to take the girls because Emily was in danger.’ Amy paused. ‘She said she was saving her from her mother’s new boyfriend. I don’t know if it’s true . . . Emily and Sian were pretty out of it the whole time they were there. They did manage to help me get the cable ties off my wrists, though, and we tried to get out, but Sian fell from the ladder when we tried to force open the hatch. That’s when she cut her leg.’ Amy’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I was trying to help them, but it was my fault Sian got hurt.’

  Karen reached out and put her hand on Amy’s, careful to avoid the welts and bruises on her wrist from the cable ties and the cannula attached to the IV fluid.

  ‘You were trying to escape. No one can blame you for that, Amy.’ Trying to make her feel better, Karen told her that her parents were on their way. ‘It could take them some time to get here, but they’re over the moon to have you back after so long, Amy.’

  For the first time, a trace of a smile appeared on Amy’s face. ‘How long was I missing?’

  As Karen explained she’d been missing for over eighteen months, Amy started to cry. ‘I didn’t know it had been that long. I knew it had been at least a couple of months but . . .’

  ‘It’s okay now, Amy,’ DI Morgan said. ‘We’re going to let you get some rest, and we can talk again later.’

  DI Morgan left the room, but Karen sat next to Amy’s bed until the young woman had worn herself out from crying, waiting until she was sure Amy was asleep before she got up to leave the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  When Karen left Amy’s bedside, there was no sign of DI Morgan in the corridor, so she guessed he must have gone to phone the station for an update.

  She checked her watch. It was after one a.m. They’d been at the hospital for over an hour, and Karen wondered whether there’d been any improvements in Sian’s condition. She hoped they hadn’t been too late.

  She made her way to ICU, used the alcohol sanitiser by the door and then pressed the green button and waited.

  A moment later, a nurse appeared and let her in.

  Over the sound of the beeping machinery, Karen explained who she was before asking for a quick report on Sian’s condition. Beyond the nurse, Karen saw the Gibsons crowded around the bed. Sian looked tiny in the adult-sized ICU bed.

  ‘We didn’t have any space in the children’s unit,’ the nurse explained. ‘But she’s in good hands here. The infection is raging through her body and it’s taken hold quickly, but her organs seem to be coping, which is the important thing. She’s on IV antibiotics and will be for the next few days. There’s not much to do now but wait and hope the antibiotics do their job and get rid of the infection.’

  Karen’s throat felt dry. ‘Will she lose her leg?’

  ‘The doctors haven’t made a decision on that yet. They want to see how she responds to treatment over the next few hours. If the antibiotics don’t do the trick, it could be the only way to save her life. In which case, she’ll need an operation to amputate her leg below the knee.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’

  ‘Do you need to speak to her parents?’ the nurse asked, turning and gesturing to them.

  Karen shook her head. The last thing the Gibsons needed at the moment was her invading their anguish.

  Thomas Gibson stood close to his wife, his arm around her shoulder, and Leanne leaned into him for comfort. She wondered whether Leanne had come clean about her fling with Matthew Saunders. She hoped the couple would be able to put it behind them. They looked so close and they’d need to support each other now more than ever.

  Karen left the ICU with a lump in her throat and headed towards the children’s ward. She bumped into DI Morgan on the way.

  ‘I’ve just taken a call from the superintendent,’ he said. ‘She’s full of praise for you.’

  Karen shrugged and felt uncomfortable. ‘If only we’d tracked them down a little earlier. I just spoke to the nurse in the ICU and she said Sian could lose her leg.’

  DI Morgan closed his eyes. ‘Poor little mite. It’s not bloody fair.’

  ‘Let’s just hope the antibiotics kick in in time. Do you want to go and speak to the Deans? I’m not sure whether Emily will be fully awake yet but we could try.’

  DI Morgan agreed, and they made their way to the children’s ward in silence.

  Pausing before he pushed the green button to request entry, DI Morgan stopped and turned to Karen. ‘Looks like you were right about that hunch.’

  His face was deadpan but his eyes twinkled, and she knew he was teasing.

  ‘Yes, you’ll come to realise I’m usually right once you’ve worked with me a little longer,’ she said.

  DI Morgan smiled. ‘I should have guessed you’d say that.’

  They were pleased to see that Emily was already sitting up in bed, taking sips from a paper cup filled with water. Her parents stood over her bedside, and Jenny was stroking Emily’s dark tangled hair back from her face. Dennis stood ramrod straight beside his daughter’s bed, like a man on guard.

  All three looked up as DI Morgan and Karen approached.

  ‘I know this probably isn’t the best time, but we were hoping Emily could tell us what she remembers,’ Karen said, and her gaze drifted to Dennis Dean.

  He towered over the bed, glowering at everyone and everything. But when Karen glanced down, she saw he was holding Emily’s small hand in his huge one.

  ‘She’s still a bit tired,’ Jenny said. ‘She was given some sort of tranquilliser and it knocked her out.’

  ‘Is Sian all right?’ Emily asked, and from the look of stricken panic on both Dennis and Jenny’s faces, Karen quickly surmised that they hadn’t yet told her quite how ill Sian was.

  ‘The doctors are treating her now, Emily,’ Karen said. ‘They’re giving her some special antibiotics. They’re very strong, and hopefully they’ll get rid of the infection.’

  Emily nodded but still looked anxious.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened the day you disappeared?’ Karen asked, moving a little closer to the bed.

  They had most of the answers – at least, she thought that they did. They knew Cathy had been behind the abduction and it appeared she’d acted alone.

  It was just so hard to imagine why Cathy, such a seemingly placid, meek person, could do something so out of character.

  Emily handed her cup of water to her mother, who put it on the nightstand. ‘I wanted to see the ponies. I’d gone a couple of times to the field just to watch them. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.’ She shot a nervous glance at her father, who nodded encouragingly.

  ‘I saw a lady there one day, and she said her name was Cathy and that she owned a couple of horses. She seemed nice and I spoke to her a couple of times. Once I was quite upset and I went to visit the horses to see if it would cheer me up. She was there and told me not to worry and that she could help me. She said she’d helped somebody in the past who was just like me. She promised everything would be all right.’

  Even though Karen stood on the opposite side of the bed to Jenny Dean, she could hear the woman’s harsh breathing. This had to be extremely difficult for her to hear.

  ‘Were you going to meet her when you left school?’ Karen asked.

  Emily nodded. ‘She said she’d let me ride one of t
he ponies and I was really excited. I told Sian about it and she wanted to come too, and then we met Cathy in the woods like she told me. But Cathy seemed different. She was angry with me for bringing Sian, and then she took us into one of the fields and told us we were having a picnic before we went riding. She gave us a bottle of juice to share and sandwiches and crisps. And I thought she was being nice again. I don’t remember what happened after that, but when we woke up, it was all dark and cold. She left us juice and food. There was another lady there called Amy and she tried to help us. We tried to escape, and that’s when Sian fell down the ladder and cut her leg.’ Emily’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘I know it’s really difficult, Emily. But you’re safe now. Can you tell me why you were upset that day?’ Karen asked. ‘Why did you need Cathy to help you?’

  Emily’s whole body tensed, and she turned a fraction to look at her mother before quickly looking back down at the bed sheet covering her legs. She shook her head.

  ‘We know all about Phil,’ Jenny said in a strangled voice. ‘He won’t be coming anywhere near you ever again.’

  Through all this, Dennis Dean had been silent but Karen could feel the fury and rage vibrating from him.

  ‘What did Phil do to you, Emily?’ Jenny asked.

  Emily shrugged. ‘I just didn’t like him. I didn’t want him in our house. It was his fault Dad didn’t come back.’

  The words left Emily’s mouth in a rush as she explained. It seemed that Phil had never gone any further than making Emily feel uncomfortable. She told them he’d given her chocolates and other small gifts, but she still didn’t like him. To Karen, it sounded very much as though Phil had been grooming Emily, but she hadn’t been molested. She was thankful Emily hadn’t been exposed to Phil Carver long enough for him to begin a campaign of abuse, but Karen found listening to Emily describe his little gifts and grooming tricks difficult. It must have been torture for her parents.

  When Emily had finished talking, Jenny said, ‘Can you believe she gave them an adult dose of tranquillisers? She could have killed them. The doctor says Emily shouldn’t have any long-term damage, but how could she do that to children?’