by Alex Lake
Ha, Kate thought. Fuck you, Mr Perfect Plans. She hid her smile. So Phil knew what was going on. Which meant – what? He’d have told Gus, surely, who’d have told the cops. They’d be coming to get her. But how would they know where to look? Could they trace Mike’s phone? She was pretty sure that that was possible. All they would need was some help from the police, and given that Mike was the Strangler, that shouldn’t be too hard to get.
‘Of course, this changes everything,’ Mike said. ‘That damn phone. Without that you’d have been found tomorrow morning somewhere near Stockton Heath – I was thinking of somewhere near the bridge at Lumbbrook. Plenty of people walking dogs there. I’d have been questioned, would have my alibi ready, but they wouldn’t bother with me, not when they knew it was the Strangler. Then Mike Sadler would quietly disappear, and, a year from now, there would be another serial killer in Wolverhampton targeting women who looked like Andrea Berry.’
He tapped his hand on his knee. ‘It was such a good plan. But now – it’s over. Busted. I can still kill you – and I will, by the way, whatever happens – and I can still vanish, but there’s no way I’ll get to Beth. They’ll tell her about this and she’ll move on. Another new name, another location. And this time, no stupid mistakes, because she’ll know I’m out there.’ He grinned at Kate, a wide, manic grin. ‘Which means you get to stay alive, at least for a little bit longer, until I figure this out.’
It was an improvement, Kate thought. Not much of one, but an improvement. At least now she had some value to him.
‘You’d better figure it out fast,’ she said. ‘They’ll be talking to the police right about now.’
She spoke with as much bravado as she could muster, but it took a huge effort. This man was clearly completely crazy, and he was hellbent on getting what he wanted, a large part of which was for her to suffer. When he wasn’t smiling, when the mask that allowed him to move around among normal people slipped, she saw how much he hated her, how deep the need for revenge ran. He thought that she and Beth had killed his child, and, over the years, he had twisted the rage that he felt into a worldview that justified murder.
She wondered which came first, whether he was crazy to begin with or whether he had been tipped over the edge by Beth leaving him. And then she remembered the bruises, remembered how Beth had taken photos of her soft drinks in the pub, had disappeared from the Trafford Centre. And she knew that he had been like this from the start.
And she felt very, very afraid.
‘The cops?’ Mike sneered. ‘I doubt it. I made it perfectly clear what would happen if they involved the forces of law and order. And it won’t help them if they do. All they have is this phone number. They might be able to find the barn, but if they do, we won’t be here.’
She felt the hope drain from her. They – the police, Phil – had no idea what they were up against. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re moving on.’
‘To where?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’ Kate said. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Like I said, I’m good at disappearing.’ He stared at her, his eyes cold. ‘I’ll be right back.’
A few minutes later he yanked open the passenger door. He was holding a loop of heavy plastic twine.
‘I need the bathroom,’ Kate said. ‘I need to pee.’
‘Do it there,’ he said.
‘In the car? In my pants?’
He nodded.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Then don’t.’ He grabbed her by the armpit and yanked her to her feet. ‘You’ll go when you need to. Not my problem.’
He pulled her towards the back of the barn. Ankles still tied, she took small stumbling steps, only staying upright because of his support.
The back of the barn was in shadows. As they approached, she made out a large rectangular shape.
‘This is it,’ he said. ‘The most useful vehicle a man could have.’
It was a motorhome, probably twenty years old. He let go of her and opened the door, then walked behind her and pushed her roughly through it. It was small inside, not much bigger than a transit van. On the left was a seating area, with a sink and two-burner hob. Past that were the driver and passenger seats. To the right was a door; he opened it and dragged her into a cramped bedroom.
Against one wall was a narrow cot; against the other was a metal chair, fixed to the floor.
Kate’s legs felt heavy and leaden. She was not an expert in motorhome design, but she didn’t need to be to know that the chair was not a standard feature. It had been added, and not to provide additional, comfortable seating for guests. It had been added for another purpose entirely.
And she had a pretty good idea that she was about to discover what it was.
He took her elbow and twisted her so that her back was to the chair.
‘Sit,’ he said, as though he was talking to a dog. He was brisk now, and businesslike; she got the impression that she was nothing more than a puzzle-piece that he was moving around, a cog in his machine. She was not a person, not any more. She was valueless, and that was the most terrifying thing of all.
‘The toilet,’ she said. ‘I need to go.’
The look he gave her was one of near-disbelief.
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Do it.’
‘I want to use a toilet. I don’t want to do it – I don’t want to sit in my own urine.’ It was a test, she realized, a way to see if he had any human emotion at all.
‘Shut up,’ he said, and pushed her onto the seat. As he did, she could no longer control her bladder and it let go, a wet, warm stain spreading over her crotch. It reminded her of waking as a child in the middle of the night, after she had wet the bed.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Crisis averted.’
He freed her ankles, then took the twine and tied them, one by one, to the metal legs of the chair. He pulled the twine tight and it dug into her flesh; she stifled a cry of pain. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. With a grunt, he got to his feet, then opened a box in the corner of the room. He took out a thick leather strap, which he wound around her torso, under her breasts.
There was a ratchet on one end; he fed the other end through then yanked it, pulling her upright against the back of the chair. She gasped as the air was expelled from her lungs. When she inhaled, the strap constrained her ribs painfully; she realized she would only be able to take shallow breaths.
He took another, shorter strap from the box, and wound it around her forehead, fixing it to a slit on the wall so that her head was immobilized. He reached again into the box. This time it was a leather gag. He squeezed the base of her jaw to open her mouth, and slid it between her teeth. Then he undid the handcuffs and tied her wrists to the arms of the chair with the twine.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Time to be leaving.’
He turned his back on her and closed the door. It clicked shut, the thin material vibrating as he walked away.
Seconds later the engine started, and the motorhome began to move.
22
May passed her phone to Phil. They were sitting on a couch in the corner of a coffee shop in the village. The gentle, warm buzz of a Saturday morning seemed totally out of place; it seemed impossible that all these people could be idly going about their business as though nothing was wrong. Phil wondered how often he had been one of those people, ordering a skinny macchiato – or, in his case, a cup of tea – while around him were people in pain: loved ones dying, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters fighting in foreign wars, spouses having affairs. On the outside all was calm; inside, turmoil.
Although he doubted that many people were going through what he and May were facing. Most people – thankfully – would never have to discover just how extreme, just how all-encompassing, this kind of worry could be.
Where was she? Was she alive? In pain? There were so many questions, and no way of answering them. His mind kept skipping from one horrific
possibility to another.
Gus was at the house, where a team of police had shown up, some in uniform, some not. DI Wynne had been there; she’d promised Phil, in her practised, measured way, that she and her colleagues would use all the resources at their disposal to find Kate.
And then she’d gone into the house – his house, until recently – and, in the absence of anything else to do, he and May had walked to the coffee place.
Before they left, May had typed a message to Beth. They’d worded it carefully; they didn’t want to spook her. In the end they settled on a non-specific, but somewhat urgent formula.
Hi Beth, May here. Been a long time. Something’s come up and I’d like to talk to you. Is there a number I can contact you on? Today, if possible?
May nodded at the screen. ‘She’s replied. Take a look.’
Phil scrolled through the message.
It’s nice to hear from you, May. It has been a long time. Maybe too long. I’m not sure about a phone call, but if I can help, let me know. What’s it about?
‘She’s pretty cagey,’ he said. ‘Which isn’t a surprise. Given what happened to her, I’d be cagey if someone from that time sent me a message which even hinted at something weird going on.’
‘So what do I do?’ May lifted the coffee and took a sip. ‘What I most want to do is smoke. At times like this, I wish I’d never given up.’
‘Me too,’ Phil said. ‘It’s weird: I’ve not smoked for years, but right now all I want is a cigarette. Anything that might help.’
‘It wouldn’t help, though. It wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.’ May tipped her head back and made an exasperated sound. ‘What do I say to her? If I say that it’s only a chat, she won’t believe me; if I tell her what’s happened, she’ll run a mile.’
Phil drummed his fingers on his mug. ‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘She might want to, but she might not be able to.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘How about we tell her that it concerns Colin Davidson and it’s something she needs to know. Something important. And that once we’ve told her, we’ll leave her alone if that’s what she wants.’
May shrugged. ‘Worth a try,’ she said. She tapped out a message on the screen, then held it up for Phil to read.
‘How about that?’ she said.
‘Works for me.’
It was about fifteen minutes before Beth replied. They read it together.
It took me a while to decide how to respond. At first I was angry that you mentioned that name to me and I wanted to tell you to leave me alone, but then I realized that it was not you I should be angry at. Don’t shoot the messenger and all that. I guess I was shaken to see his name after all this time, although to be honest I suspected it might be about him from the tone of your first message. I’ve worked hard at forgetting it all, although I’ve never totally achieved that, and don’t suppose I ever will. The truth of what he was – still is, probably, people like him never change – was worse than you can imagine.
May looked at Phil. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not after what we found out.’
That’s why, once I was free of him, I tried so hard to stay away. I guess, though, that it hasn’t worked. I always wondered whether this day would come. So go ahead, give me your number and I’ll call you. I’d prefer it that way around.
May typed in her number and hit send. A minute later, her phone rang. She looked at the screen.
‘Withheld number,’ she said. ‘Must be her.’ She put it to her ear. ‘Beth?’ she said.
A moment later, she winced. ‘Andrea, sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep that in mind. And I’m well, thanks for asking. You?’
She listened for a few seconds. ‘It’s a pretty long story,’ she said. ‘But here are the highlights.’
Phil listened as she summarized what had happened. She missed out quite a bit, but she got in the main points: his and Kate’s break-up, her meeting Mike, him turning out to be the Strangler, and then finally, the bombshell.
‘Turns out that Mike wasn’t who he said he was,’ she said. ‘It turns out that he was Colin Davidson, and he was doing all this to get your details – name, location – from Kate.’
There was another pause.
‘She didn’t tell him. He hacked her computer. Found you on her Facebook account. Anyway, he knows who you are.’
May’s face was lined with strain, her eyes red and bloodshot. She put her hand to her mouth and chewed on her thumbnail.
‘And,’ she continued, ‘he has her. He has Kate with him.’ A pause. ‘We don’t know where. Phil spoke to her, she’s alive. But for how long, we don’t know.’
She looked down at her feet, tapping her shoes on the wooden floor, listening. Something Beth said made her sit upright. She nodded.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Give me an address. We’ll be there as soon as we can.’
23
Kate tried to move. She was trapped in a very upright position; it had quickly become uncomfortable; now it was nothing short of agony.
God, her whole body hurt. Every time she took a breath, her ribs were crushed against the leather strap, her knees were protesting at being locked at ninety degrees, her lower back alternated between numbness and bolts of pain that shot down through her buttocks and into her legs. Sciatic pain: her dad got it.
What she had never understood about pain was how exhausting it could be. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t expending any energy, wasn’t out running a marathon or doing a spinning class, but she felt drained, felt as though she had already given everything she had to give to this all-encompassing agony.
And then there was the leather gag, pressing against the sensitive skin on the roof of her mouth. That was painful too, but the pain wasn’t the worst thing about it. It was the sense of discomfort, of constantly feeling like she wanted to retch, of wondering whether she might vomit, and die, drowned in her own puke.
There is pain, she told herself. She’d once had a passing interest in Buddhism and the one thing she remembered was that you could somehow diminish suffering by separating it from the self. There is suffering, not I am suffering. It allowed you to accept it. She tried it again.
There is pain. There is pain.
It wasn’t working. She tried to twist her body into a more comfortable position.
That didn’t work either. She was well strapped in, and, given the speed and sureness with which Mike had done it, it was evidently not the first time, which meant he probably had more victims than the four women in Sheffield and the four he’d killed here.
Jesus. Had he driven around the country with women trapped in his fucking motorhome? Was she merely one of a whole series to have been in here? One of many women who had been immobilized, in agony, the stench of their own urine filling their nostrils?
For a moment, fear took the place of the pain, then it was back, and worse than before.
And by her reckoning, they’d only been going thirty minutes.
North? South? East, maybe. Probably not West, unless they were heading into Wales. She thought she’d smelled the sea at one point, but that could easily have been her imagination. Or her piss. It was cold now, cold and wet and smelly and uncomfortable.
Anyway, it didn’t matter which direction they were heading in. Even if she knew, she had no way of telling anybody. And even if, by some miracle that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend, she could get free, then she still might not be able to contact anybody. She was pretty sure she’d seen him leave his phone in the barn, presumably to avoid anyone tracing them with it.
And if he’d left the phone, then he’d left behind any chance of Phil contacting him. So, untraceable, and uncontactable, his plan for her was pretty clear.
This was it. She was going to die, here, in this chair, or in some dark wood or remote cabin. She steeled herself to the possibility; strangely, she wasn’t bothered. There was nothing about death that scared her. She wasn’t religious; she didn’t fear eternal damnation or have
any hopes of a joyous, final reward spent at the feet of the Lord. No, like everyone else, she’d rot in the ground or be scattered as ashes in some place that her parents thought she’d like. People died all the time; five in this car crash, twenty in this terrorist attack, a hundred in this bombing raid. Eight at the hands of this serial killer; she’d be number nine.
No, it wasn’t death that bothered her. It was the thought of those she’d leave behind, of her parents, suffering the awful fate that no parent should have to: burying their child. She wasn’t sure how they’d cope. Her mum would turn inward, bury the emotion, find a way to carry on. Her dad? She didn’t know if he’d be able to bear it. Like most of his tough Northern friends, he was, beneath it all, a tender, sweet, loving man. There was a strong streak of sentimentality in Northern men, and it was particularly strong in her father.
This might, she feared, be the end of him.
Tragedy upon tragedy.
Her death bringing about his collapse.
And all because of the bastard driving this stupid motorhome. God, how she hated him. Hated his selfishness, his simple assumption that he was entitled to whatever it was he happened to want, and that he could do whatever he wanted to get it.
He wanted Beth all for himself? Not to love her but to hit her, bully her, break her. All fine, in his eyes, as long as in the end she was his. And if she wasn’t? If she escaped? Why, then kill her and anybody else who you thought might have helped her, along with however many other innocent people you needed to make your plan work.
Yes, she hated him. She’d never known what hatred was, until now. She’d thought it was a stronger version of dislike or distaste, but it wasn’t. It was much more than that: she knew that, given the chance, she would kill him without a second’s hesitation, even if it bought her a spell in prison; whatever the cost. And more to the point, she would enjoy it. She would take pleasure in seeing his face as she buried an axe or a knife or hammer in it.
But she also knew she wouldn’t get the chance. She knew that she was going to die, alone and full of hatred.
