by Alex Lake
‘No,’ Beth said. ‘It’s not happening.’
Then Phil would try to soften her, try to persuade her. Make it realistic.
‘Beth,’ Phil said. ‘One meeting. That’s all. It’s no big deal, and we get Kate back.’
‘He’s my son, Phil. And I don’t want him to have anything to do with that bastard.’
The voice came from the phone. ‘That bastard who is his father.’
‘One meeting,’ Phil said. ‘That’s all. Do it for Kate.’
Beth hesitated. ‘OK,’ she said, acting reluctant, although Phil didn’t think she had much need to act. ‘One meeting.’
Phil nodded encouragement. This was what they had planned.
‘In a public place,’ Beth continued. ‘For a few minutes. You don’t touch him, or tell him who you are. And only after Kate is safe. Then you leave me alone. For ever.’
‘That won’t work,’ he replied. ‘You can blame your friends. I don’t trust them – if we meet in public there are too many places the police could hide. I’ll be too vulnerable.’
‘No,’ Beth said. ‘It’s a public setting or nothing.’
‘Then nothing.’
She looked at Phil; this was not what they had discussed. They had planned to arrange a meeting in a motorway service station, or a McDonalds, or on a bench is some town centre or other, and then, when he showed up, for the police to grab him. They could be shopping nearby, or having coffee, or dressed as truckers eating eggs and bacon.
But that was no longer on the table.
Beth tried again. ‘Public place,’ she said. ‘Or nothing.’
‘Then nothing,’ he said again, and laughed. ‘I’ll bide my time. I’ll kill your friend and then I’ll find you, Beth, and my son, and I’ll take him from you. One way or another. Maybe I’ll let you live. Maybe I’ll punish you by letting you know that your son is with me.’
Beth glanced across the table at Phil. She had a haunted, distant look in her eyes. Suddenly, she blinked, and straightened in her chair.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘What’s your proposal?’
32
His proposal was simple: they would meet at a location that he would specify. The meeting would take place exactly one hour after he gave them the location. They needed to be close to Stockton Heath, as it would be within an hour’s drive of the village. Beth was to arrive, alone, with Dylan. Kate would be waiting outside in an open location; Beth would come and meet her, leaving Dylan in the car. Then Kate would go to the car and take Dylan out so that he could run to his Mum.
Through all of this, Mike would be visible and at a distance so that he could not interfere. Once Kate was at the car, he would come over and meet his son.
While the meeting took place, Kate was to stay out of the car and stand with her hands above her head, so that he could be sure that Beth had not brought anything with her – a gun, for example – that Kate could use against him.
In that vein, he wanted Beth to be wearing tight clothes so that he could be sure no weapon could be concealed, and to be empty-handed.
Once the meeting was over, they could leave, unhindered.
That was his offer. His final – his only – offer.
‘We need to leave,’ Phil said. ‘We need to head back home.’
‘I have to call Gus,’ May said.
Phil shook his head. ‘No. He’ll get the cops involved again. Not this time.’
‘He won’t,’ Beth said. ‘I won’t let him. And I have a plan.’ She picked up her car keys. ‘I’ll take my car. I have to stop at work. I need to go to the clinic and pick something up.’
‘What?’ Phil said.
So she told them.
Phil drove back with her, Dylan behind them in his car seat.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to put yourself at risk. Kate wouldn’t ask you to do it.’
‘I know,’ Beth said. ‘But it’s not just about Kate, is it? I hadn’t fully understood it, until now, but this is never going to end. I have to face it. And if I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering whether Dylan will come home from school, whether his football coach or Scout leader can be trusted, whether he’ll be approached one day in the street by a friendly man who says he knows his mum – gives my name, and address, and all kinds of details – and does he want a lift home? He’ll never stop.’
Phil nodded. ‘But how do you know that won’t happen anyway? You let him meet Dylan, Kate is safe, all’s good for a while. But he’ll still be out there. You’ll still be wondering.’
‘Yes,’ Beth said. ‘I know. Which is why this has to be the end.’
33
‘I’ll admit,’ Mike said. ‘That I was a bit worried.’
He was sitting on the cot, leaning against the wall, sipping from another mug of Bovril. The warm, meaty smell made Kate want to vomit, despite the fact she was slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘I thought that this was going to take a lot longer, that I’d have to find Beth again. But now she’s going to come to me, and she’s bringing my son as well!’ He leaned forward. ‘The good news – for you – is that I need your help, which means I have to untie you. A bit, at least. I’ll leave the chest strap on, and your hands will stay tied. But I need you to be able to stand up and play your part, so you’ll have to stretch your legs.’
He stood up and walked over to her, then knelt down and started to untie the twine that held her legs to the metal chair. When he was finished, he released the strap around her forehead, then loosened the chest restraint a few blessed millimetres.
‘The gag remains,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you shouting out warnings to your friend. So, here’s what’s going to happen.’
He told her what he was going to do. And she knew her friends had no chance.
The steady hum from the engine told her that they were on the motorway again. Her legs were straight out in front of her; for the twenty minutes since he’d untied her and started up the engine, she’d lifted and flexed and stretched them, feeling the blood begin to flow again. It had given her a worse case of pins and needles than she had ever thought possible, but it was a welcome pain. She relished every prickle, every buzz.
And her neck and shoulders: she was almost delirious with the pleasure of moving them. She luxuriated in the sensation of the pins and needles, but, as they settled down, her thoughts turned to Beth and her son.
Beth and her son, who were walking into a trap.
Mike had found it very amusing that, because of a hope that they could save their friend, they were going to lose everything. He had no intention whatsoever of handing over Kate, nor of letting them leave. Once his son was with him, Kate would become the latest Strangler victim, and Beth and Dylan would simply disappear.
It was evidence of the stupidity of normal people in letting their emotions guide their actions, he said. People like him ignored emotion; everyone else was in thrall to it. They didn’t ask the right questions, took too much at face value. Beth thought that his desire to meet his son was so great that he would hand Kate over in order to satisfy it, and she thought that because she believed in emotions, because that was what she herself would have done.
But she was wrong. His desire to meet his son was very great, but not as great as his desire to get what he wanted, and that was what he was going to do.
Kate flexed her legs. Well, she was going to do something to put an end to this. She wasn’t going to sit back and let it happen, not when it was on her account that Beth was doing this.
That was the worst thing about it all: if she had been able to, she would have told Beth to stay away, to leave her to her fate. It was her own fault for trusting him in the first place – God, she’d been stupid – and if someone was going to pay the price for her stupidity then it should be her, and her alone. Not Beth.
And certainly not Beth’s son.
Kate felt tears wet her cheeks. They flowed into her mouth, running over the lea
ther gag, their salt taste stinging her swollen tongue.
That poor boy. That poor, innocent child, was going to be left motherless, and at the mercy of his merciless father. What would Mike do with him? She had no doubt that he would soon be introduced to the concept of discipline, Mike-style. Perhaps he’d get his own punishment chair. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good.
What would the police do, when Beth and her son disappeared? They’d know what had happened; Phil and May and Gus knew about Mike. The question was whether they’d find him. She was pretty sure that Steven Magwith would settle into his life, into the identity that Mike had created for him, with barely a ripple. No one would notice him. They would notice a five-year-old boy, though.
Mike would know that. And so he wouldn’t give them the chance to notice him. Was that his plan? To hide his son away in his cellar? And then, after some time had passed, to move again? To a new country, perhaps. Somewhere that the authorities did not pay as much attention as they did here.
The poor child. It could not be allowed to happen.
She had to stop it. One way or another, she had to stop it.
And, dimly, an idea of what she might – possibly – be able to do was forming at the back of her mind.
34
May’s phone buzzed.
It was a text message from another new number. GPS coordinates, nothing more. Phil put them into Google Earth.
‘Some barn,’ he said. ‘In the countryside. Not too far from here.’
Gus looked over his shoulder.
‘That’s where he held her before,’ he said. ‘That’s the place we raided. The bastard’s back there.’
He looked at Beth, then May, then Phil.
‘I still think we need to involve the police. This is not something—’
‘No,’ Beth said. ‘You had your chance. And if he sees that it’s not me, he’ll kill Kate. He’ll think that he’s going away for eight murders, so it might as well be nine. Or he’ll escape again. That’s what he does. But if I go, there’s a chance of ending this.’
‘You’re a very brave woman,’ Gus said. ‘Very.’
‘It’s not bravery when you have no choice,’ Beth said. ‘This is what I have to do. I should have done it five years ago, and then Kate wouldn’t be in this situation, but I didn’t. So this is on me.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ May said. ‘Not at all.’
‘It is. And now I have to end it.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going to get changed,’ she said. ‘And then we can go.’
Five minutes later she came back into the room. She was wearing a pair of grey yoga pants and an olive green tank top.
‘Can’t hide anything in these,’ she said. ‘Just like he wants.’
‘He only wants to see your hot body,’ May said, and hugged her. ‘The fucking pervert. Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ Beth let go of her. ‘Take care of Dylan,’ she said. ‘If anything happens.’
‘Nothing will happen,’ May said.
‘If it does.’
May nodded. ‘If it does.’
Beth picked up her phone and car keys and turned to Phil and Gus. ‘Let’s go.’
They followed her car as the light faded. In the back seat, they could make out the head of the dummy that was supposed to be Dylan. They’d bought a portable DVD player and hung it from the back of the headrest. It was only when they were ready to leave that they realized they didn’t have any kids’ DVDs, so Dylan was watching A Few Good Men. Whatever. It looked, from a distance, like a kid engrossed in an episode of Fireman Sam or Chuggington, and, in any case, if Mike got close enough to notice what film was playing then they were in huge trouble.
‘Think it’ll fool him?’ Phil said. ‘The light will help. At least it’s getting dark.’
‘It better,’ Gus replied. ‘It better.’
They continued in silence. After a while they turned off the main road onto a B road. It wound through the flat, featureless landscape of the Cheshire Plains. Somewhere to the east, Phil could see the silhouette of the massive Jodrell Bank telescope. It was no wonder they had situated it here; there was nothing to get in the way of it receiving its radio signals from space. As he looked at it, he felt a mild sense of shame; he’d gone there on a school trip when he was about seven; all he remembered of it was the headmaster – Mr McDonald – making them all stay behind after the show they’d watched in the Planetarium, his face red with anger.
Other members of the audience, he said, came to me after the show and informed me that representatives of this school were talking and laughing throughout the show, and, when asked not to do so, ignored the request. I have never been so embarrassed to be the headmaster of this school, and all of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Even though he had not been one of the miscreants – he had been thrilled by the show the Planetarium put on – the headmaster’s words had stuck with him and ever since he had not been able to think of Jodrell Bank – or astronomy at all, in fact – without experiencing the low-level shame that he felt now. Perhaps without it he would have become a famous radio astronomer; on balance, though, he thought not. His failure to make a mark on the world of cosmic science could not be laid at the door of Mr McDonald.
They turned onto a narrow road, high thick hedges on either side. Tree branches stretched overhead, meeting in the middle to form a canopy that blocked out the little remaining light.
Ahead, Beth’s brakelights flashed and she turned to the right. Gus switched off the headlights and pulled into the side of the road, in front of a gate that led into a fallow field. They got out of the car and opened the gate, then walked into the field. The grass was thick and dry and there was a sweet smell; honeysuckle, maybe or something similar.
On the far side they could see the lights of the car moving slowly along the farm track. Phil realized that his legs were shaking.
‘I’m fucking terrified,’ he said. ‘God knows how she feels.’
Gus nodded. ‘God knows,’ he said.
35
Kate knew now that pain was never going to frighten her again. She’d often wondered how she would get through the pain of childbirth, should that day ever come – it seemed unimaginable, how a baby’s head could pass through that particular orifice; the rational part of her knew that it was designed with that purpose in mind, but somehow it didn’t seem possible. Now, though, she knew that she’d be fine.
Partly because, if she got out of this, she’d be glad simply to be alive, to have the chance of being a mother, to have the chance of walking down the street; Christ, she’d even be glad to sit through day-long corporate training snooze-fests.
And partly because, after the pain she was enduring right now, nothing was beyond her in the future.
Her legs were better, but one of her knees ached constantly, and when she moved it, it felt as though the bones were grinding against each other somewhere deep inside. Her shoulders and back were sore, too.
Not as sore as her chest, which, after the constant constrictions of the leather strap every time she breathed in, felt as though it had been pummelled with a hammer.
But none of it was anything compared to the blazing pain in her teeth.
Hurt, pain, agony, torment: none of them even came close to describing what she was going through.
Her plan was as follows: the strap serving as a gag was made of leather; leather is chewable; she could chew through the leather. Then, with the gag still in her mouth – she could keep it in there by biting on the broken ends – she would go out to meet Beth. As soon as Beth appeared, she would open her mouth, shake it out, and shout to Beth to run, that it was a trap, to get back in her car and go, as far away as she could, and to call the police and tell them to look out for a motorhome, to put every damn cop in the country on the alert for motorhomes. So they’d find him and that would put an end to it.
True, he might kill her, but at least the pain would be over.
Leather was chewable, it turned out. But not
without a lot of effort, not without so much effort that first one, then two, then three of her teeth, the big ones at the back, molars or pre-molars, she thought – but she could hardly remember the word because so much of her brain was taken up in screaming Ouch, what the fuck are you doing that for? – but anyway, three of those big bastard teeth had broken, snapped off in her mouth, and, because she didn’t want him to see them when he came in the room she’d swallowed them, swallowed her own shattered teeth.
She could still feel the sensation as the first one had gone. She’d managed to get some purchase on the leather, get her tooth into it a little bit, and she was working it back and forth, feeling her jaw ache as she did so, and then, without warning there was a loud crack and oh, shit, the pain.
And blood. Blood she swallowed too, but she couldn’t stop it from flowing out of her mouth, so she had to bend her head down, use the new freedom he’d given her, and smash her knee against her nose until something inside it broke and it started to bleed.
And she’d had to go on chewing that leather, thinking as she did.
He’s a child. A baby.
Not my baby.
But a baby.
Beth’s baby.
And somehow she got through the pain. Somehow she carried on until the leather separated and she was able to hold it in her broken teeth.
And she sat back and waited, blood drying on her face.
A while later they came to a halt. Mike opened the door.
He frowned.
‘What happened?’ He leaned forward and examined her. ‘Nosebleed? Did you do it to yourself? Think it might act as a warning to your friend?’ He laughed. ‘I think she already knows what I’m capable of. She was one of the first to find out.’
He untied her and dragged her to her feet, then he handcuffed her hands behind her back. He put the leather strap around her chest and attached a chain to the back of it.
‘Another aid to discipline I use with my girls,’ he said. ‘Treat those bitches like the dogs they are.’ He gave it a tug. ‘Come on, Fido, time for walkies.’
