by Tom Bale
He gave her a withering look. ‘You think prostitution will fizzle away because middle-class feminists disapprove of it? Huh. Some people do not have the same comfortable choices that have been available to you.’
‘I know that—’ she began, but he cut her off.
‘And do you know that for many it is an informed choice? That what you call exploitation can be something they find enjoyable and rewarding? For these women, the real exploitation is to toil for forty or fifty hours a week in factories or shops. Stocking shelves at four a.m. in Asda.’
‘You can’t compare that with prostitution. And whatever the motive, the idea of women having to sell their bodies for sex is repulsive.’
‘Only because you are English, and the English are sexually repressed.’ He gave her a thin, knowing smile, which caused Alice’s face to burn red.
It was almost a relief when he stood up, until she remembered that another, far more important confrontation was looming.
The Friday evening rush was well underway. Fighting through a horde of travellers at the exit, Alice experienced a desperate longing to spot someone she knew, someone more reliable who could offer her shelter for the night.
‘I need to call Harry,’ she reminded him.
‘Yes, yes. At the car.’
Outside it was quickly growing dark, and bitterly cold. A glitter of frost was already visible on some of the cars. Alice shivered, unable to shake off a conviction that Renshaw would fail to keep his word.
He unlocked the car, opened his door and then stopped, realising that she had made no move to get in.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘I was thinking, why don’t I ask Harry to come and get me?’
‘From here?’ Renshaw’s eyes narrowed. ‘But the woman? If she is working for them …’
‘I don’t think Harry’s that naïve. Besides, I’m willing to take the chance.’ Seeing the doubt on his face, she said, ‘You’ll be long gone by the time they get here, so it’s no risk to you.’
Another pause. She could almost see tiny cogs whirring inside his head. At last he shrugged, and produced Alice’s phone.
‘Very well. But make the call from the car. It is too cold out here.’
On that point Alice didn’t argue. Renshaw started the engine and turned the heating up, then handed her the phone.
With a heartfelt sigh, he said, ‘I realise that my own situation has been weighing so heavy, I failed to give enough thought to what you must be feeling. I want you to know I am truly sorry.’
Alice nodded, taken aback by such an effusive apology, and the fact that he had agreed to her suggestion. The possibility of being reunited with Harry, perhaps within an hour or two, lifted her spirits enormously.
She looked down at her phone and saw that the display remained dark. She pressed the power button again. Nothing happened.
‘Weird,’ she murmured to herself. She had seen Renshaw switch her phone off earlier, and she was certain it had been charged as normal last night. She’d had a few problems before with some of the background apps draining power, but thought that had been sorted out. ‘Battery’s dead.’
Renshaw clicked his tongue. ‘I find such gadgets are often temperamental. Please, use this.’
He produced a battered old Nokia. Still puzzled, Alice took it and keyed in Harry’s number from memory. It diverted immediately to voicemail.
She checked the number, reading it aloud, then dialled again. Voicemail. What was going on?
‘A problem?’ Renshaw asked gently.
‘He’s not answering.’ There were horrible images crowding her mind: Harry held prisoner by the men from Thursday morning; Harry in bed with this mysterious woman …
‘We must go now.’ Renshaw moved to put the car in gear.
‘But I could still wait here …’
‘And what if he does not answer?’ He offered a smile. ‘Stay if you must, but this is no place for your infant. Nerys will look after us; you have nothing to fear.’
Alice sighed. She knew in her heart he was right. Being stranded at the services wasn’t an appealing prospect, especially when she had no money and no working phone.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just want to be back with my husband.’
‘Of course. And you should text him now, to say you are well. Tonight, perhaps, we can arrange for you to meet him somewhere.’
‘What if I sent him your friend’s address?’
‘Ah. I would prefer to keep that to myself.’
‘Because of this woman with Harry?’
‘Partly it is that.’ Renshaw seemed to be wincing as he spoke. ‘Also, if you do not know this information, they cannot later extract it from you.’
Alice had a minute to dwell on the comment while she helped Renshaw negotiate a route out of the services and back on to the motorway. At one point he ignored the lane markings and was nearly side-swiped by a van. It was only when they were trundling west at a steady fifty miles an hour that she felt it was safe to compose a text. The archaic phone was a struggle to use, so she kept the message brief.
Harry, this is Alice on Renshaw phone. Me and Evie fine. Staying at R friend in Gloucs, hope to call u later to collect us. Let me know who u r xx
Checking the text to be sure it had sent, she spotted the error. She had intended to say: Let me know how you are. Would he perceive that as a dig at him, because of his mystery companion – and did she even care if that was his interpretation?
Or was she just very tired, and lonely, and prone to overthinking everything?
‘Done now, yes?’ Renshaw said, after she had conspicuously failed to return the phone. She was hoping against hope that Harry would call straight back.
Evie began to squirm, screwing up her face and moaning in her sleep. There was a bowel movement coming, Alice guessed. She put the phone down between the seats, and while she was trying to make things more comfortable for Evie, Renshaw deftly returned it to his pocket.
It took a while to settle the baby, Renshaw grumbling about the effect on his concentration. Finally Evie was calm again, apparently having passed nothing more than wind.
‘What was in the bucket?’
The question just popped out before Alice could consider the wisdom of asking it.
Renshaw shifted in his seat, and the car gave a corresponding wobble. ‘It was bleach.’
Alice gasped. ‘So you might have … disfigured him?’
‘Do you care?’
She hesitated. Her immediate reaction was to feel sickened by the idea, but then she had to remember who they were talking about here: not innocent victims, unfortunate bystanders, but men with knives and guns who had terrorised her family. Just the image of Evie being hauled from her crib produced a surge of fury, as intense now as when it had happened.
‘No, I suppose not,’ she said.
Thirty-Two
In return for telling her about the parcels, Harry was given a little more information: yesterday Ruth had followed Foster, Bridge and another man to a hotel in Crawley, a shuttle bus ride from Gatwick airport.
‘I don’t know if they’re still there. Probably not.’
He frowned at the regret in her voice. ‘Isn’t that a good thing? I mean, are we following them or hiding from them?’
‘We’re doing both, Harry. We need to stay on their trail—’
‘You need to stay on their trail. I need to find my wife and daughter.’
‘Yeah, but right now we have no clues as to where they’ve gone. Until we do, this is as good a place as any to stay tonight. As long as we’re careful.’
He saw how serious she was when they reached the hotel, a huge and rather ugly modern construction close to the town centre. They drove into the car park beneath the building, and the way Ruth scouted it made the earlier search at Hickstead seem cursory by comparison. She appeared to stare at every number plate, as if committing it to memory. The tension unnerved him, but it also made him cross that he’d been so easily fooled
before.
Finally she parked in a space close to the exit and told him the plan. She intended to book them in, then summon Harry so that he could go directly to the room.
‘The fewer people who see you, the better. Once you’re inside I’m going to pop out to get some stuff from the shopping mall along the road. And I want to make a call, see if I can check out those fake cops.’
She fetched a small suitcase from the boot and unzipped the pocket at the front. To Harry’s surprise, she handed him a cheap Samsung phone.
‘Please don’t use it without asking me first. I’ll call you in a minute with the room number.’
He nodded, feeling increasingly like a child in the care of an over-protective guardian. When Ruth shut the door, he thought for a second that she might instruct him to lock the car for his own safety.
He spent the next ten minutes listening to the tick of the cooling engine and the rumble of passing traffic. Then the phone trilled.
‘Room 224,’ said Ruth. She described the layout of the hotel, and how to avoid coming to the notice of the staff at reception.
As it was, there were a couple of off-duty flight crews waiting at the check-in desk, so nobody paid Harry any attention as he hurried through the impressive atrium that dominated the ground floor of the main building. Ruth met him at the lifts, explaining that they could only be operated with the key card.
‘I booked just the one room. Best save money where we can. It’s twin beds, though.’
‘Oh.’ Harry dreaded to think how Alice would greet the news that her husband intended to spend the night in a hotel with another woman.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ruth added wryly. ‘I’m not going to jump your bones, as we say in Yorkshire.’
The room was bland – beige walls and a plain blue carpet – but it was a reasonable size and in good order. The en suite looked decent, too.
He gave Ruth her car keys but was reluctant to hand over the phone. ‘Can I use this to contact Alice?’
‘You mean you haven’t called her already?’
Ruth grinned as she said it, so he replied with the same tone of amused irony: ‘I thought I had to get your permission.’ After all, if they were going to be stuck in this room until morning, it was better that they got along. ‘I was thinking, if she was able to contact the police and let them know she’s all right …’
Ruth looked sceptical, but didn’t veto the idea. ‘Can you get her number without switching your own phone back on?’
He tapped his head. ‘It’s in here.’
‘Go on, then.’ She eased past him, and he had a foretaste of the awkwardness that lay ahead: washing, undressing, lying awake in the dark. ‘While you do that, I’ve got to put a parking ticket in the car, then do some shopping. Do you want me to buy some food, or we could get room service later?’
‘I’m not hungry, thanks.’
‘Okay. I might pick up some snacks.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I should be thirty, forty minutes max. You’ve got your own key card, but I’d advise you to stay here in the room. And don’t use the phone other than to call your wife.’
‘I know, I know.’ He shooed her towards the door. ‘I won’t think for myself any more. I’ve learned my lesson.’
Maybe he had, Ruth thought, and maybe he hadn’t. At heart Harry seemed like a good man, and certainly likeable enough – and yet she was aware of a constant nagging irritation when she was with him.
The reason, she deduced, was that she felt a sense of almost parental responsibility towards him. The age gap was probably no more than ten or fifteen years, but added to the imbalance in their respective life experiences, that was more than enough for a mother–son dynamic to form.
That’s what you don’t like, said the critical voice in her head. That he seems so young and innocent. So unlike you.
She propped the parking ticket on the dashboard, then walked out of the hotel into the glare of artificial lights. Above them, night had fallen, and the air was cold and crisp. Her breath emerged in clouds of steam. A perfect night for bonfires and fireworks, baked potatoes and hot toddies.
In another life, she thought.
The main road dipped beneath a bridge and then rose, but it ran straight enough to make out the shops, less than a quarter of a mile away. There was a lot of slow-moving traffic, pumping clouds of exhaust into the air. A lot of pedestrians about, too, mostly people traipsing home from work.
Ruth quickened her pace. She was still fretting about Harry, and how he would adjust to his new status as a fugitive. She knew the unreality of it would keep clawing at him, impairing his judgement, which was why she needed to get back before he did anything foolish.
Shouldn’t have left him the phone, she was thinking as a car slowed alongside her. It was a Peugeot estate with three occupants: two males and a female. And there was a detachable blue light on the roof, of a type Ruth hadn’t seen for a while: these days most unmarked cars had lights concealed behind the front grille.
As these thoughts passed through her head, she made the mistake of breaking her stride. It meant that the man who emerged from the passenger seat was able to step directly in front of her, holding up a warrant card, while the woman climbed out of the back, a baseball cap hiding her face.
For one long wasted second it struck Ruth that these people might be genuine police officers. But the man wasn’t dissimilar to Harry’s description of DI Warley, and the woman – that wise voice in her head was now shrieking at her – the woman was Sian Vickery.
‘Come with us, please, madam.’ The man took hold of her arm and Ruth couldn’t pull away because Vickery was on her other side, hemming her in; both displaying their ID wallets for the benefit of any witnesses. Some of the passersby were frowning, some smiling, but none seemed in any doubt as to what was happening here. A masterstroke, tactically speaking.
‘What are you— no!’ she blurted, at this point still more humiliated than scared. After warning Harry to stay alert, she’d been careless herself, and all because she thought it would be quicker to walk to the shops than drive.
She shouted: ‘Help me, please! They’re not real pol—’
‘Come on, madam.’ Vickery sounded firm but not unfriendly. ‘The doctors warned us you’d say that.’
They hustled her towards the car, the man subtly applying far more pressure to her arm than was necessary. Ruth cried out, hoping to gain a measure of sympathy, but Vickery grabbed hold of her hair and wrenched the wig from her head.
There was a horrified gasp from the onlookers: all their prejudices confirmed in that single act.
Vickery tossed the wig into the footwell and slid along the back seat, pulling on Ruth’s arm as Warley shoved her into the car. He got in last, shutting the door behind him. Vickery had taken something from her pocket – Ruth caught the flash of a needle – but by now the car was moving, all the doors and windows tightly shut, and the sharp stab of pain in her arm told her it was futile to struggle. She was theirs now, and no one who’d witnessed her abduction would think they had seen anything other than an unruly woman trying to resist a legitimate arrest.
Thirty-Three
The journey to Gloucester took far longer than anticipated, and the mood in the car became tense and fractious. Even with Alice studying a road atlas and issuing clear instructions, Renshaw had a habit of trundling past important junctions, or turning left when she had distinctly said right.
Just north of Cirencester they came off the A417 by accident, and then continued on a succession of winding narrow lanes, all of them woefully short of illumination and road signs. As poor a driver as he had been in daylight, Renshaw was even worse in darkness. Alice was almost tempted to offer to take the wheel herself, except that it would mean Renshaw holding Evie, and she couldn’t allow that. It was bad enough that Evie wasn’t in a car seat to begin with.
Eventually they located the village of Cranstone, which appeared to be little more than a handful of pale stone cottages with a matching church
. Then Renshaw confessed that his friend lived another mile or so further on. He pulled up and took out his phone to call for directions.
‘Can I see if Harry’s texted back?’ Alice asked quickly.
Sighing, Renshaw checked the display, then showed it to her: nothing. He made the call and there was a brief conversation. Alice noticed that several times he said I, not we.
‘I have not mentioned you yet,’ he admitted when she pressed him on it. ‘But it will be no problem, I assure you.’
This time, crawling through the darkness, Renshaw managed to locate the correct turning on the first attempt. He drove down a lane that was barely wide enough to accommodate their car. Tall hedges loomed over them on each side, stray branches clawing the car as they passed.
There were only a handful of properties along here, set so well back that they were all but invisible. Most had name plates fixed to the gateposts, which Alice read aloud for Renshaw’s benefit.
‘High View … The Old Lodge …’
‘Beech House,’ Renshaw muttered. ‘We need Beech— ah!’
He braked sharply beside a set of open gates. Alice couldn’t see a name anywhere, but Renshaw seemed to feel this was the place. He turned on to a gravel drive, and gave a small exhalation as the property came into view. It was a substantial-looking farmhouse built in Cotswold stone. Five or six bedrooms at least, Alice guessed.
‘Not what you were expecting?’
‘It’s …’ Renshaw began, then hesitated, as if he wanted her to believe he knew Nerys better than he did. ‘She has done well,’ he said ruefully. ‘Very well.’
There was a spacious parking area in front of a double garage, but no other vehicles in sight. Renshaw parked and got out, telling Alice to stay where she was. Presumably he wanted a chance to explain to Nerys that he’d brought along a couple of additional guests.
He’d left his door open and the air coming into the car was icy cold. Alice snuggled Evie against her but she knew they couldn’t wait here long, or they’d both freeze. But as Renshaw reached the house, the front door opened and a woman emerged, wearing a black knitted dress over black leggings. She was in her late fifties, well-built rather than fat, with a distinctly hourglass figure. She had a rounded face with a pale complexion, and dark wavy hair.
