Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  ‘He trusted you,’ she choked.

  ‘Like I said,’ Neil said from somewhere beside her. ‘Never trust anyone.’ His voice was cold and emotionless.

  Ben Davies was white with fear. His brown hair was stuck to his forehead in sweaty clumps and, despite the chill that filled the cold warehouse his face was wet with perspiration. Claire was awake again, her eyes fixed on Matthew’s body and the pool of blood that soaked his chest. She dared not look at Neil, who paced the floor in front of her.

  ‘Now look,’ Neil said, gesturing towards Matthew and turning to Kate. ‘Look what you made me do.’

  Kate, still on her knees, dragged herself across the floor to Matthew. His eyes were still open, staring past her, seeing nothing. His mouth was fixed in a macabre twist, somewhere between shock and fear. Kate held her breath. She tried to look at the wound dispassionately, but she couldn’t; his blood was everywhere.

  ‘You have to get him help,’ she said, looking up at the man that was her brother.

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ he replied coldly.

  She felt Matthew’s blood seeping through her tights. She pulled away, but it was too late; his blood was all over her legs. It was still warm and the heat of it on her skin made her gag. She turned and threw up on the floor, her vision blurred; the room moved around her in sickening shapes, throwing the world off balance.

  There was a bang at the inside door.

  ‘Neil,’ the negotiator said. ‘Neil, this is John, please talk to me. If someone’s hurt, let us help them.’

  Kate heard movement in the next room. Footsteps hurried across the floor, echoing from the sections of roof that were still in place. At least, she thought, they were a little closer now. It still wasn’t close enough though. Someone would break the door down. There wouldn’t be enough time for him to shoot all three of them, Kate thought, but he’d have the time for at least one.

  Neil raised a hand to his lips and turned to his son. Ben flinched, scared rigid in his seat.

  Neil gave Claire a fleeting glance before turning back to Kate. ‘Why’d you let her go?’ he asked reproachfully.

  ‘She’s just a child,’ Kate said. Fear lodged itself tightly in her throat. ‘None of this is her fault.’ She nodded towards Ben, then Claire. ‘It’s not theirs either,’ she said. ‘Please. Just let them go.’

  ‘If I open that door,’ Neil said, stepping towards her, ‘it’s game over.’

  He stepped callously over Matthew’s body, careful not to set foot in the man’s blood. ‘By the way,’ he said chattily, taking Kate by the arm and pulling her to her feet. ‘Talking of game over, we never did finish that game of hide and seek, did we?’

  Pulling Kate with him, Neil walked over to Claire. Claire’s face contorted with fear as he approached. She squirmed in her chair, but the tape was tight around her legs and arms. Neil reached for her neck and pulled loose the scarf she was wearing, ripping it from her. ‘Who was doing what?’ he asked, pulling the scarf taut between both hands. ‘Were you hiding, or was I?’

  Kate looked away from him. She didn’t want to play his sick games; she just wanted this over with. If he was going to shoot her she wished he’d just do it.

  ‘Kate,’ he said. He moved behind her and put the scarf around her throat, pulling it tightly against her skin. He leaned to whisper in her ear. ‘Who was hiding? Me or you?’

  ‘I was hiding,’ she told him resentfully.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Neil lifted the scarf over her eyes and tied it tightly behind her head. Kate was blinded, in darkness. Next to her, she heard Claire struggling to say something.

  ‘Now,’ Neil said from somewhere behind her. ‘Here are the rules. I count to ten and you try and hide. Your options are limited. Try to use your imagination.’

  Somewhere in the distance, Kate heard a helicopter. There was no sense of relief now. They were already too late.

  ‘One.’

  Kate stood her ground. If she tried to move she would only walk into Claire, or worse trip over Matthew’s body, and besides, there was nowhere she could go. There was nowhere to hide.

  ‘Two.’

  She heard the legs of a chair thudding on the warehouse floor. She winced, dreading what Neil might be doing to either Ben or Claire.

  ‘Three.’

  Beside her, Claire continued to writhe in her seat, her mumbling muted by the gag in her mouth.

  ‘Four.’

  There was a noise somewhere above her, clattering on the warehouse roof.

  ‘Five.’

  Kate thought of her father, dying alone on the hallway floor. He wasn’t alone, she reminded herself. She swallowed loudly and the sound of it rang in her ears.

  ‘Six.’

  She was fourteen years old again. It was seven years after her brother had disappeared from their lives. She was sitting on the top step of her parents’ staircase, listening to her parents argue in the kitchen below.

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Why weren’t you watching him?’ her mother cried, her voice carrying up the stairs and onto the landing.

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Why weren’t you watching him?’ she screamed again. ‘Why weren’t you watching our son?!’ There was the sound of breaking glass; something being thrown across the room, smashing against the wall.

  ‘Nine.’

  Fourteen year old Kate held her breath. ‘He wasn’t mine to watch,’ her father’s voice taunted. Thirty seven year old Kate held her breath. She was going to have the last word.

  ‘Ten. Coming…ready or not.’

  Neil held the gun at arm’s length and pointed it at Kate.

  ‘He wasn’t your father,’ she said quickly, the words pouring from her mouth while she was still alive to speak them. She had never said it aloud before – had never told another living soul that she knew her mother’s secret – and it felt good to finally admit it to herself and to hear the words for what they were. ‘Mum had an affair and you were the other man’s,’ she blurted. ‘That’s why my dad got rid of you.’

  She braced herself for the bullet that was going to end her life.

  A final shot rang through the warehouse.

  Sixty One

  Just before the third and final shot rang through the eerie silence of the industrial estate, Chris searched for Andrew Langley via the internet on his mobile phone. Sophie’s words had resonated and he recalled what Kate had told him yesterday. Someone knows something about Daniel. Too much to be a coincidence. Too much that all this had fallen in Kate’s lap by chance.

  He found the PI’s website and called the number of the office.

  ‘Hello, Andrew Langley’s office?’

  ‘This is DCI Chris Jones, South Wales Police,’ Chris told the woman. ‘Is Mr Langley there at the moment?’

  There was a lengthy pause. ‘Andrew’s in hospital,’ the woman finally spoke. ‘I found him here this morning.’ Her voice broke and she sounded as though she was going to cry. ‘He’d been attacked.’

  Chris allowed a moment for the information to absorb. After thirty years of false hopes and leads that led nowhere Kate had been given a link to her brother. Then Sophie’s declaration. Now this.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Not good,’ his assistant said. ‘We’re just waiting. I wanted to be here, in case anyone wondered where he was.’

  ‘Of course. Look, I’m sorry to ask this now, but do you know anything about Daniel Kelly.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ the woman asked quickly.

  ‘No,’ Chris told her. ‘I know Kate.’

  ‘Andrew’s been trying to get hold of her. Is everything ok?’

  Chris hesitated before responding. How could he answer? He didn’t know one way or another. What he did know was that this woman had had enough to handle for one day.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ he lied.

  The sound of the shot echoed around him, hammering in his chest and pinning his feet t
o the ground.

  Sixty Two

  It had started to rain. Kate felt raindrops hit her face and for a frightening moment thought it was blood spattering her cheek. She stood transfixed, afraid to move, afraid to speak; afraid to let go of the breath she had been holding in case it was her last.

  There was another noise beside her, something brushing past her and when the scarf was lifted from her face and she dared to open her eyes, Kate saw the black-clad man who had shot her brother standing in front of her. She looked up through the gap where the roof should have been and saw the top of the fire tender ladder through the gap; the ropes from which the gunman had been lowered swinging in the air, almost invisible.

  On the floor behind him, Daniel lay lifeless.

  Kate moved her hands behind her back, working the life back into her arms. She was alive.

  The gunman unbolted the door and armed response rushed in. Someone untied Ben, who quickly ran out crying for his sister. Claire, too stunned and weak to move, stayed sitting in the chair she had been tied to.

  From among the unfamiliar faces Chris suddenly appeared. He rushed to her, putting his arms around her and holding her close. She buried her head in his chest.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he told her, speaking softly into her hair. ‘I said I wouldn’t let you come to harm.’

  Kate breathed him in, grateful for the familiarity of him. ‘I’ll let you off,’ she said looking up at him, ‘if you please get the keys for these things.’ She indicated the handcuffs. They were dead weights on her wrists.

  Chris surveyed the scene on the warehouse floor. He looked at Matthew, his body covered now; his blood soaking through the sheeting that had been placed over his chest. He couldn’t begin to think how Matthew had been involved in all this, or why, but assumed Kate would fill him in as soon as they’d escaped the madness.

  His eyes moved towards Neil Davies, his body twisted awkwardly on the warehouse floor. ‘Sophie said he’s…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘So he said,’ Kate said, answering the question he was unable to ask. She looked at Neil’s body – at Daniel, so long sought after - and could feel nothing.

  ‘Do you think it’s true?’

  She remembered the blue eyes; the invisible pull that had drawn her close to him. ‘I don’t know,’ she lied. ‘But I suppose we’ll find out.’

  ‘What about Matthew?’ Chris asked. He couldn’t tell her about Andrew Langley, not now. All that could wait until she’d had a bit of time to recover.

  Kate shook her head. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘It’s a long story.’

  Claire was being helped from her seat by one of the armed response team. The man held her tentatively by the arm as though she may fall over if he let her go. She held out a hand as Kate and Chris passed her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Kate tilted her head. ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m sorry he found you.’

  Claire was carried out on a stretcher by one of the ambulance teams. Kate’s eyes followed her. Claire knew, she thought. All the time she’d been hiding Ben at her house and throughout the phone conversation they’d had just yesterday, she must have known that Kate was his sister. She wasn’t scared of him, Kate thought bitterly. In some sick kind of way, Claire had enjoyed the excitement and attention that being part of Neil’s nasty little secret had given her.

  She could have been killed. Ben and Sophie could have been killed, and Claire would have allowed it to happen.

  Chris reached for Kate again, pulling her back to him and distracting her from her thoughts. He looked down at her.

  ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said.

  She managed a smile. ‘No such luck, I’m afraid.’

  He held her close to his chest and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. For years he had tried to repress his feelings for her, as if pretending they didn’t exist would make them stop.

  Never again, he thought.

  Three Months Later

  Sixty Three

  Kate stared at the photographs and files strewn across Andrew Langley’s desk. Hundreds of them, it seemed to her; years of work that had amounted to this: reams of paper and an even greater number of regrets, stacked in a pile of reports and photos. She remembered standing outside Andrew’s hospital room, too guilty to show her face inside as his family – his wife, daughter, son-in-law and first grandchild - gathered around his bed, welcoming him back to the land of the living. How could she show her face before them, find even the slightest of words to say, when it was her family – her history – that had almost cost him his life?

  ‘Where would you like to begin?’

  She was snapped from her daydream as Andrew entered the office with their tea. What was it Sophie had once said about tea, Kate asked herself: something about people using it in the vain hope of distracting themselves from the realities of their situation, or words to that effect. She took the hot mug from Andrew and nodded gratefully. Sophie had been right.

  ‘Where would you suggest?’

  Andrew gathered a selection of photographs together: images of Kate outside the station, Kate at the local supermarket, her father in his front garden: the home in which she’d spent her childhood.

  ‘You’re very good,’ she mused, sipping at the tea.

  Andrew smiled, but the look was tinged with sadness. ‘Regretfully,’ he said.

  He gestured to the chair opposite his desk; a large, high-backed, cushioned chair that Kate assumed was intended to make the person seated in it feel relaxed, at ease. Try as she might to lose herself within it, she could feel neither or these things.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like someone here with you?’ Andrew said, although he had already asked this several times. ‘Chris?’

  Kate shook her head. She would hear it for herself first and give herself time to get things straightened out in her own head before sharing it with Chris. It might take her a day, might take her a month; she wouldn’t know until she’d had it all lain out before her; all the facts in all their naked, horrifying truth.

  ‘Let’s just get it done, shall we?’

  Andrew took a sip of his tea, sat forward in his chair with his hands clasped together on the desk, and sighed.

  ‘Ok,’ he began. ‘Neil Davies first approached me in the New Year of 2007. He and his wife, Sarah, along with their two children had moved here from East Manchester, where they had met at a student party. He had grown up in a children’s home in the East Anglia – I’ve done all the checks. He was there from 1983 to 1992. During that time he met Matthew Curtis.’

  ‘Matthew’s parents?’ Kate asked, already knowing the answer. She had no reason anymore to doubt what Neil…Daniel…had told her that night. Daniel, her brother: proven by DNA tests.

  ‘They were both killed in a house fire. Matthew was a few months old. It was put down to an electrical fault somewhere – the house hadn’t been rewired in God knows how long. Anyway, his mother managed to get Matthew out of the building, but she went back inside for her husband. Neither of them made it back out.’

  Kate put her tea on the desk. She felt a sickening in her stomach; a churning that made her throat and cheeks begin to colour. Matthew was a good kid, she thought. He was a child, just a child, with tragic beginnings and he had fallen into the wrong hands.

  Daniel’s.

  ‘Shall we stop?’ Andrew asked, eyeing her with concern.

  Kate shook her head. ‘Sorry,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  ‘Who knows what kind of friendship or bond those two formed during their time in that place?’ Andrew continued, absent-mindedly thumbing the only picture of the two he had been able to locate; taken from a nurse who had worked in the home. Kate had seen the photo, once, and asked never to see it again. There was the brother she had lost that day: his innocent smile replaced with something else entirely; something vacant and already sinister.

  ‘The children’s home was closed in 1997 after a
series of allegations of abuse. There was a lengthy inquiry into what had been going on behind closed doors, but the full truth was never revealed. The scaled down version was grim enough. We’ll never know, but what we do now know is that Daniel obviously had a strong hold over Matthew, for whatever reason it may have been. Enough to manipulate him into assisting with years of revenge, by the looks of it.’

  ‘Why did they move to South Wales?’ Kate asked. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘It’s not a coincidence,’ Andrew said, shaking his head. ‘Daniel was three when he went missing, yes? Very young, but not quite young enough to lose all recollection of events. The human mind is a clever and deceitful thing, Kate. It can trick us into believing that we’ve forgotten things: names, facts; where we left our car keys. Memories. Most of the time those things haven’t been forgotten, they’ve simply been relocated in the brain. It takes a sight, a sound – something incongruous to trigger the memory and bring it all back.’

  ‘So, what are you saying? Daniel remembered being taken?’

  ‘Not at first,’ Andrew said, riffling through the files. ‘Although he always knew that his name had been Daniel. The couple who had him before he went to the children’s home gave him the name Neil. I’ll come back to them. Like I was saying, he didn’t remember being taken. Not until he saw this.’

  He took one of the files from the pile in front of him and opened it, pushing it across the desk to Kate. It was a Christmas card; a snow scene of a castle and its surroundings.

  She opened it. To Sue, the card said. Merry Christmas, love from Tracy. Kate looked up from the card.

  ‘They worked at the children’s home,’ Andrew explained. ‘The card was in the office. Daniel was eight at the time. He saw it, it triggered something: he took it. He kept it for over twenty years.’