Lost Girl

by Nevill, Adam

  Inside the car, the father bent double and spat sour saliva from a drying mouth. Straightening up, he caught Oleg’s idiotic, beatific grin as the drug continued to course through the man’s veins. The insolent levity had gone from his eyes, as if he were now losing patience with the father. This powerless man, cuffed at wrist and ankle, who had done so much damage, had the temerity to mock him.

  As if walls of bronze inside his mind were suddenly beaten by red tongues of fire, and reflective depths flickered with the deep blood of a voracious sun, the father was consumed by rage, charred by a loathing for himself. He produced the handgun, turned sharply, and reached into the rear of the car. He forced the weapon inside his captive’s mouth. Not pulling the trigger might have been the hardest thing he had achieved in his life. It had come down to the gun going inside Oleg’s mouth or his own.

  There has been a continuation of fierce artillery and mortar exchanges. Within the last twelve hours the British and United States governments have urged all remaining citizens to leave India and Pakistan immediately. Diplomatic and aid agency personnel have been evacuated.

  The father withdrew the weapon from the King’s mouth. Oleg spat blood onto his blanket, then grinned anew, and the father recognized that Oleg knew a great deal more about the situation than he had shared.

  The father unlocked his door and made ready to get out, to make the call he dreaded with every vibrating atom of his being, and had postponed for hours: to the old accounts that Scarlett Johansson and the police detective had given him. He needed to face up to what had been done to Miranda. Oleg seemed to read his intentions, even before he had them. ‘Maybe your wife is already dead. Why confirm it now? But the girl, your daughter, I think we can save.’

  The father never opened the car door. Instead, the blood leaked from his heart to leave him cold and unable to move. The very air seemed to darken around his head.

  Oleg spoke quietly, reassuringly, as if to a child. ‘As you suspect, they are confident that they will catch you. There will be a message from your wife too, but I do not think you should look at it. They wish to destroy you, even before they kill you. This is how King Death works. This is how terror works.’ Oleg nodded at the screen and the news from India. It was now being cut again with rival stories about the pandemic. ‘We waste time. Soon there will be greater shocks that will make the world stand still, and even the Kings will take their eyes from you. Here is a pause that you must take advantage of. Soon, even this war will be insignificant. Something worse is already here. Again.’

  The father stared at Oleg, dumbfounded, and only half-registering the coloured skull’s prophetic assurances. ‘All that will happen next I have seen in other forms, in another place. Many are going to afterdeath. So many, you can’t believe. You suspect this. You feel it build. If we know this now, then we are the kings in this life today.’

  ‘Cut the mystical crap.’

  ‘Quarantines and closed roads will not favour a man who flees with a child he has stolen.’

  ‘Let’s keep our communication right around there.’ What other news there was originated from outside hospitals within various parts of the UK. Patients and medical staff were dying in increasing numbers, but only a few hundred so far, in the south-east, London, the Home Counties, Oxfordshire, as well as the Midlands. But a pattern of red dots was growing across the map of a country still reeling from the devastation of the summer heatwave.

  Oleg would not be curbed. ‘There is no last judgement, but there is resurrection in a new form, amongst horrors and in chaos. Simmy and I learned this. We prepared for this. And now I am almost ready to call upon our patron again, one final time, and to embrace the mad court. I believe Simmy dances there, while waiting for me. But there is something I must do first, and you have told me what it is.’

  ‘What are you fucking talking about? Save the horse-shit. I need to think.’

  ‘I tell you this because you need to hear it. There is a witness to my final trajectory, and yours too . . .’

  ‘What? You think I’ll buy this crap about a . . . this bullshit. A patron?’

  ‘Nemo deum vidit. Nobody has seen God. I already tell you I don’t know what it is. I am too small to know. But death is not terminus, it is transitus. And the cosmos is full of great beasts. I have passed by dragons. I get too close and they fill my dreams with hell. You have seen this on my walls and in your sleep. And they are drawn to our hell. We who are confined by signs see it first. What you see on my walls is coming. We are both trapped inside Simmy’s ritual. Unless I make a final sign, you may never be released.’

  ‘There are no signs. No patrons. There are only despicable and revolting people, like you and the bastard you loved, and Karen Perucchi, who stole a child and ruined lives.’

  ‘Ha! It is always easier to deny than accept. But see it another way. Greed and arrogant power made us snatch your girl. That was the first sign in Simmy’s ritual. Jealousy and revenge made a woman steal her. Pain and terror released my name from a devil’s lips and it fell upon your ears. Your rage and your guilt made you a killer. Am I right? These were the greater parts of us. Our power. They were the brightest lights in the window that Simmy had opened to find a patron. His ritual created the chain of reaction, and this has lit so many lights in the other place, where he is. When you crossed my path, your rage opened you to me, joined you to it, the patron that is so close, and it brought us to this, here. It was all inevitable. You came within the confinement, and now we are bound to each other. How else did I see you coming?’

  ‘You want to die. You are ready to die. You said so. And you know I am happy to oblige you, so why would you help me, if that’s even what you are suggesting?’

  ‘We are pushed together, closer, the remaining players. Two of them must work together to finish this ritual, what Simmy began. Us. We each have business in the same place. You seek the lost object of your desire, but you are in the crypt. I am only offering you the stairs to lead you out. I only want the head of Medusa. The one who paid the devil, Abergil, to kill Simmy. I believe he and I can find each other again if we make this final sign. There are . . . connections that you cannot understand. But you must be my mirror, Red Father. It is all I have lingered for, you, the messenger. You have delivered your message, so now I tell you where we go, so that we can close this circle and sever ourselves from this woman that binds us together. The one who has destroyed us. We are both guided on this journey, make no mistake. And we too will be severed from each other, broken from our connections, when we make a great light together. Simmy wants me to finish this way, with blood, so that he can find me. I can sense this. Her death will be like a star to him, and will draw to me the company that he now keeps.’

  ‘Jesus wept. If you say one more word about this bloody—’

  ‘So, Red Father, listen to me carefully and I will tell you where to go. To the place where you will find your daughter.’

  THIRTY

  As the sodden and blustery afternoon turned to dusk, the father found a place in the trees, just outside the security fence, offering a partial view of Karen Perucchi’s house. And judging by how long it had taken him to find the fence, only to then be confronted by the size of the property, he knew he wasn’t supposed to see this. No one was. An essential part of maintaining an affluent lifestyle was now dependent upon concealing it. The survival of the rich was becoming contingent on their ability to hide wealth and remove themselves from public life. Years of riots and home invasions had given rise to permission for affluent communities to defend themselves too; conflicts had left hundreds of looters and trespassers dead. The suspected summary executions of thieves had failed to reach a court in years. The country was way beyond all of that now. Knowledge that made the father feel sicker and weaker as he lay in the wet soil like a tired animal.

  Through the rain-blurred air, the father caught faraway glimpses of hardwood floors, suggestions of elegant furnishings, luxury and comfort. How deep the building reached he co
uldn’t tell from his position. A vast disc of a covered swimming pool, ringed by a white stone patio, was the most visible feature on the other side of the fence. The pool area led to a long, pavilion-style building, shaped in a crescent; a new design, one storey high, with floor-to-roof windows and sliding doors at the centre, to catch the sunlight. Lights now blazed inside the large communal area at the heart of the building. Around the glass more white stone glimmered, and a cedar-panelled façade on either wing blended into the wooded backdrop.

  This was a well-insulated property, and probably built to order, with rain-water recycling, a solar-energy receptive roof, all energy self-sufficient and off the grid; no doubt storing its own power and fitted with a ground source heat pump.

  The perimeter wire was electrified, as signs indicated. Wire panels, taut between concrete pillars, reached twelve feet high, with an outward overhang of black razor wire on the last three feet. Placed twenty feet apart, and topping each fence post, was a small camera, directed towards the house. Outdoor floodlights to startle and light up intruders were positioned close to the cameras and would be motion-activated.

  Several acres of immaculate lawn stretched from the house to the fence. Growing up to the property’s border, a dense wood of pine, oak and beech acted as a further layer of concealment and protection. With the exception of the drive leading to the closed gate, there were no roads near the house.

  Serpentine in manner, the father had spent three hours pushing through a sodden, unmanaged and occasionally wind-lashed forest floor, until he’d come upon a thin track. He’d eventually followed it across another mile, the path slippery with gelatinous mud, and through near-impenetrable woodland until he reached the fence. Even wearing his poncho and hat, by the time he’d reached the perimeter he was bemired to his elbows and hips, and his underwear clung to his skin.

  With the exception of out-of-date satellite maps, there was no public information available about the address, and little about the gated community in which the building sheltered. Two years had passed since the abduction, so Karen may have moved, or be abroad in another lavish residence. He vaguely recalled her bragging about her overseas property portfolio years before. The only course of action to verify current occupancy was the direct approach, a trespass and break-in while armed.

  But if Karen Perucchi no longer lived here and he went in armed, there was a chance that he might engage in a lethal conflict and die fighting his way into the wrong house. The mere thought of crossing the floodlit bowling green beyond the wire made him feel sick.

  And the tools he had available were no use in the face of the insurmountable fence. Automatic locking might ultimately seal off the entire house, once the security lights on the boundary fence startled anything living that had strayed onto the lawns. Shatter- and bullet-proof glass might have been fitted into the doors and windows of the house. Prolific home invasions over the last twenty years, as well as the unflagging abduction threats, had meant the wealthy left little to chance. This New Forest community employed its own security patrols; this entire area was listed as private property.

  At the border of the easterly section of the forest, the father had been forced to turn the car around when the navigation system issued a warning preceding immobilization of the vehicle. He’d spotted distant camera masts on the secondary road, and they allowed him to drive no closer than five miles from the first house in the community. With no way of getting any closer by road, he’d parked and continued on foot, and he’d needed the navigation function of the military binoculars he’d found amongst Oleg Chorny’s weapons to get this far.

  Looking at the glowing windows from his distant position within the dank weeds, and while the ceiling of trees crashed above him as the winds built for the night, his teeth came close to snapping as he ground his jaws together. She got away with it. Karen Perucchi had stolen his daughter. She’d pocketed a little girl in the way she’d pocketed charitable donations intended for the starving, and she got to live here. He could only think of one punishment worthy of such crimes.

  Closing his eyes tight and taking deep breaths, he reminded himself that choking indignation was the bedfellow of murderous rage, and could derail his ability to think clearly and rationally. Back in the car, Oleg had warned him of this. The journey to the fence had also consumed three hours. A journey he would now have to repeat to return to the car. And he would have to come back here, along the same route, the following morning, but with something to get him through this fence, and then he would have to make his move while exhausted.

  The hurricane had blasted north, but the tail of the storm still raged, so at least the weather offered some natural cover. The flooding in Dorset and Wiltshire, power outages, numerous closed roads and treacherous driving conditions in a forested area might hamper the arrival of any assistance once he’d tripped the alarms and lights. How quickly private security details could respond to calls, and how substantial the patrols were, was pure conjecture.

  The weather was his only ally, but that would not help him cut through the wire, then traverse the grounds quickly and get inside the house. There might also be onsite security: a permanent bodyguard, particularly if the residents had children, was standard for the wealthy in the cities and towns.

  There were the Kings to consider too. How long might it be before they ran him down out here? The Kings knew who he was, and who he was searching for, but how many of them knew his little girl had been taken for Karen Perucchi? Yonah Abergil was dead, as was Semyon Sabinovic. Besides Oleg, he didn’t know who else had been in the loop about his daughter’s abduction. But if even a minor figure like Rory had known something, then others would too. Abergil had admitted he’d confided in associates. The Kings might appear soon, or already be in place, waiting for him. He was pretty sure now they weren’t tracking his car, or he’d already be dead. God bless you, Gene Hackman.

  The father opened his eyes as if to release his skittish thoughts before they panicked into a rout, and brought the binoculars to his eyes. Old DEV-13s that would still provide good magnified recordings of anything he could see, footage equipped with directional sound, and he could study this more closely in the car.

  Through keyholes in the ground scrub and treeline, he sighted the fence, cameras, the position of the visible security lights, then the other parts of the building and grounds that he could make out.

  Bright orange wall lights, a long white leather sofa, an expanse of wooden floor, a dark rug before a broad fireplace made from steel; all appeared in his magnified vision as the building’s windows revealed a portion of the interior. The rear wall of the central area was constructed from long sheets of glass and sliding doors, facing another patio on the other side.

  As the building curved, one side of the room was lost to sight, but beyond the fireplace he could see a large open bar. A person could just walk out to the pool from the bar, or right through the middle of the house to the rear patio and gardens. There would be access to other rooms too, in either wing, from the large communal space that had been designed for entertaining.

  While the father assessed the very real possibility of being killed before he made it across the broad, open grounds, there was movement in the living space. Sudden, quick movement behind the glass. A figure moving from left to right, then disappearing through a door, on the right of the building.

  He didn’t twitch, and let the wet earth, the cold and rain, engulf his stationary form as he waited for the little figure to reappear. As he lay barely breathing and unwilling to blink, the few minutes stretched into fifteen, then twenty. The child did not re-emerge.

  Heartbeat thumping from the sudden infusion of adrenaline, the father replayed the footage. Dressed in a blue tracksuit, her raven hair tied in bunches, her small, eager face in profile, a young girl appeared and ran across the living area on the tiny screen of the binoculars. She’d run from left to the right, from one wing of the spacious building to the other.

  ‘Baby,’ he whispere
d into the wet air. He felt concussed, even paralysed, before disbelief seeped through him like damp.

  He watched the recording again. And again, and again, all the time refusing to acknowledge this was his daughter, while unable to recognize that it was not.

  Pausing the footage on the child’s face, at the moment he could see a fraction more in profile, he enlarged the frame until he was staring hard at a snub nose, the slim angles of the cheeks and forehead, and a partially open mouth. He played it again. The child was tall, but the vaguest suggestion of a residual infantile plumpness about her cheeks and posture, the short gait and speedy flit, rather than a mature running technique, made it possible for the girl to be around six years old. The hair was the right colour too. If he could see her face fully, he would know her; he was sure that he would know his own child.

  His thoughts were routed. Brief notions of his daughter erupted. Memories flooded in, even those he had not known to still exist. Her image was suddenly brighter; his sense of her more distinct, less imaginary. His heart seized, but the pain of recall was less acute. Briefly, he wrestled with a mad desire to throw himself up the fence and into the razor wire.

  The father did not know for how long he lay in the mud thereafter, sobbing into his wet, dirty hands. And as he cried, he said his wife’s name.

  Eventually and slowly, his limbs stiff with cold and damp, he packed away his sodden equipment and slid carefully backwards, through the mud and into the trees. And so shaken was he, with what might have been hope, even euphoria, the discomforts of his passage out never registered.

  There had never been a real choice about him breaking into the house. When and how were the only questions he entertained now.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Who knew? Besides you and Sabinovic, who else would know that Karen Perucchi took my daughter?’