A Dark and Twisted Tide (40 page)

Christakos closed his eyes.

Dana decided to throw him a lifeline. ‘I don’t believe you intend to harm any of these women. I think in your own way you’re doing your best to protect them. But she gets past you somehow. How does she do that?’

His eyes snapped open again. ‘I look forward to the press conference when you announce to the nation that the killer you’re hunting is a mermaid. Weren’t you looking for a vampire earlier in the year? They’re going to have you working on
The X-Files
, Detective Inspector.’

‘We’re not looking for a mermaid, we’re looking for a good swimmer.’ Anderson jumped in before Dana could react. ‘We have a man upstairs who’s been swimming in the river for forty years. Constable Flint’s been doing it all summer. It’s perfectly possible if you stay close to the bank, respect the tides and watch out for traffic. How does your girl do it? Discreet flotation device? One of those big mono fins you see the free divers wearing?’

Christakos shook his head, as though there were no end to the nonsense he was expected to listen to. He looked tired, a patient man who’d been pushed to the limits of professional courtesy. He’d be convincing in a witness box.

‘I’ve been speaking to your sister,’ said Anderson. ‘She’s quite upset. She likes Lacey. But you knew that, didn’t you? She told us
the two of you have met her. That Lacey’s visited you at your house.’

‘I am extremely fond of Constable Flint. I would not dream of harming her. I haven’t harmed any of the young women who’ve been in my clinic.’

‘Possibly. Possibly not,’ said Dana. ‘But what you need to be worrying about is how long it’s going to take before we decide one way or the other.’

‘What do you mean? Where is my sister now?’

‘You think the worst that can happen is losing your licence and your reputation,’ Dana pressed on. ‘Ultimately, you may be right. But your assistant has identified two of our victims. We’ve got more than enough to charge you with murder, and unless we find Lacey and the other two missing women in the next few hours, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. You’re an immigrant with a habit of travelling abroad. No magistrate will give you bail. You’ll be stuck in a British prison for the next six months while we get ready for a trial.’

She waited, giving Christakos a chance to take in what she was telling him, and then went in for the kill.

‘What will she do, do you think, without you to keep her in check? What will she do tonight if she has any of these young women? What will she do to Lacey?’

88

Pari

AS SOON AS
Pari’s feet became free, she scrambled to the edge of the skip. The rubbish was several feet deep and once she started moving she began to sink into it, but she made it over the side and dropped to the floor of the barge.

And now she had to drink or she would die for sure. If necessary she’d lean over the side and lap up the Thames. She spotted an upturned plastic tub with perhaps an inch of water in the bottom. She lifted it, tasted it and poured the rest down her throat. Better.

Her thirst assuaged, Pari glanced to the north bank. She couldn’t swim, had never learned to swim. There might be something on this barge that could help her float, but the water was moving so fast. She stood upright, or as upright as she could manage on the constantly shifting underlay of rubbish, and looked around. Maybe there’d be a boat that could help her.

‘Help!’ she yelled.

And then, as though her longing had had the power to conjure up rescue from the ether, she heard the gentle hum of a small outboard engine.

‘Help!’ she yelled again, into the void that was the black river.

‘For the love of God, be quiet,’ replied a voice in her own language.

89

Lacey

THE WATER HAD
reached Lacey’s waist. She couldn’t stand upright, the rope around her neck was too short. She’d tried everything she could think of and there was no way she could get her face higher than the water line on the bricks opposite. She had less than an hour.

Once already – it could have been minutes or seconds ago, she couldn’t be sure – she’d lost it completely. She’d screamed until her throat felt as though it were bleeding, but the only answer she’d received had been the gentle lapping of the returning waves. And now panic was building again. Her chest was growing tighter. She couldn’t think, couldn’t plan, couldn’t be calm. All she could do was scream.

Except that wasn’t her voice. That sound, winding its way through the darkness, wasn’t even a scream. More like a moan. Or an echo of a moan.

‘Hello! Is someone there?’

For a moment, only the sonorous mumblings of the water answered her. Then,

‘Lacey?’

‘Nadia?’ Hope surged through Lacey’s body. She wasn’t alone. ‘Nadia, I’m over here. Where are you?’

‘Lacey, I can’t move.’ Nadia sounded ill, exhausted. Hope died. ‘Lacey, they’ve tied me up. The water. Come and get me. Please.’

‘Where are you?’ Lacey was spinning in the water, the rope cutting like a blade into her neck, trying to locate the source of Nadia’s voice and knowing she was planting cruel and hopeless ideas of rescue in the other woman’s head.

Sounds of hands slapping hard against water. Then Nadia cried out again, reverting to her own language in her terror. She wasn’t anywhere close. Lacey took hold of the rope again and pulled hard. It held as firm as ever.

Nadia was screaming now. And that was the sound of someone choking. Wherever Nadia was, she’d been tied up closer to the sewer floor than Lacey and the water had reached her already.

The screaming and the struggles and the choking went on. Lacey closed her eyes tight and would have given anything to close her ears, too, so that she wouldn’t be able to listen to the sound of another woman drowning. After a few more seconds she realized she didn’t need to. The sound of her own sobbing was masking just about everything else.

It takes a long time, she learned, for a strong young woman to drown.

90

Pari

PARI STARED OUT
across the water. The voice had come from the direction of the furthest bank. ‘Who’s there?’ she called. ‘Who is it?’

The sound came hissing back towards her, soft and urgent, sibilant. ‘Shhh!’

Pari rubbed her eyes. Something was making its way towards her. A small craft, without lights. As it grew closer, Pari could see the pale, carved wood of the hull and then the driver, an old woman wearing a black hood and cloak and with only her large, pale face visible. She was struggling with the current. It was almost taking her past, sweeping her away downstream, but she managed to toss the rope and Pari caught it.

The woman stared up at her. ‘You need to get in,’ she said in Pashto. ‘Quick, there isn’t much time.’

‘Who are you?’ Pari was suddenly reluctant to leave the relative security of the barge and climb down into that frail-looking boat. ‘Are you taking me back there?’

‘I’m taking you somewhere safe. Where no one can hurt you again, but you have to hurry.’

‘Are you the one who sings to us?’ Pari was trying to match the voice she was listening to with the one she remembered
coming from below her window. ‘The one who helps us get away?’

‘Ai, ai!’ The old lady pointed up-stream. ‘Will you look? They’re coming. Don’t you understand? They’ll throw you in. Me too, if they catch me.’

Pari followed the woman’s stare. Sure enough, there was a pinprick of light on the water, heading towards them.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘If you’re not coming, I’m going without you. I daren’t let them catch me.’

It was the woman’s terror that convinced her. And the light was getting bigger, heading directly towards them. Pari swung both legs over the rail and lowered herself into the boat. At a nod from the old lady, she loosened the rope and pushed hard against the barge.

The distance between the boat and the pontoon grew quickly and Pari realized the old lady was steering them out to the middle of the channel. ‘Where are we going?’ she demanded. ‘Get to the bank.’

The woman was looking up-stream. ‘I can’t. That’s the way they’re coming.’

She was right. The oncoming boat was close to the north bank. They had no choice but to cross the river. Pari turned round, trying to judge how far it was.

‘The tide’s taking us,’ her companion said. ‘Can you row?’

Pari had no idea, but the lights from the approaching boat were getting bigger. She picked up the oars and pulled as hard as she could. Ignoring the pain in her head she did it again. And again.

She kept pulling. The old lady clung to the tiller, as though sheer force of will could make the engine work harder, but as they moved closer to the centre of the river Pari wasn’t sure how much more she had to give. Each stroke was getting harder. But every time she looked up, the lights on the pursuing boat were closer to the rubbish barge, closer to discovering she’d gone.

The waves were bouncing over the side of the boat, soaking them both, and too much water was gathering in the bottom, but every stroke took them closer to the opposite bank. Pari carried on rowing, her eyes fixed firmly on the planking of the boat, dreading to see the lights of the pursuing boat almost on top of them.

‘The current’s easing off now,’ said the old lady at last. ‘You can probably stop rowing.’

Pari looked up and round. They were drawing close to the bank. She pulled the oars out of the water and tried to get her breath.

‘Are you all right?’ said the old lady. ‘I’m Thessa, by the way. You must be Pari. I’ve seen your name in the books.’

Pari managed to nod. With a stab of alarm she saw the pursuing boat at the pontoon. It was big, with lots of lights. It wasn’t a boat that seemed to be aiming for stealth. And there seemed to be another, drawing up behind. She watched people climb out and start making their way around the skips. Looking for her.

As the engine slowed and the face of her driver screwed up in concentration, Pari spun round on her seat. A black gap in the river wall had appeared before them. The river water was pouring into it.

‘We can’t go in there.’

‘It takes us to a ladder.’ Thessa swung the boat wide and aimed it directly at the outlet. ‘You can climb out.’

Oblivious to Pari’s whimpered protests, the boat travelled in beneath the arched roof of the sewer and the night became even darker. Pari blinked furiously. A few yards of brickwork on either side was all she could see.

‘Your night vision will kick in properly soon,’ said Thessa. ‘Close your eyes for a second or two.’

Pari closed her eyes for a second. She didn’t make it to two. It’s hard to keep your eyes closed when someone very close is screaming.

91

Lacey and Dana

THE RATS HAD
been growing in number. As the water had risen, creeping up the sides of the tunnel, so the eyes had appeared all around Lacey. Eyes that jumped, darted, stabbed at her in the darkness.

She was on her feet, the water at chest height, struggling to keep her balance, the wound around her neck raw from her attempts to pull free. She had another twenty minutes, she reckoned, before the water covered her completely. The rats knew it too. They knew their time was running out.

They’d gathered on the ledge, just above her head. Nostrils twitching, tails flying, ears twisting to every new sound, scrambling over each other in a never-ending quest to be close to her, a writhing mass of plump bodies and thick tails. The eyes were the worst though, eyes that never seemed to leave hers.

One of them sprang, its needle-like claws stabbing her face before it clambered into her hair. More of them coming at her.

Screaming, thrashing, she dropped into the water to get them off. Water in her throat. Her head banging against the wall. Bites in her scalp. Her hair being pulled. She couldn’t breathe. Something was striking at her head. Someone yelling, threatening.

Not her voice.

Lacey struggled to her feet and spat out water. She shook her head like a terrier with a rat in its mouth but no small, cruel creatures clung to her. A short, thin girl with long black hair was standing in the bow of a boat, slamming an oar down hard against the ledge, the wall, even occasionally Lacey’s head, and yelling in a language Lacey didn’t understand. She would have been a terrifying sight, except the rats had gone. She’d scared away the rats.

‘She says she hates rats,’ said a voice behind her. ‘It was always her job at home, to scare the rats from out of the back yard. This is Pari, by the way. I’m helping her escape.’

As though exhausted by the effort, Pari collapsed into the bow of the boat. Thessa’s boat. Thessa herself was at the stern, a black cloak drawn around her head and shoulders. She looked at Lacey in astonishment.

‘My darling girl,’ she said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

Dana sat opposite Christakos and uttered the formalities that would continue the interview. She was conscious of Mark, standing immediately behind her, his hands gripping the back of her chair. She should tell him to sit down, if she fancied wasting her breath.

‘There was no sign of Pari on the river,’ she told Christakos. ‘Our officers have just got back.’

Christakos’s skin had turned several shades paler in the few hours he’d been in custody. ‘She has to be there. We’ve used it before when we’ve had to hide girls for a short time. They’re perfectly safe.’ He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself. ‘Did you look properly?’

‘I searched every inch of that bloody barge myself,’ said Mark, before Dana could open her mouth. ‘I found parcel tape in one of the skips that could have been used as a restraint. Other than that, nothing.’

Christakos dropped his head into his hands.

‘Who is it?’ said Dana. ‘Who has taken her?’

He seemed to shrink in front of her eyes. ‘My sister,’ he said. ‘My sister got to her first.’

92

Lacey and Dana