Authors: Tom Bale
T
his was almost worse
than being kept prisoner, Georgia thought as she led Rob through the garden. Worse than the attacks, or jumping out of that window. Because this was when the people who had taken her in, the family that loved her – the family that
she
loved – would see what she really was.
And they couldn’t fail to reject her.
She felt so sick that she had to stop, once they were through the hedge, doubled over and sucking in the cool, wet air, trying not to throw up, or faint, or both. Rob held her, rubbed her back, but didn’t hassle her with questions.
Maybe he’s guessed
, she thought, but even then he couldn’t possibly know how bad it was.
They set off along the path, Georgia glad of the rain on her face. It was coming down harder now, washing away her blood trail. Even the footprints she’d left were becoming difficult to make out.
‘Over here, I think.’
She stepped carefully through the long grass, letting out a moan when she spotted the woman’s leg. She turned to Rob and pointed. She couldn’t go any closer.
R
ob was trying not
to anticipate what he would see. Maybe it was because he felt sick and groggy himself; not thinking straight. But Georgia was in a bad way, that much was clear. If she had fought with Ilsa and come off best, well, so what? She had nothing to feel guilty about.
Then he saw the body.
Georgia hung back, a few feet away. After he’d been there for perhaps twenty, thirty seconds, just staring, she covered her face with her hands and began to sob, her shoulders heaving up and down in a rhythm of pure heartbreak.
Rob’s duty was to offer comfort, but first he had to compose himself. Find some clarity of thought in the midst of this. . . horror.
Ilsa had been stabbed multiple times, mainly to her torso, but also to her arms, her neck, even her face. Rob didn’t try to count the wounds; he didn’t need to.
Now he understood Georgia’s reaction. There wasn’t a hope in hell of passing this off as self-defence. It was more like a frenzied attack, a sustained act of revenge.
That explained the state she was in; the blood all over her arms, her t-shirt. Had Milo or Lara noticed? To be fair, he thought, a lot of the dark stains looked like mud – and some probably
were
mud.
A bird hooted nearby, and in shock he jerked away from the body. He was aware of time pressing on them, the possibility that witnesses could materialise on the path at any moment. But Georgia was on the brink of an emotional meltdown, so first he had to take her in his arms and hold her tight. With her face buried in his chest, she made an attempt to explain herself.
‘I dunno how. . . In my head it was Mark Burroughs, and he was going to kill me, and I had, I had to—’
‘It’s okay. You don’t have to justify yourself to me.’ When there was no response, he added, gently, ‘I’d have done the same thing, I think.’
She broke away from him, met his gaze at last, but looked sceptical.
‘I mean it,’ he said, thinking of that dangerous rush of temper in Bosham, when he’d launched himself at Jason Dennehy. ‘She deserved what she got. You mustn’t feel guilty about it.’
‘But the police. . .’ Georgia swallowed back another sob. ‘I’ll go to prison, won’t I?’
Rob blew out a sigh. In his heart, he didn’t think that possibility could be dismissed. Even with the strong mitigating circumstances in her favour, it was unlikely that a court could overlook an attack of this ferocity. At the very least Georgia would be referred for psychiatric reports, and might end up undergoing years of treatment.
In some quarters she would be regarded as a monster. A freak. The simplistic explanation would be that she had unleashed the demons in her head, and no one who met her would ever forget that.
‘Okay.’ He hugged her again, kissed the top of her head, and said, ‘Here’s what we do.’
B
y the time Georgia reappeared
, Wendy was frantic. She’d been gone at least ten or fifteen minutes, and she was wet, muddy and bedraggled.
‘Did you call them? Where’s your dad?’
‘He’s okay. He’s making the call.’
‘What happened? Where have you been?’
Georgia shrugged, unwilling to explain. ‘Dad got hurt trying to stop Kyle,’ she admitted, quickly adding, ‘He’s all right, though.’
‘You mean Kyle’s still here?’
‘He was, but he got away. I helped Dad up. He was feeling dizzy, so I didn’t want to hurry him. When he felt better, he went off to make the phone call and I came back here.’
To Wendy’s ear, Georgia’s words bore the tone of a pre-prepared statement, but Evan said, ‘They’re both okay, that’s what matters.’
From the corner of the room, Milo grumbled, ‘Typical of Kyle to get away. He caused all this, you know? Him and Gabriel. We hardly did anything.’
He’d been arguing in this vein for the past ten minutes, backed up by Lara, who now glared at Wendy and said, ‘You’ve got no proof that us two hurt anyone. It’s our word against yours.’
‘We’ll take that chance,’ Josh said. ‘I think the DNA, the fingerprints, the injuries will tell their own story, don’t you?’
Lara had no comeback, but Milo frowned. ‘Where’s Ilsa?’
With a quick look at Georgia, who was visibly shivering, Wendy said, ‘I assume she escaped with Kyle.’
‘I doubt that,’ Milo said scornfully, and Lara said, ‘More likely he’s killed her. He hated her guts.’
‘He hated all of us.’ Milo winced and made another appeal to Wendy. ‘These are too tight. They’re hurting my wrists.’
‘Won’t be long,’ Wendy said. ‘I’m sure the police can replace them with something better.’
As they continued to protest, she pondered the way Georgia’s body had almost crumpled during this exchange. She pushed it from her mind when Josh called Georgia over and clasped her hand in his, reassuring her that his wound had stopped bleeding.
‘I’m fine – and it’s thanks to you, Squirt.’
Evan was next in line with the congratulations: ‘You’re a fricking hero, Georgie.’
Wendy said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to miss out on this.’ She’d hoped for a full embrace, but Georgia resisted; even so, Wendy could feel how cold her skin was, her t-shirt soaked through with muddy water. ‘You need some towels.’
Georgia wrinkled her nose. ‘Gonna have a shower.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. . . It might be better to wait for the police.’
‘Nah, it’s disgusting. I’ve gotta get clean.’ Seeing her mum’s concern, Georgia leaned close and whispered, ‘They didn’t do anything to me, so don’t worry about that.’
Wendy was hugely relieved to hear it, though she couldn’t shake off the feeling that her daughter was hiding something.
She faced down more complaints from Milo and Lara, while Evan had the bright idea of making tea. For a minute or two, Wendy was alone with her thoughts, her fears; it was hard not to look around this room, once such a sanctuary from the world outside, without feeling that it had been irrevocably tainted by this ordeal. Could they ever be comfortable here again? she wondered.
Could they ever feel safe anywhere?
From upstairs, Wendy heard the pulse of the shower and felt an odd but disturbing premonition of doom. It must have shown in her face, for Josh offered an encouraging smile.
‘Stop fretting, Mum. She’s a survivor.’
Wendy nodded, but said quietly, ‘It’s what she had to do to survive that worries me.’
‘Whatever it was, it’s better than the alternative. I’d say be grateful for that.’
It was probably good advice. The door opened and Rob came in, grim-faced and as drenched and grubby as Georgia had been. He hugged them both, but with a strangely distant air. At Wendy’s urging he wrapped himself in a bath towel, then sat on the floor and allowed her to clean a nasty cut on the back of his head. His description of recent events was practically identical to Georgia’s.
‘You could be concussed, you realise that?’ Wendy told him. ‘Not to mention kidney damage from that kick.’
He snorted. ‘Trying to cheer me up?’
‘I’m just warning you. When the ambulance arrives, I don’t want any nonsense about not needing treatment. You’re going to a hospital and that’s my final word on the matter.’
Rob chuckled, but was serious when he pointed out the flaw in her argument. ‘It won’t be up to you – or me – where I go. When the police get here, their priority will be to sort out who did what to whom, and that’s likely to take a while.’
As he said it, he glanced at Georgia, who had just rejoined them, now scrubbed clean and dressed in jogging pants and a sweatshirt. Wendy couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that the two of them were engaged in a conspiracy of sorts, but she reflected on Josh’s wisdom and knew that he was right:
be grateful
. It was going to be hard enough to move on with their lives as it was.
Moving on – though perhaps in different directions.
F
or the next
few days they were at the mercy of officialdom. It was a blur of hospitals and hotel rooms, news bulletins and intrusive questions shouted through half-open windows. Long, weary interviews and painful rehabilitation, tearful reassurances for family and friends, and a growing aversion to contact with the outside world.
News crews had swarmed around the hospital; more than were present in the village of Branham. Footage of the luridly tagged ‘torture house’ was nowhere near as prized as even the shakiest long-range glimpse of the victims themselves.
Interest from the media proved too great for them to return home until the following weekend: instead they sought refuge in a Winchester hotel. Even here they were not immune, for images of the family had been plucked from Facebook and spread over the pages of tabloids and broadsheets alike. It was a taste of celebrity which none of them was eager to repeat.
Throughout this period, the police acted as their bodyguards, their protectors, their confidants and counsellors – but always there was an edge, another side to their voracious appetite for information.
Wendy and Evan had been first to endure a long bout of questioning, because the other three required immediate medical treatment. Rob showed signs of concussion, requiring that he be kept under observation overnight. He also underwent an ultrasound scan, after a urine test found evidence of slight renal trauma. Josh’s gunshot wound required over a dozen stitches; and when Georgia passed out shortly after the first officers arrived at the house, she was judged to be severely dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion.
Rob knew differently there, but he wasn’t going to say a word. Anything that delayed the point at which she would have to make a statement was good with him.
B
efore the police
arrived at the cottage, Rob had to explain about the shoe that had been planted in their home. Although it wouldn’t show him in a good light, he agreed with Wendy that he would have to come clean, whereupon Josh pointed out that he faced a similar predicament. The murders of John Nyman and his driver could not be described without explaining the context for their visit: the smuggling.
‘Of course, I fully intend to play down the scale of what I was up to,’ he said with a grin, ‘but I can’t leave it out altogether.’
Rob’s other concern was Kyle’s paternity claim, the sort of detail that had the potential to get the tabloids frothing at the mouth. Wendy tried to downplay his fears.
‘Whatever the truth of the allegations, you don’t bear any responsibility for what he did.’
‘They won’t care about the truth – just the fact that Kyle
believed
there was a connection will be more than enough.’ But he agreed that it had to be divulged.
As the investigation got underway, Kyle and Ilsa were still missing and would, in the words of the police, be urgently sought in connection with the enquiry.
‘Do you really think they escaped together?’ Wendy asked Rob.
With a non-committal shrug, he said. ‘I only saw Kyle in the car, but I suppose she could have been crouched on the back seat or something.’
‘Perhaps,’ Wendy said, with a delicacy that suggested she didn’t believe a word of it.
It was a relief when the conversation moved on, safely away from the other aspect of his encounter with Kyle that he was still keeping to himself: the moment when he’d put the knife to Rob’s throat, and his gleeful warning.
I’ll come back for you all, that’s a promise.
E
vents moved so quickly
that it wasn’t until Tuesday that Rob was interviewed by two officers from the Norfolk and Suffolk Major Investigation Team. DS Husein was also present, along with a detective from Kent police called McIlroy. The location was a small, stuffy waiting room at the hospital, commandeered for the purpose. Rob was informed that he was not under arrest and could leave at any time, or seek legal advice if he thought it necessary.
He declined. ‘I’m happy to help in any way I can,’ he said.
As well as asking questions, the police had much to tell him. It seemed that Milo and Lara had been competing to spill the beans, blaming everyone but themselves for what had happened. Their base had been in a village close to Petersfield, where their first victim, a homeless man of unknown identity, had been subjected to weeks of torture. A forensic team was now scouring the house, which had belonged to Kyle’s late grandmother.
‘There’s some kind of family feud between his mum and his aunt,’ Husein said, ‘but both are adamant they have no idea where Kyle might have gone. The aunt says she didn’t have a clue that Gabriel and the others were living there.’
‘But we’ll catch him,’ said the detective inspector, a narrow-featured, placid-looking man called Toner. ‘Be in no doubt about that.’
DC Driscoll, a tall woman with a slightly flustered air, admitted that there had been no sightings to date, but explained that traffic cameras with ANPR – automatic number plate recognition – were being deployed nationwide to locate the vehicle in which he had escaped.
At that point she became slightly reticent, and moved on to the discovery of a 7 series BMW, found abandoned near the coast at Hunstanton. Inside were the bodies of John Nyman and his associate, both extremely well known to the Kent detective, McIlroy, who was bald, cheerful and reeked of aftershave.
‘Losing them two will knock the crime rate down by twenty points on my patch,’ he drawled. ‘At least till some other scrote fills the gap.’
That provoked a taut smile from DI Toner, who changed the tone completely when he said, ‘And then there’s Ilsa.’
T
here was silence
, prompting Rob to ask, finally, ‘What about her?’
‘It turns out she didn’t leave with Kyle,’ Driscoll said.
‘Oh.’ Rob wasn’t sure if he’d ever achieved an expression as blank as the one he attempted now.
‘We found her body, late yesterday afternoon.’ Toner had a commanding presence, and a quiet, deliberate way of speaking that would have been intimidating even if Rob had been able to tell the whole truth. ‘She’d been murdered, then dragged into the marshes. Hidden away.’
‘And in water,’ Driscoll added. ‘Which isn’t good for us, evidence-wise.’
‘That’s a pity,’ Rob said, ‘but if you’re expecting sympathy for her, you won’t get it from me.’
‘Understandable,’ Husein said gently, perhaps responding to a new air of tension in the room. ‘But regardless of what she’s done, her death has to be investigated.’
Toner said, ‘We’ll be speaking to Georgia, too, you’re aware of that?’
‘Of course,’ said Rob. ‘We all have to be interviewed.’
‘Good.’ Driscoll brushed a stray hair from her eyes. ‘What we need from you is a clearer idea of the sequence of events, from when your daughter managed to escape. . .’
‘And the timings, in particular,’ Toner added.
Rob shrugged: on this point he was genuinely vague. ‘It all seemed to happen very quickly. After we heard the crash, a couple of them went to investigate. I think Ilsa went out through the kitchen, then Milo followed her. He was gone for. . . a few minutes, I suppose. Then he came back, and Georgia managed to sneak past them and set us free.’
‘A brave girl,’ Husein remarked, with what might have been a pointed look at Toner.
‘Quite,’ the DI agreed. ‘And when she reappeared, what sort of state was she in?’
‘Jesus Christ! What sort of state do you
think
she was in?’
He was so vehement that Husein placed a cautionary hand on his arm. Unmoved by the outburst, Toner said, ‘Was she upset, in floods of tears? Was she angry, scared. . .?’
Rob swallowed. ‘She was very shaken, as you’d expect, but keeping it together.’
‘What about her physical appearance?’ Driscoll asked. ‘I imagine she was in quite a mess?’
Remembering that Milo and Lara had seen her come in, he said, ‘Yeah. She’d been hiding out in the fields, so she was filthy, and soaking wet.’
‘Any blood on her?’ Toner asked.
‘I think there was some, from when she’d been assaulted by Gabriel and
Lara
.’
Driscoll caught his emphasis. ‘Don’t worry. Lara won’t be wriggling out of responsibility for her crimes.’
Toner moved briskly on: ‘You say you went after Kyle, but he jumped out on you, then drove away. Correct?’
‘Yes. I was hit on the head. It was Georgia who found me.’
‘And was this before or after she took a shower?’
‘Shower. . .?’ Thrown off stride, Rob suspected he had a look in his eyes like a cornered animal. ‘Uh, before, I think. I sent her back inside, then went to the main road to get a signal and call you. That took, I don’t know, maybe ten minutes.’
Driscoll: ‘Why is it, do you think, that Kyle stayed around, rather than just get away?’
‘No idea. Maybe he wanted a chance to deal with Ilsa?’ He stopped there, conscious that he mustn’t say too much. He knew Wendy had reported a conversation where Lara suggested that Kyle might well have killed Ilsa.
‘So why the attack on you?’ This was from McIlroy.
‘Because I was standing between him and the car. I was in the way – simple as that.’
‘Did he say anything to you, during the attack?’ Toner was now watching him very closely. ‘Any reference to Ilsa?’
Rob shrugged. ‘Not that I can recall.’
‘No? That’s a little odd, then.’
Another excruciating silence. Fuming slightly, Rob said, ‘Why?’
‘Because you don’t seem very surprised about her death.’
‘After the past week, nothing much surprises me any more.’ It was a glib response, but it gave him time to think; he’d been working so hard to keep a lid on his temper, but maybe that wasn’t the natural reaction to this sort of pressure.
After a few more routine questions, Toner returned to Georgia’s actions. ‘It’s regrettable, I have to say – not only taking that shower before we arrived, but also her clothes going missing.’
‘I don’t know what happened there.’ Rob sat up straight, his heart beating fast, and set his face in a defiant expression.
‘You have to admit,’ Driscoll said carefully, ‘it’s quite hard to see how they could have been accidentally mislaid.’
‘Not really. It was chaos once you and the ambulances got there.’ The anger was coursing through him now, and this time he let it run. ‘Jesus, to be fixing on that after what the poor kid went through – she did so well to escape, and then come back and set us free. If it weren’t for her, you’d have been rolling up days later to find a house full of rotting corpses. So if she felt. . .
soiled
by the experience, and chose to try and hide her embarrassment, you won’t hear a word of criticism from me. I’m proud of her, all right? I’m
more
than proud.’
As he sat back, crossing his arms, there was a murmur from Husein: ‘Hear hear.’
Toner gave a little frown of displeasure, and said, ‘I think we can leave it there for now.’