There were suddenly tears in Mark’s eyes too. His voice scraped out as though his throat was made of sandpaper. ‘What did you do?’
‘I… I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘Please, Grace. I need to know.’
‘No you don’t. All you need to know is that you’re alive and they’re dead. All of them, except the Chief Bastard. And if I ever find him, I’m going to make him pay and pay for what he took from us. I won’t kill him fast like the others. I’ll slice him up bit by bit until he begs for death.’
There was a thrill of anticipation in Angel’s voice that Mark recoiled from. She clearly took pleasure from the thought of hurting the Chief Bastard, just as her abuser had taken pleasure from hurting her. That didn’t make her the same as him, but it did stir up a deep unease in Mark. He silently waited for the rest of the story.
A long while passed before she continued. ‘After that night, I was done with Stephen, with the Winstanleys, with everything. Stephen tried his usual lines on me, but I wasn’t listening any more. I hardly slept. And when I did, I had nightmares. I wanted to die. I thought about it constantly. I even tried to OD on some sleeping-pills Stephen brought me. But he found me and walked me round until they wore off. That’s when he said I couldn’t stay at the flat any longer. I begged him to change his mind, but he wouldn’t. He said I had to leave Sheffield for my own good. His friend from The Minx knew someone in Newcastle who could put me up. He warned me never to come back to Sheffield. Said if I did there’d be dire consequences for me and my family.’
A tremor of disgust passed across Mark’s face. ‘The fucker used you and threw you away like a broken toy.’
‘He could’ve let me OD. Dumped my body somewhere for the coppers to find. Runaways die like that all the time. Nice and easy, no questions asked. It was a big risk letting me leave. I think maybe in his own fucked-up way he really did care for me.’ Angel frowned in silence for a moment, as though trying to gauge the truth of her words. With a shake of her head, she continued. ‘So one night this Geordie bloke came to the flat. He took me to a house in Newcastle where some other girls were living. Turned out this friend of Stephen’s friend owned a string of brothels and strip-clubs. Most of the girls were junkies. Within days, I’d had my first hit of H.’ A sigh slipped from her lips. ‘And all the hurt, all the guilt, all the memories went away. After I came down, all I could think about was getting another fix, and another, and… And the rest is hardly worth telling. They bounced me from brothel to brothel, kept me back of house until I was old enough to work the clubs. And when they’d got all they wanted from me, when I started to look like the scag-whore I was, they let me go off with a pimp from Middlesbrough.’
‘So what made you come back here after all these years?’
‘Something happened. Something that made me realise it was time to start fighting back against all the beatings, the abuse, the rapes. Then I saw on the news what Stephen had done and I knew I had to get payback for what they did to us. And to make some kind of amends for what I did to you.’
Mark could sense – could almost smell – the guilt emanating from Angel. Hesitantly, he reached over and touched her arm. She stiffened, but didn’t move away. ‘You don’t need to make amends for that. You only did what you had to do.’
‘No.’ Angel spat the word out vehemently. ‘I had a choice. There’s always a choice. I chose to survive when I should’ve let them kill me.’
‘Bollocks you should have. You were fifteen. A fifteen-year-old shouldn’t have to make choices like that. No one should.’ Mark’s voice was suddenly imploring. ‘If you truly want to do something for me, let go of this thing. I don’t want anyone else to die because of what happened to us.’
‘This isn’t just about you and me. It’s about all the other kids whose lives have been or will be destroyed by the Chief Bastard.’
‘Go to the police. Tell them what you know. Let them track him down and deal with him.’
‘I told you, you can’t always trust the police.’
‘So who can you trust?’
‘No one. I’d have thought you’d see that after everything you’ve been through.’
‘Sure I see it.’ Mark’s tone became steely, forceful even. ‘But I can’t, I won’t, allow it to define who I am. Don’t you see? If I do that, Stephen Baxley and the Chief Bastard will have won.’
Angel’s pained face drew into even deeper creases. Mark’s words struck deep and true. For most of her life this thing… this guilty rage had consumed, directed and, until the past few days, weighed on her with a paralysing force. She hated it with every ounce of her being. But what would she do without it? Who would she be? ‘I can’t let it go. It’s too late for that. I have to see this to the end.’
‘When does it end? When the Chief Bastard’s dead?’
‘No. It ends when they’re all dead. Every one of them who’s ever hurt a child.’
‘Then it’ll never end, because you’ll never be able to kill them all.’
‘Maybe not, but I can try.’
Mark removed his hand from Angel, releasing a breath heavy with sadness at the thought of her insane quest and the world that had driven her to it. A powerful feeling suddenly came over him that he had to get away from this place, get back to the city, to the hospital, to Charlotte. It seemed to him that if he didn’t do it now, he might be stuck here forever, sharing a dark, lonely limbo with Angel. ‘Do you think we’ve waited long enough?’
‘More than long enough.’
Mark twisted the ignition key so that the dashboard lit up. He turned on the satnav. A blip on the GPS tracking screen pinpointed their location. ‘We’re a few miles south of Rotherham. East of the M1. Where do you want to go?’
Angel turned the question over in her mind. The priority was to make sure Mark was safe. But where was safe? And what about herself? Where was she to go? Trying to come up with answers seemed to make her limbs feel impossibly heavy. ‘Just head towards Sheffield. When we get there, I’ll tell you where to go.’
Mark started the engine. ‘Can you put the car in reverse for me?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s easy. You just shift the gearstick into the slot marked—’
‘It’s not that. I can’t move my arms.’
Mark turned towards Angel with a concerned frown. By the light of the dashboard, she looked like a sickly child. ‘Why can’t you move your arms?’
Angel’s eyes moved, and Mark’s followed them to her stomach. He gasped at the sight of blood welling through her vest. ‘You’ve been shot!’
She shook her head slightly. ‘It was when that fucker hit me in the barn. He had a knife. Take a look at it, will you? Tell me how bad it is.’
Carefully, Mark lifted Angel’s sopping vest. The wound yawned like a cave in her abdomen. Something dark bulged through it. His mouth filled with bitter saliva at the sight. ‘It’s bad. Very bad.’ He shrugged off his dressing-gown, bundled it up and pressed it against the wound. Angel gave out a hoarse groan. Blood almost instantly soaked through the material. ‘We’ve got to get you to hospital.’
‘No! If I go there, I’m fucked.’
‘You’ll be even more fucked if you don’t. You’ll be dead.’
Angel closed her eyes. She knew Mark was right. She hadn’t felt much when the knife went in, except for a winding sensation. But as the adrenaline had worn off, pain had begun pulsing outwards from the wound in white-hot waves. At the same time, numbness had come on in her arms. Now it was creeping through her legs, merciful but terrifying. Her face contorted with savage frustration. That she was dying didn’t matter. It only mattered that she would die before she’d had the chance to kill the Chief Bastard. She looked at Mark, her eyes burning with a fevered light. ‘Promise me you’ll find the Chief Bastard.’
‘But I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘There is someone you can possibly trust to help you. Jim Monahan. He’s a cop.’
‘How do you know Detective Mo—’
‘It doesn’t matter how I know him. Just promise me you’ll find the Chief Bastard. And if the law can’t get to him, promise me you’ll make him pay.’
‘OK, OK, but only if you’ll let me take you to hospital.’
‘Say it. I want to hear you say it.’
‘I’ll find him and…’ Mark hesitated to make the second part of the promise. The Chief Bastard had already taken part of his innocence. There was no way he was about to lose the rest of it over him. No matter what Angel said, he had to trust the law. But he saw that it was necessary to lie if she was to survive. ‘And if the law can’t get him, I will.’
The wild light in Angel’s eyes faded to a weary resignation, an acceptance that she’d done everything she could, given everything she’d got. Suddenly there was only one place she wanted be, only one person she wanted to see. ‘There’s someone you can take me to. A doctor I know. She’ll patch me up.’
‘You need more than patching up.’
‘Either you take me to her or I’ll get out of the car right here.’
Mark looked at Angel uncertainly for a second, then heaved a sigh. ‘Where does this doctor live?’
Angel told him the address and he punched it into the satnav. He put the Audi in reverse and they set off again. At every rut and pothole the car exploded over, pain blazed up Angel’s spine into her throat, choking off her breath. Her vision was fraying at the edges. Darkness seemed to be seeping into the car like ink, staining its interior blacker and blacker. She focused on the satnav’s robotic voice, holding on to every word like a drowning person clutching a lifebuoy. The road and street names were gradually becoming more familiar. She gagged. Something acrid and coppery-tasting filled her mouth. She spat it out.
‘Hold on,’ said Mark. ‘It’s not far now.’
‘Not far now,’ Angel repeated, slurring the words. ‘Not far now, not far…’
Then she saw it. Looming through the night like the rampart of some ancient fort. Hillsborough Stadium. Mark turned onto her parents’ road and pulled over outside their house. He eyed the two-up, two-down terrace doubtfully. ‘A doctor lives here?’
He jumped out of the car and hammered on the door. A light came on in the upstairs window. A moment later, the door opened on a safety chain. A woman peered through the gap between door and frame. As soon as he saw her timid, questioning eyes, Mark guessed he’d been lied to. Her face was lined with age and worry. It was the face of someone used to taking instructions, not handing them out. ‘Are you a doctor?’
The woman shook her head, looking at Mark in his blood-stained pyjamas as though she suspected he was a madman.
‘Then a doctor doesn’t live here?’
‘No. What gave you that idea?’
‘I was told…’ Mark tailed off as it struck him that the woman’s eyes had the same feline shape and porcelain-blue colour as Angel’s.
An inarticulate groan rasped from the car. The woman squinted over Mark’s shoulder. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Someone’s hurt. Can I use your phone?’
The woman blinked, uncertain. ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble. My husband—’
‘Please. She’s dying!’
‘Dying?’ The woman’s uncertainty gave way to frowning concern. ‘Who’s dying?’
The groan came again. This time it contained a word, only just audible. ‘Mum.’
The woman stiffened as though she’d heard a voice from a coffin. ‘Grace?’ She breathed the name through trembling lips. ‘Is that you?’ She fumbled at the security chain, struggling with unsteady hands to unhook it. She stepped into the street in her dressing-gown, barefooted. She didn’t seem to notice the cold of the pavement as she approached the car and stooped to look inside it. Her hand shot to her mouth, partly stifling a sound that expressed both shock and horror. Mark’s gaze darted back and forth between the women, and it was like looking at two photos of the same person taken twenty-odd years apart.
‘Hello, Mum,’ said Angel, her voice fading even as she spoke.
‘Grace, Grace,’ Linda Kirby murmured as if in a trance.
‘Help…’ Angel’s voice caught on her pain. She swallowed, then continued, ‘Help me into the house.’
Linda slid an arm under her daughter’s armpit. ‘I don’t think we should move her,’ said Mark. But Angel was already standing, out of the car, her face as grey as the soot-stained brickwork of the little terrace. Step by tottering step, Linda guided her into the living room and lowered her onto the sofa.
‘Oh my angel, my poor little lost angel,’ whispered Linda, cradling her daughter’s head, fearfully tender.
Mark grabbed some towels from a radiator in the hallway and handed them to Linda. ‘Press them against the wound.’
As Linda did so, Angel grimaced and air wheezed between her lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Linda. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ It wasn’t clear if she was apologising for the pain or for something else.
‘Where’s your phone?’ asked Mark.
Linda pointed at a sideboard. Mark snatched up the phone he saw there and dialled 999.
Angel’s eyes drifted around the living room. Nothing much had changed. Same three-piece suite, same carpet, same curtains. It was almost as if she’d only been away a few hours. Her gaze lingered on the shrine of photos of herself cluttering the mantelpiece.
‘I never gave up hope,’ said Linda. ‘I always knew you’d come back to me one day.’
Angel looked into her mum’s eyes. Her lips formed three silent words.
I love you.
Then a terrible stillness stole over her.
Linda pressed her face against her daughter’s, letting out a low keening sound that quickly built into a wail.
‘What is it?’ asked Mark, jerking round to face them.
‘She’s dead.’ Linda’s voice came muffled and choking.
Mark rushed to Angel’s side and searched vainly for a pulse. He thought about trying mouth-to-mouth. Then he looked at her face. All the pain had gone from it. Death had smoothed away the lines of rage and guilt. She looked as peaceful as a sleeping child.
‘My baby is dead… She’s dead…’ Linda gasped between sobs, clutching a hand to herself as if a steel claw was raking through her guts.
Mark stepped away from mother and daughter, suddenly feeling as if he was intruding upon some private rite. He turned towards the door at the sound of heavy footsteps lumbering along the hallway. A burly figure with close-cropped grey hair swayed into view. Mark’s heart lurched. Was this man another hired killer? Then he smelt the booze-reek steaming off him and saw the dull glaze over his eyes. If it was a hitman, he wasn’t in much of a state to do his job.