Before It's Too Late (17 page)

Jackman excused himself and headed down to reception to get them coffees. While the machine was pouring what resembled dirty water into a cup, he reached for his mobile. The X in the corner indicated no signal. He waited until the coffees were made, emptied a sachet of sugar and a couple of mini-cartons of milk into Celia’s, then placed them on the side.

He nodded at the receptionist who was tapping away at her computer, ventured outside and checked his phone again. Still no signal. Frustrated, he wandered around to the side of the main house. A line flickered for a split second, then disappeared. Broom Hills might offer excellent views and a beautiful rural setting, but when it came to mobile signals it was hopeless. Jackman turned, glanced up at the house. He could see the birthday cards that lined Alice’s window ledge from here and the sight injected a twinge of guilt. He paused, inhaled deeply, then pocketed his phone and headed back inside.

Celia almost pounced on him as he walked back into Alice’s room. “Dad, Mum just moved her eyes.”

He steadied himself, relieved he’d placed lids on the coffees.

“I asked her if she wanted the blinds turned down because the sun was coming through and she shifted her eyes to the right!”

He looked at his wife. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. “That’s great, honey,” he replied with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Celia’s smile melted. She moved around to the other side of the bed, sat beside her mother and grabbed her hand protectively. “You don’t believe me.”

He passed a coffee across. “Of course I do. It’s just, well… ” He sighed. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d watched Alice at the hospital, asking her questions, willing some sort of reaction. It was easy to make a gesture and mistake an errant blink or eye movement for some sort of recovery, then repeat the process and get nothing. “Don’t get your hopes up. It could have been a coincidence.”

Celia took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed. “I wasn’t imagining it, was I Mum?” she implored.

Jackman approached the window. “It’s going to be another beautiful day,” he said.

A movement behind him made him turn back. Christine, one of Alice’s carers had entered the room. “Good Morning, Alice,” she said in her cheery Irish tone. “How are we today?” She nodded at Jackman and Celia. “And you’ve got your family come to see you on your birthday. How nice!”

Jackman moved to the bedside. “How’s she doing?”

“Very well, thank you,” Christine said.

“Have you noticed anything?” Celia said. “Any recognition?”

Christine rested her hands on her hips. “Can’t say I have, but it’s early days.”

Celia explained what she thought she saw.

“Did she, now? Clever girl,” she replied and patted Alice’s arm affectionately. Christine, with her smile that lit up her ruddy face was just the sort of person that Alice would have liked. Jackman was glad.

Christine bustled around the room, smoothing Alice’s bedclothes, fluffing up her pillows and commenting on her array of cards. Jackman moved across and sat on the armchair in the corner.

“Can we put a book beside the bed?” Celia asked. “To keep a note of when Mum shows some recognition? So that we can see if a pattern emerges.”

“Well, I shall put it in her notes in the office,” Christine said, “but of course you can keep a book yourselves. Nothing wrong with that.”

The thought of Celia’s optimism formed a lump in Jackman’s throat. It was easy to imagine something, cling onto a tiny thread of hope, only to find it snap off in front of your face.

He suddenly felt a warm hand on his shoulder and looked up to find Christine staring back. “We never lose hope,” she said.

Chapter
Thirty

I sat there, huddled in the corner listening to the staccato of ‘picks’ beside me. The noise was disconcerting. Pick, pick, pick, interspersed, every now and then, with an intermittent throaty tear
.

My new company was bound. Just like me. And somehow they were working on their tape, gradually pulling at the adhesion of the glue
.

Another tear, then a rip. A shuffle. More picking. Though different, louder this time, as if there was more control. Another rip was followed by coughing and spluttering
.

I shrank back. Terror pressed down, suffocating me
.

There was more fidgeting next to me. It seemed to go on for ages
.

Eventually a voice spoke out, “Min, is that you?”

Goose pimples skittered down my arms. I concentrated hard. The inflection in his voice betrayed his roots. He was Chinese, although not from my province and he spoke in English. Why was he here? I tried to grunt back, but the sounds merged together into a muffled din behind the tape
.

“It’s me, Min. Lonny.”

Relief choked my voice. I let out a huge whimper. It was somebody I knew, somebody from the college
.

I felt him reach forward. “I’m just going to remove the blindfold.”

Again in English. But this time I knew why. Lonny was from Hong Kong. His native language of Cantonese couldn’t be more different to my own Mandarin. My mother always said that I shouldn’t have put all my efforts into learning English at the expense of other languages closer to home
.

Threads of my hair felt his presence as he moved around to the back of my head. Strands snagged as he nudged the material this way and that. I flinched, but remained silent. Suddenly, the material was pulled away. I took a moment to focus. A thin layer of daylight illuminated the pit
.

I glanced up at Lonny. He was one of the richer kids, the ones with parents who gave them generous allowances, the ones who hired vehicles and took off to explore the country. We shared a couple of classes. But I knew him well enough to see how different he looked today. His usually immaculate hair was dishevelled. Spots of glue blotted his face around the mouth. His clothes were dirty, as if he’d rolled in a dust bath
.

He gave a weak smile, held a palm to his temple. “My head’s killing me,” he said
.

I glanced down and spotted a pile of duct tape on the floor. From the moment he’d been left here, he’d set to work on removing the tape, spindly fingers working back on his wrists, then his face. I raised my eyes to meet his gaze
.

He pointed at my mouth. “Shall I remove the tape?”

I nodded
.

“It’s gonna hurt.”

I nodded again. It was all I was capable of
.

Slowly, he pulled at the edge of the tape. I felt a tiny sting as he grasped enough to give him leverage. “Ready?”

I blinked acknowledgement. He pulled back, short and sharp. The tear of the glue travelled like a burn across my cheek. I recoiled. Twice more, he repeated the actions, each time checking that I was ready to brace myself for the pain that was about to follow. When I was finally free, I gulped in huge mouthfuls of air before I mouthed, “Thank you.”

He sat back on his heels and set to work on the binds around my hands. “Are you okay?” He looked up as he spoke. His eyes were soft and full of concern. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak. I’d sat here on my own for so long, contemplating my fate, loneliness squeezing every ounce of energy from me
.

“What happened to you?” I eventually said. My words were rough and brittle and my throat hurt as I pushed them out
.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Lonny said staring into space. “It was around nine in the morning, I was walking down Alcester Road. Felt a bang on the back of my head,” he reached up and rubbed his crown, “must have blacked out.”

I absorbed his words slowly. I wanted to hear every minute detail, every second of his capture, in the faint hope that his experience would answer some of the questions that had plagued my brain these past couple of days
.

My hands freed, I rubbed the area around my mouth and sat forward as we worked on the tape around our ankles in unison. “Maybe somebody saw you?”

He paused, thought for a minute, his eyes searching the space in front of him, then shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t remember seeing anyone.” If he noticed my hesitation, the shadow of disappointment that crept across my face, he ignored it. “When I woke up, I was in the back of a vehicle.”

“What kind of vehicle?”

“I don’t know, my eyes were covered. I could hear the engine. I wanted to call out but I was gagged and my hands were tied. At first I thought I was dreaming. It seemed like ages until he parked up, the engine cut, and the door opened.”

“That’s when you arrived here?”

He looked across at me. “Yes. He pulled me out of the vehicle. Then, as soon as I was upright, I felt a sharp point through my t-shirt.” He leant forward and winced as he fingered the small of his back. Thin threads hung loosely where the material had been snagged. The area was circled with specks of blood, where the top layer of skin had been scratched beneath. “He didn’t speak, just led me here. But the knife didn’t leave my back. I remember being pushed down onto my knees, the jingle of metal… ”

“The chain.” I raised my eyes to the roof. “I think it locks the grid in place.”

Lonny wavered as he stood to examine it
.

“Hey, careful.”

“My head feels like it’s full of cotton wool,” he said
.

“I felt like that too. I think he drugged me. Had a massive headache afterwards.”

Lonny rubbed his forehead and looked around at the walls, then reached up towards the grill. “This the only way out?”

I nodded and watched him grab the bars. “It’s no use. I’ve already tried.”

His shirt flapped as he gave it a quick shake. The chain rattled like a snake in the background
.

“There must be a way,” he said
.

“There isn’t.”

Lonny rubbed his hands up and down his face, covering his eyes. He wobbled again
.

“You’d better sit down. I felt very dreamy at first. Like a hangover I had to sleep off.”

He sat and rested his head on the concrete wall. Silence filled the pit for several minutes. Finally, he looked across at me. “What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you get here? We all know you disappeared after leaving the Old Thatch Tavern on Monday evening. It’s been on the news, the radio. Everyone’s talking about it. The police are crawling all over the college. What do you remember?”

“What day is it today?” I asked, ignoring his questions
.

“Thursday.”

Thursday. That meant I’d been cooped up in this hell hole for three nights now
.

I looked across at Lonny. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Of course the police would have been alerted to my disappearance. But being encased in this dark cell for the past couple of days had played tricks with my mind. There were times when I felt so alone, like I’d been forgotten, as if the world had pushed me aside and moved on without me. In a way it was heartening to think that they were looking. But why hadn’t they found me? And why was he here now?

I relayed the story of how I arrived here and, as I mouthed the words, I was reminded just how little I knew about our captor
.

Lonny listened intently, waiting for me to finish before he spoke. “They thought you’d been murdered like that other girl.”

I jerked my head to face him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, she disappeared for a week before they found her body. People thought you might be another victim.”

A shiver slipped down the back of my neck. We sat quietly for a while and I became aware of how thick the atmosphere of the pit had become, now that two people vied for a lungful of air
.

“Why do you think we are here?” I eventually asked
.

He took a deep breath and thought for a moment. “Ransoms? Both our families might be considered wealthy.”

“Mine aren’t. Their money is tied up in the factory.”

He shook his head, his face blank as if he’d run out of ideas
.

“And even if it was kidnap, as you suggest,” I raised my arms wide, “why put us together? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he thought if we were tied up and gagged we wouldn’t be able to communicate.”

The thick air was mingling with the heat now and the dual effect was stifling. I fixed my gaze on the wall in front. “He.”

Lonny twisted his head. “Sorry?”

I returned his gaze. “You said, ‘he’.”

A few seconds passed before Lonny spoke. “Well, I presume he must be male. To have the strength to lift me into the vehicle and manoeuvre me across to here.”

I glanced back at the grid above us. “Yes,” I said, as if I was speaking to myself. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

Chapter
Thirty-One

Jackman slowed right down as he passed the Volkswagen parked in Clifford Chambers’ main street. The white van with yellow and blue signage read ‘C Ward Plumbing Solutions’ next to a blue water droplet. Dots of yellow painted vapour sat above the symbol. He looked at the petrol cap – no rust circle. But he’d seen that symbol before somewhere.

He pushed the thoughts aside, continued to the end of the road and pulled up beside a police car. It was parked behind two police-issue Land Rovers, a Transit van and a black Audi. The sight of the Audi puzzled him. What the hell was Reilly doing here? He slammed the car door behind him and headed up the track that led out of the village and into a farmer’s field.