And then he appeared just beyond the kitchen doorway, breathing heavily and working hard to control it. He looked at her and she at him, the white cotton of his T-shirt rising with each deep breath, a wide band of blood stretching down his right side and soaking into his trousers. He held the girl under his left arm like a rolled length of carpet, her hair hanging down, mewling, long streaks of blood on his arm that reflected the light.
‘Put her down,’ Sarah said.
He gave her that same incredulous look. ‘Be reasonable, Sarah, what are you really going to accomplish here? The doors are all locked and so are the windows. It’s midnight. If you could stick your head outside and scream everyone will think you’re a pissed-up kid. Nobody’s going to care.’
‘Then you should let me try.’
He smiled and took a step towards the kitchen.
‘Put her down,’ she repeated, pulling the paring knife from the counter, holding it loose at her side.
He shook his head. ‘What’re you going to do with that? You’re more likely to hurt the girl.’
She flicked her wrist and the knife spun towards his bare feet, causing him to hop backwards as it clattered over the kitchen floor and into the dining room.
She reached across to the counter and held the boning knife in the same way, loose at her side.
‘Put her down. In the dining room, anywhere. Just somewhere she can’t see.’
Now he looked at her confused. She didn’t wait for his reply.
‘I know we’re not going anywhere, it’s not about that now. But you’re not having her, not as long as I have a single breath in me. Put her down, I have something I want to show you.’
And she doubted even that. He had not once shown the slightest interest in her. He had saved her from Hakan, she was sure of that now. Everything now focused on why he had done that. She was down to her last option, not least because of all the shadowed doors it might open. It came down to one simple fact. Almost all the men who had ever seen her naked subsequently turned all kinds of stupid.
Simon gently swung Andrea down and walked her unprotesting to the other side of the door, away from the kitchen. His attention was now fully on Sarah.
She kept her eyes on him, moving her free hand to the top button of her shirt, unfastening it, then moving down as she released each button, leaving smudges of blood on the white fabric as it parted. She pulled open her shirt and shrugged the material from her shoulders, now standing in just her jeans with the shirt hanging by her waist, her torso lean and flat.
She saw it in Simon’s eyes, a widening of his pupils, a dark intent that shifted across his face. He took a step towards her without knowing why, his features shaped by need. He saw her now.
She let the material fall over her wrists to the floor and Simon took another step and then another, now standing in front of her, his eyes on hers. He reached down to her hand and the knife, encircling her wrist and holding it firm. She looked defiantly up at him as he cupped her face in his free hand and ran his thumb across her cheek, then his fingers down her neck and over her shoulders and down her arm, the skin of his palm hard and warm. Gliding around her waist and then up over her ribs and across her chest, his fingers each in turn catching on a nipple. Then back to her neck and face. His brown eyes fixed on hers all the time.
She busily rehearsed in her mind what she would do, imagining the distance from her left arm to the kitchen counter, then to the carving knife. She pictured it, rehearsed the movement while working to veil her intentions, barely aware as he tenderly brushed her hair from her face. She closed her eyes, threw out her arm, closing her fingers around the handle, awkwardly but enough that she had a grip. She turned her wrist and the blade as she punched inwards with all her strength. The blade travelled three inches before his hand clamped around her forearm. She opened her eyes. He was still looking down at her.
He said, ‘You’re all kinds of resourceful.’
She looked insolently back at him, but inside she was already running from the consequences.
‘You can’t touch her,’ she said.
‘I’m not going to.’ He raised her wrists as he had before, hands supine. He took both knives and leaned across her, pushing them back into the rack. ‘I’m going to take her back.’
She watched as he stepped backwards out of the kitchen. She could feel goosebumps climbing her stomach and arms. She bent down and picked up her shirt as he picked up Andrea.
She listened to him walk through the living room, the house silent now, her throat sore, all of her sore. She pulled on her shirt and re-fastened the top button, flaring out the bottom, exposing her stomach and a narrowing stretch of skin to her chest.
From behind her she heard the sound of heavy concrete moving. She leaned over the work surface and examined the wall. It was relatively newly decorated, the cupboards above fairly modern. There were two of them. She pulled one open, seeing two shelves of stacked tupperware. She studied the door for a second and then on a whim pressed her palm against the inside, wincing at the pain of pushing it flat, putting pressure on her fingertips. A palm print in her congealing blood and the imprint of a thumb and four fingers. She closed the cupboard as she heard him pad back through the house.
He appeared in the doorway, holding the remains of the glass bowl and the bloody shards of glass in his hands. ‘That’s the problem with the light in the room fixed,’ he said, looking at her in amusement. ‘The bulb somehow managed to unscrew itself.’ He placed the fragments of glass onto the draining board. ‘How did you break that?’
She looked at the glass and replied, ‘With considerable difficulty.’
‘How?’ he persisted.
‘I used a screw from the bookshelf to cut the glass like cutting tiles. Then it was a matter of breaking the glass along the fracture, which was very difficult.’
He shook his head and held out his left hand for her. She could see the cut still bleeding along his wrist and forearm. She had been a split second from making a much deeper cut across his throat, then her world might have been a little different.
‘The girl is off limits,’ she stated.
He looked back at her but said nothing. She let him wait a second then stepped forward and took his hand, allowing him to lead her up the stairs.
FIFTY
Adam turned off the promenade and drove inland, the small green globe on his laptop refusing to show an internet connection. After a few junctions he turned parallel to the coastline, the late night streets empty save for occasional groups moving at a disjointed crawl. He passed a white sign with black lettering and into Grimsby, past a dormant school and then a square centred by grass, a row of shuttered shops and a glowing takeaway. The globe flashed and then stayed solid. He had a connection but carried on, looking for a stronger signal, but the globe blinked off. So he reversed back to the square and flicked off the headlights.
He searched for his copy of Simon’s address, aware of the BBC Homepage slowly loading on the laptop. When he looked at the screen a young girl’s face stared back at him, at the top of the screen the headline
Child kidnapped from High Street
. He clicked the link and the same picture appeared amid text, then a stock photo of Hambury on a busy day. He picked out partial sentences from the text as he paged down to an image of a green Rover, the number plate blanked, then another of a burnt-out car. The sequence of images led him to think the car was the Rover. And then he froze, giving a despairing groan as he read the text. It was not the Rover. It was the charred remains of Sarah’s silver Toyota.
Oh God!
His first news of her in over a day, it weighed him heavy in the seat.
Adam sat motionless for a long time, just staring at the burnt remains of Sarah’s car, fearful of reading more for what it might tell him of her fate. He only moved when the screen blanked, stretching out a finger and tapping a key. The screen blinked on. He moved to the top and started reading, sighing with relief when there was no mention of anything inside the car.
Once he had reduced the article to the bare facts there was very little detail. The when and where, a brief background of Andrea Scott and why she was in Hambury, a brief mention of parents, the fact that they were estranged but with neither mentioned by name, a short summary on the idyllic market town of Hambury. Sarah was mentioned indirectly as an alleged eyewitness who was also missing. The phrasing made it sound as though there was an unspoken implication.
He typed keywords into a search engine and found almost identical stories featured on all the tabloids and news sites, the opening gambits to a big story but no detail to create sensation. Their main thrust was the shock of a child kidnapped from a busy high street, then of the eyewitness now missing, the same unspoken implication. The light in the car shifted as he moved from site to site, soaking up every word.
Adam’s first impulse when he finished reading was to find Brian. He immediately checked that thought. The fact that Andrea’s kidnapping was now news changed nothing. Brian was already checking Simon’s address. If Adam could tie Simon Thompson to that address online, there was potential to access a lot of data. He spent a moment thinking where he should start and then his fingers danced, images and text moving up and down the screen as his eyes scanned the page.
In ten minutes he had a myriad of Simon Thompsons cross-referenced to the east coast but none he could match to the address. His fingers hovered as he deliberated and then danced again, logging into his company’s web portal, his determination and sense of urgency ploughing him past any reservations. It gave him an instant hit. The address Brian was checking was Simon’s last registered place of residence. Adam searched through the DVLA, electoral roll, insurance and school records. He even ran a credit check against Simon and the address, returning a fail because Simon had no credit history.
When he was done Adam had gathered a lot of information without knowing much at all. He knew Simon’s education had finished at sixteen, when he had been immediately employed by Thompson Deep Sea as a crew hand and then a watch captain, relief skipper and charter skipper. Simon had no police record, not even a speeding fine. He had a driving licence but was not listed as ever owning a car. He was not married and there were no registered dependants.
Adam felt deflated and conflicted. He had at least confirmed the address was Simon’s. The right thing for Adam now was to ring Boer but he was in no hurry to talk to him. He sent Boer a voicemail, summarising Peterborough and what they found there, confirming the address in Cleethorpes was Simon’s.
He still felt restless, as if there was more he could do with the information he had. He tapped a finger against the laptop and flicked back through the data. He had Simon’s childhood address from his school records. It was local. He searched for the address and watched wide-eyed as the map loaded on the screen.
By his reckoning he had driven past Simon’s childhood home twice in the last hour. It was the large pub right on the sea front. Another search pulled up the pub’s website, a brochure page of soft lighting and smiling faces. He deliberated, drumming his fingers lightly on the keyboard. He set the laptop on the passenger seat, switched on the headlights and turned the car.
Minutes later he was parked at the back of the pub. A low wall skirted the perimeter of the car park, the long drop to wet sand guarded by a metal railing. A view out to the North Sea Simon had spent his childhood looking over. Adam pushed the laptop under the passenger seat and walked across the car park towards the pub, passing people filing in the opposite direction.
FIFTY-ONE
From the stairs Simon ushered Sarah into the bathroom and left her there, heading into his bedroom and carefully pulling off his T-shirt. He listened to the bathroom door close and the lock slide as he twisted sideways in front of the mirror. He carefully pushed at the skin, the wound jagged across his ribs. He saw pink flesh, a glimpse of muscle and bone immediately blotted by dark red.
He pressed the T-shirt against his side and deliberated. He was reluctant to stitch the wound but it was deep. With three months at sea ahead of him he could not afford an infection. He hesitated, then pulled a wooden box from a shelf and took a reel of nylon and a short bowed needle from the box. He fetched the whiskey and used it to rinse his hands, smiling to himself as he tipped a measure into his hand cupped under the wound, methodically rubbing the alcohol into the exposed flesh and the skin around it. His eyes pinched closed as he waited for the stinging to abate.
The toilet flushed as he disinfected the thread and then the needle, his ears straining for any sound as he plucked at his flesh and progressively pulled it closed. He heard a tap run and then only the dull drone of the bathroom extractor.
When he was finished he knotted the thread and cut it, cleaning the needle and returning the box to the shelf. He dabbed blood from the wound and examined the line of tight stitches. Another scar but it would do.
On the landing he plucked a towel from the airing cupboard and knocked on the bathroom door. She kept him waiting long enough for him to picture the window open and his prize gone. Then the lock slid back and the door opened. He cautiously stepped inside.
Sarah had undressed, the naked landscape of her body broken only by a small triangle of white cotton. In that instant the dark inside leapt from him, pinned her down and gorged on her body, which she saw in the flare of his eyes and the barely contained flinch of his body.
He handed her the towel and forced himself to turn away, unfastening his trousers and stepping into the shower, the beat of water against his skin soothing the rampage inside. He soaped away the blood while watching her through the screen.
She looked back at him, contemplated him, then hooked a thumb each side of her hips and dragged the material down over her narrow legs. Her skin radiated an olive sheen of faded tan, save for a small triangle of white flesh and neatly trimmed pubic hair.