Authors: Rachel Abbott
‘I’m Tom,’ he said, standing up. ‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s a bit groggy, but she’s asking for you.’
Tom had started to cross the room towards her cubicle when the young doctor pushed his way through double pale blue swing doors and strode towards them.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but before you see Leo, I’d like to give you an update. We’re worried about her arm. When she came in we treated her with antibiotics but we were concerned about bacterial infection – necrotising fascilitis. We took a tissue sample, and the tests show that the bacteria is present, so we need to remove some of the tissue in her arm to stop it spreading. We’ll do whatever we can to save her arm.’
Ellie started to cry. As a nurse herself, she knew exactly what this meant, and understood how serious it was.
‘Go, Tom,’ Ellie said through her sobs. ‘Go and see her. I’ll be in in a minute.’
Tom swallowed and tried to fix his face into a neutral expression with a trace of a smile to welcome Leo back to consciousness. The nurse showed him into the cubicle and kept a discreet distance, checking the monitors.
‘Hey,’ he said, sitting down next to the bed, close to her face. ‘Good to have you back with us, Leo.’ He reached out a hand and stroked the hair back from her face.
Leo made a noise deep in her throat.
‘Don’t try to speak, love. It’s okay. You’re safe.’
She made a gurgling noise in her throat. ‘Got them?’ He finally made out what she was trying to say and understood why she had wanted to see him.
‘Yes, don’t worry about a thing. We’ve got them.’
He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, and as he sat back down he heard a sound behind him.
‘Tom?’
He turned his head.
‘Louisa,’ he responded, the emphasis on the second syllable as if surprised to see her here.
Louisa stepped fully into the cubicle. Dressed in scrubs, she looked as beautiful as she had when he had last seen her, but her face was neutral – her professional expression, Tom supposed.
‘I’m going to be Leo’s anaesthetist for the operation. Have you any questions you would like to ask me?’
‘None, and it’s not my place anyway. Her sister’s outside, and she may have some.’ He smiled, but before he could say another word, the phone in his pocket vibrated. He pulled it out. It was Becky.
‘Sorry, but I’m going to have to take this.’ He leaned over Leo again and whispered gently, ‘Got to go, Leo, but I’ll be back. I’ll see you later.’ He dropped another kiss on her forehead and turned to Louisa.
‘Take good care of her, won’t you?’
‘Of course. We’ll do our best to get her back to you as soon as possible.’
‘I’ll catch up with you later. Okay?’
For a moment Louisa’s eyes met his as if she wanted to ask him a question, but instead she just nodded.
Tom went out into the corridor and answered his phone. ‘What’s up, Becky? I thought you would have charged them and gone home to bed by now.’
And then she told him about Ben Coleman’s phone and the website they had found open on it.
65
This time last week Maggie had believed she had a happy family and a job she loved. In the space of a few days her life had become a nightmare. Now she would have to face questioning from the police. She knew they would want to talk to her about how she and Josh had been captured, and they would expect her to be nervous and edgy. But she felt constantly on the verge of vomiting.
It was going to be all right, though. It
had
to be all right, for the children.
Since they had got up Suzy had kept Josh and Lily occupied and fed, but to Maggie it felt as if the air in the kitchen was crackling with the tension spilling from her body. Duncan had told her not to mention him when the police came, but she didn’t think she could do that. Surely the other two men would have said something? And what about the girl, Leo?
Maggie hoped and prayed the poor soul would survive, but would she remember there was a third man in the room? Would they think she was hallucinating?
She had spent the night writing lists of pros and cons – what she should tell, and what she shouldn’t. It was impossible. Lying to the police went against the grain in every way possible. But how could she explain Duncan’s involvement without telling them everything? Was she ready to do that?
She felt so emotionally battered and bruised that she didn’t feel capable of logical thought. And what about everything that she had already kept from them? Was she any better than Duncan? If she had told them about the photo on Duncan’s phone, would the second woman have been murdered?
But nobody else was going to die now. The two men were in custody. She didn’t have to decide about Duncan that minute. She needed more time before condemning her husband to a long prison term. Time to
think
.
Maggie thought the two men were unlikely to mention Duncan. Samil had been adamant that the police wouldn’t be able to pin the two recent murders on them, and they had
certainly done a good job of cleaning the van. If they had left no traces, they could only be charged with kidnapping Leo and Maggie. Their treatment of Leo would result in a fairly heavy sentence, but if they were found guilty of the murder of two victims they would get life. The minute they involved Duncan, the question of the murders twelve years ago would come up, and maybe they hadn’t done such a good job of covering their tracks then. So logic suggested that Duncan’s name would be kept out of it altogether.
Her head was so muddled, so confused. It seemed she never had a chance to work out what to do before the next horror struck. She felt as if she was being dragged along on a rip tide and wasn’t actively making any decisions at all. The horror of the one decision she
had
been about to make struck her. How could she even have considered abandoning her own children? Choosing to be the one to die because it was the easiest option? Josh and Lily needed her. Her body shuddered involuntarily.
Now she was out of time. The doorbell rang. The police were here.
Maggie had to let them in even though she wanted to bury her head in a pillow and sleep until this nightmare was over. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping her tense limbs would relax. It had no effect. She opened the door and in a voice that was barely audible even to herself, invited in the two detectives. She indicated the door to the sitting room and let them lead the way. For a moment she caught hold of the door jamb, certain her legs were going to let her down.
‘Mrs Taylor, I’m so sorry for the terrible events last night. You must be feeling dreadful,’ DI Robinson said.
Maggie glanced at Tom Douglas, and his eyes seemed to pierce the thin shield that she was erecting around her conscience.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Maggie said.
Maggie was about to offer them a drink so she could escape for a few minutes’ respite in the kitchen when her sister popped her head in the door and smiled warmly at the police officers. ‘Sorry to disturb, but would you like a cup of coffee?’
Both detectives looked as exhausted as Maggie felt, and seemed grateful for the offer of coffee.
Maggie lowered herself into a chair, feeling twice her age. Every bone in her body ached and her head felt too heavy for her neck.
‘How’s Josh this morning?’ Tom asked.
‘He’s okay, thanks. He seems to be coping, although who knows how much he’s hiding.’
‘Well, it’s partly thanks to him that we found you last night. We have two men in custody, as I expect you realise. The one who abducted you and Josh is Ben Coleman. He’s a surgeon at Manchester Royal. The second man is Adam Mellor, a corporate lawyer. But they’re not talking. They’re saying nothing at all, in fact.’
Maggie realised that her mouth had dropped open. A
doctor
? She should have realised when she had seen the sutures holding the plastic tie in place, but that a doctor could have let that poor woman suffer in such a way was beyond belief. They hadn’t mentioned Duncan, though. That made her decision easier – or at least it did for now.
Becky Robinson was speaking, and Maggie forced her concentration back onto the conversation.
‘At the moment all we have on them is yours and Josh’s abduction, and the unlawful holding of Leonora Harris – the woman who I believe you saw there before we arrived.’
‘How is she?’ Maggie asked.
‘She’s not great, but they’re operating on her arm today, and we’ll see where she goes from there.’
Maggie noticed an extra layer of strain around Tom’s eyes as he spoke, and Becky gave him a sympathetic glance. Obviously this Leonora girl meant something to him.
‘So what can I do for you?’
‘We believe these men are guilty of at least two murders as well as the abductions,’ Tom went on. ‘Very possibly they are guilty of other murders, including two here in Manchester twelve years ago. We think they killed the two recent victims in the mill where we found you, and then transported them in the back of Adam Mellor’s van to the sites where their bodies were found. The van’s clean, but we’re searching every inch of the mill.’
Maggie had been in that van, sat where those girls’ bodies had lain. An image flashed into her head of the three of them together. Two dead, one waiting to die. She mentally shook herself as Tom Douglas continued.
‘It’s possible that they’ve been thorough enough to cover their tracks – as thorough as they have been at cleaning the van – so that’s why we have to make sure the abduction case against them is watertight.’
Maggie’s body tensed. These men had to go down for a long time or she would never feel safe again.
Tom continued: ‘We need you to tell us everything that happened from when you arrived at the park to pick up Josh after his football. We know from Josh that’s when it all started.’
And so Maggie filled them in on everything from the moment she first saw the two men waiting for her until the moment she stood by the police car. Or almost everything. Would Leo remember that there was another man in the room? She doubted it. If the men weren’t talking, what risk was she taking?
The questioning went on. Maggie felt removed from it all, as if it were happening to somebody else and she was merely an observer. She gave no thought to her answers and was barely aware that she was talking.
Tom jolted her back to reality. ‘We’re concerned about your ongoing safety, I’m afraid, and we do need you to be extra vigilant.’ He was leaning forward and resting his forearms on his thighs.
‘Why? You’ve caught them, haven’t you?’
‘We have two men in custody, but we have reason to believe there’s a third man.’
She swallowed.
How did they know?
‘What makes you think that?’ she asked, her voice, even to her own ears, sounding like stone scratching glass.
Becky took over. ‘We don’t know if he’s involved in the current crimes, but we strongly suspect that a third man – Michael Alexander – was involved in the other unlawful killings we mentioned – the ones that took place twelve years ago.’
Maggie couldn’t speak. She wanted to, but her throat seemed to have seized up.
Becky continued to explain their concerns. ‘Michael Alexander went off the radar about twelve years ago. He told his university tutor that he was going home to nurse his sick mother.’
Maggie felt herself relax a little. They didn’t know where he was.
‘That doesn’t sound like something a murderer would do,’ she said.
‘Well, you never know with psychopaths,’ Tom Douglas added. ‘Sometimes they seem like the most caring people, although it’s all a carefully constructed act. In any case, it wasn’t true. His mother was an alcoholic and died when he was eight. He’d been in care since he was five.’
Maggie felt the room spinning and she gripped onto the arms of the chair.
‘Are you okay?’ Becky asked.
Maggie closed her eyes and tried to get some degree of composure back.
‘Sorry, I’ve not eaten much in the last twenty-four hours, and I’ve drunk too much coffee.’
‘Shall I ask your sister to join us?’ Becky asked. ‘If you need somebody with you, I could look after your kids.’
Maggie quickly shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’ She turned to look at Tom. ‘Why do you think he’s still a danger if he’s not done anything in the last twelve years?’
Tom and Becky looked at each other for a moment.
‘We didn’t say that,’ Tom said. ‘You’re probably aware that the police often hold back some information about murders, sometimes so that we can differentiate between copycat murders and repeat offences – serial murders, in other words.’
Maggie felt herself nodding, although she didn’t feel she had any control over her body at all anymore.
‘There are some similarities between the murders here in Manchester and another series of deaths down south. I can’t go into detail, but that coupled with some evidence retrieved from Ben Coleman’s phone is enough to make us strongly suspect that Michael Alexander is involved.’
Tom Douglas continued to talk, but Maggie was far away. She remembered her shock when Samil – Ben Coleman, as she now knew he was – had read out the fantasy death of Tamsin from his phone. Duncan’s fantasy. She had recognised it, but pushed it from her mind.
It was a mode of death that had become infamous in Suffolk over the past few years.
The murders had begun with a neighbour of Maggie and Duncan’s. The wife of the couple concerned had liked a drink, and Maggie had seen the look of disgust on Duncan’s face many times, but the husband seemed relaxed about it. Then there had been an embarrassing occasion at a party when the woman had been so drunk she had fallen over, knocking into a display cupboard holding a number of pieces of antique glass. The doors of the cupboard had shattered and the wife had cut her arm. But worse, most of the valuable glass had been broken too. Her husband had gone white. He had picked his wife up from where she was laughing hysterically on the floor and apologised profusely to the hosts, saying he would recompense them in any way that he could. Two days later, the woman was found floating in the Suffolk Broads. Drowned.
At first people assumed she had been drunk and had fallen in, but the police soon made it clear that it was murder. There were marks on her neck that indicated her head had been held under the water. The nature of the marks, and the fact that there were multiple bruises,
suggested that she had been repeatedly held under the water. The husband was the obvious suspect but was cleared almost immediately.