‘Since Monday. Or at least that’s when I started noticing.’
‘That’s when you took on Ronnie’s case.’
Joe thought about that, and then he remembered something else. ‘He was at court yesterday. At the back, watching.’
‘Joe, why didn’t you say?’
‘Because cases attract crackpots.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘About tonight?’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Let the bruises go down, and always check behind me when I have a piss.’
‘You shouldn’t make a joke of it. You could have been badly hurt. Next time it could be me. Or Monica.’
Joe tried to sit but pain came at him quickly, like a kick to his head.
‘Take it slowly,’ Gina said.
He waved her away and had another go.
‘You’re right, I’m sorry. I’m not calling the police, but you or Monica, you do whatever feels right. Be careful. I got a good enough view in court that I’d recognise him again. If I see him, I’ll confront him.’
Gina didn’t respond, and Joe knew that she wasn’t happy with that answer.
Once he was in a sitting position, taking deep breaths, he was able to have a good look around.
He had never been to Gina’s house before. It was a new-build box, all clean lines and bright doors. There was a small table at one end, a vase with a single flower in the centre, and the living room was grouped around the fireplace, rather than the television, which sat modestly in the corner. Candles were dotted around the hearth, and there was a bookcase against one wall filled with worn out spines. Joe imagined her with her feet lifted onto the sofa, a glass of wine in one hand, a book in the other, just peace and solitude.
‘Nice house,’ Joe said.
‘Thank you.’ She looked around. ‘I used to think it was a bit lonely here, but now I don’t like to think of anyone else in it, because it’s become my quiet little place.’
‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘You’ve found your place.’
‘What did Miss Reader have to say about the case?’
‘Nothing much. She thinks Terry Day is a good witness.’
‘What, you’ve told her what we found out, that he’s a fantasist?’
‘No, I’m not stupid. I just floated him as a suspect. She didn’t seem concerned.’
‘Did she give anything away?’
‘She didn’t get a chance. I was too busy being revived. Anyway, I didn’t go for a drink to tap her for information. We’re old friends, that’s all.’
‘Just that?’
Joe smiled. ‘There were a couple of times.’
‘I’m surprised she had it in her.’
‘She’s not how she seems at work. She’s sweet.’
‘Sweet?’ Gina said, laughing. ‘How hard did he hit you?’
‘Not that hard,’ Joe said. ‘Thanks, Gina, but I’ll go now.’
‘No, stay,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a bang on the head.’
‘Thank you, Gina,’ he said, and then he sighed. ‘I could really do with a drink.’
Monica struggled against her bindings.
She was tied to a metal chair, but she was fighting against it, the chair legs clattering on the floor. Her hands were fastened behind her back, her wrists bound together tightly, with ropes around her ankles. She was wearing a blindfold. It smelled of sweat and dirt and put grit into her eyes.
But it wasn’t just the discomfort that made the cold finger of fear drag slowly down her spine. It was the disbelief, the way her night had changed beyond any way she could have imagined.
There was someone behind her. She tried to twist her body but it was futile. It was pure instinct, the need to know the direction of attack. There were footsteps, shallow breaths, the stench of sweat and alcohol.
Monica’s breaths increased. ‘Who are you?’
There was no answer. Her words echoed.
She was somewhere large and empty, but there was the hum of traffic not far away, and sometimes voices more distant. Even music drifted over, jumbles of conversation and songs that told her that there was nightlife nearby. And then there were the trains, the unmistakable steady rumble and the occasional blare of a tannoy, mixed in with the whirr and rattle of tramlines, very close by, the carriages screeching on the rails as they curved away.
Monica jumped as she caught the scent of someone different. It was less masculine, like a perfume, just a faded smell of flowers, and then she remembered the hand around her when she had climbed into the car. It had been slender and soft, even though it had gripped tightly. Not the coarseness she expected from a male hand.
‘Who are you?’ Monica said again, but softer this time, more pleading.
She jumped when the voice appeared in her right ear, a whisper, jolting her. It was a woman.
‘Hello, Monica,’ she said. The voice sounded cold and vicious, meanness in every snapped syllable.
Monica whimpered, she couldn’t stop it, and then she was angry with herself and so gave her bindings another rattle. She was stronger than this. But whoever the woman was, she knew her name. This wasn’t random and that scared her even more. And then she remembered the call from Ronnie. Or at least she had thought it was Ronnie, because that was the name she had been given, but he had sounded different somehow.
Monica strained against the ropes, her breaths fast, tears soaking her blindfold. ‘Why are you doing this?’
There was a laugh, loud and strident, echoing again, and Monica got a sense of the emptiness of where she had been taken. Her head thrashed around, not knowing the source of the threat, but then she tried to gulp down deep breaths. She had to stay in control. She put her head down and tried to compose herself. But how was she supposed to cope with being punched until she was dazed and then dragged from her own car and into the back of a van parked just behind? She had tried to fight, but there had been two of them, and they had fastened the blindfold and tied her wrists and feet together. She had been tied to a chair and left there, with no idea of time, with every moment filled with terror, waiting for someone to come near her, unseen, so that she had jumped at the flutter of wings, the drip of water onto concrete, the creak and bang of a loose metal fence. There had been rustles in grass, like rodents.
Monica pulled against her ropes, but they were too tight. ‘I want to go to the toilet,’ she said, but when the woman laughed behind her, she realised that it had sounded like what it was: a pitiful attempt at misleading them.
‘I’m not stopping you,’ the woman said, sneering. ‘You can sit there and piss yourself, if you think it will make you more comfortable, but it will weigh you down.’
‘For what?’
‘For what happens next.’
Monica yelped and flinched as she felt a hand on her neck. The fingers were rougher than the ones that had been round her before. It was a man’s hand. Hardened dry skin rubbed against her, scratching, moistened only by the sweat that had popped onto her neck. She tried to pull away, to put her chin down, to protect her throat, but then she realised that the hand wasn’t going for her neck, but for her hair. A rough finger tickled at the soft hairs at the nape of her neck, and then started to grasp the longer strands and run it through his fingers. Monica felt it as light tugs. The hand ran down the length of her hair, straightening it, and then hovered over her breast, where it ended. She moaned in fear, couldn’t help herself.
There was a sound. Of metal blades clicking together.
‘What’s that?’ Monica said, aware that there was something new, her terror increasing another notch.
Her hair was pulled tight. She gasped and then she heard the wet lick of a tongue on a lip, before the blades clicked together and the tension on her hair relaxed. There was a moan of satisfaction, and then she felt the warmth of someone’s breath on the top of her head, the sound of someone inhaling. The smell of human sweat was in her face. A man, definitely. Sour, damp. She tried to turn her face, not sure what was going to happen, but nothing did, apart from the continued inhale and exhale from above her.
Monica closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Her blindfold was sodden with her tears.
‘Please, stop,’ she said, her voice more pleading now, desperation evident. ‘I’m scared. You’ve had your fun. Just let me go home. Please.’
‘Fun?’ It was the female voice, shrill and loud. ‘Do you think this is it, tying you up? The fun has only just started.’
Someone knelt by Monica’s ankles, and then she felt some tugging, before there was the surprise of her ankle coming free, first her left, and then her right.
Her head filled with a mix of hope and fear, that things were about to get worse, but perhaps about to get better, that she was going to be set free.
There was a kick to her chest, a booted foot that hit her hard, made her gasp in pain and in shock, and then she was falling. She braced for the collision. Her head jolted backwards as the chair hit the ground, momentum making it carry on to the concrete, the crack loud in the night. She was dazed and winced in pain, and the back of her head felt damp. The chair clattered away from her. Monica lay on the ground, panting, grimacing, her hands still tied behind her back, the blindfold still in place. She curled up her knees instinctively, to protect herself.
Someone knelt next to her. It was the woman again. Monica could smell her perfume.
‘This is your chance to go home,’ the woman said, her voice soft.
Monica didn’t say anything at first. She lay there, sucking in deep breaths. She could feel dampness in her crotch. She had pissed herself as she was kicked over, the surprise of the unexpected blow making her lose control. The woman was watching her. She could tell from the steady pattern of her breaths, patient and slow.
‘I don’t understand,’ Monica said, gasping. ‘Why you are doing this?’
A laugh. ‘You don’t have to understand. You just have to play the game.’
‘What game? What are you talking about?’
‘This game. Our game. The one we always play.’
‘This is no game,’ Monica said, straining at her ropes, but it was no use.
‘It’s simple. In thirty minutes, we will kill you. The only way you can stop us is if you get away.’
Monica sobbed, tears making it past the blindfold. ‘But I don’t know where I am. I can’t see anything.’
Another laugh, and then she whispered into Monica’s ear. ‘That, my little sweetness, is why we like it.’
Sam cursed as a traffic light turned red near his mother’s home. He pulled out his phone and dialled Joe’s number, but his phone was switched off.
‘Joe, it’s me,’ he barked, once it went to voicemail. ‘Get to Mum’s as soon as you can. It’s about Ruby.’
The lights changed to green and he threw the phone onto his seat. The journey had been too long, just a stream of red traffic lights and queues. The roads around Manchester never seemed big enough; there was never a quick route anywhere.
As he turned on to the street where he’d grown up he could see his mother in the window, pacing, looking out. Sam didn’t bother locking his car. She turned towards him as he strode to the front door, and when he rushed into the house she had taken up a position on the sofa, holding Ruby’s hand, who had been crying.
‘What happened?’ he said. He was out of breath.
Ruby looked at Sam, and then at their mother, before she said, ‘I want to talk to Sam. Alone.’
His mother looked hurt as she struggled to get to her feet, but she knew that this had been her reason for calling him, that Ruby would confide in her big brother, the nearest person she had to a father figure. Sam knew from the purse of her lips and the glaze to her eyes that she wasn’t as strong as she was trying to appear.
When the door closed, he said to Ruby, ‘Talk to me.’
She started to cry straight away. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I know that, but if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.’
Ruby pulled her legs onto the sofa, long and awkward, and wrapped her arms around her knees. Tears ran down her cheeks as she said, ‘I went down the path,’ her voice breaking.
Sam went cold. He sat on a chair opposite. ‘The path?’ he said, although he already knew the answer.
Ruby nodded.
Sam closed his eyes. The path where Ellie was murdered. Images of Ellie flooded into his mind. He had tried so many times to reconstruct the last moment he had seen her alive. She used to set off for school bright and cheery, tall and awkward, just like Ruby, a cloth bag slung over her shoulder, the one that ended up thrown into the undergrowth, her school books dirty and wet. He couldn’t remember if that was how she had been that morning – it had been just an ordinary morning then, so why should he remember – but it was still something he clung on to, the idea of her smile and her goodbye as she went.
He opened his eyes to look at Ruby, who had stopped crying and was looking back at him over her knees with large, wet doe eyes.
‘Why did you walk that way?’ he said quietly. ‘We’ve told you often enough.’
‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’ she said, her voice angry. ‘My life has always been about Ellie, but I never knew her. I want my life to be about me, so I don’t see why I can’t walk home that way. It’s the quickest route.’
‘Because it’s dangerous,’ he snapped.
‘Lots of people go that way!’
‘Not everyone has to visit a grave once a year because of that path!’ He was shouting now.
Ruby ran out of the room, crying, and Sam groaned as he listened to the stomp of her feet on the stairs. When her bedroom door slammed, he knew he had to go after her.
He went up the stairs and knocked lightly on her door. When she didn’t answer, he pushed it open slowly.
Ruby was lying on her bed, face down, her head in her arms, theatrical, teenage. Sam understood her frustration. Her whole life had been moulded by what happened to Ellie, as if Ruby had only ever been her shadow. The replacement girl.
Sam softened. ‘I’m not here because you used the path,’ he said. ‘Mum said you had been followed.’
Ruby didn’t move.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘It’s you I’m worried about.’
She lifted her head to look at him, and then pulled herself up.
‘Why do you care?’
‘Because I’m your brother, and since Dad died, I know I’ve got to be there for you. So here I am.’