Authors: Chris Ewan
‘Grandpa, I need you to read out some of what’s been written there. It’s important. Can you do that for me?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s a lot to take in. And I’m sorry not to be there with you, but I promise I’ll explain later.’
‘When did your sister do this?’
‘A few weeks ago, I think. When she was staying with us.’
There was no need for me to mention that it would have been during the last few days before her death.
I glanced down at the memory stick poking out of my laptop. Checked the code.
9A13D21A
.
‘I need to know three of the answers that are written in the puzzle, Grandpa. The first one is nine across. Can you tell me what it says?’
‘Nine . . . across,’ he said. ‘Might drip. Three letters.’
‘No Grandpa. Not the clue. I need the answer. The clue doesn’t matter.’
‘The answer must be
Tap
.’
‘No, I know,’ I said, trying not to sound impatient. ‘But what has Laura written?’
I waited a moment. When he spoke again, he sounded confused. ‘Well, that’s not right.’
‘What’s not right, Grandpa? What did she write?’
‘
The
.’
‘Just
The
?’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t make any sense. The answer is
Tap
. I never understood why you two couldn’t get the simplest of clues.’
‘It’s OK,’ I told him, gazing out through the windscreen towards the trees on the other side of the clearing. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense, but this is really helpful. There’s just two more to go. The next one is thirteen down.’
‘And you don’t want the clue?’
‘No Grandpa, just the answer.’
‘
Missing
.’
‘
Missing
. That’s what she’s written?’
‘
Missing
. Yes. But it doesn’t match the clue.’
I shook my head. Glanced down at the memory stick.
21A
.
‘Last one, Grandpa. Twenty-one across. What answer did Laura give?’
‘She’s written
Dog
.’
‘
Dog
,’ I repeated. ‘
The Missing Dog
. Is that it, Grandpa? Nothing else?’
‘That’s what it says here. But the answer isn’t
Dog
. It’s
Dim
.’
‘I know Grandpa. It seems stupid. But you’ve been really helpful. I’ve got to go. Will you give Rocky a pat for me?’
‘Not bright. Three letters. The answer is
Dim
.’
‘OK Gramps. I’ve really got to go now.’
I cut the connection. Looked across at Rebecca. She’d already typed in the three words.
The Missing Dog
. She half smiled at me. Hit
Enter
.
The laptop made a croaking, whirring noise. Then a bum note sounded and the dialogue box redrew itself.
Invalid password. Retry.
‘Crap,’ Rebecca said.
‘Try it without the spaces this time.’
Rebecca shrugged. She typed
themissingdog
and pressed
Enter
.
Another croak. Another whir. Another bum note.
Invalid password. Retry.
‘Could your grandpa have given you the wrong answers?’ she asked me.
He had. He’d done exactly that, because it was what I’d asked him for. Laura’s
wrong
answers. She’d filled them in the same way as we had when we were kids. But maybe this time I needed the
right
answers. Grandpa had said the answer to the first clue should have been
Tap
. The answer to the final clue was
Dim
. In which case, I needed to ring Grandpa back and ask what the second clue had been. The one for thirteen down. It had to be a seven-letter word. Not
Missing
, but . . .
I was just flipping open my phone, about to redial Grandpa’s number, when I froze and realised what I’d overlooked. I hadn’t made a mistake. My first instinct had been correct. But
The Missing Dog
wasn’t the password. It was another clue.
I grabbed the laptop from Rebecca and pointed through the windscreen towards the muddy track.
‘Drive,’ I told her.
‘What?’
‘Just go. I’ll tell you when to stop.’
Chapter Fifty-one
Lena had been waiting a long time. Her waiting had been intense. She couldn’t relax for a second. She couldn’t allow her attention to slip. The door might open at any moment. She had no way of telling when it could be.
The talk-radio fan seemed much stricter than the pizza guy. He’d kept her in the soundproofed room by herself. He’d made sure the door was locked. He’d barely communicated with her at all.
The soundproofing had gone from being her biggest ally to her greatest problem. It meant she had no way of hearing the guy approach. She couldn’t listen for his footfall. She couldn’t feel the vibration of his steps through the rubber underlay. The only chance she had of attracting his attention was to shout and scream very loudly. But if she did that, he’d be fully on his guard when he opened the door.
Lena wanted him relaxed. She wanted him casual. She needed him that way because the damage to the window was clear and obvious. As soon as he saw the smashed glass, he’d know something was wrong. He’d react. And Lena needed to react quicker.
She was sitting with her back against the rubber tiles, right next to where the door would open. She’d started off standing but the effort had become too much. The nervous tension had caused muscle fatigue. The fatigue would cause cramp. And she couldn’t afford that. So now she was alternating between standing and sitting, and she was currently in a sitting phase. The sitting didn’t trouble her. She could cause just as much damage lower down as she could higher up.
She’d decided there were three key elements to what she needed to do once the guy opened the door.
Number One was speed. She needed to respond instantly. Before the guy saw the window. Before he sensed how close she was to him.
Number Two was aggression. She had to be violent. She had to be mean. She had to cause as much damage as she physically could in as short a period of time as possible.
Number Three was movement. Whatever else happened, she had to get herself between the guy and the door. She had to throw herself into the space. She had to ensure he couldn’t shut the door. This was the most important element of all. If he managed to close the door, if he was able to lock it, then her one and only opportunity would be gone. She’d be stuck for good. All her planning and all her thinking would be wasted.
She’d decided all this a long time ago. Hours had passed. They’d crept slowly by. And all the while her body had been under stress. Her heart had been hammering against her ribcage. Her breathing shallow. Her nerves frayed.
She’d been clutching the jagged shard of glass in her hand for so long that it felt as if her fingers had numbed. Her fingertips were bleeding badly from where she’d sliced herself and snagged her nails while trying to prise the glass out of the window. The blood had trickled down her wrist. It had dried against her skin. It was sticking to her like a second skin. Like the opaque film on the back of the window.
She’d used the blade of glass to shred the pink duvet cover into strips. She’d applied some of the strips to clean the worst of the blood from her hands. The rest she’d wrapped around the end of the glass shard to form a tightly wadded handle, like the hilt on a dagger. It worked pretty well. She was pleased with the result. And she knew for a fact how sharp the blade was. The shard was broadly triangular and it was notched and barbed. It was approximately twenty centimetres in length. It was capable of inflicting serious harm.
Lena wasn’t squeamish. She wasn’t the least bit fazed by the prospect of stabbing the man. The last few months had taught her certain things. They’d taught her that her life could be snatched from her in an instant. They’d shown her that there were people in the world who were prepared to put their own interests ahead of her liberty. They’d proved to her that she had to fight hard to protect herself and that she couldn’t rely on other people to do it for her.
She hadn’t been able to rely on Melanie Fleming. She hadn’t been able to rely on Pieter and Lukas. She hadn’t been able to rely on the plumber Melanie had told her to contact if anything happened to her. And she most definitely hadn’t been able to rely on her father.
Her father claimed to love her, but his love was a crushing, controlling force. She’d tried to explain this to Melanie. Tried to make her see that involving her father and his men in her safety was a terrible mistake. But Melanie had insisted, said they needed the resources, and now she knew for certain that Alex had been right all along. The important thing was to rely on yourself. Trust in yourself. Invest your faith only in those people you believed in absolutely.
The only person Lena had ever felt that way about was Alex. But now Alex was gone, so she was left with the next best thing. She was left with herself, and after that she was left with the people Alex had truly trusted. The ones he’d made her promise to call if ever she was in genuine peril. He’d made her memorise the telephone number. Made her recount the sequence over and over until she knew it by heart. She’d never met the man who would answer but she knew his name and she knew that she could trust him. She knew it because Alex had told her so.
The bolt shunted back in the door before she was ready for it. All the hours of waiting and she’d lost concentration just when it mattered most.
The door opened and the man took one step inside and she felt the long delay in her reaction like she was watching the scene unfold in slow motion.
She saw the man turn his head.
Saw him register the damage to the window.
Saw him frown and recoil in confusion.
Saw his hand grasp the door handle.
Saw him shift his weight and lean backwards and start to yank the door shut.
That was when she finally reacted. When she moved.
Key element Number One was over. She’d failed to show speed.
But that just made elements Numbers Two and Three doubly important.
Number Two was aggression. She had plenty of that. She screamed and twisted at the waist and wrenched the glass shard around in a mighty swing. She gave it everything she had. Gave it thrust. Gave it weight. She drove it deep inside his inner thigh.
The blade disappeared up to her fingers. She felt his torn flesh. His warm blood.
The spread of blood was immediate. It was pulsing. It squirted out of the wound and soaked into his tan chinos and pooled towards his groin.
She still had a hold of the blade. Tried to pull it out for a second stab. The glass was stuck fast.
Then the man howled and crumpled, ducking to clutch at his thigh with both hands. He slumped to the ground, wedging the door open with his back. He was taking care of element Number Three all by himself. His teeth were bared in a snarl. His gums were exposed. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and he was yelling in a ragged baritone.
Lena pushed up from the floor. She vaulted the man and ran heavy-limbed through the apartment and scrabbled with the lock on the front door. She didn’t need a key. Only the snap lock was engaged.
The door opened on to a deserted hallway. It was cold and there was a lot of bare concrete. An elevator was in front of her but the metal doors were dented and the light inside the call button didn’t work and Lena wasn’t prepared to trust it. She found a litter-strewn staircase at the end of the hall. Maybe fifty storeys to run down in her socks. Maybe one hundred flights of stairs. She looked back to the elevator. Back to the apartment door. She could hear the man hollering in pain.
Lena fled.
Chapter Fifty-two
There was a creaking, scraping noise as Rebecca eased the van away from the garage door, followed by the tinkle of falling plastic from the broken light clusters. I checked the view in my side mirror. White paint had been scratched and scraped clean from around the horizontal crease that had been imprinted in the door. But the door was still closed. Only the slight gap at the bottom remained. I didn’t think anyone would find Anderson’s body in a hurry.
Rebecca steered the van through the gateway at the entrance to the clearing. She followed the narrow track down through the woods. The van bounced and bounded over the stony ground. It rolled and rocked and teetered. My bad shoulder banged against my seat in a way that jarred and smarted.
But I didn’t care.
Laura had reached out to me. She’d left the code, knowing that I was the only one who could possibly understand it. She was talking to me. Trusting me. And now I was repaying her trust. Deciphering her message.
I was sure that the solution to the code was at the end of the path. It was tacked to the gate post, hidden in plain sight. It was the laminated sign about the scrappy terrier who’d been lost in the woods.
Laura knew what I was like – how much I loved dogs. She knew that if Lena ever called me up to the cottage, I’d pay attention to the poster. She knew the plight of the missing dog would affect me. Knew it was something I’d remember.
I had Rebecca drive through the gate and come to a stop. She was irritable and frustrated, but I turned from her without explanation and hopped down from the cab. I walked back to the gate. Plucked the sign from the post. I looked at the photograph of the little terrier, its pink tongue hanging from its mouth, its head on an angle, ears raised as if it was listening to some distant command.
I read the printed message.
Please help us to find Chester. Missing 5 April in this plantation.
The message was followed by a telephone number. The number was for a Manx mobile. No area code.
Fifth April. Exactly two days before Laura’s accident.
I climbed back up into the cab and hauled my door closed. Then I passed Rebecca the laptop and showed her the crinkled poster.