Proctor walked back to where he’d left Carrie.
He’d been sitting on the canal bank, watching the reflections of the streetlights. He didn’t know what lay ahead and he needed some time to reflect. He wanted Melissa to know that she could have found Carrie if she’d looked harder. It was no longer about escape, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. It was about what he left behind.
It was quiet by the canal. The largest mills were closest to the water, so that it made the streets dark and somewhere to avoid at night. As he walked past the pub nearby, the Thursday night crowd was getting rowdy. There was a band playing Irish music. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his leather coat and dipped his head. Not far now.
He looked up at the building where he’d left Carrie. It stood as a shadow, two four-storey blocks of brick and blacked-out windows, connected by high steel walkways. He checked whether anyone was there – no one was watching – and pushed at the security fence. As he stepped through he was enveloped by darkness. His favourite place, where no one could see him. No one could hurt him.
He moved slowly through the yard, to keep his footsteps quiet, and then into the building itself. However hard he tried, he couldn’t stop the echoes. There was a flutter of wings somewhere, disturbed by the crunch of his shoes, and above all of it, soft whimpers coming from the small space under the stairwell. Carrie was still there.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and shone the screen towards her. Carrie’s pale skin reflected back like a ghost. Oh, how he loved her complexion, the family trait. Strawberry hair and skin like glass.
He knelt down in front of her. Carrie shrank back, her hair sticking to the cobwebs on the wall. He reached out for her hair and let out an involuntary sigh. As he ran it through his fingers, he imagined how Melissa would react. Her grief, her agony. The excitement surged through him.
He closed his eyes. It was too easy to mistake it for passion. It was something very different. He had to think of something else and control it. That wasn’t why he’d taken her. He took deep breaths through his nose. He pressed his knuckles into the grit on the floor, needing the pain to distract him.
By the time he looked at Carrie again, he’d calmed himself. He knelt down and untied the rope from the metal pillar so that just her wrists were bound. Carrie’s chest was rising and falling quickly, her eyes wet and scared. He slipped his arms under her body and lifted her. She was tall but still skinny, light enough to lift.
He grunted as he straightened. Her body felt damp, her T-shirt moist through perspiration. She couldn’t wrap her arm around him to help him take the strain, so he had to do it all himself. Her ribcage dug ridges into his arms.
His first footfall was loud on the stairs as he took her to the floor above. Each step echoed and threw up dust. More cobwebs trailed across his face as he got higher. He was heading for the top floor; he wanted a good view for his farewell.
He had to put her down for a rest after two flights of stairs. He was gentle with her, though, laying her on the ground so that she didn’t hurt herself. As he fought to get his breath back, he went over to the window, wiping some of the dirt away so that he could see through. All he could see was the orange glow behind the dark shadow of the building opposite. That was where he needed to be.
The remaining flight of stairs was easier. He stood in a large doorway, the double doors that once protected it long gone. He was looking across the walkway that connected to the next building. The steel was worn in places, cracks showing, the lattice of the bridge revealing the drop below. There would be no surviving if he fell, just a long drop onto broken-up concrete and then eternal darkness.
He threw Carrie over his shoulder, fireman’s-lift style, and began his walk across.
The bridge clanged as he went and it moved in the brickwork, so that it bounced as he walked. He had a brief look down, into the darkness, but it made his vision swirl. Instead, he focused straight ahead, to the approaching doorway, lit deep blue by the light that filtered in through the opposite windows.
Carrie grunted as he put her down, dropping her more roughly than he’d intended. He grabbed the rope around her wrists and pulled her across the floor. She bumped over small stones that were dotted around until he threw her against the wall. He stood over her and saw that her T-shirt was ripped. Her bra was showing. Small, clean, her skin unblemished.
He turned away. Not that.
There was a mattress in the corner, with a sleeping bag inside a rolled-up plastic sheet. He shuffled Carrie onto it. Damp and mildewed, he couldn’t keep out the rain and the cold, but it had been new when he’d brought it in a few years earlier. It was where he spent long evenings watching; he could see people but they couldn’t see him.
He went to the window and moved the piece of slate that covered one of the small panes, the nail that held it in place scraping on the tile as he moved it. Moonlight came in, making Carrie’s skin glow. He had a better view now, across to Melissa’s apartment building, with her window on the corner.
He clenched his jaw. He’d miss this. He’d thought of this moment for so long, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was where he spent so much time, watching her. He’d seen everything from his position. Melissa and Carrie enjoying each other’s company, both of them wandering the apartment as they relaxed. He’d watched Carrie grow, from the little girl running around to the young woman she was now. Just like he’d watched her mother. He’d even seen Joe Parker the night before. That hurt.
And he could see Melissa again. On Carrie’s bed, Joe with her, distress obvious from every contortion of her body.
Ripples.
Now it was time to bring more pain.
He went to the hole he’d knocked in the roof some months before. A pile of bricks in one corner served as a step. He pulled out the tarpaulin and climbed up, grabbing the edge of an oak beam, his head emerging through the gap, his face illuminated by moonlight. The rest was effort, pulling himself upwards, his face red, until he could lie flat on the tiles, panting from the exertion.
The roof had three peaks, so that he could lie between two and let his body be submerged by the shadow. It gave him the sounds of Ancoats and the cool of the night. And an uninterrupted view of Melissa’s apartment. It was different to being inside. Being on the roof felt like they shared the same space, the same piece of air.
He watched Melissa for a few minutes. She wasn’t doing much, just lying on the bed, Joe Parker’s arms around her. That wouldn’t find her daughter.
It was time to say hello again.
He pulled out Carrie’s phone and dialled.
Melissa’s phone rang, making them both jump.
She pushed away from Joe and grabbed it from the bedside table. She held it up. It was showing Carrie’s name.
‘Hello?’ she said, her voice frantic.
When Melissa’s eyes closed, Joe knew who was on the other end. He whispered for her to put it on speaker.
‘Where are you?’ Melissa spat out the words.
‘Don’t rush me,’ Proctor said. He was speaking quietly, his voice almost drowned out by wind in the microphone. He was outside.
‘Bring her back,’ Melissa wailed. ‘I don’t care about the others. I don’t care where you go. Just let Carrie go and run. That’s all you have to do.’
‘So get the money. I can’t go anywhere without money.’
‘I don’t have that sort of money. No one does.’
‘What about your lawyer friend, Joe Parker. Ask him.’
‘I just want her back. Please, Mark, please.’
‘So that’s a no? I didn’t realise there was a price you wouldn’t pay for Carrie. Who gets all the blame now, sweet Melissa?’
‘Wait, wait!’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Talk to me, Mark, it’s been a long time. We can sort this thing out.’
‘What’s this, the big reunion?’ Proctor laughed. ‘It’s over for me, I know it. Either you get the money for me somehow, so I can run, or else it ends now. But I’ll make some noise before I go.’
‘Don’t hurt her, please.’
Proctor went to say something but stopped. Music came through the phone, like a sudden burst, and the noise of people. He clicked off.
Melissa curled up on the bed, her arms across her stomach, grimacing as if in pain.
‘We need to focus,’ Joe said, trying to take the phone from her.
‘I just want my baby back.’
‘So we need to find out where he is. He clicked off when there was a noise.’
Melissa looked at him. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘He hung up as soon as there was a noise, as if he was worried it would give him away. He’s somewhere busy.’
Then something occurred to him. He went to the window and looked out, but all he could see was his reflection. ‘Turn off the lights.’
Melissa ran to the switch and plunged the room into darkness.
‘He knows I’m here,’ Joe said. ‘He mentioned me.’
‘He must have heard you in the background.’
‘I didn’t say anything, I was too busy listening. No, it’s something else. I think he can see us.’
Melissa rushed to the window to join him. They scoured the darkness ahead but it was all just that, shadowy brick blocks and the moonlight on the murky ribbon of canal water.
‘Where?’
‘His place, where he goes to be alone. He had somewhere as a child. Why not somewhere as an adult?’
‘But why so close?’
‘To watch you, Melissa. Don’t you see? You’re the sibling who rejected him’
‘You mean he’s been watching us the whole time?’ she said, her hand over her mouth, trembling.
‘He couldn’t just find somewhere to take Carrie and observe you without going there before. It’s too convenient, too quick.’
‘He might be in a car.’
Something occurred to Joe. ‘Get the photographs he’s taken of Carrie.’
‘Why, what for?’
‘There’s something we should have spotted.’
Melissa ran through to the living room and came back with the envelope they’d looked at earlier in the day. Joe closed the blinds as Melissa turned on the lamps.
She pulled out the photographs and scattered them across the bed. ‘What is it?’
Joe picked up one, a shot of Carrie walking along the pavement in her school uniform, a brick wall the backdrop.
‘I knew it,’ he said.
‘What, what?’
‘Look at the angle,’ Joe said. ‘It’s from on high, looking down, like a vantage point. This wasn’t taken from a car or van. And she’s in her uniform so it must be on her route to school.’
Melissa picked up another one. ‘This is the same. And it’s got the canal in the background. I can see the towpath.’
She went to the window as Joe clicked off the light again. They both peered around the blind, looking for something, anything.
Joe opened the window.
‘What are you doing?’ Melissa said.
‘That sudden burst of noise made him hang up. If he’s watching close by, the sound must be close too.’
They sat on the bed in silence, straining to hear something above the light drone of traffic and the occasional chatter of conversation.
Then it came back. A sudden burst of music, people shouting.
‘It’s the pub,’ Melissa said, gripping Joe’s arm. ‘They have a band on every Thursday.’
‘He’s so close,’ Joe said, scanning the buildings nearby, trying to see something in the darkness. ‘There!’
‘Where?’
‘Top floor of that building. It’s all dark but there’s a glint in the window. It’s faint but it’s something moving.’
Melissa ran for the door, Joe just behind.
They were going to get Carrie.
‘Shit!’
Proctor threw the phone off the roof, gritted his teeth as it sailed through the air, landing with a smash as pieces were strewn over the road. The pub was too noisy. He cursed his bad luck. Why then, when he was talking? The sounds might place him.
He looked across. The light had gone off in Melissa’s apartment.
Shit!
His shoes clattered on the tiles as he scrambled across the roof and dropped down into the hole. Dust flew as he landed with a thump. Carrie was on her knees in front of the window, her wrists against the broken windowpane, rubbing the rope against the jagged edge. Her bracelet twinkled in the moonlight.
She looked round and yelped when she heard him. She dropped back to the floor and shuffled to the wall, shrinking back.
He rushed at her and slapped her across the face, a loud crack in the night. He was breathing hard. He had to stay in control.
Don’t make mistakes.
But his anger was growing, becoming harder to check. He grabbed the rope around her wrists and dragged her across the floor, grimacing, enjoying it too much. Carrie shrieked in fear and pain, muffled only by the gag. He clamped his hand over her mouth, making her cheeks puff red.
‘Shut up! Now!’
She whimpered.
He yanked her to her feet and pulled her towards the hole in the roof. It was hard work. He lifted her over his shoulder and put one hand on the roof edge, the other arm over Carrie. He was panting through exertion and tried to clamber up on the same pile of bricks he’d used before. It was too hard. He was going to have to push her up and hope she landed properly.
He got her shoulders through the opening and then put his own shoulder underneath her. With a heave, Carrie dropped over the lip and tumbled down the tiles. Proctor couldn’t see her but he heard the clatter of her body against the roof. He paused to listen out for how it ended, whether there was a muffled scream as she went off the edge, but there was nothing.
Proctor hauled himself back through the hole, the breeze cooling the perspiration speckled across his forehead. Carrie was slumped in the crevice where the two roofs sloped and met, her ankles over the edge. He took a few deep breaths and then slid down to join her. As he got close, he had a glimpse over. A long sheer drop, too dark to see the ground.
Carrie was trying to shuffle herself along, snakelike, to get away from it. He grabbed the rope and helped her, pulling her into the middle. He sat her upright. She put her head back against the roof and tried to suck in air around the gag, soaked from saliva.