The Hunt (28 page)

‘Mummy, when are we going home?’ It was Megs’ usual question when they woke up, but today the answer was different.

‘Today,’ their mother said.

‘Mum?’ Gemma asked. ‘Really?’

Her mum nodded. She was already dressed, and she looked exhausted. Earlier, Gemma had listened to the low mumble of voices as she spoke with someone in the adjoining bedroom. For the thirteen days they had been there that had happened most mornings, and most afternoons and evenings too. Some of them were police, some social workers. Health workers, too, who would come in and sit with them all, ask questions, talk about a variety of things which were, she knew, all about what had happened.

Her dad’s brother and sister had been there, seeing them in the Cardiff hotel after visiting him in hospital. They told her mum that they’d been helping the police with their inquiries. Both of them had looked scared, as if this had all happened to them.

What she struggled to get over to everyone was that she was fine. Her mum and Megs were alive and well, and sharing the hotel suite with her. Her dad was alive, still in hospital being treated for his wounds under police protection. Under arrest, in fact, although no one had told her that outright, and none of them really knew what came next for him.

So she was fine.

Because it could have been so much worse.

‘What about our house?’ Gemma asked. They’d been told that it was a crime scene.

‘They’ve finished there,’ her mum said. ‘We’ve had people doing work while we’ve been away, too. New carpets, fresh paint. It’ll be nice.’ She frowned, voice going quieter as she said, ‘We’ll have some policemen staying with us, for a while.’

‘How long?’ Gemma asked.

‘I’m not really sure,’ her mum said, the uncertainty etched on her face.

‘Will we have to move?’

Her mother didn’t reply.

‘I broke the shower curtain,’ Gemma said.

‘I’m sure that’s been fixed too, sweetie.’ Her mum hugged her, then slipped across to Megs’ bed and lay down beside her. Gemma’s little sister had been unnaturally quiet since those bad days, and their mum spent a lot of time with her, talking, playing games, sometimes just lying there hugging.

‘Can I go for a last swim, Mum?’ The hotel had a pool and sauna area, and Gemma had been twice every day they’d been staying there. She thought it was thirteen days. She’d lost count.

‘Just don’t be too long. They’re sending a car for us at one o’clock, and I thought it’d be nice to have lunch in the restaurant first.’

‘Will Daddy be coming home with us?’ Megs asked, and Gemma turned away and started packing her swimming things. No one knew the answer to that for sure, her mum had recently revealed. Their solicitors were working on it, but the police were eager to continue questioning, and it could be that he’d be held in custody while they did that. Gemma hated the idea of their dad being held anywhere against his will. She knew what that was like.

She heard her mother’s calming, soft voice as she whispered to her sister, and then Gemma said goodbye and left the room.

A man was sitting outside. His name was Dave, and he was a policeman. He was friendly enough, but she could not bring herself to trust or like him. His being outside their room was just another indication of how big a deal this was. And she didn’t want anything about this to be a big deal – not that they were taken, not that her dad had been hunted like a bloody fox, not that a strange woman had come along to help him and killed people up in the mountains, and more around the farmhouse where they’d been kept prisoner. And not that she, Gemma, had stabbed a woman in the side of the face with a nail.

She slept well, but sometimes upon waking, Gemma knew that she’d been dreaming of Vey.

No one knew where their kidnapper was now. She’d spoken to her mum about it, during their fourth or fifth night here. They’d all just returned from the hospital, leaving her dad in a fitful sleep, and Megs had gone straight to bed. Her mother opened a bottle of wine, and after a glass she’d had a sudden, explosive fit of sobbing. Gemma had cuddled her, rocking her back and forth on the double bed.

‘Don’t be scared,’ she’d said. ‘The police will find her. She can’t have gone far. I banged a nail in her head.’ The weak attempt at humour had seemed to bring her mum around. She’d wiped her eyes and laughed softly.

‘Oh, I’m not worried about her. She’ll be dead by now.’

Gemma’s blood ran cold at the memory of what her mum had said. It had come from her dad. Such knowledge to carry.

Everything had changed. They were all together again, but she feared that her old family was gone forever, and nothing would ever be the same again. Gemma was starting to understand that, and the reporters who hassled them whenever they left the hotel made that clear. Sometimes she wasn’t sure just who the police were guarding them against. She was too afraid to ask.

‘Going for a swim,’ she said to the policeman.

‘Don’t be too long. Your mum tell you?’

‘That we’re going home today?’

Dave smiled and nodded. ‘That’s nice news for you, kid.’

Gemma couldn’t help smiling back. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

There were three other people in the pool. She recognised two of them, older women who had been staying at the hotel for the past four days. They might have been sisters. They swam side by side, but Gemma had never heard them speak a word to each other. The third person was a young boy, maybe her age. When she entered the pool room he glanced at her, then did a double-take. He smiled. Gemma turned away, aloof, and walked to the deep end.

The cold embrace when she dived in was welcome, and she glided underwater for a few metres. When she broke the surface she fell into a smooth, economical front crawl, pulling herself towards the shallow end, performing a perfect tumble roll, then settling into a comfortable rhythm. She was a good swimmer. Though she’d had lessons when she was younger, it was her dad who’d really taught her how to swim properly. He’d said that one day maybe they’d do a triathlon together, and the idea excited her.

Gemma had no idea whether that could happen now. Her dad had been shot.
Shot!
And though he was recovering well from his wounds and ordeal, the doctors had said he faced a long rehabilitation, with physical and psychological therapy.

She swam, and tried to let her worries drift away. The rhythm, the stroke, the regular movements, were all calming and almost hypnotic. Ten lengths, twenty, thirty, and she paused in the deep end and held on to the side of the pool.

The two women had gone. So had the boy. She hadn’t noticed any of them getting out, but she was glad to have the pool to herself. Soft music played. Machinery hummed. She swam ten more lengths, then hauled herself out, showered, and entered the sauna.

Her mum said she needed to open up and let out her emotions about what had happened. She said Gemma had grown cold, distant, and she was afraid that things had affected her far more deeply than anyone else. Sometimes she said these things directly to Gemma, but she’d also heard her mum talking about her in the next room, to the social and health workers who paid regular visits. Big Ears strikes again.

‘I’m fine,’ Gemma whispered in the sauna. She threw water onto the rocks and welcomed the loud hiss.

And she really thought she was. Soon she’d be home, and then she’d be able to talk to her friends again. She’d been allowed a few calls, but they hadn’t permitted any of them access to a phone or iPad. That had troubled Gemma more than what had happened; being out of the loop was hell. She could go to school, catch up, and start putting things behind her. Pull forward, like she did in the pool. She’d have to help her family, too, especially little Megs.

And her dad. When they visited, sometimes he looked at her and cried.

‘I’m fine,’ she said again, and the sauna door opened.

‘Hi,’ the boy said.

‘Hey.’

He entered and sat in the opposite corner, rubbing sweat from his face, sighing at the heat.

‘You here alone?’

‘Just stay the fuck away from me!’ Gemma snapped up the water bucket, wielding it in one hand, jumped to her feet, and kicked the door open.

‘Woah!’ the boy said, hands held out.

‘Touch me and I’ll smash this across your face. There are police here, everywhere, and they’re just waiting for someone to try anything!’

‘Wait! Gemma, I’m sorry, I—’

‘How the
fuck
do you know my name?’

He didn’t answer. He just stared at her, hands still held out as if to ward off violence.

She stood in the open doorway, half warm, half cold, feeling slightly ridiculous holding the bucket raised in one hand.
I’m fine!
Lowering it slowly, she raised her eyebrows.

‘Well?’

‘Some woman gave me something to give to you.’

‘What woman? What something?’

‘Dunno.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said to tell you,
Nailed her.
’

Gemma blinked sweat from her eyes and dropped the bucket. It rolled on the tiles and came to rest. ‘Okay. Then give it to me.’

She followed him across the pool room and entered the male changing area with him. There was no one else there, but it still felt weird. Gemma focused on the boy, and what he’d said. It must have been her.
Must
have been. But what did she want?

‘Here,’ the boy said, handing her something from the kit bag in his locker. It was an A5 envelope, sealed.

‘You didn’t want to open it?’ she asked. ‘You know who I am, right?’

‘I do now. Don’t care. She gave me some money, and
…
’ He shrugged, almost embarrassed.

‘She scared you.’

‘Just a bit.’

‘Thanks,’ Gemma said. She left the boy, and the changing room, and ten minutes later she was dried and changed and back in their hotel suite. Her mum and Megs were dressed, cases packed.

‘You were quick.’

‘Yeah, I’m excited to get home,’ Gemma said. ‘It’ll be good to get back to normal.’

Her mum’s expression hardened, her smile slipped. Gemma looked away.

In the bathroom, she looked again at what Rose had given her. There were two objects. The first was a memory stick, unlabelled. Gemma knew that in truth,
nothing
would ever be normal again. But perhaps whatever information the stick contained might take them halfway back.

The second object was a small square of thin paper. It carried a simple message.

‘If you or your dad ever need help, Tweet:
Jane Doe was born in Sorrento
.’

The memory stick she would hand over to her mum’s solicitors. The message she would keep to herself. After reading it three more times she tore up the paper and flushed it down the toilet.

Gemma stared into the mirror, and the girl looking back smiled.

‘Is this the one that got away again?’

‘I thought you might call. So who am I talking to?’

‘You can call me John. How’s the arm?’

‘It’s doing okay, thanks. I can still shoot a gun.’

‘You showed that quite well in Wales.’

‘Yeah. Enjoyed that.’

‘And the hip?’

‘I can still run.’

There was silence for a moment, broken only by a crackle of static on the line.

‘You did a lot of damage.’ He had an accent that Rose couldn’t quite place. Probably European, though she wasn’t even sure of that. ‘Most of the British cell wiped out, and the survivors mopped up with the info the girl passed to police. And they were one of the oldest, active for
…
a long time. So you know we can’t just let you go.’

‘I thought you might say that, too.’ Rose was nervous, but she didn’t let it show. Her voice was firm, and she was in control. She had to believe that. ‘So I’ve just got to tell you this, “John”. Or maybe you’re Hans Kluge. Or the husband of Chrissie Pinn. I could name quite a few more people you might be, because I know so much more about the Trail cells in other countries than you can imagine. Everything I know about the Trail beyond the UK is recorded, placed in safe keeping in several places around the world. And I learned a trick from you guys, here – if I don’t check in every week, that information is released to police and made public on the internet.’

John was silent for a while. Then he started giggling. It made Rose shiver, because it sounded so out of control. But really, she should know better.

‘What do you know? A few names? Some websites, email addresses?’

‘More.’

‘Addresses, maybe. A few bank account details, some of our suppliers, photographs. Details of some of our friends. If you reveal that, do you really believe it’ll do anything we can’t undo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Our clients have included businessmen, actors, drug dealers, models. Several politicians, mostly from Eastern European countries. Mostly. Also one high-ranking army officer, close to retirement and mourning the fact he’d never killed. We’ve used our network to rid your country of several undesirables. The UK cell was as good as state sanctioned! And we have fingers in industries, governments, and business organisations around the world, and no one finger knows what any of the others are doing. I’m in telecommunications. We have lawyers, financiers, doctors. We’ve been around for a
very
long time.’ He laughed again, but all the humour had gone. ‘So even if something
did
happen to you, do you really think you could hurt us?’

‘I’d do my very best.’

John fell silent again, for much longer than before. Finally he said, ‘We want to see you try.’ The line went dead.

Shaking, skin tingling, Rose placed the satphone on the floor of the Jeep and stamped on it, again and again until it was in bits. Then she drove for a mile until she reached a bridge and dropped it into the river below.

Driving. She’d done a lot of that recently. There was nowhere she wanted to settle.

Dragging Grin’s corpse from the postal van, wedging it deep between rocks where hopefully it would remain undiscovered for a long time
…
there had been no epiphany there, no release, and no sense that anything like this could ever be over. Really, she’d felt nothing at all.

That frightened her.

She’d driven the van three miles further before dumping it and stealing a more nondescript vehicle. Then after leaving Wales she’d gone to ground for a couple of weeks and watched Chris regain some of his life. But only some of it. The infamy was instant, with the news full of his capture and the trail of bodies that led to it. His family’s incarceration was also reported, and as the details of where and why they had been held – and Chris’s role in their release – began to leak out, the whole tale became much more complex. He became notorious, and feted.

The media revelled in the story. Naked survivors shot and left in the mountains – one of them a minor reality TV character, another a retired football player – were not as innocent as they might seem. A couple of lovers who’d had their mountain bike stolen by the man at the centre of the story appeared on talk shows and signed a book deal. And several historical murder cases were being linked. A man on the Underground, tongue cut out; a woman in Cornwall, stabbed to death in an old tin mine, her corpse missing its hands; a body found in Liverpool minus its head.

The public loved it. Rose didn’t. Chris had found his family again, but she knew that he’d be changed in ways that could not be undone. She went through a series of feelings for him – jealousy, respect, pity. She hoped that the simple fact of his brief celebrity would protect him from any desire for revenge from the wider Trail organisation; if he and his family were harmed, that would be seen as final proof of his whole wild tale. In truth, she was quite certain that the overseas Trail cells would hardly be concerned at what had happened to their British counterparts.

Her, though. She had rattled their cage.

She hoped that the information she’d passed to Gemma would help ensure the family were treated fairly. It would also guarantee at least a dozen high-profile arrests for older murders, and the scandals would keep the press occupied for weeks, or months. Perhaps with so much going on, Chris and his family might eventually be left alone.

In the end, though, she became ambivalent to Chris’s story. It seemed that was the final tragic tale of her own life. They’d taken her family, and in doing so had stripped away most of what made her human.

So she drove.

Thirty-seven days later she looked out at an ocean far from where home had once been, and felt the sun burning her skin. She’d cut her long hair short and dyed what was left to a blazing blond. Her arm and hip had been treated by a friendly doctor she knew and were healing well. It had been amusing to take on a French accent. She dressed in floral dresses, very feminine, very not her. She used a variety of names.

She was lost.

The breeze brought the smell of the sea, and she remembered Adam once telling her that it was the taint of death. The scent of the coast that so many people loved was actually produced by countless dead bodies, brought in by the ocean and deposited on the beach, rotting. Rose smiled and breathed in. It seemed quite fitting.

She walked along the beach for some time before she saw him. He was sitting in an old plastic chair with his crossed legs resting on a sea-smoothed log. He nursed a clear drink in a glass in his lap. His hat was tilted over his face and his greying hair was dark again, but she knew who he was.

Rose found another chair waiting outside the small beach hut, almost as if it had been placed there for her. She dropped her backpack in the doorway and dragged the chair down the beach, leaving lines and footprints in the sand.

Sitting beside him, feeling the chair’s legs sink in, she came to rest. Neither of them spoke.

Perhaps for a while she could stop moving.