The Overlooker (20 page)

No sign of Suzie and Millie.

Nick stopped dead. He felt the blood leave his face.

‘They should be here.' He turned his troubled face to Tom, as if his teenage son could have the answer. ‘When Millie went AWOL after lunch, Suzie thought she knew where she'd be. There was a shop Millie had her eye on down in the shopping mall. Suzie said she'd find her and bring her here on the bus. That was more than an hour ago.'

Tom tried to smile. ‘You know Millie. Perhaps she wasn't where Mum thought. Or they've had a row and Millie is digging her heels in. Some people do get paranoid about hospital visiting, you know.'

‘But Suzie would have rung me. There's nothing; no voicemail, no text.'

He got his phone out again and speed-dialled her number. The wait seemed endless.

‘It's switched off.'

Tom took his elbow and steered him towards the coffee shop. ‘There's got to be a simple explanation. This isn't South America. People don't snatch teenagers off the street. Mum knows you were in the ward with Uncle Martin. She'll have guessed you'd have to switch your phone off. Why don't we have a coffee while we wait for them? We can watch the door.'

‘She could have texted me.'

‘Probably in too much of a spin. Black coffee for you? If's she's chasing around town worried about Millie, she won't be thinking too much about anybody else. She just wants to find my crack-brained sister and bring her up here to fly the family flag before visiting hours are over. Come to think of it, my sympathies for Millie are cooling. Uncle Martin was such a great old guy. Time she grew up.'

He found seats for them at a table, facing the door. He fished his own phone out.

‘I just tried,' Nick said. ‘She's not answering.'

‘It's not Mum I'm ringing. It's Millie. I'm going to give the brat a piece of my mind.'

Nick held his breath.

Tom sighed and clicked his phone shut. ‘No joy. She's switched off too.'

Nick pushed his coffee cup aside. ‘I've got the car outside. I'm going down to look for them.'

Outside the hospital, Tom stopped short when he saw the crumpled wing of his father's car.

‘What happened? Had an argument with a stone wall?'

‘There's a whole lot more I haven't told you yet. I was convinced this Honda was following us. Turned out to be the local Baptist minister. But then we went out to Briershaw this morning, and there he was again. I have this nasty feeling that he's mixed up in it somehow.'

‘And he tried to drive you off the road?'

Nick flushed. ‘Not exactly. He left before we did. But I guess my nerves were shot to pieces. Let's just say I misjudged a bend. There was this other car coming fast towards me. I didn't quite make it.'

He had a vision of that hooded cyclist turning to stare back at him through the windscreen. In triumph?

He had hardly begun to tell Tom all his suspicions.

They were halfway down the hill that led to the town centre beside the river and the canal. Nick was driving faster than he should.

Tom glanced sideways at him. ‘Steady on, Dad. One crash a day is enough.'

Nick's phone rang. He snatched it out of his inner pocket. He was about to snap it open, on tenterhooks to know who was ringing.

A car braked sharply in front of him. Nick just had the presence of mind to clamp both hands on the steering wheel and stamp on the brakes.

Tom grabbed the phone from him. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick was aware of the look of alarm his son was giving him. For the next few moments, he tried to concentrate on the thickening traffic and remember his way to the central car park. The other half of his mind was all too alert to the conversation going on beside him.

‘No, it's Tom . . . Never mind that. Where are you . . .? How long ago was that . . .? Look, stay where you are. We're heading into the car park. We'll be with you in a few minutes . . . Try not to worry. It's probably nothing serious. We'll sort it.
Ciao
.'

Tom put the phone down on his knee. He looked at his father more gravely, as Nick manoeuvred into a parking space.

‘That was Millie.'

‘
Millie
?' The car came to an abrupt halt. ‘Where is she?'

‘In a café in the shopping mall. The Banana Tree? She says Mum rang her to say she was in the precinct and they agreed to meet there. That was forty minutes ago. Mum hasn't shown up and she's not answering her phone.'

The two stared at each other in silence.

At last Nick found his voice. ‘But I dropped her off here about twenty past two. Well, not actually in this car park. At the side of the road, at the other end of the precinct. She was going to check out that beauty shop where she thought Millie would be. If she was already in this area before she rang Millie, she would only have been a few minutes away from this café. How could she
not
turn up?'

Tom's voice was low, strained. ‘You've been worrying what might have been happening to Millie, on her own, after those threatening calls. Did neither of you think that Mum might be in just as much danger?'

T
he precinct seemed full of slow-moving people, with too much time and not enough money to make window shopping a real pleasure. Nick struggled to hurry through them, sometimes bumping shoulders in his haste. Tom seemed more agile, almost dancing through the shifting gaps.

‘Where's this café?' he panted, as their paths converged.

‘The Banana Tree. Over that shoe shop.'

They found the narrow entrance and pounded up the stairs. Millie was sitting at a table by the window. Her head was turned away from them. The elfin face was silhouetted against the glass, with its crop of unnaturally blonde hair.

Nick felt a rush of relief and anger. He had been so afraid for this vulnerable fourteen year old. Even now he found himself casting around the café to see if anyone was sitting at a table alone, watching her. They looked like unremarkable shoppers, filling out the long hours over a cup of tea.

But it was Millie's folly that had led her mother into a trap.

Tom got to the table first. Millie's coffee cup was empty. She turned her head towards him with an almost wilful attempt to appear unsurprised.

‘Hi, there.' She smiled at Tom. ‘How's uni?'

‘Never mind the small talk. Where's Mum? You said she told you to meet her here?'

‘She said she was in the precinct. She should have been here in five minutes, max.' Her eyes went past him to her father. ‘Would somebody mind telling me what's going on?'

Nick slumped into the empty chair facing the window. ‘Sorry. It's a long story. I have a nasty feeling someone's following up on whatever was going on in that house in Hugh Street. I had a phone call warning me off.'

‘You never told me!'

‘No, well. I didn't want to worry you.'

‘Dad, is that true?' Tom exploded. ‘Millie didn't know? You let her come down here alone . . .'

‘I didn't
let
her. She was supposed to be coming to the hospital with us.'

Millie looked from one to the other in growing alarm. ‘You and Mum went to the police, didn't you? You wouldn't let me come in with you. That was it, wasn't it? It wasn't just that creepy man in the boarded-up house. You were going to tell them you'd had this threatening phone call. And you didn't tell
me
!'

‘I'm sorry, sweetheart. It never occurred to me you'd take off on your own.'

Millie's grey-blue eyes grew wider. ‘And you think Mum . . . She came here to get me and . . . she's just, like, vanished?' He watched the last blood leave her already pale face. ‘You think somebody's got her, don't you?
Who
?'

‘I wish I knew. I've no idea what all this is about. And I don't believe the police do, either. They'd pretty well written Hugh Street off as some kind of illegal factory, breaking all sorts of laws, I don't doubt, but it hardly seems to fit anything as melodramatic as kidnapping.'

His eyes were intent on the precinct below the window. He was searching for any sign of Suzie hurrying towards the café. He knew it was a vain hope. She should have been here nearly an hour ago. A cold numbness was creeping over him. He didn't know what to do next. Everything in him wanted to put the clock back. To keep a close watch on Millie, so that she could not have crept out of the house unseen. To forbid Suzie to go off into town alone to find her. Another part of his mind wrestled with the problem of how he could have come with her and left Uncle Martin waiting in vain.

He should have sent Suzie to the hospital and come here himself. But was he invulnerable? Were any of them? Whoever was behind those phone calls might have missed Millie slipping out of the house. But they must have followed Suzie. Seen the point at which Nick left her on the pavement. Walked behind her the short distance into the precinct. And then . . .

The shutters came down on his imagination. He had no idea how they could have seized her in broad daylight with so many witnesses.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes to clear the unsettling vision.

‘We're wasting time,' Tom said. ‘She's been missing for an hour, and we still haven't told the police.' He had his phone out. ‘You've got a number? I don't just mean 999. Who did you talk to?'

Nick retrieved some slips of paper from his inside pocket where he kept his phone. His own business cards, some handwritten memos. He selected Inspector Heap's card and put the rest back. ‘I'm not sure she's the right person now. She'd gone cool on Hugh Street.'

‘She's not going to stay cool about a kidnapping, is she?'

Tom dialled the number. Nick realized the state of shock he must be in to let his son take the initiative. But when the call connected, Tom pushed the phone across to him. ‘You'd better do this. She knows you.'

Nick felt a numb certainty that she would not answer. But he was startled into action by the sound of her voice.

‘Inspector Heap.'

‘It's me. Nicholas Fewings. My wife and I came to see you about a threatening phone call.'

‘I told you to leave it to us, Mr Fewings. I know these things are unpleasant, but we don't think there's any substance behind it. Just a nuisance call to warn you off.'

‘There have been three more calls since. And my wife's missing.'

There was silence at the other end of the phone.

‘Just a moment. I'm copying someone else in on this. Right. Go ahead.'

Wearily he went over the events of the afternoon. Millie's absence. Suzie's belief that she could find her. The hospital visit. Millie's call. A sense of futility stalked over him. He knew already that the police would have no more idea where Suzie was than he did.

He closed Tom's phone and handed it back. ‘They're coming. At least she believes me now. She's taking it seriously this time.'

Millie had gone quiet. They were all watching the shifting patterns of humanity in the shopping mall below them.

Nick was watching for the trim female figure of Inspector Heap. Another part of his mind was alert for something less reassuring. He was not sure what he expected. The teenager in the grey hoodie? The seemingly innocent Reverend Redfern?

His eye caught the two men striding along the shopping precinct immediately. Amongst the drifting window shoppers and the harassed young mothers with toddlers and pushchairs they stood out. Their middle age and masculinity; the speed and purposefulness with which they walked. The way their eyes were scanning the shops around them, on the lookout for something.

He caught his breath.

One was taller than normal, with something burly about his build. From above, Nick could see his bald head within a ring of black hair. He wore a dark suit, but the jacket was unfastened casually. The other was shorter, younger, a shock head of golden-brown hair above square shoulders. A tweed jacket and grey trousers. Nick had had a stereotyped suspicion that there would be something foreign about whoever was behind what was going on. Asian? East European? Russian? There were too many fantastic scenarios whirling through his brain.

This pair looked uncompromisingly white British. He would not know until he heard them speak.

The eyes of the shorter one went up to the café window.

There were only moments left.

He shot a look around the café. The only exit seemed to be the stairs they had come by. There must be another through the kitchen. In a few seconds the men would reach the door.

Tom had caught his alarm. He half rose to his feet. Millie looked scared.

None of them had put their thoughts into words, but it was obvious to all of them that the two men had come looking for them.

Tom had his phone out. He's got quicker reactions than I have, thought Nick.

‘Are you dialling 999?'

Tom nodded.

‘They can't do anything, can they?' breathed Millie. ‘Not here in front of everybody.'

Everybody. Nick looked round at the two women behind the counter. An elderly couple drinking tea. A younger woman with an older one who was probably her mother. A couple of teenagers not much older than Millie, drinking milkshakes. The men had looked powerful, fit. They had vanished from sight below the window.

As Tom lifted his mobile to his ear, there were footsteps pounding up the stairs.

The tall man paused in the doorway momentarily. It took only a second for him to identify the Fewings at their window table, made all the more conspicuous by the fact that all three of them were on their feet. He strode across to them, with the shorter man in his wake. One of the women behind the counter gave an audible gasp. The other customers stopped drinking to watch.

The leading man's hand went to his inside pocket. Is he going to draw a gun? Here? Nick thought incredulously.

Tom was already making contact. ‘Police. I'm in the Banana Tree Café, in the shopping precinct. Two men . . .'