Читать книгу: «Nowhere to Run»

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

Lauren strained with aching fingers to get purchase on the knot, but all she managed to do was force it tighter around her already sore wrists.

She was breathing hard, heart fluttering in her chest as she struggled to escape. She closed her eyes in concentration. She could feel every strand of the tough braided nylon. It was rubbing her skin raw, but she had to keep trying. Had to get loose. Had to get away before he came back.

In her ten troubled years she had dealt with all sorts of men, but none like this one. She had heard stories of perverts and child-molesters, had even met a couple, not that she’d known at the time, but this guy – he was more than that. He’d kill her. It was there in his eyes when he looked at her. He’d do what he wanted with her, then . . .

A sob escaped through the gag that was tied across her mouth as her fingers slipped off the rope yet again. She didn’t have the strength for this.

*

Pete Gayle stepped into the Exeter CID squad room and a hearty cheer went up. He paused in the doorway, grinning. Glancing around the big, open-plan office, he saw that the noise was being made by a pitifully sparse crew. The place was almost empty, just his own team there, but they were certainly making up in volume what they lacked in numbers.

A bunch of helium balloons shot up over his desk, bright and multicoloured, on strings that held them about halfway to the ceiling. Two of his three DCs stood up, stretching a ‘Welcome Back’ banner between them.

He stepped forward and took a bow to enthusiastic applause.

‘Welcome back, boss.’

‘Good to see you, Sarge.’ Grey-suited and grey-haired Dick Feeney threw him a salute with his free hand, the bright colours around him emphasising his colourless appearance.

‘About time, too.’ That was Dave Miles, at the other end of the banner from Dick.

Pete raised his arms. ‘Thank you, fans. Thank you very much.’ He headed towards them.

Clustered in the far front corner of the big office, his team consisted of Detective Constables Dave Miles, Dick Feeney and Jane Bennett and PCs Ben Myers and Jill Evans.

Dick and Dave pushed the banner onto a couple of pieces of Blu-tack on the wall behind them.

‘Nice to be back, boss?’ Dave gave him a lopsided grin. Long and lanky, he was dressed in dark trousers and an open-necked white shirt with a waistcoat over it, his dark hair neatly combed.

‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t even got to my desk yet.’

‘It’s good to see you, Sarge,’ Jill said. Small, slender, dark and immaculate as always, Jill had been a caring but firm PC on the beat and had joined his team two and a half years ago, after impressing him on a case involving a homeless guy whose girlfriend had been raped and murdered. He had looked good for it, with no alibi and a history of drug abuse, but Jill had finally proved that he couldn’t have done it and supported him through the process of finding out who had.

He was now off the streets and the gear, and working in a betting shop. Or, he had been, last Pete had heard.

‘That’s right,’ added Ben, the spiky-haired and baby-faced newbie of the team, having moved into the office just over a year ago.

‘What did Louise think of the idea?’ asked Jane. Shockingly, her red hair, which she had always worn long, had been cut into a stylish bob, parted and swept back at the sides since he last saw her. It was a drastic change, but it suited her.

‘She hardly noticed, to be honest,’ he admitted. ‘She doesn’t take much interest in anything, lately.’

Jane’s face fell. ‘I’m sorry, boss.’

Pete shrugged as he reached his desk and sat down opposite her. ‘So, what’s the news? What’s been happening?’

They sat, the celebratory mood broken.

‘Well, today’s all about Operation Natterjack,’ Dave said. ‘Bloody stupid name. Everybody’s out, dragging drug dealers, distributors and manufacturers out of their beds and off the streets.’

‘Which is why Colin wanted me back in today, to keep you lot under control. Yeah, I know about that,’ Pete said. ‘What else?’

There was a pause. Then Jane shrugged. ‘Not a lot, really, boss. We’re just hoping for a nice, quiet day. Share a pizza for lunch. Keep the phones manned and wait for the glory boys to trickle back in with all their arrests, which they’re going to have to do the paperwork on while we sit back and take the piss.’

He looked from one face to another but no one had anything else to say. ‘OK then. A nice, quiet day it is. We hope.’

*

Lauren’s cheeks were wet with tears, her chin slick with dribbled saliva. She had pulled and pushed, twisted and wiggled the ends of the finger-thick rope around her wrists, but all she had gained were aching arms and fingers and raw, abraded wrists. She had been trying for what seemed like ages. She was exhausted, no longer caring about how disgusting the gag was in her mouth with the spit and the snot and the tears.

God, she wished she had someone who would come looking for her. Come and rescue her from this bloody middle-of-nowhere barn and the arsehole bastard who’d dumped her here. But there was no one. If she was going to get out of this, it was down to her.

She sucked in a breath and, biting down on the wet gag, set to work once more, pushing through the pain.

Curling her fingers up and around, she touched the knot at her wrists and hooked her short nails into the rough strands. She burrowed one slender finger into the knot then wiggled it around as much as she could. If she could just force the rope back through, then get a hold on it . . . She felt it slip just a tiny bit.

‘Yes,’ she gasped.

Tension and excitement mingled in her stomach. She felt queasy as she tried again. Yes, definitely. She adjusted her grip and tried once more, pulling it straight up and – yes! It finally released. She wriggled her wrists and shook her arms. The bindings fell away and her arms slumped to her sides as she fell forward, howling in agony as her shoulders, stuck for so long in one position, dropped free. It was several seconds before she dared to try to lift her arms to untie the gag.

Vision blurred with tears of pain and relief, she could see redness around her wrists, but not how bad they were, as she loosened the gag and spat it out, then reached for the rope at her ankles.

Pulling the knot around to the front, she was glad for the first time of the knee-length white socks they made her wear for school. Quickly, she untied the thin rope and got to her feet. She staggered and put her hand out to the dusty stone wall, waiting a moment until she felt steady. Now she just had to get through those doors and she would be free!

There was no catch or lock on the inside.

She leaned her full weight against the junction of the big, old wooden panels and heaved.

Nothing.

‘God! What now?’ Her voice sounded strange after being gagged for so long. She felt reluctant to make a lot of noise. Not that she had heard any sign of anyone since the man left, but . . . If she was heard by a friend of his, and caught, then . . .

She flinched as a hiss came from the rafters, above and to her right, all the way at the end of the barn. She looked up into the darkness under the roof tiles. Saw a pair of eyes staring down at her. Then another pair.

‘What are you looking at?’ she muttered to the two young owls.

Their parents had it easy. They came in and out of the barn through a hole in the corner of the roof. She had watched them numerous times. She, on the other hand, had to get through these bloody doors.

CHAPTER 2

Pete heard the door open behind him. He finished pouring his coffee, put the jug back on the coffee maker and turned to see who had come into the small kitchen.

‘Jane.’

‘Hey, boss.’

‘So, come on. What weren’t you telling me earlier? What’s been going on while I’ve been gone?’ He took a sip of his coffee and moved aside so she could get some for herself.

‘Well . . . there hasn’t been much, really. Just the usual odds and sods. Burglaries . . . We cracked that string that we were working on when . . . well, you know. A hundred and eighty-seven, it ended up at. All down to one bloke. Derek Atkins. He’s due in court in a couple of months.

‘There was an illegal licence plate deal going on, down on the Marsh Barton industrial estate. We closed that down a few weeks back. They were making them and selling them for cash, without documentation, to all and sundry. Mainly crooks wanting falsies for getaway cars. Major coup, that was. The blokes doing it kept records of who they sold to, stupid sods. We got loads of leads out of that, for all over the place. Here, Dorset, Avon and Somerset, West Mids, Thames Valley, even the Met. I don’t know how many cases got solved out of that one bust. Anyway, they’re the highlights, I suppose.

‘Currently, DS Phillips has got a job on out at the airport, in conjunction with the Transport Police and Customs and Excise. A smuggling ring. They’re hoping to make some arrests on Wednesday, I think. And DS Hancock has got something else going on, on the industrial estate. A series of break-ins. Tools and equipment nicked and safes and cash boxes raided. I don’t know all the details, but I don’t think they’ve got much yet. What about you? How are you doing?’

Pete pursed his lips. He’d known Jane since they were in uniform together, eight or nine years ago. She’d been the first recruit to his team when he’d got his sergeant’s stripes, closely followed by Dave, and he knew full well when she was prevaricating. ‘Never mind me. What’s been happening about Tommy?’

Jane sighed. ‘Boss, you know how it works. You’ve got to stay out of that. If you don’t, anything we find can be compromised.’

‘I don’t need lectures, Jane. I need facts. I’m his dad. I need to know what’s happening and Simon’s told me sweet FA over the last month or more.’

Jane grimaced. ‘As far as I know, there’s been nothing to tell. He hasn’t got anywhere.’

‘Well, why the hell not?’ Pete set his coffee down before he spilt it. ‘Surely, a missing kid – and a copper’s kid at that – takes priority over a smuggling ring that the Transport guys should be handling on their own, anyway?’

‘Of course. But they’ve got nothing new to work on. They’ve run down all the leads they had. It’s like he’s just disappeared off the face of the earth, from what I can gather. And I have been keeping up with things on the quiet.’

Pete sighed, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Sorry, Jane. I’m just—’

‘Frustrated to hell and back, I expect,’ she cut in. ‘We’ve been helping where we can, but it’s Simon’s case, so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘How’s Louise coping?’

Pete pursed his lips. ‘Not so good. If anything, she’s been getting worse, not better, the past few weeks. And I can’t seem to help. If I try, all she does is snap my head off, so . . . I just leave her to it as much as I can. I don’t like to, but . . .’ He shrugged.

‘Must be tough on you, too, though, eh?’

‘Yeah, well. It’s supposed to be, isn’t it? It was me that wasn’t there to pick him up.’

‘Oh, come on. It wasn’t your fault.’

He felt a swell of bitter guilt. ‘If I’d been there when I was supposed to be, it wouldn’t have happened, would it?’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t like you forgot or didn’t bother, was it? You were busy. Saving my arse, as it happened.’

Pete smiled, knowing what Dave Miles would have said to that, as persistently politically incorrect as he was. It was true; he had been working – caught up in an arrest with Jane and a couple of PCs. An arrest that had gone horribly wrong until he managed, somehow, to rescue the situation.

They had been going to bring in a shopkeeper who had been using the cover of furniture imports to bring in cannabis from Thailand. A job that had, ultimately, been a contributing factor leading towards today’s Operation Natterjack. But when they got there, the guy had not been where they expected him to be. Instead, he had been in the back room, unpacking a delivery. When Jane went in through the back door, a PC in tow, while Pete went in the front with the other uniform, the bloke had seen her badge and panicked. The Stanley knife in his hand had become a weapon. He’d grabbed her, threatening to cut her throat. It had taken Pete twenty minutes to talk him down.

Twenty minutes that made him late getting away at the end of his shift.

‘What, so now it’s your fault, is it?’ he asked with a smile.

Jane’s green eyes flashed. ‘No. If anyone’s to blame its Ranjit bloody Seekun, the bastard who held a knife to my throat. Or whoever actually took Tommy.’

‘Mmm.’ Pete picked up his coffee and took a sip. ‘Ugh. This is bloody cold already.’

*

The doors at the back of the barn had straw bales stacked along in front of them, a double row then a single, like a line of seats in one of those old Roman places. Lauren imagined a row of men sitting there, watching her as she lay in the straw, and a shiver ran through her. Suddenly, it seemed to get darker and the temperature dropped. Then the noise started. An intense rattling on the roof above her. She wondered what the hell it was, then she heard a rustling from outside as well. Hail, she realised. But hail or not, she had to get out of here. She jumped up onto the bales, heaving at the doors behind, throwing all her weight into it.

The doors barely moved, but, as she pushed, she saw light down behind the bales.

A gap.

She jumped down, heaved on the bale in front of her and shrieked as she fell back, the bale coming away far more easily than she had expected. She got up, pulled another one away, then another. Behind them, the ancient wood had rotted away and a sheet of corrugated iron had been fixed over it, on the outside.

And metal could bend.

‘Yes!’ Lauren was breathing hard, but the excitement of possible escape kept her going. The rattle of hailstones on the roof continued as she sat down, put her feet against the metal and pushed.

*

By five o’clock, the squad room was back to full capacity and as noisy as Pete remembered it with the incoming officers chatting and joking about the arrests they had made that morning. They had begun to drift in from mid-afternoon. Teams brought in the men and women they had arrested during the morning raids, processed them into custody and interviewed them, then came upstairs to type up their notes and reports. Even with an extra man on the custody desk it was a slow process. Officers were frustrated and short-tempered by the time they got to the squad room, but when they came in and saw Pete at his desk, they each came over and welcomed him back, asked how he was doing, expressed their sympathy or asked after his wife and daughter.

Leaning back in his chair, his day almost over, Pete heard a phone ring among the hubbub and looked up to see whose it was. DS Mark Bridgman picked up his phone and held a hand up to the two men who were chatting next to his desk. Pete watched as he spoke briefly into the phone, then put it down and stood up, heading for the door to the DI’s office at the far end of the squad room.

He knocked and went in. Emerged a minute later and returned to his desk.

‘So, what do you reckon, boss?’ Dave Miles asked.

Pete spun his chair back around.

Dave was looking at him with a half-smile. ‘Looks like gardening season’s over, so are you back for good, or what? Do you reckon you’ll be able to stand the pace?’

‘Well, if today’s anything to go by, I reckon I’ll cope.’ We’ll see how Louise dealt with it when I get home, he thought.

The door at the far end of the room opened and both DI Colin Underhill and DCI Adam Silverstone entered the room.

Hello. Something’s up.

He hoped they were not going to make a meal out of welcoming him back. He’d had plenty of that through the afternoon. He didn’t need the official version, especially from Silverstone. He sat up straighter in his chair as Underhill raised his hands for quiet.

Silverstone stepped up beside the older man. In his immaculate uniform, he looked exactly what he was – a career desk-jockey who’d barely know one end of a baton from the other and had certainly never felt the greasy collar of a drug-pusher or a burglar. The contrast between the two men was almost laughable. Colin was the bigger man in every sense apart from rank. An inch taller, a good four stones heavier, fifteen years older and hugely more experienced, he was a man-manager, not a pen-pusher. He’d walked the beat, come up through the ranks and he looked every inch of it in his slightly rumpled tweed jacket and cord trousers.

‘Right,’ said Silverstone. ‘What’s everyone doing at the moment? I need to know what cases each DS has on their desk, as of now, excluding this morning’s haul. Mark?’

Bridgman looked up and set his pen down. ‘We’ve got the city centre muggings and the break-ins down on the Marsh Barton industrial estate, sir. We’re at a crucial stage with the muggings.’

The DCI nodded. ‘Simon?’

Phillips glanced at Pete. ‘Tommy and the Jane Doe, sir. And the airport job.’

‘Jim?’

‘We’re leading on the drugs, sir. All this morning’s stuff, plus trying to track down where it’s coming from.’

‘Right. OK. I think, Simon, you ought to have this new one. A missing girl. Thirteen years old. Rosie Whitlock. Dropped off at school this morning and never went in. Parents are Alistair and Jessica. Live in the St Leonard’s area of the city. Mark’s got the details.’

Pete spun around to face his team. ‘What are we? Invisible?’ He pushed himself up out of his chair as Dave shrugged.

‘Maybe he thinks it’s too soon for you, boss,’ Jane suggested.

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

*

Lauren peered with a sinking heart through the gap she’d created at the blackened forest of stinging nettle stems beyond. But, she only had two choices – stay or go. And if she stayed . . . She didn’t even want to think about what would happen to her. She grabbed a couple of big handfuls of loose straw, pushed it out through the gap in front of her, then started to wriggle through, arms in front of her face, hoping that the sleeves of her cardigan might offer some protection from the burning stings.

Metal scraped the back of her head and she ducked lower. She felt the dull edge dig into her shoulders. There was no going backward now, even if she wanted to. It was forward or nothing. As long as she didn’t get stuck . . .

‘Oh, God.’ A vision filled her mind of her stuck half in and half out of the barn, wedged under this bloody door when the man came back and found her. Caught hold of her legs and . . . Throat clogged with terror, she scrambled forward. The old stems crackled like fire as they snapped and broke, adding to the noise of the hail. Then, between her panting breaths, she thought she heard something else.

She stopped moving. Held her breath, straining to hear.

‘No, no, no.’

An engine.

He was coming.

She pulled herself forward. The corrugated iron pressed down on her backside. Her thighs. Then she was rolling out and free, curling into a ball to protect herself from the nettles, barely registering the miracle that she had yet to be stung. Her bare legs felt suddenly chilled. Goosebumps rose on her skin. She got up, pressing herself against the stone wall and looking around for the first time.

The hail was still coming down hard, thick enough that she could not see clearly through it. The nettles were bending and swaying beneath it – nettles that stretched away, dense black and brown, in front and to the right, all the way to a dense thorn hedge, beyond which lay open fields. To her left, there was a gap at the side of the barn, a barbed-wire fence and woodland, dark and inviting.

The van sounded terrifyingly close. She began to edge along the side of the old stone wall, reaching out with her left foot to press down the nettles, breaking the stems before moving over them. The engine stopped.

Oh, God. Her breathing got shallow and fast as terror gripped her.

He was here. She moved faster. At least the noise of the storm would mean he couldn’t hear her.

The side door of the van slid open and she stepped forward, pushing through the wet stems rather than pressing them down. She would just have to suffer the consequences for the next couple of days.

But she was amazed to find that she wasn’t stung.

She heard the door roll shut.

Nearly there. Just another metre to the end of the barn and about three more across the gap beyond. She ran and leapt for the fence and the sweet freedom of the dark and sheltering woods.

CHAPTER 3

Pete stalked up the length of the room as the two senior officers turned back into Colin’s office.

The door had not quite closed behind them when his open hand hit it hard. Silverstone was halfway through the interconnecting door to his own office when the loud slap behind him made him stop and turn.

‘A word. Sir,’ Pete said stiffly.

The DCI’s eyebrow rose. ‘DS Gayle?’

Pete ignored Colin for now. He was standing behind his desk, out of the direct line between him and Silverstone. ‘That case should have come to me and my team. You know it and I know it.’

‘This is your first day back, Peter. And it’s a missing girl.’

‘So? I haven’t got anything else on the board and if it’s a missing girl, it’s not likely to be related to Tom, is it? Paedos’ 101. Basic training. Ninety-eight per cent of the time, they go for boys or girls. Not both.’

Silverstone stepped forward and let the door close behind him. ‘That may be, but I still feel it’s too close and too soon, Peter. I want the parents to know that the person handling this is on it one hundred per cent. No distractions.’

‘Right. So you give it to a guy who’s already got a full caseload. That makes sense. Sir. And what progress has DS Phillips made on the Jane Doe or my son?’

Silverstone sighed heavily. ‘This is not about DS Phillips, Peter. Can you honestly tell me that you’re ready to cope with something like this? Whether it’s a boy or a girl. Because I don’t know that you are, and I’m not going to risk the safety of a thirteen-year-old girl to prove a point.’

Not going to risk the safety of your promotion, more like, Pete thought. ‘If I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t be standing here. And I’ve got a damn good team behind me so, even if you doubt me, there’s no reason to doubt them.’

‘It’s not that I doubt you, Peter. Your abilities as a detective are well established. I simply don’t want to put you in a position where you might become overwhelmed, for personal reasons – the similarities between this case and your own, albeit this one’s a girl.’

DI Underhill sat down at last and Silverstone turned to him. ‘Help me out here, Colin. What do you think? Honestly?’

‘Honestly?’

Pete looked at him. Honesty was the last thing the DCI wanted from his deputy right now. What he wanted was support.

‘I can see both sides here, sir,’ the older man said. ‘I mean, I can understand why you’d show Pete some consideration, in the circumstances, but I can also understand how it might leave him feeling frustrated. Not trusted. And how it will look to the rest of the guys out there.’ He nodded towards the squad room.

Silverstone’s eyebrows pinched closer together. ‘And how is that, Detective Inspector?’

‘Well, like you’re hedging your bets, sir, possibly to the detriment of the case. And the girl.’

‘I see.’

‘What it comes down to, sir, is who’s able to give the case most commitment at this moment in time. And I have to admit, Pete’s right. If he’s back with us fully and completely, it’s him.’

Silverstone turned to face Pete. ‘And are you, Detective Sergeant? Back with us fully and completely?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The DCI sighed noisily. ‘Very well. But I want you to share the case with DS Phillips. That way, if it does get too much, you can hand it over without any break in continuity. And it may tie in with what he’s already working on, which was why I chose him to begin with.’

Pete drew a long, slow breath. What was he – some bloody rookie on his first job? He’d been a detective since before this jumped-up twat got to bloody secondary school. He didn’t need his hand holding. He let the air out through his nose. ‘Sir.’ He turned away, grabbed the door handle and went back through to the squad room before he had a chance to let himself down.

‘Simon.’

The younger detective looked up. Tall but a couple of stones overweight, with curly brown hair and a baby face, he had been a DS just over two years and Pete still struggled to take him seriously in the role.

‘Hi, Pete.’

‘I’m taking that new case off your hands. The missing girl. DCI’s had a change of heart.’

‘You sure?’

‘Don’t you bloody start.’

‘I mean that he’s got a heart to change.’

Pete smiled. ‘No, but he’s changed something. What have you got?’

Simon handed him a sheet of paper. ‘Just what you heard a few minutes ago. And the parents’ address and phone number.’

‘Apparently, I’ve got to keep you in the loop. Might be a connection to your Jane Doe. What’s that about?’

‘She was found ten days ago in the river, down by Powderham Deer Park. About ten, eleven years old. Sexually assaulted, strangled and naked. We’re still trying to find out who she was.’

‘Shit.’ Pete let his eyes close for a second as he absorbed that information. Still trying to ID her and still trying to find Tommy. Some detective you are, he thought. ‘All right. We’ll have to keep an open mind on a possible link then.’

‘Yup.’

Pete went back to his desk and sat down. He put the report sheet on his desk, picked up the phone and, taking a deep breath, started dialling.

The phone was picked up almost before it had rung. ‘Alistair Whitlock.’

‘Mr Whitlock, this is DS Peter Gayle. I’ve just been handed your daughter’s case and I’d like to come and talk to you about it – and your wife, if she’s there?’

‘She is.’

‘Perfect.’ He glanced at the address. ‘We’ll be there in a few minutes, OK?’

‘Thank you.’

He put the phone down and stood up. ‘Jane, you’re with me.’

‘Boss?’

‘Interview time. The Whitlocks.’ He headed for the door.

‘Wh—We’ve got that now?’

‘Yes. Come on, chop-chop.’ He paused long enough to hold the door for her, then hurried on down the stairs, feet clattering on the polished concrete.

They were moving along the back corridor, towards the car park behind the police station, before she caught up with him. ‘How did you swing this then?’

‘By being open and honest. You didn’t mention the Jane Doe earlier, when I asked you what had been going on. None of you did.’

‘Yeah, well . . . We thought it might be a bit close to home, boss.’

He hit the release button by the back door and pushed through. The late afternoon air struck him with a chill that had not been there this morning. An after-effect of the storm they’d seen earlier, he guessed. ‘You’re driving.’ He followed her across the car park towards her car. ‘My son is missing, Jane. What we’re talking about now is a murdered girl. How would that be close to home?’

‘One paedo case, another potential one. We were trying to do you a favour, that’s all.’ She stopped at the side of her bright green Vauxhall Nova and pressed the button on the remote. The car beeped and the locks snapped open. They climbed in.

‘If there’s something to know, I want to know it, Jane. I’ll hear things eventually. If they’re sensitive, then maybe I’d be better hearing them from one of you, rather than some plod I barely know. Did you think of that?’

She sighed. ‘No, boss. Sorry.’ She slipped the car into gear and back out of her space. ‘Where are we going?’

*

Lauren charged headlong through the green twilight of the woods, the hail a distant clatter on the leaves far above. Down here, it was almost dry, the ground firm beneath her flying feet. She did not look back or sideways, just concentrated on what was in front of her. Running, chest heaving, jumping over brambles and ferns, darting around trees, kicking through low-growing weeds, she went as fast as her exhausted legs would carry her. She had no idea how far these woods stretched, what they held or what lay beyond. She just knew she had to run, to get as far away from that barn as she could, to have any hope of escaping the man she was sure was behind her.

Chasing her.

She had heard the twang of the barbed wire as he jumped over it, the crashing of heavy footsteps through the undergrowth. He had shouted once.

‘Hey! Come back here!’

But since then, nothing.

The noise she was making combined with the rattle of the hail on the leaves above her to cover any more distant sounds. But she knew he was still coming. He had to be. There was no way he’d have given up.

She hit a narrow trail, barely visible on the ground, and turned onto it. It was too narrow to be man-made – must have been an animal of some sort – but it had to be going somewhere and it was away from the barn, which was all she cared about for now.

She ran on.

The trail wove around trees and bramble thickets and weird little prickly bushes that she’d never seen before. She began to see light through the trees ahead. The edge of the wood? A pool? A road?

Her legs were getting wobbly and weak. Her chest and throat felt raw. It was hard to suck enough air into her burning lungs, but she had to keep going.

The brightness spread across her field of view. It had to be the edge of the woods. She had no idea what that meant but, whatever it was, she would deal with it when she got there. She just had to get there. Get away from the man behind her.

The trail was helping – it made the running easier – but she didn’t know how much longer she could go on. She tripped on a root, staggered, exhausted, put out a hand to a narrow tree trunk for balance and pressed on. She couldn’t stop. Not now. She glimpsed a grey sky between the leaves up ahead. Noticed that the rattle of hail had stopped. The storm was over. Then, lower down, she could see the bright green of leaves in sunshine. A hedge, maybe? A road?

She caught the glint of wire. A fence. The trail led right up to it and through into the long grass beyond. A huge, rough-textured oak tree stood just to the right, its bark green with algae.

She ran up to the fence, panting hoarsely and bent to climb through.

Then screamed as an arm darted around her waist and snatched her off her feet.

‘Come here!’

CHAPTER 4

Traffic was queueing into the city on Heavitree Road so Jane turned left out of the station.

‘You look a damn sight better than you did last time I saw you,’ she said as she changed up through the gears.

July, Pete recalled. Annie’s tenth birthday. Jane and Dave had called round to give her a little something from the team and to let him and Louise know the latest on Tommy’s case. Not that there had been much news to pass on. ‘Yeah, well. I hadn’t been sleeping too well for a few weeks by then.’ He’d lain awake for hour after hour every night, getting up two or three times a night. Sometimes he would stand in Annie’s doorway and just watch her sleep. Other times, he would wander the house, check the doors and windows or go to his office and sit at the computer, trying whatever he could think of in a search for clues – anything that would tell him where Tommy might have gone.

‘It showed. You looked like you’d done five rounds with Frank Bruno.’

Pete grunted. ‘Thanks. Back to my normal, handsome self now, am I?’

She slowed, indicating right. Gave him a brief laugh. ‘Don’t know about that, but you certainly look a bit more normal than you did then.’

‘That’s all right then. Wouldn’t want to frighten the punters.’

She made the turn into a side street lined on both sides with parked cars and accelerated again.

‘So, come on. What’s the latest on Tommy?’

She glanced at him, meeting his gaze for an instant before returning her eyes to the road ahead. Sighed. ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s like he vanished into thin air.’

‘Except people don’t. He went somewhere, somehow.’

She took a left turn, working her way through the back streets towards the home of the Whitlocks. ‘Well, yeah. But, how are we supposed to find out where and how if he wasn’t seen?’

Pete sighed. This was not a discussion to be had with Jane. It wasn’t her problem. It was Simon Phillips’. But, one thing he was certain of – there was no way the Whitlocks were going to suffer months of the same agony that he and Louise had. Not if he could help it. Whatever it took, he would find their daughter.

‘Here we go.’ Jane turned at another junction and drove slowly until she spotted the right number on a gatepost.

‘Blimey, they ain’t poor, are they?’

The house was set in its own neatly manicured grounds behind a high, thick hedge.

Jane turned in through high wooden gates that already stood open and parked in front of the double-width garage.

‘You never been round this way before?’ Pete asked as they stepped out and made their way to the front door.

‘Don’t get too much crime up here, do we? And you know me. I come from the other side of the river.’

Pete laughed. ‘Well, that’s closer than me. Only money round Okehampton is the old kind. Manor houses and the like.’ He reached for the bell-push, but hadn’t touched it when the door opened to reveal a man in shirtsleeves and smart trousers.

‘Detective?’

‘DS Peter Gayle. And this is DC Bennett.’

‘Come in. My wife’s through there.’ He stood back and indicated a door to the right of the big hallway.

They went into a large, bright sitting room where Mrs Whitlock sat on one of three cream sofas, a barely touched cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of her. In her thirties, blonde hair held back from her face in a chignon, Pete could see that she was a woman of natural style and beauty, despite the haunted look she wore now.

Her husband followed them in and sat beside her, taking her hand. ‘Please, have a seat. These are the detectives, Jess.’

She glanced up, clearly in shock.

Pete took the sofa at right angles to theirs. ‘Pete Gayle. This is Jane Bennett. We just need to establish the facts of the situation, then we’ll get out of your hair.’

‘Please. Ask us anything,’ Alistair said. ‘Just . . . find her, Sergeant.’

Pete took out his notebook and saw Jane doing the same. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Now, we only have what you told my colleague on the phone, so… We need to build as full a picture as we can.’

‘Why? Surely, it’s not Rosie’s fault she’s gone? What can we tell you that’ll help find whoever took her?’

‘If she’s been abducted, rather than gone off on her own . . .’

‘Of course, she hasn’t gone off on her own,’ Whitlock snapped over him. ‘She has no reason to. She’s perfectly happy at home. And at school.’

Pete raised his hands. ‘As I was saying, if that’s the case, then whoever took her would have probably at least seen her before. It may well be someone she knows or someone you do. Or, if it was random, then one of you may have seen something out of the ordinary. Perhaps an unusual vehicle on the road out there.’ He waved towards the street. ‘Someone hanging around when you picked her up from school or in town. Anything.’

Whitlock squeezed his eyes shut and tilted his head back for a moment. ‘I’m sorry. Where should we start?’

‘We’ll need a picture of her. As recent as possible. Mrs Whitlock, you took her to school this morning. Is that usual?’

She looked up, a dazed look in her hazel eyes, took her hand back from Alistair and clasped them in her lap. ‘We share the job. Sometimes I do it, sometimes Alistair does.’

‘All right. Which way did you go? As much detail as you can, please.’

She shook her head slightly. ‘The same way as always. Left at the end of the road, bear right then turn right by the junior school. It’s really not that far. We only drive her because she’s never up in time to walk.’

‘Did you see anything out of the ordinary along the way?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing. It was just an ordinary morning.’

‘No one following you, perhaps?’ Pete pushed. ‘An unusual vehicle parked nearby when you got there? An accident or roadworks?’

‘No, there was nothing. As I said, just a normal morning. I dropped Rosie barely a hundred yards from the school gates. There were mothers and kids everywhere, just like always. I pulled away and . . .’ Her face crumpled and she covered it with her hands as she burst into tears. Her husband put an arm around her shoulders and held her.

Pete recalled Louise’s similar reaction in this same situation, just a few months ago, and his own seething need to stop talking and get out there, searching for his child. Emotion swelled like a lump in his chest. ‘I’m . . .’ He coughed and cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Whitlock. But this is very necessary. You didn’t see anyone you knew when you got there? Stop for a chat, maybe?’

She took a deep, shuddering breath and shook her head. ‘As I said, I dropped her off, pulled away and went on to work.’

As she took out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, Pete turned to her husband. ‘And if you take Rosie to school, you go the same way?’

‘Yes.’

‘At the same time?’

‘Of course.’

‘And when you realised she was missing, you phoned her friends?’

‘Yes. That was my first thought. Maybe she’d gone home with one of them. She doesn’t have any evening activities on a Tuesday. But they said they hadn’t seen her all day.’ His voice seemed to clog. He swallowed.

Instinctively, Pete was inclined to believe the couple. They gave every appearance of being genuine and honest and, having been in this same situation himself, just a few months ago . . . Or was it that that made him feel this way? He was going to have to work hard to maintain his objectivity on this one. ‘Evening activities?’

‘She swims at county level. Loves tennis, too.’

He nodded. ‘We’ll need a list of her friends. Has she got a boyfriend?’

Jessica looked horrified while Alistair shook his head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Mrs Whitlock?’ Pete pushed.

‘No. Good Lord, she’s only thirteen.’ She looked about to crumble again, but held herself together somehow.

‘Of course. But, kids these days – you never know, do you? We also need to know about anywhere she goes regularly. Like for the tennis and swimming. Anywhere she goes with friends. Or with you or other family members.’

Alistair shook his head like a man confused by what was happening around him. ‘She goes into town with her friends, like all teenage girls, and she has school and her sports. That’s it, apart from the occasional party or sleepover and the usual family stuff.’

Pete nodded. ‘If you could make us a list of her friends, with their contact details, and where she goes to swim and play tennis, then, sir.’

‘Right.’ He got up and stepped out of the room.

‘Does she have a favourite place, Mrs Whitlock? Somewhere she might feel safe?’

‘What? Why?’ She looked confused.

Pete shrugged. ‘We have to allow for every possibility.’

Alistair came back into the room, a small beige book and a notepad and pen in his hands. ‘What’s this?’

‘I was asking if there’s anywhere Rosie might consider special. A safe haven. Favourite place. Anything like that.’

Alistair shook his head. ‘We’ve never . . . Why would she need a place like that?’

‘You’d be amazed at what goes on in kids’ heads,’ Jane said. ‘She doesn’t have any history of depression or anything like that, does she? Mood swings beyond what you’d expect from a teenage girl?’

‘No. Certainly not.’ Mrs Whitlock’s eyes grew wide with outrage.

Alistair sat down and took her hand again. ‘She’s just a normal teenager.’

‘What about school?’ Pete asked, thinking of his son, Tommy. ‘Is everything OK there? No undue pressure? Exams coming up?’

Jessica shook her head.

‘Has she been bullied at all? At school or perhaps online?’ Jane asked. ‘All this twittering and Facebook, chat rooms and so on.’

‘She’s not into that kind of thing,’ Alistair said. ‘She uses her mobile a fair amount, texting and chatting with her friends, but that’s all as far as I know. And she’s not bullied. She’s very popular, by all accounts.’

‘We’ll need her computer, tablet, whatever, just to make sure,’ Pete said. He’d still never seen Tommy’s again after all this time, he remembered suddenly. He’d have to ask Simon about that. ‘I expect she had her mobile with her?’

‘Yes,’ Jessica said softly. ‘But it’s switched off. Goes straight to voicemail. That was the first thing we tried when I came home.’

‘OK. We’ll need the number then, and the service provider. I take it it’s all right for us to check the call log?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you, sir. You were already home?’

‘Yes. I worked from home today. I’m a lawyer. Look, is anyone actually out there searching for Rosie, Sergeant?’

Pete paused, writing in his notebook, then looked up again. ‘As soon as we have somewhere to search, we’ll be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, sir. But we need all the information we can get in order to get to that stage. What other relatives are there?’

They glanced at each other and he spoke again. ‘We both still have our parents. I have a brother, Jason . . .’

Pete noticed a faint grimace cross the woman’s face.

‘. . . Jess has a sister, Penny. Penny Child. She’s divorced, but she’s kept her husband’s name.’

‘So, she’s single now?’

‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘She’s got a boyfriend. Michael Gibbons. They’ve been together – what?’ She glanced at her husband. ‘Two years or so? But what’s this got to do with anything? None of the family would have—’

‘And that’s it?’ Pete broke in.

‘Family-wise, yes.’

‘Right. We’ll need a list of contacts – family, friends and colleagues, even if they don’t know Rosie.’

Alistair frowned. ‘Why?’

‘For elimination and for cross-reference. People forget things, don’t notice them, do notice them. You’d be surprised. Tell you what, you’ve got your little book there. While you do that for us, would it be OK if you made us all a drink, Mrs Whitlock? Jane can give you a hand.’

‘OK,’ she said, looking a little surprised by the request. ‘I’m sorry. I should have offered before. It’s just . . .’

‘We understand.’ He nodded to Jane to go with her, then waited until Jessica had led the way out of the room. ‘Jane.’ He got up and went to the door, stuck his head through and said quietly, ‘Ask her about her brother-in-law. And if the girl’s all right around her father as well as anyone else you can think of. Grandfathers, friends.’

‘Right, boss.’

‘What was that about?’ Alistair asked as Pete returned to his seat.

‘Oh, just something I remembered at the last minute. How are you doing?’ He glanced down at the notebook on the coffee table in front of the other man.

‘Coming along.’

‘So, you’re a lawyer. What kind of law do you practice?’

‘Corporate, Sergeant. Company takeovers, property purchases and sales, staff disputes, that sort of thing.’

‘Big money involved at times then.’

‘Yes. But it’s the client’s, not ours.’

‘Nevertheless.’ He glanced around the room. ‘You’re obviously not on the breadline.’

‘And, Sergeant?’

‘Well, one of the things we have to consider in these circumstances is the possibility of kidnapping. For ransom.’

‘What?’ He stopped writing as he stared at Pete in shock. ‘I’m just a West Country lawyer, not some big City banker. Why on earth would that kind of thing affect me?’

Pete shrugged. ‘You never know, sir.’ In his own case, Simon had looked not just at ransom, but at the influence someone might want Pete to bring to any of the cases that were being worked at the time. ‘You haven’t received a demand of any kind?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘If you do, you will tell us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Only, very often, these things include a proviso that you mustn’t contact the police. It’s never a good idea to go along with it. It’s aimed at isolating you, making you more vulnerable, that’s all.’

‘As I said, Sergeant, we’ve heard nothing from anyone. And, if we do, we’ll be sure to inform you.’

Pete nodded.

Alistair leaned back in his seat. ‘Anyway, why are you – a sergeant – handling this? I thought an inspector would have come out.’

‘That’s the TV and the movies, sir. In the real world, especially these days, with all the cutbacks, there’s usually only one DI in a station, if that. And he or she’s in a more supervisory, management-type role than an active investigative one. They allocate cases, oversee progress and chip in if we ask them to.’

‘I see.’ He resumed writing, resting the pad on his raised knee.

‘So, you were at home all day?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t hear anything from the school, asking why Rosie hadn’t turned up, anything like that?’

‘No, they . . .’ He sat forward again. ‘It’s not like your average comprehensive, Sergeant. They assume the students have some level of responsibility. They allow them a day for sickness before chasing them up.’

Pete grimaced. He’d never heard of a school treating its students like that before. Maybe a college or university, but not a senior school. ‘OK. We spoke about her mobile and so on. Do we have your permission to check on your landline and Internet provider, too?’

‘Of course. Anything that’ll help find Rosie, though how they might is beyond me.’

‘The more information we have, the better.’ Hopefully, the records would allow him to verify Alistair’s whereabouts for at least part of the day without needing to ask him directly at this stage. That could come later, if it proved necessary – statistically, the majority of missing kids were missing because of something a parent or close relative had done, but, at the same time, he knew how distressing that kind of suspicion could be. He remembered answering these same questions five months ago, from Simon Phillips. How he’d seethed to get out there, do something – anything – towards finding Tommy instead of wasting time, answering damn fool questions.

Jane opened the door and held it for Mrs Whitlock to come through with a tray, which she put on the coffee table.

‘Great. Just what we need,’ Pete said, as she handed him a cup and saucer.

‘Thanks, Jess. There we are, Sergeant. Rosie’s mobile number is at the top. Our home line. Then you have my parents’, Jessica’s, my brother’s, her sister’s, Rosie’s school. Her best friend is Becky Sanderson. We spoke to her earlier. You’ve got the numbers there for our tennis club, King’s, plus Northbrook swimming pool, which she uses at this time of year because the outdoor one at Topsham is closed, my office and Jessica’s school. The other ones are just friends of ours. Purely social. From uni and so on.’

‘Excellent. Thank you. That should speed things up considerably.’ He took a sip of his tea. ‘So, she uses Topsham pool when it’s open?’

‘Yes.’

Tommy had enjoyed swimming, too, but he had never bothered with the open-air pool. Had preferred to stick to the indoor one in the city – where he’d been waiting for Pete to pick him up on the evening when he’d . . . Pete sucked air in through his teeth, breaking the chain of thought. ‘One thing I would say. I don’t know how – it baffles me, even after all these years – but it never takes the press long to get hold of things like this. My strong advice, for now, would be not to say anything to them. Just in case. As soon as we’ve established there’s no reason not to keep things quiet, we’ll probably call a press conference ourselves and involve you both in that, if you’re up to it. It keeps things under control a bit, that way. Less intrusive, at least to start with.’

‘Why wouldn’t we want to talk to the press? Jessica asked. ‘I’d have thought . . .’

‘In case she was kidnapped,’ Alistair said before Pete could reply.

‘What?’

‘It’s unlikely,’ Pete said gently. ‘But if she was, and the press are already involved, that might not be a good thing.’

‘Oh my God! I hadn’t even thought of that. You mean, if it gets out they might . . . ?’

Pete held up his free hand. ‘As I say, it’s only a faint possibility. It’s just one of the things we have to consider at this stage.’

Clearly, the missing girl was desperately loved. Pete felt the old determination building inside him. He wasn’t going to allow these people to go through what he and Louise were going through. He would do his level best to bring their daughter back alive and well, whatever the odds.

‘God, this is unbelievable. It’s just so awful!’ She looked as if she was going to break down again.

‘I’m sorry. I know how you feel, Mrs Whitlock, and—’

‘Don’t be so bloody patronising,’ Alistair snapped. ‘How the hell can you possibly know how we feel?’

‘Sir, I . . .’

‘Has your daughter ever gone missing, Sergeant?’

Pete felt himself go pale, a wave of coldness sweeping through him.

‘DS Gayle lost his son in similar circumstances, just a few months ago, sir,’ Jane said stiffly. ‘So he knows exactly how it feels. I don’t, but he does.’

‘That’ll do, Jane,’ Pete said softly.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘Yes, well . . . As DS Gayle was saying, we’ll do all we can to find your daughter and bring her back safe.’

*

Lauren woke in complete darkness, snuggled tight against the warm body of another person. For a brief moment she felt safe and cosseted. Then the smell of the hay brought her back to reality with a jerk. Who was this other person? Another girl. She smelled feminine. Lauren could feel her long hair, a skirt and bare legs against her own. Where had she come from? She tried to ask, but there was a gag in her mouth. She moved to free it but her hands were tied behind her with something thin and hard. Shifting in the hay, she found her ankles were bound too. Shit, they really meant business now.

‘Iss OK.’

The other girl tried to say more, but was clearly also gagged.

‘Uh-huh.’ Lauren swallowed, but it went the wrong way and she began to choke and cough. She heard the other girl trying to say something through her gag, but couldn’t make it out. Then she moved in the darkness. Lauren felt hands brush against her clothes. Her choking was getting more urgent as she fought for breath. The other girl’s hands fumbled blindly, moving from her cardigan to her blouse to the knee-length sock that was tied across her face as a gag. She felt the gag being pulled away and stiffened her neck, pulling back to help. The knotted cloth snapped free and she was coughing and gasping.