Burnt (22 page)

From what he could see as he scanned the vehicle, there wasn't any blood – a good sign. The car had been locked when they found it – another good sign. At least she wasn't attacked in the car. But what the hell was she doing out here at the cemetery in the middle of the night? And who sent her that text?

Seb turned around to face the sea of gravestones and a shudder ran through him at the images he tried unsuccessfully to block. The older detective, Shackleton, approached, eyeing him curiously.

‘I hear you're in the SAS?'

Seb gave a curt nod, his eyes falling on a point in the distance as he battled with painful memories.

‘Real-life Rambo, huh?' the second detective chimed in cynically and Seb turned his flint-like gaze on the man. There was something about his tone that Seb didn't like.

‘If you've got something you want to say, spit it out.'

‘Hey, I was just sayin',' he said, holding up his lily-white palms in a gesture of surrender. ‘I've heard about you guys; trained to kill people with nothing more than a matchstick and your bare hands.' His beady eyes narrowed. ‘Surely a woman wouldn't be too difficult to get rid of?'

Seb scoffed at the man's attempt to get a rise out of him. Did this guy honestly think anything he said or did could make him quake in his boots? He'd survived the SAS selection course – there was nothing this overweight paper-pusher could do to scare him now. Maybe when he'd been eighteen and shredded to emotional pieces … Seb clamped down on that train of thought. He wasn't a grief-stricken teenager anymore.

‘Tough guy, huh?' Crantz scoffed. ‘Well, let me put something to you, Taylor. Here's what I think could be one possible scenario. Ms Whiteman and – oh, I don't know, maybe an old flame? – had a bit of a lovers' tiff and he freaked out and lost his temper. Maybe his training kicked in and he reacted automatically – fatally.'

‘You think I'd be
undisciplined
enough to overreact to a lovers' tiff?' Seb asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow.

‘Maybe your discipline didn't count on old guilt rearing up to bite you on the arse? What happened? Did she bring you out here to reminisce about old times – was this a local make-out spot?' He smiled a sickly, wolf-like smile.

Seb concentrated on breathing, not reacting. In. Out. Let them yell in your face until they're done and shout back, ‘Yes, sir!' His mind repeated the automatic mantra that got him through basic.

‘Or was meeting out here your idea? Lonely place, no witnesses.'

‘You know, if you put half as much effort into actually looking for clues as you do in thinking up this crap, we might actually be able to find her,' Seb snapped, irritated by his obvious attempts to get a rise and frustrated that precious time was wasting.

‘Mr Taylor.' Shackleton, the older detective, stepped forwards, interrupting smoothly. ‘Can you think of any reason Ms Whiteman would have come out here? Was it something she would normally do?'

‘Her college said she received a message from me. We told all this to the constable at the station.'

‘I'm trying to work out why a woman would agree to come to a place like this. Would that have been a normal request? Are you two into … this kind of thing usually?'

Seb dragged his unyielding glare from Crantz to Shackleton and eyed the stockier man steadily. ‘I don't
know
what the message said. It wasn't
from
me.'

‘The people across the road said the car had been here since at least yesterday morning. No one saw it arrive,' the constable said, coming back to the group after he'd knocked on a few of the doors of the houses that lined the street opposite the cemetery.

‘So it could have been here late Tuesday night, early hours of Wednesday morning, after she left work,' Detective Shackleton said. He turned to Seb. ‘Any idea where she may have gone?'

‘I can't see her coming here alone, and not in the middle of the night. But if she did come out here for a reason I can take a guess where she went,' Seb said in a tight voice. He didn't want to go there.

Crantz smirked. ‘How about you show us?'

Clenching his jaw, Seb walked through the graveyard, his gaze focused on the spot in the far corner. He made himself concentrate on each step of taking apart and rebuilding his M4 carbine assault rifle – anything to take his mind off the approaching destination. It had to be his imagination, but he could swear he heard the same depressing tones of ‘Danny Boy', floating through the air just as it had that day by the graveside. He still hated that damn song.

Slowing his steps, he approached the grave and waved a hand towards the statue of the small angel on top of a white slab of granite. ‘This is it,' he muttered, his gaze tracing the engraved details on the headstone listlessly.

‘Regan McDonald,' Shackleton read aloud. He turned his questioning gaze onto Seb. ‘Why would she come here?'

‘This is an old school friend. They grew up together.'

The detective gave a brief nod and turned back to the grave. ‘Okay, we need to take a look around. Fan out and do a search line up and down these rows around here. Look for anything that doesn't belong.'

Seb took a step back and got out of their way. Standing with his legs braced slightly apart and his arms folded firmly across his chest, he watched silently as they worked.

‘Sarge. Over here.'

Seb turned towards the excited call and felt something like a grenade drop to the pit of his stomach; he braced himself for the explosion. He found himself following the police officers to a far gravesite, the growing apprehension inside making his gut churn.

‘Okay. Hold up here, Taylor,' Crantz ordered as Seb stopped just shy of the grave. Compared to most of the others, this one was meticulously maintained. No weeds grew around the base of the stonework. The flowers were fresh, not dried and morbid, or stuck in old Vegemite jars with the remnants of stagnant water drying around the edges, like most of the other graves he'd passed. He tried not to look at the name etched in the stone. If he didn't read it, maybe it wouldn't be real, and it would just stay a horrible nightmare.

‘Constable, set up a crime scene. No one goes any closer,' Shackleton ordered.

Seb's gaze snapped to attention. On the grass next to the grave was a dark stain. Seb had been around war and destruction long enough to recognise dried blood when he saw it, and from the look of this, there was a lot of it.

Detective Shackleton was already on his phone. ‘I want forensics down here – now!'

‘Taylor, you need to get back. This is a crime scene,' Crantz snapped.

‘What the hell's going on? You need to get in there and see if there's anything else to go on. Christ, if that's her blood we have to find her, fast.'

‘No one is going in there to look for anything until forensics gives the okay. Now go home – we'll be in touch if we need any more information.'

‘No bloody way. You guys brought me down here. I'm not going anywhere until you get some answers.'

‘And right now, you're getting in the way of us doing our job – so go home,' Crantz said. ‘But don't leave town just yet, GI Joe. We might need to call you down to the station for some questions.'

Seb headed back to the farm. His first instinct was to break into Rebecca's house and look around for any clues she might have left behind, but he managed to stop himself. The cops were taking Bec's disappearance seriously, and would be swarming over her place soon enough.

What the hell was going on? Where could she be? And more disturbingly, why was there blood around Marty's grave?

Rebecca sat in the dark, her head throbbing and her hands tied securely to a pole in front of her. It took her a few minutes to remember what had happened. The last thing she remembered was trying to run and cold, sharp rocks beneath her cheek.

Beneath her now was dirt. Tilting her head back carefully to try to lessen the insistent pounding behind her eyes and the nausea in her stomach, she could make out the high tin roof above her. As her eyes got used to the dark, shadows began to take shape and she made a better assessment of her location: she was in a storeroom of some kind, or a shed.

She slowly got to her knees, barely maintaining a tenuous hold on her stomach contents. Her hands were secured around a pole that went from the floor to the roof, with no hope of sliding her tied hands up and over. In fact, they were tied quite tightly and she was unable to move them freely in either direction.

She struggled for a while, tugging and pulling at her bonds to no avail. Her wrists were sore; she could feel them burning from the friction she'd created trying to loosen the rope, and with a frustrated growl, she rested her head against the cold metal of the pole and fought to stop the renewed nausea her exertion had caused. In an attempt to take her mind off her physical ills, she tried to make out any sounds that might give her some clue of her whereabouts.

There was nothing, just the gentle whisper of the wind as it blew through trees somewhere in the distance. She frowned, trying to piece it together. You only heard that sound when you were near the creek.

She tried to get a better look at her surroundings. She was obviously not in town, so whoever was responsible must have brought her out to a farm somewhere. As far as she could make out, the shed didn't look familiar. A tarp covered something that resembled a piece of machinery in the far corner and there were lots of old drums stacked around her, smelling strongly of leftover diesel and pesticides.

The flash of memory, that instant of fear that struck her as she'd seen the look of pure venom on Charles Green's face, made her shiver all over again. She recalled the few times she'd seen him since coming back home, and the only time that really stood out was at the hospital the night they brought in his mother. Rebecca tried to recall anything odd about him – anything that may have warned her that he was a psychopath, hell-bent on killing her, but nothing came to mind. He'd seemed polite, quiet – almost meek. Surely if he'd been stalking her he'd have shown some kind of animosity towards her at the hospital? What had she missed?

A shuffling noise outside alerted her to someone approaching and her breath froze in her lungs. A blinding shaft of sunshine hit her in the eyes as the door was thrown open and she squinted at the silhouette in the doorway.

‘I was hoping you'd still be out.'

He stepped further into the shed and Rebecca caught a glimpse of his face. It was twisted in a grimace, a mask of hatred. Charles Green. Any hope of rescue faded.

‘Why are you doing this?'

‘You really have no idea? None?'

Fear such as she'd never known before sliced through her and Rebecca fought to hold on to her common sense. She needed to keep him talking to neutralise the situation. The trick was finding a way to do so without antagonising him further – not easy with someone who seemed this unstable.

‘No. I don't.' She spoke slowly and calmly.

‘You make me sick,' he spat, taking a step forwards. ‘You have the
nerve
to come back to town and flaunt your life in front of everyone. How do you think my parents feel, seeing you and your kids laughing and enjoying life, when their child is dead and cold in the ground? How do you think they
feel
?' he yelled.

Just stay calm
, she told herself. He was obviously suffering some kind of mental illness. Knowing the family he came from, it'd probably been untreated all his life. His mother wouldn't have dared gone behind her bully of a husband's back to seek medical intervention for Charles if she'd suspected there was something wrong, and Jock Green would be too self-absorbed to even notice his youngest son wasn't quite right.

‘I didn't mean to flaunt anything; I came back to Macksville because I wanted to be with my family. I certainly didn't do it to hurt anyone.'

‘You
enjoy
making sure everyone knows how happy you are. I've seen you – I've been watching you for a long time, Rebecca.'

‘The phone calls,' she said slowly as things began to fall into place.
The open window
. ‘You were in my
house
.' She was unable to hide the anger in her tone.

He seemed to be enjoying the fact that he'd managed to unsettle her. ‘I know everything about you, Rebecca.'

She felt violated. This man had been inside her house, touching her things. He'd been in her children's room. She felt ill at the thought, then outraged. ‘That was you that day. Outside my house, talking to my
children
.'

‘I was just saying hello. I would never hurt them, Rebecca. I like kids.' He shrugged.

He just enjoyed kidnapping and murdering their parents. Well, that was comforting; nice to know he drew the line somewhere.

‘Charles, please, if you like kids, then you have to realise what you'll be doing to them by doing this. Kids need their mother.'

‘They'll just figure out, like I did, that their mother didn't put them first. Look at you! You're like a bitch in heat over Taylor. I've seen him sneak away from your house, lookin' all smug and happy with himself. I know what you two were doin' in there.
Slut
.'

She swallowed the sting of his insult; she needed to control her anger and disgust and try to establish some kind of connection with him if she wanted to get out of this.

‘Your mother loves you, Charles. She just didn't know how to get out of her situation.'

‘Shut up! You know nothing about my mother.'

‘I know she is worn down and frightened.'

‘She never cared what happened to us.' He spat the words with so much venom that Rebecca felt
the hatred radiating from him. ‘She let that bastard beat us every damn day and did nothing. What kind of mother lets that happen? Then after Marty died, she didn't even care about herself any more. I sure as hell didn't exist. I'm glad the old bitch is dead.'