Chasing Innocence (26 page)

The genesis. He found her as soon as he could, when he was nineteen. His father begged and pleaded in his final moments, directing him to the sprawl of Malaysia’s gateway city. Simon found her there, possessed only of a woman’s charm and by a man and a child of her own. His life then shaped by choices and their consequences, a life of searching for a ghost as his needs evolved.

He submitted now to his need and drained the last of the glass, padding across the landing into the spare room. He checked the bed was neatly made and crease free, then to the bathroom. He double checked the window was secure, rinsed the glass and stepped out of his shorts and naked into the shower, his body pitted by shadow amid the weave of muscle, a body that drew endless female eyes but had never known the caress of a woman.

He washed and rinsed and towelled himself dry, pulling chinos over his nakedness, a clean T-shirt down over his wide shoulders, tight and white. He checked the bathroom window a final time then padded down the stairs, through the dining room and living room to the hallway, into the garage, the concrete cold under his bare feet, the need raging through his veins, the dark inside dancing the light fandango.

FORTY-EIGHT

A row of chimneys spewed smoke to a sky made pink by the glow of city lights beneath it, gradually growing in the horizon as they approached Cleethorpes. Adam pulled into a floodlit forecourt and refuelled while Brian hunted down a local streetmap. Then they both hunched over a small table eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, the map open between them. The address Simon Thompson had left in Peterborough was real. At least the road existed. Brian outlined his plan. He would check the house at the address while Adam searched the internet for everything he could about Simon Thompson.

Twenty minutes later they were driving towards a brightly lit pub jutting proud from the promenade. Two roads ran parallel, one rising high above the other, separated by a steep bank of grass that was home to seats, steps and a dormant crazy golf course.

Adam turned at a roundabout and descended to the lower road and the seafront, pulling into a vacant space. They both looked out at the dark void, the light picking out shallow valleys of wet sand, the distant waves crested white in the horizon. Adam wound his window down and was instantly assaulted by the buffeting air and ocean roar, the smell of the sea. He wound it back up again.

Brian buttoned his jacket. ‘This is as good a place as any. Sit tight and compile as much data as you can. Make sure you keep the doors locked and if anyone gives you reason, get out of here and call Boer. He’ll know what to do. Same goes if I’m not back in a couple of hours.’

He climbed out and Adam followed. Brian pulled open the boot and reached inside for his kit bag, producing a dark rubber torch that he slid between his belt and jeans. Then a pitted rounders bat that he pushed up his jacket sleeve. Adam watched, wide-eyed, but said nothing. Brian cast him a sideways glance. ‘I’m only going to look. This is just in case anybody looks back. Don’t worry about me.’

Adam was not worried, not for Brian. He watched him pull a small leather pouch from the bag, which was pushed into the chest pocket of his jacket. Then Brian winked, slapped him hard on the shoulder and jogged off along the promenade and up the grass rise. A small figure chased by his own shadow.

For a time Adam stood still, the buffeting breeze comforting, letting his thoughts run free. The horror of the last few hours was slowly giving way to a barely suppressed anticipation. Was this the place? He checked his expectation, trying not to hope yet that he might actually see Sarah again, that this might end with smiles.

He climbed back into the car and locked the doors. His face bathed in green light as his laptop booted. He waited for a connection to the internet but it failed. He tried moving the laptop around in the car, onto the passenger seat and dashboard, but still no signal. He looked out at the promenade and late night dog walkers struggling with flapping coats, realising there was probably little call for wireless internet in the North Sea. He deliberated while staring at the ocean, then set the laptop back on the passenger seat and reversed, starting back along the promenade.

FORTY-NINE

Simon dropped a mat onto the floor beneath the workbench and sat on it, his arms out behind for support and the soles of his feet against the wall, his legs bent. He braced himself and channelled his strength through his hips, pushing through his thighs. The door weighed 150 kilograms and sat on a metal plate and four rollers, set in two shallow gutters cut into the floor. It took over 200 kilograms of force to roll the door out and start it into the room. It was designed specifically so only he or machinery could open it. Only he, Hakan and the brothers even knew it was there.

His breath quickened and his face reddened as he pushed through his legs. The door shifted, then gradually rolled into the room. When there was a sufficient gap he pivoted around and braced his shoulder against the opening, extending his arm and jacking the concrete sideways. When it was fully open he shuffled back into the garage and squatted, regaining his breath while peering beneath the workbench into the dark of the room.

The moonlight from the garage window helped his eyes adjust, slowly defining the shapes inside. The woman was sitting on the floor, facing him with her back against the wall. On the mattress lay the sleeping girl, a small outlined shape, her hair splayed. Now he could make out the woman’s features, could see she was staring sentinel right back at him.

‘Go away,’ she said from the dark.

‘Turn the light on,’ he said.

‘I can’t,’ she replied. ‘You turned off the power, you know that.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

A brief pause. ‘Well it doesn’t work now.’

He deliberated and then backed out from under the bench, pulled closed the garage curtains and went back to the hall. He switched on the garage light and squatted down again. The small room was still shadowed by the bench, so he swung it around to one side. Now he could see.

The woman had moved, was now much nearer the opening with one knee on the floor. Like a sprinter waiting, her arms loose at her sides. The garage light cut a harsh contrast with the shadow across her body.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘You’re not taking her.’ Her voice was quiet and calm.

‘Who says I’m here for her?’

‘What else would you be here for? To apologise for the stale food, or that she even has to be here? “I’m sorry I kidnapped you but it’s all your daddy’s fault.” You’re sick.’

‘It’s true,’ he replied.

‘No it’s not, Simon. It’s bullshit.’

‘And you know this?’

‘I know enough of your sort. The lies you justify everything with, the consuming need.’

He shuffled closer.

‘Get away,’ she said. Her back arched as if under starter’s orders.

Intrigued, he moved again. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Sarah. I will not hurt the girl. I just need to talk to her. Don’t make me hurt you.’ His voice was edged with a genuine sadness that lost her, delaying her reaction for a fraction of a second. He was almost through the opening before she realised and launched herself forward, sweeping with her right hand towards his throat and stabbing at his ribs with the left.

The suddenness and the speed of her attack threw him, her lips drawn back from her teeth and a cold determination in her eyes. He did not see the glass in her hands until it passed through the shards of light. The glass bowl. He barely had time enough to reflex his left arm in defence, protecting his throat, the glass slicing a deep tear across his forearm, another sharp pain across his right side and again into his ribs as her momentum brought her crashing with a snarl into him.

He tried grabbing both her wrists as she repeatedly stabbed the glass at him, finally grasping them and pushing her hard back against the wall, dropping his shoulders to protect himself from the immediate jabs of her knees and feet as she screamed and fought. He squeezed her wrists until she dropped the jagged glass, now smeared with blood, both her palms supine, bloody and cut deeply. She seemed so fragile, so full of venom, shouting as she kicked and kneed him, her teeth biting into his shoulder as he moved in too close. She was no match for his strength but it was like wrestling three people at once. He filtered it, damped out the noise, the fury and the pin pricks of pain as he fought for control. Every ounce of her was invested in the fight and then he realised why.

Invested in distracting him, her mouth forming the same word over and over;
run, run, run
. He looked across at the child, now just the bundled blanket. He looked over his shoulder and to the child standing behind him, wide-eyed and rigid against the wall, next to the opening. Seeing his attention fix on her jolted her, and she scrambled out through the gap and disappeared into the garage.

Sarah immediately locked her legs around him and hung onto his body, trying to pull him down. But it was futile. He prised her loose and did what he should have done already. He brought his hand down hard across her face, but even then he pulled back from the blow. She lay motionless, a sudden peace. He spent a moment studying her, wondering and then he heard the child sobbing, frustrated as she tried to open the front door, the noise fading as she disappeared through the living room and nearer the keys, although what were the chances she would find or even reach them? He propelled himself backwards, through the opening and across the garage.

As soon as he disappeared Sarah started after him, blinking at the garage light, her face throbbing, adrenalin causing her to stand unbalanced and fall sideways, glancing painfully off the workbench. The girl screeched somewhere inside the house.

She ran through the garage and hall, living room and into the dining room. She ignored Simon with his back to her, bearing down on the girl now desperately trying to open the patio door. She focused only on finding a phone, she had seen one, was almost ready to sprint up the stairs when her eyes set on the bureau.

The girl turned to face Simon, backing against the patio door, sniffing and looking at Simon then past him to Sarah as she plucked the phone from its charger and stepped into the living room. She turned her back to him, hunched protectively as she pressed the green dial button, a tone as Simon rounded on her, not daring to look, sensing him loom, fingers pressing 999 as quickly and carefully as they dared. Knowing he was almost on her as she bowled the handset underarm through the living room, skimming across the carpet, through the door into the hallway, coming to rest by the boots and shoes. The orange screen lit up. She turned to face him but he crashed through her, pushing her down and away with his arm, catching her ribs with his rising knee, jarring her teeth and cutting her lip. She tasted blood as she rolled to her feet and ran straight back into the dining room, hearing him now in the hall.

The girl stood petrified. Sarah shouted for her to move as she gave her attention to the wooden chair. The girl jumped to the kitchen entrance. The chair sat in its place beside the bureau, the chair she had been tied to. She picked it up and spun like a hammer thrower, sweeping the chair around and into the glass of the patio door. The force made the door judder and a crack, the chair breaking apart in her hands, the momentum taking her around and despairing. She faced the door and kicked at it with the ball of her foot. The glass flexed but remained as it had. And then Simon filled the dining room doorway. She heard him and turned to face him, bending down and picking up a length of broken chair from the floor. She said to Andrea, in a low voice, ‘Upstairs.’ And then she ran at him.

Simon was not sure what to expect next, this certainly was not it. She came at him fast in a shallow arc, like a gymnast it occurred to him as she took a final stride and leapt straight at him. And she hit him hard. It was like catching a forty-five kilo medicine ball fired from a machine, he did it but it unbalanced him. He staggered back with Sarah’s legs like clamps around him, jamming the length of chair across his throat, forcing him to take another step back and down onto one knee.

Andrea watched her ride Simon to the ground. Sarah had drilled her, what she should do. Try the front door, quick places to look for keys, the patio door and if they both failed run upstairs, open a window and scream. Sarah had repeated that over and over, first as she eased the screws from the bookshelf and then as she scratched away at the glass bowl. It had scared Andrea, Sarah’s determination. At the same she realised everything Sarah was doing was for her, just as the fury Sarah invested in the fight scared her too. But then Andrea had no understanding of the consequences of failure. She flinched as Simon plucked Sarah off him and tossed her aside. Then she ran, three rapid steps onto the landing and then up the main flight.

Sarah’s shoulder took the brunt of the impact as she hit the wall below the living room window, immediately turning as Simon struggled to his feet, staring at her incredulously before bounding up the stairs after Andrea.

Sarah ran straight into the kitchen. She had not been here before. It was square and minimal, small because part of it was the hidden room. She flung open drawers, looking for keys while grabbing at anything remotely sharp. Her hands smeared blood across everything she touched. Her eyes lit upon a knife rack and she immediately discarded everything else. She heard Andrea squealing upstairs, sounds that in any other house might be of joy if not for the terror permeating the noise. Sarah’s short list of options were being crossed off in rapid succession.

That Simon would come for the girl had seemed inevitable. When he did, she knew it would not be the gentle Simon who had studiously cleaned her wounds. It would be the addict she would face, full of need. She could not let him take Andrea then, any more than she would let him take her now. Right now she needed him to come into the kitchen. She reached across to the knife rack and pulled out a paring knife, a boning knife and then a large carving knife, laying them beside each other on the counter as his heavy footsteps descended the stairs.