Dead Heat (30 page)

Then the phone rang. It was Tara Wickson.

‘Henry?' Her voice was dithery. ‘Henry? Please come and help me, I don't know what to do.'

He struggled into an upright sitting position, not sure if he had been to sleep.

‘What's the matter, Tara?' he asked blearily.

She was panting.

‘What's the matter?'

‘I'm standing here . . . in the kitchen . . . I've got a shotgun and I'm pointing it at Jake Coulton and I'm going to kill him . . . I'm going to kill the bastard . . . and then I'm going to kill that bastard of a husband of mine.'

Henry was suddenly very awake. ‘Whoa . . . come on, cool it, calm down, Tara,' he said. ‘Tell me what's going on . . . Keep calm . . . Keep rational . . .' As he was talking, he was racing upstairs, throwing his dressing gown off. He needed to get dressed and keep her on the phone, talking . . . because while she was talking, she wasn't pulling a trigger. He tried hard to recall some of the tips from his hostage negotiator's course, but his mind was pretty much a blank. He lurched into the bedroom and switched the main light on. Kate groaned, shielded her eyes from the glare and sat up, looking astonishingly annoyed and puzzled at the same time.

With the cordless phone to his ear, he shuffled himself into his discarded shirt.

‘Now keep calm . . .' he was saying again as he tried single-handedly to get into his jeans. He could not be bothered with underpants. ‘Tell me what's going on.'

Charlotte Wickson, wedged down behind the front seats of the Bentley, cried as she was driven away from the disco, feeling as though she had been abandoned by Henry and her mother, who had sent the dislikeable head of security to pick her up.

Jake Coulton threw the big, heavy car sharply around corners, braked hard, deliberately so as to make the ride as rough as possible for the recalcitrant teenager behind him. He heard her groan and gasp and felt good about it.

‘You shoulda sat in the seat.'

‘Fuck off,' she said.

He sneered and stopped at a set of traffic lights. He glanced over his left shoulder.

Something inside him moved.

She was wearing a very skimpy skirt, revealing her long thin legs, and a short, cut-off top that displayed her belly button. She wore little else. White knickers, high heeled shoes and make-up.

He dropped his left hand back between the seats. It came to rest on her side, in the gap between her top and skirt. Her skin was cold and goose-bumped.

His fingers slid upwards.

An electric-like jolt shot through her. She stiffened as she realized what was happening and twisted away from him.

‘Get off me, you sick bastard!' she yelled. She scrambled on to the back seat and huddled deep in a corner, as far away from Coulton as possible under the circumstances.

He laughed savagely.

The lights changed and the car surged through. Coulton grated his teeth, his nostrils flared and that something inside him grew even more. It was something he knew he had to respond to.

He drove out of Blackpool towards Poulton-le-Fylde, wondering how and when it could be. He reached up to the roof of the car and switched on the interior light. He could now turn his head round and leer at his passenger, who, with her legs drawn up defensively, was actually displaying more to him that she wanted to.

‘Where's my mum?' she demanded. ‘She should've picked me up, not you.'

‘Who gives a fuck where she is, the slag? I'm here and that's all that matters.'

‘I hate you,' Charlotte said through fingers that were covering her face.

‘And I care?' he said, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and half an eye on the road. He threw himself back over the seat and grabbed Charlotte's arm.

She screamed and kicked out. The huge car swerved and he almost lost control of it as it veered across the road. But he kept going and also kept hold of Charlotte. He pulled her to the gap between the front seats and tried to drag her through it. She writhed and fought against him and broke free, scrambling to a position directly behind him, out of his reach. She tried to open the door. It was child-locked.

He cackled and put his foot down, now driving along the main road past Poulton. It was a long, straight stretch of road and the car's speed increased dramatically.

‘You know your dad hates you, don't you?' he shouted.

‘That's not true, that's not true!' she cried.

‘Because you're not his. You're a little bastard.'

‘I'm not. No, I'm not.' Her head was in her hands and she sobbed pitifully. Her make-up, so carefully applied several hours before, was streaked around her face. She had hoped the drugs she'd bought would have taken her up on a higher plane. They'd had no discernible effect on her whatsoever, she thought.

‘Your mum's a slag and you're a bastard,' Coulton almost chanted manically.

‘No!' she screamed.

He laughed. ‘No one cares about you, not even Mummy. But I do, Charlie, I care about you.'

She held her hands over her ears. She did not want to hear this.

‘I'm all you've got.' The car slowed as they reached the outer limits of Poulton. ‘And I'm going to show you how much I care, how much I love you.' He reached a set of traffic lights where he turned right into Lodge Lane towards the village of Singleton.

Charlotte sank further back in the plush leather seats. ‘Where are you going? Where are you taking me?'

‘Somewhere nice and quiet where we can chat.'

‘Take me home,' she ordered him. ‘Now.'

‘You can't tell me what to do, Charlie. I'm in charge here.'

He turned off Lodge Lane into a dark side road.

‘I'm going to blow his head off.'

‘
No!
. . . no,' Henry said more quietly. ‘Not till I get there at least,' he begged. ‘Just wait, just wait for me, Tara . . . I'm coming to help . . . I'll be there soon.'

Kate had very quickly picked up that the situation was desperate and had helped Henry to get dressed, so that he was able to keep on the phone. She pulled his trainers on and fastened them.

The disturbance had also woken the girls and, slightly frightened and disorientated by what was going on, they stood sheepishly at the door of their parents' bedroom in their night attire.

‘I've got to, I've got to . . . I'm going to do it . . . Fuck, I'm going to do it,' Tara said hysterically.

‘Just take a breath, count to ten,' Henry instructed her with an authoritative voice. He could actually hear her inhaling, then starting to count. He put his hand on to the silent button on the phone so Tara would not hear him. ‘When I hang up, will you call Jane Roscoe? Her number's in the phone book downstairs. Tell her I'm on my way to the Wicksons', OK?'

Kate nodded.

‘. . . eight . . . nine . . . ten!'

‘Well done,' Henry said, back with Tara. ‘Now then, Tara, will you do something for me?' He stepped out of the bedroom, hurtled downstairs. ‘Will you?'

‘Do what?'

He dashed into the kitchen and unplugged his mobile phone from the charger and switched it on.

‘Tara, I'm going to hang up very, very briefly and I want you to do the same.' He looked at the display on his mobile as it searched to register. It seemed to be doing it exceptionally slowly. He hated mobiles. ‘Keep hold of your phone, because I'm going to call you back immediately from my mobile phone, OK?' Then he had a very fundamental thought. ‘You are on your house phone, aren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Tell me the number,' he said. His mobile was still scanning the airwaves, getting nowhere. He had Tara's home number programmed into the phone, but he didn't want to lose her just because his phone would not pick up a signal. She recited the number for him. ‘OK, right, got that . . .' At last his phone locked in. ‘Right, after three, put the phone down and I'll ring back straight away, got that?'

‘Yeah.'

‘One . . . two . . . three.'

He waited for her to hang up before he did, handing the phone directly to Kate who was now downstairs with him. Leanne and Jenny – bedraggled, uncomprehending and beautiful, the pair of them – stood behind her.

As he dialled Tara's number he said quickly, ‘As you can gather, she's got a shotgun and she's pointing it at somebody's head.'

His mobile rang out Tara's number. It sounded out for ever.

‘Come on,' he said, searching for his car key. ‘Come on.'

At last she picked it up.

‘Tara – you OK?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is everybody else?'

‘At the moment,' she replied ominously.

‘Good – keep it that way. I'm just leaving the house now and I'll be with you as soon as I can. It might feel like a long time, but it will only be a short time, so c'mon, let's keep talking.'

It was violent, brutal and terrible.

Coulton was on her as soon as he stopped the car in the dark lane.

Charlotte struggled and kicked and scratched and bit and screamed, but she was no match for him. He was strong, agile and determined, driven by the inner demon which was unstoppable. She was, as the saying goes, only a slip of a girl; a girl who was drunk and drugged and was not functioning correctly.

She had no chance and Coulton gave no quarter.

He laughed as he forced himself into her, hurting her severely.

She could do nothing. The only good thing was that it did not last long, but afterwards he lay on top of her on the back seat, almost suffocating her, panting and moaning into her ear. She lay, trapped, sobbing.

When he pushed himself up, he looked down at her in disgust.

‘What the fuck's up with you?' he sneered. ‘It's only what your dad does to you, isn't it? Oh, sorry, but he isn't your dad, is he?'

He slid off her, got out of the car and walked round it, tucking himself in, readjusting everything. He bent in and looked at her. She was still crying, with body-rattling blubs. She had not moved, had not tried to cover herself up. ‘By the way, you're a shit shag.'

He got back in behind the wheel.

‘And by the way, too, if you tell anyone about this, you're dead,' he threatened over his shoulder. ‘You're dead and I'll dispose of your body so you'll never be found.'

He laughed cruelly.

Charlotte curled up into a ball again and began sucking her thumb.

‘The dirty fucking bastard.'

The tone of Tara's voice had changed. As she related the sequence of events that night to Henry, she became more agitated, especially as she recounted the rape of her daughter as it had been described to her.

‘He's the one who's going to die, not my daughter.'

‘Calm down, come on,' he soothed her, ‘calm down.' He was driving with one hand on the wheel, juggling the mobile phone as best he could – as ever it was a motorist's nightmare that new mobile phones were too tiny to wedge between shoulder and ear. ‘You're doing really well, Tara.' He hoped he did not sound patronizing. ‘He actually doesn't deserve to die––'

‘Yes, he does.'

‘No, no, listen,' Henry said quickly, trying to make his point. ‘If he dies, he gets away with it. Don't you see? Killing is too good for him. He won't suffer. It would just mean that you are down at his level, can't you see that, Tara?'

She made no reply.

‘So let's do it the proper way,' Henry cooed. ‘Let's just make sure that he gets to court and gets convicted and goes to prison for a long, long time. Shame the bastard.'

‘I want him dead.'

‘No, come on, that's not the way to do it.' Henry realized he wasn't getting through to her. He changed tack, deciding it was better to give her no alternatives. ‘Look, we need to get him convicted, OK? That's what we're going to do, Tara. Put him up in front of a court, expose him, show him up for what a bastard he is and there's some things you can do to help with that . . . First of all, is Charlotte all right?'

‘She's been raped. How can she be all right?'

‘I think you know what I mean . . . is she there in the house with you?'

‘Yes . . . yes, upstairs . . . God, I want to pull this trigger . . . I want to see his face get blown to pieces.'

‘I know you do,' Henry said. ‘I understand that, but you phoned me for help, so whatever you do, Tara, wait until I get there. I have to talk to you, face to face, OK?'

No response.

‘OK?' he pushed.

‘Yes . . . yeah . . .'

‘Right, what you've got to do is this,' he started. ‘Make sure that Charlotte doesn't have a bath or a shower or a wash.'

‘Why?'

‘Evidence . . . I'll explain it when I get there. And make sure she keeps the clothing to one side she was wearing when she was attacked. We'll need that, too.'

‘Right.'

‘Hold on, I've got to put the phone down one moment.' Henry was approaching a roundabout and felt he needed both hands on the wheel, particularly at the speed he was travelling. He lay the phone on the passenger seat, negotiated the roundabout and cursed when he saw the phone slide across the seat, away from him. He made a grab for it, missed, and it dropped down between the passenger seat and the door.

‘I do not believe this,' he said with frustration.

Coulton drove Charlotte home in the Bentley. He made her sit in the seat alongside him. She complied numbly with the instruction, now beyond thinking or reacting in any way to him. She sat there in an almost catatonic state, staring blankly ahead whilst Coulton touched her legs and arms as he drove. His hand ran up her skirt, he tweaked her breasts, then grabbed her right hand, pulled her across and forced her to put it into his trousers.