Death Watch (2 page)

She'd glanced down at the watch on her wrist, and seen that it was nearly three o'clock.

They'd been in the park for nearly an hour. Surely that was plenty long enough, and nobody could call her unreasonable if she took Freddie home now?

She'd looked at the watch again, and felt a pang of guilt. Her mum and dad had given her that watch for her thirteenth birthday, and she'd known – though they'd never have told her themselves – that it had cost more than they could actually afford. So what kind of daughter was she, then, to resent doing a little for them in return?

‘Was it you who abandoned that poor little kitten in the bushes?' an angry voice behind her had asked. ‘It was, wasn't it?'

She'd turned to face her accuser. ‘What kitten?'

‘Don't come the innocent with me,' the man had said harshly. ‘You're all alike, you young girls. You treat animals as if they were no more than playthings, and when you've finished with them, you just cast them aside.'

Angela had not been frightened of the man. Why should she have been? Unlike many of the men who hung around the park, he was smartly dressed, and even his rage was understandable, given the crime he obviously considered her to be guilty of. In fact, rather than unsettling her, his anger did quite the reverse.

It showed he cared.

It showed he was a decent person.

The man's annoyance had drained away and had been replaced by, what seemed to Angela, to be an expression which was a mixture of shame and embarrassment.

‘Sorry, love, I shouldn't have flown off the handle like that,' he'd said. ‘I should have seen right away that you're far too sensitive and grown up to have done anything so wicked.'

‘Yes, it is wicked, isn't it?' Angela said, and though her face had still registered a real concern for the kitten, her insides were glowing at the compliments the man had just paid her.

Grown up! she'd thought. He says I look grown up.

They'd both fallen silent for a while, then Angela had said, ‘So what happens now?'

‘Now?' the man had repeated, as if he'd had no idea what she was talking about.

‘To the kitten?' Angela said.

The man had shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose the kindest thing would be for me to go back into the bushes and wring its neck.'

Angela had felt a shudder run through her.

‘Kill it?' she'd said, half-hoping that the man had meant something else entirely.

The man's face had mirrored her concern. ‘I know that sounds horrible, but it'll all be over in a second. And in the long run, it'll be a kindness.'

‘But … but I thought there were shelters where they took care of homeless animals.'

‘So there are. But the last I heard, they were all full to bursting, so even if I take her in, all they'll do is put her to sleep.'

‘She's a little girl, is she?' Angela had asked.

The man had nodded. ‘But it's best not to think about that. As I see it, there are only two alternatives: either she's put out of her misery now, or she's left where she is until the rats find her – and I certainly wouldn't wish that on the poor little thing.'

He was wrong about there only being two alternatives, Angela had thought. There was a third, and though it would involve an awkward scene with her parents, she was fairly confident she could pull it off.

‘I could take the kitten home with me,' she'd suggested.

The man had looked doubtful. ‘You're sure about that?'

‘Yes,' she'd said.

And suddenly, she had been. She'd known that her friends would laugh at her – say she'd gone soft – but she didn't care. Though she had yet to even see the kitten, she had already fallen in love with it.

‘Well, I suppose that would be one solution,' the man had admitted, almost grudgingly. ‘But I don't see it working myself.'

Then he'd turned, and walked quickly away from her.

For a few moments, Angela had stood rooted to the spot, not quite understanding what had happened. A minute earlier, the man had been so friendly and sympathetic. Now he seemed to have no interest in what they'd been talking about at all.

It was almost as if he didn't want to be seen with her!

By the time she'd recovered herself enough to follow him, he'd already disappeared into the rhododendron bushes, and she'd had to run to make sure that she didn't lose him completely. But there was no danger of that. As she'd reached the bushes, she'd seen that the man was standing in a small clearing with his hands behind his back, waiting for her.

‘Where's the kitten?' she'd asked, in a panic. ‘You haven't … you couldn't have …?'

‘No, she's fine,' the man had assured her. He'd nodded his head towards one of the bushes. ‘The poor little thing's over there.'

She'd wondered briefly why he'd made the imprecise head gesture, instead of pointing with his finger, but then she'd caught sight of a blaze of colour under the bush, and she was lost.

She'd rushed over to the bush, and squatted down. ‘Here, Kitty-kitty,' she'd crooned softly. ‘Come to Angela. I'll look after you.'

But the kitten had made no attempt to either come to her nor run away. It hadn't flinched – hadn't seemed to move even a muscle.

What's wrong with it? she'd wondered. Had the man lied to her when he'd said the kitten was fine? Had he already wrung its neck, even as he was speaking those reassuring words?

‘And what happened after that?' she asked herself now, her eyes still tightly closed, her body as still as the kitten's.

What had happened after the little creature had refused to respond to her?

She didn't know, she realized with true horror!

She couldn't
remember
!

DC Beresford led DS Paniatowski into a small clearing in the middle of the rhododendron bushes.

‘This must be where he grabbed her,' Beresford said.

‘You're sure there's a “he” involved?' Paniatowski asked.

Beresford nodded gravely. ‘Look down there.'

The ground just beyond them was already close to being winter-hard – two or three degrees away from frozen – but even so, the struggle which had occurred had left its impression on the earth. Paniatowski examined the heel marks – some small enough to have been made by a child, others the definite imprint of a larger and heavier adult.

The sergeant glanced over her shoulder. This clearing was almost completely hidden from the rest of the park, she noted, which was why – of course – it had been chosen.

‘What's that?' Beresford asked, pointing to something lying at the base of one of the rhododendrons.

‘A handkerchief?' Paniatowski guessed.

But when she bent down to pick it up, she discovered that it was much thicker than a hankie – that it was, in fact, a pad of surgical gauze.

She lifted it to her nose, and sniffed at it gingerly. It reminded her of her rare and reluctant visits to hospital – and dealt the final death blow to the possibility that the mystery of Angela Jackson's disappearance would have a happy ending.

‘Look what else I've found,' said Beresford, who had been searching under a second bush.

And when Paniatowski turned towards him, she saw that what he was holding in his hand was a fluffy toy which vaguely resembled a real cat.

‘Do you think this has anything to do with the abduction – or is it just something a kid dropped here?' the detective constable asked.

‘It could be either,' Paniatowski said.

But the odds were heavily in favour of it being what the kidnapper had used to distract the girl, just before he drugged her.

‘Hang on,' Beresford said. ‘I think there's something else down there, as well.'

He bent down again, and what he retrieved this time was a lady's wristwatch.

It was a fairly expensive timepiece, Paniatowski decided, which argued for it belonging to an adult rather than a child. On the other hand, it had a rather modern look about it, and it was hard to imagine it on the wrist of a matronly woman.

She took a closer look. The leather strap, from which Beresford was suspending it, was broken, and the glass which covered the face had been smashed. The hands of the watch showed it had stopped at two minutes past three.

‘Do you think it's the girl's?' Beresford wondered.

‘It has to be,' Paniatowski replied.

She stepped through the gap between the two rhododendrons – brushing away the overhanging branches with her hands – and found herself standing at the edge of the car park.

The kidnapper had planned it well, she thought. Once he had lured the girl into the bushes, it would have been simplicity itself to dope her and then carry her to a waiting vehicle.

She was still standing there when the old Wolseley arrived on the car park. The driver – a big man wearing a hairy sports coat – had his foot pressed down hard on the accelerator, and for a moment it looked as if he was intent on smashing his vehicle into the line of parked cars. Then he slammed on the brakes, the engine screamed in protest, and the Wolseley came to a shuddering halt.

‘The boss is here,' Paniatowski called back through the bushes to Colin Beresford.

There was no physical reason for Angela not to have opened her eyes, yet she still had not chosen to do so.

There was something rather comforting about the darkness, she told herself.

Or rather, if she was being honest, there was something frightening about what might lie beyond it.

And so, instead of taking the big step of finding out where she was, she began with smaller ones – first moving her fingers and then twitching her toes. But even before she had started to make these simple movements, her body had already started telling her things.

It had informed her, for example, that she was lying down.

But not on a bed.

On something very hard and very cold.

She became more experimental, stretching her legs and feeling the surface below her with the tips of her fingers. There was nothing to stop her doing this – no restraints, no obstacles. Perhaps, she decided, now was the time to start looking around.

The first thing she saw when she allowed her eyes to open was the light. It was a long neon tube, fixed to the ceiling, and it crackled occasionally. For a while, it mesmerized her, but then she grew bored with it, and decided to expand her vision of the world.

She raised herself up on one elbow, and looked around her. She was in a room with no windows – a room in which the floor and walls were made up of dusty grey concrete. There was a metal door in the far wall, and the second she noticed it, her heart leapt and she was on her feet and rushing towards it.

The surge of hope did not last long. There was no handle on the door, only a keyhole.

And she did not have the key!

She made her hands into fists and banged on the door. Then, when that seemed to have no effect, she kicked and kicked until her toes were bruised and aching. And all the time she was screaming at the top of her voice.

‘Let me out of here. Please let me out of here. I want to go home.'

But nobody answered.

T
he cafe in the corporation park had been designed to cater for thirty customers, with space for another sixty on the outside terrace, but the season when it would be comfortable to sit on the terrace had long since passed, and all the potential witnesses to the Angela Jackson abduction had therefore been asked to go inside.

No one was happy with this arrangement. There were not enough chairs for all the adults to sit down on, and no room at all for the children to play. The kids were growing increasingly bored and restless, the grown-ups puzzled, concerned, and frustrated – and as the windows began to steam up, tempers were becoming frayed.

The arrival of the big man in the hairy sports coat did not seem to offer an immediate solution to the problem, but at least it promised the possibility of a little variety, and when Woodend finally spoke, he had everyone's full attention.

‘I must apologize for keepin' you here for so long, an' I can assure you that as soon as you've made your statements to the officers, you can leave,' the chief inspector said.

‘What's this all about?' demanded a young woman whose headscarf did not quite conceal the row of plastic curlers around which her mousy brown hair had been wrapped.

‘There's been an “incident”,' Woodend said heavily.

‘Meaning what?'

‘Meanin' just what I've said.'

The woman put her hands aggressively on her hips, which was no mean feat, given the limited amount of space available to her in the crowded cafe.

‘My husband will be home in half an hour, and he'll be expecting his tea on the table when he walks through the door,' she said.

‘Then you'd better get yourself off now, then, hadn't you?' Woodend countered.

The response had clearly not been what the woman had expected, and it knocked her a little off balance. ‘
Can
I go?' she asked, somewhat subdued. ‘Just like that?'

‘Of course,' Woodend replied. ‘Why not?'

‘Well, I thought …'

‘Let me tell you somethin', love,' Woodend said in a voice which anyone who knew him would have read as a danger signal. ‘There's a family in this town right now that's experiencin' a heartache that I hope an' pray you never have to go through yourself.'

‘You never said anythin' about—' the woman began.

‘In fact, their whole world's collapsin' around them,' Woodend interrupted her. He paused for a second. ‘But whatever else is happenin' – however much anybody else is sufferin' – you'll have to make sure your husband gets his tea on time, won't you?'