Human Remains (46 page)

Then from upstairs, footsteps and a sudden roar. ‘NO!’

Colin came crashing through the pantry to the door at the top of the stairs, the light went on and the room flooded with light. I closed my eyes tight at the sudden brightness, and even though Audrey whimpered again I realised he’d turned away almost immediately and a few moments later I could hear him calling from what must have been outside, ‘Where are you? Audrey! Come back!’

Now what? I couldn’t think straight. Try to get Audrey up the stairs? Try to get through the front door, assuming he hadn’t locked it? He would be back long before then. If he had any sense, he would get himself away from this place quickly.

I reached for the vase and held it up to Audrey’s face. In the light, despite her eyes still being screwed shut, I could see that she was pretty. Her face was dirty, streaked with grime and tears, her eyes hollow and her skin pale.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘drink this – slowly.’ She gulped at it, and I had to hold it away from her, her fingers clutching, fumbling for the vase. ‘No, slowly – you’ll make yourself sick. Just little sips.’

It was too late to move now: he was back inside. I heard more banging and crashing upstairs, then the floorboards creaking over our heads as he moved through the house. I could hear noises as though he was throwing things about, knocking things over.

Audrey’s face creased with panic. I felt her fear, her panic.

‘Don’t be scared,’ I said. ‘I’m here. I’ll protect you.’

On the divan lay the flat-handled screwdriver. Had he seen it? I leaned Audrey against the wall and put the vase on the floor, then ran to get the tool.

‘What have you done?’

From the top of the stairs, the sound of Colin’s voice, so calm, so unexpected, made me freeze where I was. I hid the screwdriver in my hand, palming the handle up inside my cardigan. Maybe he hadn’t seen it.

‘What have
I
done?’ I replied, surprising myself. ‘What have
you
done? You were keeping her prisoner!’

‘Where is she?’ he said, and to my surprise he sounded so sad, so distraught that I realised he hadn’t seen her. But she gave herself away, reaching for the vase, knocking it over on to the stone floor with clumsy fingers and crying out as the water spread out around her.

‘Audrey!’ He came down the stairs two at a time and went to her, as though he was going to hold her, embrace her, and then stopped short as she shrank away from him. He seemed to recover himself then and he stood upright, turning to me.

‘Yes, well… she’s been through a lot. She needs time.’

‘Without food or water? You were waiting for her to die?’

‘I wouldn’t hurt a fly, Annabel. You know that.’

He took a step towards me, then, and I stepped back and my calves hit the edge of the divan. I looked up the stairs and wondered if I could make it quicker than he could.

‘Let us go,’ I said, trying to summon up a tone of voice that suggested confidence and authority.

‘You’ve tried to make a fool of me.’ He sounded angry now, frustrated. He took another step forward.

‘Don’t come any closer!’ I said.

He laughed, he actually laughed then. ‘What, you think I’m scared of you, Annabel? Why should I be? All I’ve done is try to help. That’s all I’ve ever done.’ He was close enough now to touch me, and he put his hands on my upper arms as though he was going to shake me, or embrace me, or push me over. His touch was firm, his hands warm through my cardigan which was still slightly damp from the rain.

‘Don’t touch me,’ I said, but quietly.

‘You need to take some deep breaths, Annabel,’ he said. ‘Calm yourself down.’

Behind him, Audrey was trying to pull herself up to a standing position. He glanced round at her, and laughed then at her efforts as she fell to one side, grunting with the strain of it. In her hand, gripped at tight as she could manage, was the ceramic vase.

‘You planning to hit me with that, are you?’ he jeered. ‘Poor Maggie. That might be her favourite vase.’

I forgot about the screwdriver and when I moved it fell out of my sleeve and on to the floor. Something took over. I twisted out of his grip and leaned back and brought my fist up and round and hit him as hard as I could on the side of his head. With it came a roar of rage and indignation, fuelled by terror at what he might do next if I gave him long enough to think about it.

He let out a noise of surprise, almost a yelp, as he spun backwards and lost his footing, falling to his hands and knees, then holding his cheek with one hand. ‘Ow!’ he said. ‘What did you do that for?’

I clearly hadn’t managed to knock him unconscious.

Audrey held up the vase. She was sobbing, her arm over her head and flailing as though the vase weighed ten times what it did. Colin was looking up at me reproachfully and she let her arm fall. The vase hit him across the temple and in the same moment I was thinking
She hasn’t got the strength, what’s she going to do, tickle him with it?
– he went down like a stone. Flat on his back, head to one side.

Audrey gasped, then laughed breathlessly. She sounded hysterical.

‘Christ,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think you’d hit him that hard.’

She was sobbing now, slumped back on her heels, and I stepped over Colin and went over to her and put a hand on her shoulder to provide some comfort. Then I sat down next to her and we held each other, both of us crying.

‘We need to get out,’ I said. ‘Can you walk, do you think?’ I tried to get her to her feet, her legs wobbling underneath her.

Using the wall for support, I half-dragged her up the steps and into the daylight outside the pantry. There was a man outside the back door, a member of a search team by the look of the uniform. When he caught sight of us his eyes widened and he shouted something I didn’t catch, and then more people came and they took Audrey from me and someone I didn’t recognise started asking me questions.

I said, ‘He’s down there,’ and then I couldn’t say anything else because I was sobbing with it, the retrospective fear. What had I done? What had I even thought I was doing, coming here with him in his car?

They walked me round through the weeds to the front of the house. There was an ambulance and several police cars and unmarked cars, as well as Colin’s Fiesta, parked outside the door. And, right at the back, Sam’s car.

As I went towards him I tripped over a loose slab on the pathway and fell forwards on to my hands and knees. Strong arms either side lifted me up as I said, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as though it was my fault, and my knees were scraped and bleeding. I wiped the grit off my hands on to my cardigan, still damp from the rain earlier. My palms were stinging.

‘Are you alright?’ Sam said, when he got to me. He took my hands in his, looked at the palms and blew on them gently.

‘I just tripped,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant… God, I’m just so glad to see you.’

He put his arm around me and we moved into an awkward hug. He was patting my shoulder. I stepped away, conscious of my grubby clothes, my still-damp cardigan covered in dirt and dust.

‘I tried to get here as fast as I could,’ he said. ‘I lost you on the main road. And then I got hold of DI Frost and after that it all happened really quickly.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘He was having kittens. I’ve never heard him like that. He’d just read your email. When I told him you’d gone off with Friedland it sounded like all hell broke loose.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s on his way. Look, can you please not do anything like this in future? I’ve never been so bloody scared in my whole life.’

‘You weren’t the one in the car with him,’ I said. ‘Why the hell were
you
scared?’

‘I thought he was going to kill you.’

I thought about the body on the sofa, wondered how long she had been there. How long Colin had been visiting her.

‘There’s another body,’ I said. ‘I think she’s been in there a long time. He called her Maggie.’

‘I don’t want to make things difficult for you, Annabel, in the circumstances – but you do realise you put the whole investigation at risk?’

I looked at Paul Moscrop’s fingers, both of his hands flat on the desk in front of him, spread out as though he were trying some sort of supernatural table-tipping experiment.

The table didn’t move.

‘That wasn’t my intention, sir.’

‘Not to mention your own life.’

‘Well, I thought you’d have had him under surveillance.’

He had no reply to that, of course. The teams had, as Jenna Jackson had told me, been deployed to another division.

‘Of course, without your analysis we might not have found Audrey Madison in time. But nevertheless, you are not a trained investigator. You’re not even working in Major Crime. You put yourself in a position of grave danger and I can’t even begin to think of what might have happened if you’d got things badly wrong.’

‘I know.’

I looked up briefly at Bill, who was pretending to read the top sheet of the folder open on the desk in front of him. His cheeks were red, whether from embarrassment or the warmth of the room it was difficult to tell. It being early December, the heating in all the police stations across the county was at full blast. It was stifling in here.

‘The CPS have been trying to decide whether what you did constitutes entrapment.’

‘You can tell them I went temporarily insane if it will help,’ I offered.

‘I don’t really want to be here, you know, Annabel,’ he said then. ‘If it were up to me I’d be giving you a medal. What you did was incredibly brave, and very, very stupid.’

‘I won’t do it again,’ I said.

‘Good.’ He even managed a tiny hint of a smile. ‘I think we should finish there – everyone in agreement?’

Bill looked relieved and nodded; the woman from HR who had a face that could turn milk gave me a glare but nodded her assent to the DCI. The union rep looked pleased with herself. I was hoping that was a good sign.

Sam was waiting for me in the café where we’d had our first meeting, which felt like years ago but was only just over two months.

‘How did it go?’ he asked, when I put my bag and coat over the chair opposite him.

‘It was all over in twenty minutes. I thought it would be longer than that.’

‘What did they say?’

I kept him in suspense for a little while longer while I went to the counter and got us both another drink.

‘They’re going to phone me when they’ve reached their decision,’ I said, sitting down.

‘They should be giving you some sort of good citizen award, Annabel, not putting you through all this stress. How’s Audrey?’

Audrey was staying at her parents’ house for the time being. To my surprise, as well as hers, probably, we’d become quite good friends. Physically she had recovered well, but she was not sleeping and was suffering from regular panic attacks. Not having to worry about going to work while I was suspended pending the disciplinary investigation, I had been visiting her every day. Sam had come with me once or twice, but we could both tell that Audrey wasn’t comfortable with him being there.

‘Vaughn phoned while I was there.’

‘Oh?’

‘He wants to go and see her. She’s not having any of it.’

‘I guess she probably blames him, somehow. Poor bloke. Bad at choosing his friends.’

This morning she had been dressed, in jeans and a T-shirt that was too big for her, but it was still a step up from the grubby dressing gown. She’d washed her hair.

‘Wow,’ I’d said. ‘We going out somewhere?’

She’d looked briefly panic-stricken, and then she’d smiled at me. When she smiled, she looked so different. She was the sort of girl who would have been way too cool to associate with me at school, or at work, for that matter. She would have been friends with Kate and the rest of them, and would never have paid me any attention. When I’d thought about that, I’d asked her mum if she really thought Audrey wanted me to come round and visit, or if she just felt sorry for me.

‘Oh, no,’ she’d replied. ‘Please don’t stop coming. Audrey’s completely in awe of you. She says you’re the bravest and strongest person she knows.’

‘Audrey’s not too bad,’ I said to Sam. ‘She was even dressed today. I’m hoping she’ll want to come out of the house soon.’

‘That’s good news. Has she said any more about what happened?’

She had told me some of it. I knew Sam wouldn’t print anything about it unless he had permission to do so, although he was desperate to do it. It was almost as though he wanted to take his revenge on Colin using the best method at his disposal. But he was silenced by his own moral code, and by the fact that printing the details of Audrey’s captivity would prejudice a future trial.

‘She’s getting there. She needs time.’

He had tried to do whatever it was he did to me – hypnotise her, brainwash her, whatever it was – but it hadn’t worked, he’d had no mental control over her and so he had kept her locked up. She’d felt as though she was being disposed of. She had been afraid of closing her eyes and sleeping, in case she woke up to find him there. Or in case she never woke up at all.

Sam drank his cappuccino, recognising that I wasn’t going to say more. ‘So, when they ring you, is that the end of it?’

‘I guess so. Either I get the boot, or I go back to work.’

‘Well, at least it means you can come on holiday with us. If you’re back at work tomorrow you can put in a leave request, can’t you?’

He’d been pressing me on this for the last fortnight. They were going to stay in a cottage in Devon for a week over the Christmas period, booked last year. Only two bedrooms, but Sam was going to sleep on the sofa if I came along. I needed a holiday, Irene insisted.

What I need is to go home and start sorting out my life,
I thought.

‘I really don’t think I can come with you,’ I said. ‘It’s a very kind offer. But I have so much I need to do. And I can’t leave Audrey.’

‘As you said, she’s getting better. One week won’t make a difference. Everything you need to do will all still be here when we get back.’