Innocent Hostage (24 page)
“Thanks Stella. I’ll be in touch.” Then Breck turned to Hull. “This address that Angela gave. Let’s go there.”
****
As they drew up outside Angela’s house, Breck noticed a silver Taurus in the driveway. It was the one that had been parked along the road from the preschool on the day he’d seen someone watching the school. He peered inside. The checkered rug was still on the back seat but this time it was folded. There didn’t appear to be anything beneath it. He said as much to Hull who was intrigued with Breck’s sleuthing. “Don’t know why you didn’t join the detective division before. You’ve got the right mindset.”
“Obsessive attention to useless details, you mean?”
Hull grinned. “Something like that.”
“Don’t know if I’d be quite so obsessed if it didn’t involve Kit and Ingrid.”
As they approached the front door, they separated. Hull went around the back while Breck waited for the other two team members to arrive. The house was in darkness. Street lights reflected on the windows and Breck could see that none of the blinds or curtains were drawn. He began to doubt there was anyone inside. God, he so wanted this over. He wanted to hold Kit and Ingrid in his arms again, keeping them safe. He sure as hell hadn’t kept them safe so far. Were they inside this house?
Two figures loomed out of the darkness. The other team members had arrived at last. One was carrying something that looked like a tomahawk.
“Hull is around the back,” Breck whispered.
For an answer, one of the men held up his cell phone and pointed to it. They were already up with the play.
The cop with the phone marched past Breck and banged on the door. “Police! Open up.”
Nothing. Not a whisper.
He banged harder.
Still nothing.
Breck’s stomach dropped away. Not with disappointment. With fear. If they didn’t catch up with Tania and Kit and Ingrid soon, God knew what would happen to Ingrid. Then his thoughts scurried to a standstill. What if it wasn’t Tania who’d taken them away? What if it was Angela? Bad twin or good twin? Which was which?
A splintering sound cracked the suburban quiet as Hull and the police constable hacked their way through the back door.
“They’ve been here,” Hull said as he opened the front door. “But it’s not a crime scene. All of you look around. Find out where they’ve gone.”
Breck took the staircase in big strides. There were two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. In the small bedroom he found a stuffed toy that didn’t belong to Kit and a pile of bandages. A wet towel speckled with blood lay in the sink. Had someone dressed Ingrid’s wound?
He reported to Hull who was poking around in the kitchen. Hull nodded. “They can’t be more than fifteen minutes ahead of us. The coffee in these cups is still lukewarm. Two cups.” He turned on the two cops. “
Find
something, anything. Hurry!”
“At least at this stage Ingrid and Kit are still alive,” Breck muttered.
Hull said nothing.
Breck opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Oh, Christ. Hull thought that they might have been alive fifteen minutes ago, but he obviously didn’t hold out much hope about how long they’d stay alive.
“I can’t give you false hope, Breck,” he said gruffly. “We don’t have any idea of the sort of people we’re dealing with here. The whole scenario is warped—a sort of good versus evil. Sure, it looks as if one sister is holding the other back, but for how long?”
“Sir?” One of the constables held out a small piece of paper. “I found this on the bottom stair, and there’s another piece just inside the back door.”
So much for being the great detective. In his anxiety he’d run right over it, Breck thought to himself.
But it was he who found the next piece of paper, at the end of the paved garden path leading to a small gate tucked away in an unkempt hedge. On the other side of the gate was a narrow lane, not wide enough for a vehicle. Hull stopped them from going any further by yelling “Halt!” like a drill sergeant. “From herein we use SOCOs. Someone’s leaving us breadcrumbs.”
From Alice and Wonderland to Hansel and Gretel. But this was no fairy tale. “We’re wasting time,” Breck said through gritted teeth. Well, he wouldn’t interfere with their scene, and there were other ways around this.
He peeled off from the group and jogged around to the front of the house. Running along the sidewalk, he kept parallel to the lane as much as possible. When he came to the intersection where the lane met the sidewalk he paused. Now what? The streetlights lit up the walkway clearly and he could see right to the open gate at the end of Angela’s garden. Tall shadows stretched through the gateway on to the lane where the team waited for the SOCOs to arrive.
Too much waiting. Always waiting. Ingrid? Kit? His heart thumped and strained and it had nothing to do with his short sprint down the sidewalk. He hunkered down, forcing himself to slow his breathing.
And there it was, right at his feet. Another breadcrumb. They had come out of the laneway and crossed the street. He stood. He should call this in. He should. If he stuffed this up, he’d lose everything.
The clock in his brain ticked on inexorably.
Was Tania watching him even now? One sister could take Ingrid and Kit while the other kept a lookout. Except that wouldn’t fly. Ingrid and Kit together would be too much for one person. Ingrid might be sweet-natured, but she was a fighter. She’d already proved that she would fight not just for herself, but also for Kit.
But Kit…what would Kit do? Would he automatically obey his mother, or would he try to protect Ingrid? He thought his mother was sick, not evil, so he might do as he was told. Except…how was he reacting to two Tanias? Would he know which was which? Breck wasn’t sure he’d know one from the other himself unless he faced both of them side by side. How could he expect Kit to work it out?
Hands on his hips, Breck turned in a circle. After they’d crossed the road, where had they gone? The obvious answer was that they’d had another vehicle stashed away.
Aside from vengeance, what did Tania hope to gain from kidnapping both Ingrid and Kit? For hours now he’d tried to fathom that out. As for killing her great-aunt, it was obvious the woman had kept records about her two great-nieces, but so what? All families did. Why should that have been a bone of contention unless…unless they’d been kept as a form of blackmail or control. Even then, that was mighty thin reasoning. No. The great-aunt must have been killed for another reason. Or, more chilling, for no reason at all.
He tried to think back to when he and Tania had been married. Naturally they’d had to produce birth certificates prior to their marriage. He must have seen Tania’s birth certificate but he could remember nothing about it, except that her surname was Davidson, not Bedloe. Heavens, how many times had Tania been married? Or was it a case of how many birth certificates did she have?
Okay, he understood that she saw Kit as a way of screwing money out of him along with the double-edged sword of vengeance. But she wouldn’t hurt Kit, would she? She’d been neglectful in the past, but that was a long way from harming him. Besides, he was her son, and although it appeared she was not the conscientious mother he’d always assumed her to be, she wasn’t all bad.
But—Angela? She was an unknown quantity.
He rubbed his forehead. What a can of worms.
Poor Ingrid. He’d give a lot to know about the issues between her and Tania. Was there a way to find out? And would it help him to find them?
He paced across the road, head down, looking for more scraps of paper. Was it Ingrid or Kit who had left a paper trail, or could it possibly be the good twin?
Further down the road a dog handler’s van drew up to the curb, followed by the SOCO’s SUV. Okay, he couldn’t delay any longer. He phoned Hull. “Get them to come down the road further. There’s another scrap of paper down here.” He clicked off before Hull could tear strips off him for going off on his own.
Then he saw it. A heap of dark clothing had been pushed under a roadside hedge further along where the street abutted the main road. He’d take a look first before calling the team in case it had nothing to do with their investigation.
He glanced around. Groups of sparrows and blackbirds settled down to roost in a stand of trees at the far end of the street. Their twittering mutters sounded almost cozy on the still night air. At this hour most people were eating dinner or lounging in front of TVs and computers. It was too chilly to be outdoors.
Breck stopped and took another look around. Nothing.
He didn’t approach the bundle of clothing directly by walking down the sidewalk. Instead, he walked down the center of the street so as not to disturb possible evidence. He’d come close to destroying a valuable clue already so he’d better get this right. Hull was giving him yards and yards of slack because of the circumstances, but if Breck stuffed up anything else, he’d be sent home with a flea in his ear.
As he came parallel with the clothing, he could have sworn he saw it move. Bullshit. He was so stressed out about Kit and Ingrid that he wasn’t thinking straight. Needed to do some of Natasha’s deep breathing exercises.
He took a step back and—a woman’s hand stretched out from beneath the clothing, fingernails clutching at the damp earth. A muffled moan startled him into action. “Ingrid?”
As he rushed towards her, footsteps thudded down the road. The troops had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We’ve got the last bit of paper. What’s up down here? Christ, Breck, you’re—shit!” Hull stopped dead when he saw the twitching fingers stretching out from beneath the pile of clothing. “Ingrid Rowland?”
The hand stopped moving.
Hull raised his eyebrows at Breck, stepped forward and hunkered down. “Ingrid? It’s Hull and Marchant. You’re safe now.” He gently tugged on the bundle of clothing. “Marchant, get a flashlight. Can’t see a damn thing.”
Breck tugged his tiny penlight out of the inner pocket where he kept it. “Here. Try this. I’ll call for something bigger.”
There was a strange gargling sound from Tony Hull. “Paramedics. Quickly!”
Breck juggled his cell phone in one hand and the flashlight in the other. The beam fell on a bloodied mess then bounced away when the 111 call went through. Breck jabbered out directions then redirected the flashlight beam back on to the huddled heap in front of them.
“She’s bad, Breck. Very bad. See for yourself.” Hull stood aside.
Breck crouched down. “Ingrid? I’m here. We’re getting help.” Then he reared back as the bloodied head rose and glared at him out of its remaining eye.
“Nnnn-nn,” it said.
Breck tried to reconcile the pulpy red mass in front of him with Ingrid’s face. “Oh, shit, shit, shit.” He leaned forward again. “We’ll get them, Sweetie. Help is on its way. Ingrid—where’s Kit?” He reached out to touch her but his hand hung in the air when she tried to raise herself again and whispered, “Nnnn-nn…” Her voice died away as her body sank down and went slack. She was unconscious.
She was also naked, the paramedics discovered, when they eased her on to a gurney.
“I have to go with her,” Breck said to Hull.
“Of course. We’ll keep searching for your son. We’ve got the e-experts at Central going through records now and we’ll keep following the paper trail. On top of that—” The ambulance doors slammed in his face and the siren wound up to a screech.
Breck sat on an upturned bucket that seemed to serve as a seat while a paramedic struggled to stabilize the patient. As he cleaned Ingrid’s eyes and nose and the features finally became clear, Breck stiffened in shock. “That’s not Ingrid! It’s Tania!” Or was it Tania? Could it be Angela?
The paramedic looked at him. “Don’t give a damn who she is, buddy. She’s in bad shape.”
Breck pulled out his phone and tried to get hold of Hull. “Turn that bloody thing off!” the paramedic yelled. At the same time he kept up a running commentary for the driver who was reporting Tania/Angela’s symptoms to the hospital.
“No! Another woman’s life is at stake and so is my son’s.” As soon as Breck gave voice to his fears, he realized just how precarious those lives were. If a woman did this to her sister, what would she do to others who got in her way?
Breck gave his back to the paramedic and the woman on the gurney and texted Hull while the paramedic’s attention was diverted. He hoped Hull could understand his cryptic message: ‘This one not Ingrid…Tania!’ That was the best he could do at the moment, but as soon as Tania/Angela was stabilized, he intended to screw whatever info out of her he could.
To make sure he had access to her, he signed her in as his wife. With all the blood and bruises, he couldn’t tell who she was. But she wasn’t Ingrid, and for that he was thankful.
He waited outside A&E, fretting, fretting, as the emergency team worked on her. What was happening to Ingrid and Kit? Several times medical staff approached him for information about ‘Tania’s’ background. He told them all he knew, which wasn’t much. Tania’s secretiveness was her downfall. And if this wasn’t Tania, then her twin must have the same background.
An hour later a woman doctor approached him. “Mr….Marchant, is it?” He nodded.
She glanced at the police insignia on his sweater. “Your wife has some traumatic injuries. She’s been severely beaten. We are stabilizing her before we remove her spleen. I suspect one of her kidneys will need to be removed also. Someone has whaled on her with a cricket bat or something similar. Her left wrist and cheekbone are broken, as if that side was exposed to her attacker. Do you know what happened to her?”
****
As they drew up outside Angela’s house, Breck noticed a silver Taurus in the driveway. It was the one that had been parked along the road from the preschool on the day he’d seen someone watching the school. He peered inside. The checkered rug was still on the back seat but this time it was folded. There didn’t appear to be anything beneath it. He said as much to Hull who was intrigued with Breck’s sleuthing. “Don’t know why you didn’t join the detective division before. You’ve got the right mindset.”
“Obsessive attention to useless details, you mean?”
Hull grinned. “Something like that.”
“Don’t know if I’d be quite so obsessed if it didn’t involve Kit and Ingrid.”
As they approached the front door, they separated. Hull went around the back while Breck waited for the other two team members to arrive. The house was in darkness. Street lights reflected on the windows and Breck could see that none of the blinds or curtains were drawn. He began to doubt there was anyone inside. God, he so wanted this over. He wanted to hold Kit and Ingrid in his arms again, keeping them safe. He sure as hell hadn’t kept them safe so far. Were they inside this house?
Two figures loomed out of the darkness. The other team members had arrived at last. One was carrying something that looked like a tomahawk.
“Hull is around the back,” Breck whispered.
For an answer, one of the men held up his cell phone and pointed to it. They were already up with the play.
The cop with the phone marched past Breck and banged on the door. “Police! Open up.”
Nothing. Not a whisper.
He banged harder.
Still nothing.
Breck’s stomach dropped away. Not with disappointment. With fear. If they didn’t catch up with Tania and Kit and Ingrid soon, God knew what would happen to Ingrid. Then his thoughts scurried to a standstill. What if it wasn’t Tania who’d taken them away? What if it was Angela? Bad twin or good twin? Which was which?
A splintering sound cracked the suburban quiet as Hull and the police constable hacked their way through the back door.
“They’ve been here,” Hull said as he opened the front door. “But it’s not a crime scene. All of you look around. Find out where they’ve gone.”
Breck took the staircase in big strides. There were two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. In the small bedroom he found a stuffed toy that didn’t belong to Kit and a pile of bandages. A wet towel speckled with blood lay in the sink. Had someone dressed Ingrid’s wound?
He reported to Hull who was poking around in the kitchen. Hull nodded. “They can’t be more than fifteen minutes ahead of us. The coffee in these cups is still lukewarm. Two cups.” He turned on the two cops. “
Find
something, anything. Hurry!”
“At least at this stage Ingrid and Kit are still alive,” Breck muttered.
Hull said nothing.
Breck opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Oh, Christ. Hull thought that they might have been alive fifteen minutes ago, but he obviously didn’t hold out much hope about how long they’d stay alive.
“I can’t give you false hope, Breck,” he said gruffly. “We don’t have any idea of the sort of people we’re dealing with here. The whole scenario is warped—a sort of good versus evil. Sure, it looks as if one sister is holding the other back, but for how long?”
“Sir?” One of the constables held out a small piece of paper. “I found this on the bottom stair, and there’s another piece just inside the back door.”
So much for being the great detective. In his anxiety he’d run right over it, Breck thought to himself.
But it was he who found the next piece of paper, at the end of the paved garden path leading to a small gate tucked away in an unkempt hedge. On the other side of the gate was a narrow lane, not wide enough for a vehicle. Hull stopped them from going any further by yelling “Halt!” like a drill sergeant. “From herein we use SOCOs. Someone’s leaving us breadcrumbs.”
From Alice and Wonderland to Hansel and Gretel. But this was no fairy tale. “We’re wasting time,” Breck said through gritted teeth. Well, he wouldn’t interfere with their scene, and there were other ways around this.
He peeled off from the group and jogged around to the front of the house. Running along the sidewalk, he kept parallel to the lane as much as possible. When he came to the intersection where the lane met the sidewalk he paused. Now what? The streetlights lit up the walkway clearly and he could see right to the open gate at the end of Angela’s garden. Tall shadows stretched through the gateway on to the lane where the team waited for the SOCOs to arrive.
Too much waiting. Always waiting. Ingrid? Kit? His heart thumped and strained and it had nothing to do with his short sprint down the sidewalk. He hunkered down, forcing himself to slow his breathing.
And there it was, right at his feet. Another breadcrumb. They had come out of the laneway and crossed the street. He stood. He should call this in. He should. If he stuffed this up, he’d lose everything.
The clock in his brain ticked on inexorably.
Was Tania watching him even now? One sister could take Ingrid and Kit while the other kept a lookout. Except that wouldn’t fly. Ingrid and Kit together would be too much for one person. Ingrid might be sweet-natured, but she was a fighter. She’d already proved that she would fight not just for herself, but also for Kit.
But Kit…what would Kit do? Would he automatically obey his mother, or would he try to protect Ingrid? He thought his mother was sick, not evil, so he might do as he was told. Except…how was he reacting to two Tanias? Would he know which was which? Breck wasn’t sure he’d know one from the other himself unless he faced both of them side by side. How could he expect Kit to work it out?
Hands on his hips, Breck turned in a circle. After they’d crossed the road, where had they gone? The obvious answer was that they’d had another vehicle stashed away.
Aside from vengeance, what did Tania hope to gain from kidnapping both Ingrid and Kit? For hours now he’d tried to fathom that out. As for killing her great-aunt, it was obvious the woman had kept records about her two great-nieces, but so what? All families did. Why should that have been a bone of contention unless…unless they’d been kept as a form of blackmail or control. Even then, that was mighty thin reasoning. No. The great-aunt must have been killed for another reason. Or, more chilling, for no reason at all.
He tried to think back to when he and Tania had been married. Naturally they’d had to produce birth certificates prior to their marriage. He must have seen Tania’s birth certificate but he could remember nothing about it, except that her surname was Davidson, not Bedloe. Heavens, how many times had Tania been married? Or was it a case of how many birth certificates did she have?
Okay, he understood that she saw Kit as a way of screwing money out of him along with the double-edged sword of vengeance. But she wouldn’t hurt Kit, would she? She’d been neglectful in the past, but that was a long way from harming him. Besides, he was her son, and although it appeared she was not the conscientious mother he’d always assumed her to be, she wasn’t all bad.
But—Angela? She was an unknown quantity.
He rubbed his forehead. What a can of worms.
Poor Ingrid. He’d give a lot to know about the issues between her and Tania. Was there a way to find out? And would it help him to find them?
He paced across the road, head down, looking for more scraps of paper. Was it Ingrid or Kit who had left a paper trail, or could it possibly be the good twin?
Further down the road a dog handler’s van drew up to the curb, followed by the SOCO’s SUV. Okay, he couldn’t delay any longer. He phoned Hull. “Get them to come down the road further. There’s another scrap of paper down here.” He clicked off before Hull could tear strips off him for going off on his own.
Then he saw it. A heap of dark clothing had been pushed under a roadside hedge further along where the street abutted the main road. He’d take a look first before calling the team in case it had nothing to do with their investigation.
He glanced around. Groups of sparrows and blackbirds settled down to roost in a stand of trees at the far end of the street. Their twittering mutters sounded almost cozy on the still night air. At this hour most people were eating dinner or lounging in front of TVs and computers. It was too chilly to be outdoors.
Breck stopped and took another look around. Nothing.
He didn’t approach the bundle of clothing directly by walking down the sidewalk. Instead, he walked down the center of the street so as not to disturb possible evidence. He’d come close to destroying a valuable clue already so he’d better get this right. Hull was giving him yards and yards of slack because of the circumstances, but if Breck stuffed up anything else, he’d be sent home with a flea in his ear.
As he came parallel with the clothing, he could have sworn he saw it move. Bullshit. He was so stressed out about Kit and Ingrid that he wasn’t thinking straight. Needed to do some of Natasha’s deep breathing exercises.
He took a step back and—a woman’s hand stretched out from beneath the clothing, fingernails clutching at the damp earth. A muffled moan startled him into action. “Ingrid?”
As he rushed towards her, footsteps thudded down the road. The troops had arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We’ve got the last bit of paper. What’s up down here? Christ, Breck, you’re—shit!” Hull stopped dead when he saw the twitching fingers stretching out from beneath the pile of clothing. “Ingrid Rowland?”
The hand stopped moving.
Hull raised his eyebrows at Breck, stepped forward and hunkered down. “Ingrid? It’s Hull and Marchant. You’re safe now.” He gently tugged on the bundle of clothing. “Marchant, get a flashlight. Can’t see a damn thing.”
Breck tugged his tiny penlight out of the inner pocket where he kept it. “Here. Try this. I’ll call for something bigger.”
There was a strange gargling sound from Tony Hull. “Paramedics. Quickly!”
Breck juggled his cell phone in one hand and the flashlight in the other. The beam fell on a bloodied mess then bounced away when the 111 call went through. Breck jabbered out directions then redirected the flashlight beam back on to the huddled heap in front of them.
“She’s bad, Breck. Very bad. See for yourself.” Hull stood aside.
Breck crouched down. “Ingrid? I’m here. We’re getting help.” Then he reared back as the bloodied head rose and glared at him out of its remaining eye.
“Nnnn-nn,” it said.
Breck tried to reconcile the pulpy red mass in front of him with Ingrid’s face. “Oh, shit, shit, shit.” He leaned forward again. “We’ll get them, Sweetie. Help is on its way. Ingrid—where’s Kit?” He reached out to touch her but his hand hung in the air when she tried to raise herself again and whispered, “Nnnn-nn…” Her voice died away as her body sank down and went slack. She was unconscious.
She was also naked, the paramedics discovered, when they eased her on to a gurney.
“I have to go with her,” Breck said to Hull.
“Of course. We’ll keep searching for your son. We’ve got the e-experts at Central going through records now and we’ll keep following the paper trail. On top of that—” The ambulance doors slammed in his face and the siren wound up to a screech.
Breck sat on an upturned bucket that seemed to serve as a seat while a paramedic struggled to stabilize the patient. As he cleaned Ingrid’s eyes and nose and the features finally became clear, Breck stiffened in shock. “That’s not Ingrid! It’s Tania!” Or was it Tania? Could it be Angela?
The paramedic looked at him. “Don’t give a damn who she is, buddy. She’s in bad shape.”
Breck pulled out his phone and tried to get hold of Hull. “Turn that bloody thing off!” the paramedic yelled. At the same time he kept up a running commentary for the driver who was reporting Tania/Angela’s symptoms to the hospital.
“No! Another woman’s life is at stake and so is my son’s.” As soon as Breck gave voice to his fears, he realized just how precarious those lives were. If a woman did this to her sister, what would she do to others who got in her way?
Breck gave his back to the paramedic and the woman on the gurney and texted Hull while the paramedic’s attention was diverted. He hoped Hull could understand his cryptic message: ‘This one not Ingrid…Tania!’ That was the best he could do at the moment, but as soon as Tania/Angela was stabilized, he intended to screw whatever info out of her he could.
To make sure he had access to her, he signed her in as his wife. With all the blood and bruises, he couldn’t tell who she was. But she wasn’t Ingrid, and for that he was thankful.
He waited outside A&E, fretting, fretting, as the emergency team worked on her. What was happening to Ingrid and Kit? Several times medical staff approached him for information about ‘Tania’s’ background. He told them all he knew, which wasn’t much. Tania’s secretiveness was her downfall. And if this wasn’t Tania, then her twin must have the same background.
An hour later a woman doctor approached him. “Mr….Marchant, is it?” He nodded.
She glanced at the police insignia on his sweater. “Your wife has some traumatic injuries. She’s been severely beaten. We are stabilizing her before we remove her spleen. I suspect one of her kidneys will need to be removed also. Someone has whaled on her with a cricket bat or something similar. Her left wrist and cheekbone are broken, as if that side was exposed to her attacker. Do you know what happened to her?”
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