Keeping (12 page)

It had seemed as though she had no skin, that the cold had rendered her unfeeling, that she was just Cheryl in a numb shell. Holding her head up had taken a lot of effort—God, her neck had ached—and blackness had inched into the edges of her mind, threatening to swallow up everything in her head until she passed out. But she’d held on, told herself she’d get out of this alive if she could.

After a while, she’d turned her head the other way, hoping with every faint, slowing beat of her heart that he was gone and she was safe. She’d forced courage up from deep inside her and had opened her eyes. The mud and scrubby grass edge of the bank had been closer than she’d expected and she would have cried out in surprise if she’d had the energy. Then it had hit her. She was too cold to move.
Unable
to move.

Oh, Jesus Christ, no. Please, don’t let me die, not when I’ve come so far…

Now, with no idea how long she’d stared at the mud and grass—seeing nodules of brown jutting out of water-smoothed earth, sprouts of green that looked black in this light—she shifted her eyes so she could scan the rest of the bank. No feet there, no legs or that leering mask. No syringe waiting to jab into her and send her on her final journey. Nothing but dark sky and a moon half covered by deep gray clouds. She tried lifting herself up but failed, so flexed her fingers, determined to get some warmth into her hands and arms, even if just by one degree.

Eventually she moved her arms as though doing the breaststroke, then chanced to draw her hands up the rock beneath her chest and attempt to push herself up on it. She managed a few inches and, with arms like rubber smacked back down again, her face plunging into the water. It rushed into her ears, her eyes, and as the force of the splash took over, she listened to a combination of her heartbeat, the whoosh of the water’s movement and an odd, quiet humming that brought on the sense that she was doomed, never to get out of the water. Emptiness, a strange void where, for the second it took for her head to make its journey, her chin dashing against the stone, teeth jarring, tongue bitten, she felt death touch her keenly and with eager, grasping hands. No pain, nothing but a dull thud of rock on bone.

She tried again, this time slapping her palm onto the rock and keeping her arm straight for long enough to launch herself sideways. She raised her other arm and clutched at the grass, seeing it, from the meager light of the moon, inside her curled fingers but not feeling it against her skin. She gripped, she tugged, and hauled herself across, bringing her legs up so she knelt on the rocks. With both hands around clumps of grass she dragged herself up until she flopped her torso onto the flat of the bank.

Her breaths came in heavy pants, lungs growing sore from the spiteful snap in the air, and she marveled that even the weather seemed to conspire against her. She laid her head down, resting for a short time to gather her strength, then eased her head up again and dug her elbows into the ground. She army-crawled the rest of her body out of the water then flopped over onto her back, fully expecting to see him looking down at her with those piercing green eyes and that hideous mask.

All she stared at was the murky sky.

She stayed that way for ages, knowing if she didn’t get moving soon her body would give up, her organs would shut down on her while she silently screamed for help. And those screams would die, she’d close her eyes and just let everything fade away, too weak to fight anymore.

No. No, I won’t do that! Oliver! Oliver, please, please come and help me.

A response drifted to her from far away—Oliver’s voice, him repeating her name, the chant coming toward her like the chug of a train, closer, closer, closer until it was so loud in her head he could have been standing right beside her.

“Cheryl? Cheryl? Is that you?”

It’s me, she wanted to shout, to think, but the words wouldn’t come. Frustrated, she waited to hear more from him, for him to tell her he was on his way and everything would be all right. It took ages for her to raise her hand and manage an awkward rub on her arm, forcing heat into her skin so she’d be able to get the hell out of there. But her body shivered so brutally she couldn’t control it and her hand whipped away from her arm of its own accord, to land on the grass and jolt in vicious jerks.

“Oliver, please! I’m at the stream. No forest. Just the stream.”
She moved her eyes to the side, away from the water. “
A field. It goes on forever.”

She wondered, then, whether it was the field she’d read about, where when you died your loved ones came to collect you in a meadow. But this wasn’t the meadow she’d imagined, with bright green grass highlighted by a beautifully warm sun, with buttercups and daisies swaying in a mild breeze. If this was the field of the hereafter, it was the one belonging to Hell. The one where no one but men like
him
came to collect you.

“Cheryl? Hang on. We’re coming!”

Those words were too much, too overwhelming, too
needed.
She closed her eyes and bucked from the cold, unable to have power over the spasms. As everything slipped away, she thought of the sunny meadow and hoped, if Oliver didn’t get here in time and she didn’t wake up on this plane, she’d open her eyes and see the sun, the daisies and the buttercups. And gran.

Chapter Nine

With blankets tossed over his shoulder, Langham sprinted out of the forest and into a field, heading toward the oval of illumination provided by the spotlight from the chopper circling above. Its heat-seeking equipment had found Cheryl perilously close to the stream, and he was fucked if he’d get there too late. Oliver kept pace with him, and as they ran Langham watched the helicopter descend. The air from the rotors blew back his hair, made his cheeks ripple and his eyes dry out. The grass flattened, spreading out like a crop circle. A black-clad figure dangled from the aircraft on a rope ladder, getting lower by the second. It reached the ground then ran to the stream bank. Langham and Oliver arrived there seconds later, getting the nod from the man in black that yes, she was alive, and yes, they needed to get her the fuck out of there.

Oliver draped the foil blanket he’d brought with him over her and knelt to tuck it under her so she was encased. Langham added the blankets then tapped Oliver on the shoulder and motioned for him to get up and out of the way. Pointless speaking—the helicopter was too loud. They stepped back, allowing room for two more men from the chopper bearing a stretcher. Cheryl was gently lifted onto it, and the men carried her away. The chopper had fully lowered to the ground, and Langham stood beside Oliver to watch them settle Cheryl on board. Then the great bird lifted and tilted a little to one side before shooting off.

Langham looked at Oliver, the
whap-whap-whap
of the helicopter distant now.

“We got her,” Langham said, putting one hand on Oliver’s shoulder. “We got her.”

Oliver blinked.

There was nothing more to say, so they walked back to the forest, heads bent, hands in pockets, Langham wondering how the hell that woman had survived. She was unconscious, from the cold, drugs and exhaustion, he imagined, but so long as her body didn’t go into shock and break down on her, she’d likely come through this okay. But what of her mind? What about the mental scars? He dreaded to think what she’d have to face when she woke up, and again when she drifted back to sleep, the nightmares coming, treating her without mercy, relentless in their quest to fracture her further.

Branches grabbed at his trousers but he didn’t give a shit. He yanked his legs away and kept going, reaching across to take Oliver’s hand for a moment, giving it a squeeze before other officers came into view ahead, flashlights bobbing erratically as they ran. He released Oliver’s hand, wanting nothing more than that hand back in his, those fingers through his, and straightened his spine. Time enough for discussing this later. For comforting. There was still so much to do.

They turned once the officers had come closer, back the other way to lead the men to where Cheryl had been found. As they all stood on the bank a meter or so from the spot, Langham explained her position, how he’d found her. Officers spoke into radios while others gazed around, probably working out which direction the killer had come from and what had possessed him to bring her out this far. Why had he changed where he’d left her? Why so far from the others?

Did he go to do his usual thing and spot the undercover policemen in those cars? Did he realize we were there? Could the officers have seen him drive past and not even have known it? Shit. Fucking shit!

He stared at the rocks poking out of the water and shook his head. What the hell
was
it about them? Why did the killer put the women into position over them? It had to be significant, and when he caught the motherfucker that would be one of the first questions he asked.

It took half an hour of waiting around before forensics and Detective Fairbrother arrived to take over. Langham and Oliver left the scene, traipsing back through the forest to where he’d parked his car haphazardly, half on the uneven track, half off. Squad cars dotted the way out, their occupants preparing to leave the vehicles and join those on the stream bank. Once they were in his car, Langham whacked up the heat, cold to the damn bone and thinking he had no real clue what cold really was. As he drove through the city, he wondered whether Cheryl was warm yet, whether she was getting some feeling back into her, because fuck, she’d had to have been freezing in that water.

He glanced at the clock on the dash, the luminous green numbers glowing five-fifteen. He pondered on whether to go home for a couple of hours but knew it was pointless. He was wide awake, and Oliver was sitting beside him, anxious, Langham guessed, to see Cheryl.

“Hospital?” Langham glanced across at him.

Oliver nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ll wait with her until her parents get there. She’s got no one else.”

* * * *

David was meant to be at work but he rang in sick. He was too tired, the amount of restless sleep he’d had fucking with his equilibrium. He didn’t like feeling so out of sorts. Reminded him of being a kid. Not knowing what was around the corner. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. As a child he’d always known what had lurked at the bend on Don’t Hurt Me Avenue, just not when the bogey woman would make an especially nasty appearance. And she
was
nasty.

He studied Conrad across the table in Morrison’s, their breakfast plates piled with a full English, their tea brewing in the pot. Conrad was a right bloody mess. Looked like he hadn’t slept very well either.

He cursed himself for not asking Cheryl about the availability of tea cozies.

Conrad was bursting with shit to tell him—obvious, it was—so David raised his eyebrows as a signal for the prick to start talking while David tucked into his breakfast. He needed Conrad now—more so than he had in the past. Before, the man had been a semblance of a friend, something David hadn’t had before. He could fool himself into thinking he was liked, that if he chose to, he could go out with Conrad on the lash and eye up the girls, taking one home for a fuck and a bit of skin-on-skin comfort. But Conrad had never asked him—maybe he would one day—and girls had never appealed to David in that way. They reminded him too much of the bogey woman, even the ones he took who weren’t brown-eyed blondes. Men didn’t float his boat either. Was he abnormal, was that it? How could you go about not wanting sexual contact with either gender?

He knew the answer to that, just didn’t want to delve into it right now. Kind of hurt, that did.

“I went to the newspaper, like you suggested,” Conrad said, “and she hasn’t been there either. Didn’t call in sick.”

David swallowed a piece of sausage. And the knot of emotion in his throat. He needed to get focused, to concentrate on the here and now, not on what had gone on in his past.

The past was dangerous. If he thought about it too much it dragged out nasty thoughts, mean questions that were relentless in expecting him to answer them. And he could answer them, if he gave himself the chance, stepped back there and took another look around from an adult’s point of view. But the child in him wouldn’t allow him to go back.
No, not there. Don’t make me go back there again.

“Look, how long has it been again?” David flapped his fork midair, feigning casual when inside he felt that
thing
creeping back, that desperately depressing thing that, once it took hold, was a bastard to shake off. “You know what? Time doesn’t matter at this stage. Some people, if they’ve got problems and shit, just take off for a bit. No explanation, nothing. They have so much going on in their head that it’s best to stay away, know what I mean? Or they go off into a world of their own, a different world to this one, where they can be someone else and not worry about shit.” He was dangerously close to letting something slip.

“Be quiet, David,”
Mr Clever said.

“Didn’t I tell you this before?” David asked. “About the people just taking off thing? That’s why the police don’t usually follow up on an adult missing person until they’ve been gone more than forty-eight hours. People just need a breather, a break. Two or three days and I bet she turns up.” David worked hard to stop himself smiling. Someone would stumble upon her—not a dog-walker this time. No, it might be the farmer this time, or maybe one of the people who worked for him. Off out in the fields thinking they had a normal day’s work ahead of them and, ‘oh, what the hell’s that in the stream there? Good fucking Lord, it’s a body!’ “She’ll turn up and everyone’ll wonder where she’s been, what she’s been doing and who with, but I reckon she won’t tell anyone a thing.”

“How come you think she won’t say anything?” Conrad frowned. “She owes her bosses an explanation, at least. Me, even. You don’t just not turn up for a date or work, do you?” Conrad looked at him funny, like he knew something David didn’t. Like he was trying to draw something out of him.

“Watch him, David. He might cause you trouble, and we wouldn’t want that, would we…”