Lost Girl (38 page)

The father finished recording his story on the car’s media, and set the recording to play live on the website devoted to information regarding his daughter’s
disappearance: who had taken her, for whom, each name, a timeline, every shred of information he’d gathered in his time as the Red Father. He set the timer for his recording to go live in two
days; by then he would have her or he would be dead.

He made other preparations for the recording to be sent to the police liaison officer, whom his wife still dealt with, the two sympathetic journalists who had periodically tried to revive
interest in the case, and his family’s legal representative.

If he died in the morning, then at least his story would be with those able to investigate Karen Perucchi. The public would know that he was a killer too, but he didn’t care about
that.

At four thirty in the morning, the father roused himself from a brief sleep, joints cracking, the painful stiffness slowly passing from his neck and joints.

Chewing on an energy bar without any pleasure, he checked his existing tools again. On the passenger seat beside him, his equipment was laid out: four handguns, the nerve agent, binoculars,
mask, water, torch, gloves, the metal cuffs he had taken from Oleg’s limbs and replaced with wire ties. The sight of the steel upon the cloth gave him a brief leap of confidence. But the bag
of tricks that had enabled him to invade other homes, and to destroy criminals, soon appeared insubstantial and primitive. A drive to Southampton was unavoidable, to better equip. He’d need
an open store that sold wire or bolt cutters.

In the rear-view mirror his eyes were grim, the surrounding flesh unnaturally pale and wrinkled like wet cotton. Dreams had left him shaken. Omens, portents, the gibberish of a shattered mind;
he didn’t know. But above all, for the first time since he began the search, he’d awoken afraid that he was a man too ruined to ever be a father again.

Oleg must have stayed awake, and probably since the father had taken him outside at one in the morning to empty his bowels in the undergrowth, then given him the sugary drink he had asked
for.

‘How will you do this?’ The voice that rose from the darkness of the rear seat was clear of sleep, but tight, near sibilant. The eyes were large discs, too bright, too still. The
father could only hope the man would die from withdrawal to save him another execution. He ignored Oleg.

‘I can help.’

The father packed a pair of small rucksacks. He chose his original handgun, for familiarity’s sake, and the one he had taken from a bedside cabinet in Abergil’s house. When he
returned to the car the previous evening, he’d made himself familiar with that weapon, by firing it into a fallen tree trunk in the forest. The handgun had barely kicked or made a sound, but
had broken apart the dead wood. The gun must have contained high-impact ammunition that would shatter bones around the entry wound. Whoever was inside the house might have them too. The idea seemed
to drain his dim resource of strength through his feet.

Oleg’s bag had also contained a small automatic rifle. The father wasn’t sure how to fit the magazine or unlock the trigger mechanism. He couldn’t face asking Oleg for
assistance, so would leave that behind. He could only risk using a weapon at close range, aimed at a clearly identifiable target. There could be no stray shots if his daughter was inside the
building.

‘How you get in, mmm?’ The questions continued from the back of the car, as if talking was easing the acute symptoms of the man’s abstinence. Oleg had folded in on himself as
stomach cramps overwhelmed his frail, shivering body.

‘You going to kill me before you go, mmm? Though maybe the overdose you are considering is best. I will even tell you how to do it. But you kill me and we are both leaving this life today.
And maybe today your daughter asks this Karen a question, this bitch who she thinks is her mummy. The little girl will ask who the man is, the one caught on the fence. She will never know that it
was her own father that was shot on the wire. And at that moment, Karen will know that she has won. All her tracks are covered and the girl is hers forever.’

The man was trying to manipulate him in return for a fix. ‘Shut up.’

‘Is this the plan for today, mmm?’

‘I’ll shoot you before I go in. For the last two years, I have wanted to make you suffer slowly. Make you feel something, know something . . . experience something that now you can
only imagine. Make you feel what you inflicted upon us, me and my family. But I don’t have time. I will drag you into the undergrowth out there. I know the spot. I marked it out yesterday.
And I am going to shoot you in the face while you look at the father of the girl that you stole.’

Oleg grinned. ‘Good. ’Tis good. You solve a problem. Two problems. Mine cus I feel bad now.’ The figure was near-rearing off the seat in his discomfort, straining bony ankles
and wrists against its ties with such vigour the car began to shake, the prelude to a seizure. ‘And before noon you die too. The storm will take away your screams. They will bury you in the
trees, close to what you came here for. Your daughter will never know her own father again. She will never know that he is buried close to her. In time she even forget what she—’

The father turned in his seat and punched the barrel of his Beretta against Oleg’s wet forehead. The man winced from the sudden shock of the blow, then slowly returned his skull to the end
of the barrel. ‘Please. Yes? We do this now. It doesn’t matter. You, me, our thoughts, are nothing. Our lives are nothing. Nothing matters any more. Best to have no thoughts, no
memories of this place. And no one dies easy of this pestilence.’ Oleg nodded at the silent, flashing media screen that had reported mostly the spread of the Asian virus since they’d
arrived in the New Forest, occasionally interspersed with the great battle lines drawn up in Kashmir.

‘
Usque ad mortem
. Soon so many will be sick unto death . . .’

‘Go to hell.’

‘I just thought you wanted to save your daughter, mmm? I am going nowhere, and you need help, so why can’t we help each other? That is all I am suggesting.’

‘Shut it!’ The father nearly squeezed the trigger.

Oleg opened his near-lipless mouth and took the barrel inside. He tried to say please, but with a gun inside his mouth it sounded like ‘Pliss.’

The father climbed out of the car and made his way to the boot. He hadn’t expended any time at all thinking of how he would dispose of Oleg, but the sooner the better. He considered it
strange, but ever since he had taken the man captive, his intense loathing and hatred for the figure had not so much subsided, as been replaced by new involvements, possibilities, second guesses,
and terrors. And all set to the soundtrack of the man’s esoteric and mystical nonsense.

Instead of taking revenge against Oleg, he was now being made to think of who had been killed because of him, of who he had killed, and who he would have to kill next. His daughter being alive
had changed everything, swiftly introducing so many new considerations, memories, regrets, doubts and emotions into the existing maelstrom that was wearing him to sand. The father could not contain
all of this. There was no part of him left over to consider the fall of man, and this world, that had accelerated around him across the last few years. He wondered why men were so poorly built to
withstand suffering when its possibility had always been so assured.

His mind was moving too fast. He needed to find some space to think through his move. He would have to silence Oleg first. An overdose, as the man suggested, was low key. The father climbed
inside the car, the bag of drugs gripped in one hand. Oleg shivered with delight at the sight of the nylon sack.

‘How much?’

‘May I?’ The figure’s entire body shook, but his hands remained still enough to take the applicator. ‘You have to find the vein for me. And then you must decide if we
part company now, or later.’

‘Where do you take it?’

‘Foot. Left foot.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Between the toes. Give me all of it if you want me to go now. Or only give me half. But if I don’t wake up . . . that would be bad for you.’

The father pulled the applicator out of Oleg’s fingers. ‘Bad for me? How can you help me? Why would I trust you?’

The man swallowed and widened his feral eyes. ‘There is still a fence at this house, mmm?’

He had the father’s attention.

‘Maybe you hate me a little less while I help you with this, or you will have no chance. Your anger, it—’

‘Why? Why would I trust you?’

‘You think I have grown a soul?’ He laughed. ‘At last I see the error of my ways and I am a better man now, mmm? No, I don’t believe in atonement, but like I said, I want
the bitch. We have history and she is the beacon I want to light up, in another place.’ He nodded at the drugs stash. ‘And for this I do anything too. My will is not my own. I am a
vessel.’ He grinned his grey-toothed, slippery grin. The man then rolled onto his side and spat into the footwell. ‘These fences . . . You can’t dig under and can’t climb.
They’ll see you on camera. Your weight will set off the alarms. Was that how you planned to get inside, to climb?’

‘Cut my way through.’

‘I see. So you think you can cut through this fence, then move to the house, then break in? This is your plan. But the steel will be too strong for the cutters you can buy. Maybe even the
army bolt cutters will struggle. But if not, it will take too long. A good torch might do it, eventually, but they would see the flame from the house. You have no torch either. You can get one, but
that means delays and my old friends can smell you here. So maybe you could cut down a tree. A big one. Let it fall on the fence. But where will you get this saw? And they will hear it anyway from
the house. You have no plan.’

‘Piss off.’

Oleg held up one long dirty finger. ‘They will hear the alarms when you are on the grass. Motion cameras will set them off. I remember there will be lots of grass for you to run across
too. The bitch has a nice place, mmm? The doors and windows will lock when the alarm trips. And there is no way through that glass anyway. I know this. I have some experience. Their houses are
fortresses.’

One by one, the man carefully outlined every fault in the strategies the father had tried to make convincing during the night.

‘How? How do people like
you
do this?’

‘We wait. Watch. You snatch when people are moving, like in a car, or in the street.’

Their eyes met. Oleg stopped smirking.

‘How long did you watch my house?’

‘How will this help you?’

‘Tell me!’

‘Not long,’ he said quietly.

A silence thickened the stale air of the car. The father could not think straight on account of a compressed but expanding rage, could not speak. He did nothing but tense and tremble.

‘The devil has your girl and she wants to keep her. But thinking of what was done back then will not help you with what must be done now. Another way is you take this bitch hostage, and
when she takes you home—’

‘No! I don’t have the time. They won’t leave that place until the storm is over. That could take days. Your shithead friends will get here, if they aren’t
already.’

‘True. I know this. But I am not finished.’

‘Get the fuck on with it!’

‘Listen, you think of all ways in and how they don’t work, until you find the way that
might
work. So, if you will allow me to finish.’

The father gritted his teeth.

‘Now, I would like half of what you have in that applicator. When I have it in me . . .’ The man paused to shudder as if with the expectation of ecstasy. ‘Then I will tell you
how you get inside this house.’

The father spat, but handed the applicator to Oleg, who immediately became busy with his left foot. With some reluctance, the father helped him locate a usable vein.

When Oleg’s head flopped back, his trembling subsided, and the brittle, sticklike form seemed to melt into the seat. ‘Thank you.’ The man’s speech slurred as the narcotic
tried to take him away.

‘How do I get in?’

Oleg smiled. ‘Best way through such a fence is explosives. You blow in the fence. The alarms go off for sure. The house will lock down too. Everyone is awake inside and panics. They go for
weapons, make calls. All that bullshit. No problem. You just get to a door, a big window, whatever. You put another explosive on the glass. And that house will open in three seconds.’

The father swallowed. ‘Explosives! Where do I get bloody explosives, you stupid junkie fuck? I suppose you’ll take me to some of your mates, who’ll kit me out? Is that
it?’

Oleg watched the father, his face near-expressionless. But the eyes narrowed and gleamed with a profound cold and the father knew he was looking into a mind that had long dispensed with anything
approximating mercy or sympathy; here was nothing but a vital, calculating self-interest. But he’d let the man into his circle, and now sat in the rain discussing the emancipation of his
daughter with the same chronic addict and murderous criminal that had taken her from him and his wife. Not for the first time in his recent life was he stunned by a situation he could barely
fathom.

‘You kill like us. You have learned that much. But you don’t think like us. You could be a rich man already, and maybe have your daughter too, today. But your anger will kill you
this morning.’ Oleg moved his head towards the nearest window. ‘If you let it. You need to clear your mind. And listen. You have to listen. To me.’ The man’s voice dropped
to a softer tone, was hushed like a whisper, and slithered its terrible range inside the father’s mind. ‘Now, when you take me, mmm, from my place, you brought my shit along too, with
the drugs, yes? Inside my army bag there are guns?’

The father nodded.

‘Good. Very soon men without guns will have no chance here, or anywhere. Now you have plenty. Inside this bag, there are also six blocks of protein. In with my tools, you see the survival
food, yes?’