No Going Back (8 page)

‘Hilary!' he responded. ‘Haven't seen you for ages. I'm fine, thanks. No need to ask how you are – you always look in rude good health and I swear you never get any older.'

Hilary McEwen-Smith did indeed have an ageless quality, though he guessed she was possibly sixtyish. Underneath her riding hat her light-brown hair was shoulder length, and a rosy complexion told of a life spent outdoors. A little on the plump side, she wore brown corduroy jodhpurs and her waxed cotton jacket was unzipped to reveal a sweatshirt, somewhat surprisingly decorated with a large smiling frog.

Daniel flashed a brief friendly smile at her companion before turning back to Hilary, but it was enough to reinforce his previous impression of the powerful likeness between this girl and Elena. Way too great to be a coincidence, in the circumstances. She was wearing a sweatshirt and navy jodhpurs. Idly he wondered if they were the ones Tamzin had loaned her.

‘Oh, by the way, this is Katy,' Hilary told him. ‘All being well, she's going to be working for me. Katy, Daniel is an old friend of mine.'

‘Hi, Katy.' Would she recognize him away from the lorry?

The girl nodded, her eyes distinctly wary. Seen at closer quarters, she was strikingly attractive in a dark-eyed, gamine sort of way.

‘When he was a boy, Daniel used to help me out at weekends and after school,' Hilary told her, ruthlessly reinventing his past for him.

‘You'll love working for Hilary,' Daniel put in. ‘Have you been riding long?'

Now he had his chance, Daniel was struggling to find a way to gain her confidence. She was clearly suspicious and he felt that one false move would set her running again.

‘I ride as a child,' she said, returning her attention to him. ‘My uncle had a horse farm.' Her pony sidled a little and tossed its head, perhaps picking up on her anxiety, and Daniel moved to stand between the two, rubbing the animal's muzzle.

‘Oh? Where was that?' He tried to inject a note of casual interest into his voice, but even so he sensed the girl stiffen.

‘Why do you ask me?'

‘I was just curious. I have a friend from Romania and you sound a lot like her.'

Daniel had hoped to provoke some sort of reaction, but he was totally unprepared for the violence of it. With no hesitation the girl dug her heels hard into the pony's sides, driving it forward. Its shoulder caught Daniel a glancing blow, sending him spinning away to land sprawling under the nose of Hilary's mount.

‘Bugger!'

He was on his feet in an instant, but Katya was already several lengths away and the pony was galloping hard. Without considering the futility of doing so, Daniel set off in pursuit, angry with himself for having handled the situation so badly.

‘Daniel!' Hilary shouted.

He halted and turned. She had dismounted and was offering him her reins. ‘Take Dusty. You'll never catch her on foot.'

Daniel wavered, looking after the fleeing girl, and as he did so, Katya reached a fork in the track ahead and swung left, immediately dipping out of sight.

‘No – second thoughts, leave Dusty,' Hilary told him. ‘That track doubles back down the valley. If you go down the hill, you might just get there before her, but be careful, it's horribly steep.'

Daniel looked to where she was pointing and, closing his mind to the risk, set off down the one-in-three slope at breakneck speed, leaping and sliding in equal measure. Once he'd started his descent, having a change of heart wasn't an option, for his momentum carried him downwards, faster and faster, until it was difficult to move his legs quickly enough to keep them underneath him.

Eventually the inevitable happened. When he was perhaps three-quarters of the way to the valley bottom, Daniel's foot skidded on a hidden tree root and he pitched sideways, rolling and bouncing through a kaleidoscope of tree trunks, brambles and leaf mould towards the stream, where it wound through the trees, some 40 feet below.

The track came as something of a surprise. Hidden from above by an overhang, Daniel didn't actually see it until he hit the gravel with his shoulder, rolled and landed on his back.

His timing couldn't have been better.

Katya was less than 20 feet away and Daniel's abrupt and unheralded arrival startled her pony into swerving violently. Competent rider though she might have been, Katya was thrown completely off-balance and ended up hanging precariously over one side of the animal's neck.

Within moments Daniel was on his feet and at the pony's head. He dragged the girl off it, clamping an arm round her waist to keep her close, and thoroughly alarmed, the pony backed away, head held high.

Katya fought like a wildcat and was tremendously strong. It was as much as Daniel could do to hang on to her, winded as he was. One small booted foot scraped painfully down his shin and stamped on his instep; her arms flailed – elbows trying to land blows to his ribs; and she even tried head-butting him, but he'd had too much experience to be caught that way.

‘Katy! Katya! Stop it. I want to help you,' he gasped.

‘No, no! Let me go! Let me go!' she yelled, kicking him again.

‘For God's sake, listen! I know about Elena.'

‘No! No! No! Please let me go! Please.' Suddenly Katya stopped struggling and began to sob.

Relieved but not wholly trusting the swift change, Daniel maintained his grip on her and was surprised by the appearance of a black and white collie, which jumped up, putting its front paws on his leg and barking.

The next moment something hit Daniel hard across the shoulders and a male voice thundered, ‘Leave that girl alone! D'you hear me? Leave her alone, you pervert!'

The man punctuated each phrase with another blow, one of which caught Daniel across the side of the head, making his ears ring.

‘For Christ's sake, man! Get off me!' Daniel exclaimed. ‘It's not what you think . . .'

But at the prospect of help, Katya cried out again and the man with the stick stepped up his attack. When one of his blows caught Daniel on the elbow, the shock loosened his hold for a moment, sending paralysing pins and needles shooting along his forearm. A moment was all the girl needed. With a supreme effort she wrenched herself free and, without waiting to thank her saviour, ran off down the track.

Free, in turn, to defend himself, Daniel lost no time in twisting the knot-headed walking stick from the grasp of the military-looking gentleman who'd wielded it with such enthusiasm and throwing it as hard as he could up the track.

‘You bloody interfering idiot!' he snarled through his teeth, before setting off in pursuit of the girl, who, seeing more walkers ahead, turned off the path, down towards the stream in the bottom of the valley.

Ignoring the blustering expostulations of the military man, Daniel followed.

The slope below the track was if anything even steeper than above, littered with fallen timber and slippery with moss. Forced to slow up, Daniel lost his footing again and again, whereas the girl seemed as sure-footed as a mountain goat.

Within moments she was at the overhanging edge of the deep rocky gully through which the stream flowed, some 20 feet below. She followed the bank until she arrived at a place where the gully was bridged by a fallen silver birch and then, glancing back at Daniel struggling in her wake, stepped on to the tree, paused to test its stability and ran lightly across.

Arriving at the same point, some moments later, Daniel knew the chase was over. The trunk of the birch was barely 6 inches in diameter, crooked and mossy in places, and spanned a good 15 feet with no handholds. Just looking at the drop to the rocky streambed below made a cold sweat break out on his body and he backed away, cursing, as Katya disappeared into the trees on the other side.

‘I just want to help you!' he shouted after her.

There was no reply. She had gone.

FOUR

T
here was no sign of the man with the walking stick when Daniel climbed wearily back on to the track, but Hilary had arrived, having followed the track down, and she'd caught Katya's loose pony.

‘No luck?' she asked, although the answer was rather self-evident.

‘I'd have been OK if Colonel Blimp hadn't decided to wade in, waving his stick about,' Daniel said, and told her what had happened.

‘Major Clapford,' she said, when he'd finished. ‘War hero, pillar of the community and general pain in the backside. I saw him making off with his dog as I rode up. Not a good man to cross.'

‘Bloody lethal with that stick of his,' Daniel agreed, rubbing a sore place on his elbow.

‘Still, you can hardly blame him, I suppose. You'd probably have done the same if you saw someone apparently assaulting a young girl.'

Daniel sighed. ‘Yeah, you're right.'

‘So, what now?'

‘I guess I'd better get back to work while I still have a job.' Daniel looked up the slope down which he had recently and inelegantly travelled. ‘I'm not sure I've got the energy to climb back up there. Is there another way back to the village apart from going all the way round?'

Hilary gestured to Katya's pony, which was standing calmly enough now, its thickish coat swirled and damp with sweat. ‘Hop on and I'll take you the short way.'

Daniel regarded the pony doubtfully. ‘I wouldn't be too heavy?'

She laughed. ‘Tough as old boots, these Dartmoor ponies. He'd carry your weight all day without any problem. Come on, climb on board or I'll start to think you're chicken!'

When Daniel parted company with Hilary in the car park of the White Buck a quarter of an hour later, it was with the understanding that if Kat should turn up at the stables again, she would lose no time in calling him, but neither of them held out much hope.

The lorry was just as he'd left it, Taz standing up on the front seat and waving his tail at Daniel's return.

‘Are you going to move that bloody thing? This isn't a public car park, you know,' a voice informed him testily as he reached for the handle to the cab door.

Daniel turned to see a stocky, balding man standing in the back doorway of the pub. ‘I know, I'm sorry. It was an emergency and there's not many places you can park something this size. What do I owe you?'

The man shook his head. ‘Just shift it, OK? Next time I'll have it clamped.'

‘OK, thanks.' Daniel waved a hand and made to climb into the cab. In his jacket pocket his phone was vibrating silently – no prizes for guessing who that would be. He must already be at least an hour late for his next drop and Bowden would be on his case in a big way.

‘Move over, Taz!' He pulled himself into the lorry, fending off an enthusiastic welcome from the dog. Fishing out his mobile, he glanced at the display. It
was
Bowden, but before he could answer it, his attention was caught by a movement in his door mirror, and he bent to look more closely, hardly believing his eyes.

Katya was standing at the rear corner of the lorry, one hand on the bodywork, looking uncertainly towards the front.

Daniel froze, feeling a bit like a twitcher who's found a rare finch nesting in his window box. What on earth was she doing here, after fighting like a wildcat to get away from him less than half an hour before?

There was no doubt in his mind that she connected him with the lorry, Hilary had told him that, so it could only mean that she had decided to hear him out after all.

Very carefully he opened the cab door and leaned out, making his movements soft and slow, as if she were a flighty horse.

Katya held her ground, her dark eyes wide with apprehension, but she glanced behind her as if suspecting him of having an accomplice who might even now be creeping up to cut off her escape.

Daniel stayed in the cab, letting her make the first move, and eventually she did, edging forward alongside the lorry until she was only a matter of feet away. She was boyishly slim, and without her riding hat he could see that her dark hair had been very inexpertly cut. He imagined she had probably done it herself.

‘I don't want to hurt you, Katya,' he said softly. ‘I just want to help you.'

‘Why?'

The question caught Daniel on the hop slightly. Why indeed? How to explain to someone with her likely background that his interest was purely philanthropic? He had an idea the concept would be entirely alien to her, but he had no other ready excuse.

‘Elena is your sister, right?' he asked, hedging slightly.

Katya nodded slowly, and again glanced over her shoulder.

‘I was there the day you ran away. The man – Reynolds, he said his name was – called me to help track you down. He said he was your father . . .'

‘His name isn't Reynolds, it's Patrescu,' she said. ‘I saw you on the moor with the dog. Why did you help him? Who are you?'

‘I thought I was doing the right thing,' Daniel told her. ‘He said you were lost. It wasn't until I saw how scared your sister was that I began to wonder why you'd really run away.'

‘I had to leave Elena. I didn't want to, but she couldn't run any more. I thought if I got away, I could maybe go back for her, but . . .'

‘But?' Daniel prompted.

‘Now I don't know how I will do it. I don't even know where she is for sure.' Her eyes filled with tears, which she wiped away with an impatient hand. ‘He – my father – will be looking for me. He won't give up.'

‘If he's your father, why are you running from him?'

Katya's eyes dropped for a moment – the ridiculously long lashes sweeping her cheeks. ‘He took us from our mother – stole us. He means to take us back to Romania, but we don't want to go.'

‘And where is your mother?'

‘She's in London.'

‘Is that where you live?'

She nodded, her eyes dipping again briefly.

‘And the other man, who is he?'

Her expression hardened. ‘His name is Anghel. He works for my father. He is a brute.'