Stolen (36 page)

Lotte leaned over and picked up the axe.

‘You don’t need that now,’ Dale reproved her.

‘I do. Just in case. It pays to have insurance,’ Lotte insisted.

They skirted round the still-burning shed, and paused for a moment to look back at it. All around them was velvety darkness, a mild night with a clear sky studded with stars, yet the fire was very bright orange, with a red core at the heart of it. Only the four corner posts of the shed remained whole now; the roof had caved in along with all four sides. But there must have been cans of paint or turpentine in there for every now and then there was a bang and another flare-up.

‘It would’ve been a horrible death,’ Dale said in a small, shaky voice. ‘I owe you my life, I was so busy panicking I didn’t think to look for tools to get out.’

‘You had the presence of mind to get the knife,’ Lotte reminded her. ‘If we’d still been tied we couldn’t have done anything.’

They could see no lights anywhere. While they knew they couldn’t possibly be more than a mile or two from a house with a phone, it felt like being in a wilderness.

‘We’re free at last,’ Lotte said with a smile in her voice. ‘We can have fish and chips, or bacon and egg. I could even murder a McDonald’s or three.’

‘Then we’d better get moving,’ Dale said.

‘I doubt that place belonged to him,’ Lotte said as they walked on, Dale supporting her. ‘Just think, he must’ve driven around looking for somewhere to kill us. Fancy anyone being as wicked as that!’

Dale chuckled. ‘Fancy you being wicked enough to offer him a blow job!’

‘I suppose that’s proof that we’d all do anything to save our own skin,’ Lotte said. ‘Mind you, I was banking on you walloping him or something. If I’d had to do it I might have bit it off.’

They walked down the narrow lane for some fifteen minutes in silence, both locked in their own thoughts. Lotte was thinking about Simon and Adam and how worried they must be, and she wondered if David had been to see them throughout all this. She felt utterly exhausted now, for fear and hunger had kept her awake ever since they were first captured. Her burnt feet were hurting too, the thin material covering them no protection from the stones on the lane.

There was a kind of dog-leg turn in the lane, and as they came out of it back on to a straight stretch, to their horror they saw Howard’s van parked up by a farm gate.

Both girls froze, shrinking back into the bushes which lined the lane. It was unlikely he’d seen them as the van was turned in to face the gate. He’d clearly stopped there to watch the fire.

‘He could have seen us silhouetted against the flames,’ Dale whispered.

‘I don’t think he’d be sitting there so calmly if he had,’ Lotte said.

‘He might not be in there!’ Dale whispered back fearfully. ‘He could be anywhere. Even right behind us.’

Lotte looked at Dale in shocked surprise, realizing that she was falling apart. She was shaking like a leaf, her eyes were full of terror, and when Lotte took her hand to comfort her, her pulse was racing far too fast.

All at once Lotte felt a whole new surge of red-hot anger run through her. She’d been tormented, abused, starved and terrified by this man for far too long. He and his wife had already stripped her of everything, but to turn her brave and confident friend into a basket case was the last straw, and she knew she had to put a stop to him now, for good.

‘Stay here,’ she said to Dale, pushing her firmly further back into the bushes. ‘I’m going to check out the van.’

Dale let out a kind of frightened mew, but Lotte was not going to allow herself to be sidetracked. Holding the axe in her right hand and supporting it with her left, she ran lightly towards the van, not even feeling her burnt foot or the rough ground digging into it. When she was nearly in view of the van mirrors, she ducked down so he wouldn’t see her and crawled the rest of the way.

His head was lolling back against the seat head-rest. He had fallen asleep!

For a few seconds Lotte crouched on the ground, just looking at him. To her it was outrageous that he could be so soothed by watching two people burn alive that he fell asleep. That was like adding petrol to the fire already burning inside her.

With the axe in her right hand she lifted it high above her head. With her left hand she opened the van door. He stirred but she was already swinging the axe down on him, and as the blade sliced into his thighs he woke, and the look of utter disbelief on his face when he saw her was laughable.

‘My turn to terrify you now,’ she said, pulling the axe back and swinging it sideways so that it not only broke the windscreen but sliced into his chest. He screamed as though he was being burned alive, but she was fairly sure his waxed jacket had prevented the blade from doing him any serious damage.

He screamed for mercy as she lifted the axe a third time and whacked it down with force across his lap. Blood came spurting out fiercely enough to splatter Lotte too.

‘You showed no mercy with me,’ she roared at him. ‘You and your wife treated me worse than some kind of farm animal, and what did I ever do to you? You stole my life, my baby, my everything. You sat here believing you were watching us die in those flames! You aren’t a man, you’re a monster!’

She hit him again and again, tears streaming down her face until she finally backed away, too exhausted to hit him again. She was soaked in his blood, and she could hear no sound from him, yet in those moments as she stumbled back to find Dale, she understood why Indians used to take their enemies’ scalps, for his blood soaking into her clothes had finally released her from her hatred and anger.

Chapter Eighteen

‘You’ve found them?’ David had been woken from a deep sleep by the telephone ringing, but the moment he was told it was the police and the girls were found, he was wide awake.

‘Are they hurt?’ he asked, his heart pounding.

‘I can’t tell you that. I wasn’t there. I was just asked to ring you and let you know they’ve been taken to St Richard’s,’ the officer replied.

Five minutes later, fully dressed, David was in his car on the way to the hospital.

It was too early for the roads to be busy, and the clear sky and already warm sun promised a good day ahead. But he knew that even if he were stuck in a traffic jam with it raining cats and dogs, he’d still be happy because Lotte was alive.

David assumed the officer who rang him must have phoned Dale and Lotte’s parents too; he thought he would give Simon and Adam a ring later just in case they hadn’t been told.

He was in such a hurry to park his car at the hospital and get in to see the girls that he almost clipped an estate Volvo driven by an elderly man in a flat cap, who was just pulling out.

‘Slow down, son,’ the man shouted out of the window. ‘You’re a long time dead!’

Something about that remark made David laugh. ‘Point taken, Pops,’ he called back as he drove on into a parking space more sedately.

*

The girls were in Singleton Ward where Lotte had been before, but in a shared room.

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you disturb them now,’ a dark-skinned Ward Sister told him when he inquired about the girls. ‘They are fast asleep, and after what they’ve been through they need sleep.’

‘What happened to them? Are they badly hurt?’ he asked in alarm.

‘I don’t know the details about what happened, but I do know their injuries aren’t too serious,’ she said, smiling and showing very white teeth. ‘But there’s a policeman waiting to talk to them, so why don’t you have a little chat with him?’

PC Andrew Duggan was dozing in the chair in the waiting room. He’d been on the night shift and had been one of eight officers who rushed out to Moor Lane when the call came in that the girls had taken refuge at a house there, and that Howard Ramsden, the man they’d been searching for, was in his van, injured, nearby.

Duggan had been part of the team headed by DI Bryan working on the girls’ abduction, so like all the team, he was overjoyed to hear they were alive, However, when they got to the isolated house where the girls were, his first impression on seeing Lotte completely drenched in blood was that she must have a life-threatening injury.

As David Mitchell came into the waiting room, Duggan woke and rubbed his eyes.

‘You found them then?’ David said after quickly introducing himself. ‘I rang DI Bryan yesterday about a house called “Drummond” in Itchenor. Is that where they were? With the Ramsdens?’

‘We haven’t got the complete story yet,’ Duggan said. ‘But basically, Howard Ramsden took the girls out to Moor Lane, tied them up in a shed on an allotment and set fire to it. Their escape was down to using their wits and sheer determination, I’d say.’

‘And Ramsden?’

‘He’s in intensive care,’ Duggan said. ‘It’s touch and go if he’ll make it. Your Lotte gave him his comeuppance with an axe.’

‘An axe!’ David exclaimed.

Duggan nodded and grinned. ‘Yes, really! An axe. She gave it some welly too! Nearly amputated his legs. Fair play to her, that’s all I can say. She was a very brave girl.’

‘How bad are her injuries?’ David’s head was spinning at the thought of anyone almost amputating legs with an axe.

‘She got some burns on her legs and feet while escaping from the shed,’ Duggan said. ‘The other girl has only minor cuts, but both of them were traumatized when they were brought in here. Lack of food and sleep has all played its part too. But I’m told they will recover quickly.’

‘Thank God for that.’ David sighed with relief. There was so much he wanted to ask, whether Fern had been caught too, and if they’d found the baby, but all he managed to ask was whether the girls’ parents had been told, and Scott, Simon and Adam.

‘Yes, they’ve all been notified, but advised not to come till this evening. We didn’t bother to tell you that. We knew you’re sweet on Lotte so you’d have ignored it.’

David smiled, but the smile faded quickly as he considered what he’d been told. ‘If this guy dies, where does that leave Lotte?’

Duggan grimaced. ‘Well, she could be facing a murder charge!’

David’s eyes widened. ‘No! After what she’s been through?’

‘There has to be due process in law. Even when someone’s an utter bastard and really deserved it,’ Duggan said apologetically. ‘But she’ll be able to plead self-defence and it would be a travesty of justice if she wasn’t acquitted. It’s early days anyhow, and we’ve still got a helluva lot of investigating to do. We only found out late yesterday that the Ramsdens reside here under a false name. We also found papers in Ramsden’s van which link him and his wife to an illegal business in the States. We still haven’t found Fern, or Lotte’s baby. But once she wakes up maybe she can tell us more.’

David had to go out for some fresh air after talking to the policeman because he suddenly felt quite faint. On the way here he’d believed Lotte’s nightmare was finally over. He’d expected there to be some hiccups – no one could go through so much without some cost to their health or sanity – but he’d hoped that he could be there beside her, helping her with that, and rebuilding her life.

Now she might be charged with murder!

He could hardly credit that the law could be so idiotic, for although he didn’t actually know any details about what this couple had put her through the previous time they imprisoned her, she had ended up in the sea. After that there was another attempt on her life, and the abduction, and finally they had tried to burn her alive, so surely she was entitled to defend herself?

Meanwhile, back in the waiting room, Duggan rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands, contemplating what he had seen last night.

He was only thirty, but he’d been with the force five years and seen many acts of extreme violence during that time. But he had never seen injuries as bad as those Lotte Wainwright had inflicted on the American. He had spoken of it quite lightly to David, almost as if he approved whole- heartedly, but in fact he had been shocked to the core by such a young, dainty girl being so brutal.

It wasn’t one or two swipes with an axe, it was a frenzied, vicious assault that had turned the man’s lower limbs to pulp. In homicide cases it was the state of mind of the accused which was all important in deciding whether the charge was manslaughter or murder. There was no doubt in Duggan’s mind that Lotte had attacked this man with absolute desire for his death, rather than in self-defence, and that she’d relished every blow of that axe. But then, the man had tried to incinerate her and her friend in that shed, so maybe that was justification?

When David realized it wasn’t reasonable to expect to see Lotte before early evening, he went to work instead, buying some newspapers on the way. All the nationals had something about the girls being found, but no detail of how it came about, except for the
Sun
, which appeared to have got its information from the emergency service log. The paper ran a dramatic headline saying ‘Saved from the Jaws of Death’, with an old picture of the girls taken on the cruise. They had padded out their lack of new information with the full back story of how Lotte had been found half drowned on the beach, that she’d had a baby which had still not been discovered, and how she and her friend had been abducted later. But it was the only paper to state that one of the girls had rung 999 and said the man who had held them captive had tried to burn them alive in a shed. It also reported that a man who had been badly injured was taken to hospital in Chichester for emergency surgery, and the police were waiting to question him about his involvement.

David had found it very hard to concentrate at work for his mind was exclusively on Lotte. It wasn’t so much the possibility of her being charged with murder if Howard died, for there was no point in worrying about that at the moment. What really concerned him was whether or not he had unwittingly overdramatized his feelings for her, because she’d appeared so vulnerable.

His mother rang to say she was glad to hear Lotte had been found, but advised him not to rush into anything. Just the tone of her voice suggested that what she really meant was, ‘Keep well away, son, that one’s trouble.’