The Well (37 page)

Randle rolled her over onto her back and slapped her hard across the face, a powerful blow that hurt like fire and set her ears ringing.

“No, please,” she started to say – but once again the hand was on her mouth. Randle picked up the knife.

“I told you,” he said.

She shook her head and tried to plead with him, but the only sound that came through the wall of flesh was a desperate murmur.

“You’re bleeding,” said Randle. He wiped the back of his hand against her forehead and showed it to her. “Such a pretty girl. We don’t want to spoil your looks.”

Hannah stopped struggling.

“Good girl,” said Randle. “Now, you try that again and I’ll use the knife. I used to be a soldier. I know how to use it. I can make sure that you’re dying slowly, while I screw you. Understand?”

Hannah nodded. Deep in her stomach, she felt hideously sick.

“Now, you know what’s going to happen. What’s up to you is how much it hurts when I do it – and whether you get to wake up tomorrow.”

Oh, please, please no,
she thought.

“Now, you do as I say. Roll over onto your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”

Randle relaxed his grip. Hannah rolled over, sobbing, and put her hands behind her. She heard the sound of tape being taken off a roll and felt him bind her wrists, tightly.

“Now roll onto your side,” he said. As she did so, he pulled the last of the tape from the roll and stuck it across her mouth.
Not enough for two girls,
he thought.
Well, I’ll just have to be all the more firm with the other one.

Randle stood. As he did, Hannah saw him wince and rub his leg. She remembered that he walked with a limp and wondered, if she got the chance, if she could outrun him. He pulled her to her feet.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go and meet your friend.”

9

Kneeling on all fours in front of the hole, Becca took one long, final deep breath.
You can do this
, she told herself.

Her fear was so tangible that she could almost taste it, like bile rising from her empty stomach.

She held her breath and submerged, flattening herself against the bottom of the well. In her left hand she held the empty water bottle, in her right the iPod in the condom. Although grateful for her goggles, there was little to see. The dim light from the iPod illuminated only a foot or so around it.

She stretched her arms in front of herself and pushed forwards into the hole, terrified. Before she had entered it, the hole had seemed easily big enough. Once she had squeezed her shoulders inside, she found that the confined tunnel seemed to press against her on all sides. She tried to move forwards, but her fear instantly smothered her ability to think clearly and she backed out, panicking.

She surfaced, panting. “I can’t,” she sobbed to herself with angry frustration, defeated and exhausted. “I can’t.”

Becca sat down in the water, pulled off her goggles and wept.
I don’t want to die
, she thought, over and over again.

Above her, a loud caw signalled the return of the bird.

“Oh, you’re back are you?” she shouted. The bird cawed again.

I’ll die if I stay here
, she thought.
I have to do this. I have to. There’s no choice. No other way. And I have to do it now. By tomorrow I’ll be too tired, too hungry and probably too sick.

The bird cawed again.

Angry, Becca returned to the front of the hole and positioned herself on all fours. “Fuck you!” she shouted at the bird.

She brought her breathing under control, taking long slow breaths. “Fuck you,” she murmured each time she exhaled, her determination growing with each breath.

She put on her goggles, grabbed the empty bottle which had been floating on the water and fished around for the iPod.

Her breaths were getting slower and deeper.
You can do this,
she told herself
. You have to do this. You’re good at this. You’re good in the water. The best in school.

Above her, the bird cawed again. Becca looked up and raised her right hand, middle finger protruding from her clenched fist.

Then she took one long breath, submerged and pushed herself into the hole.

10

Exhausted, Julia dropped her handbag on the living room floor and hung her car keys on the hook by the door.

“Hannah not up yet?” she asked.

PC Lucy Keelan shook her head. “I didn’t want to disturb her. I was going to wake her just before my replacement came, so it wouldn’t be a shock when I was gone.”

Julia looked at her watch. Hannah wasn’t usually one for sleeping in.
Perhaps she just doesn’t want to face the day
, she thought.
I know how she feels.

It had been a long, purposeless night – Ed had regained consciousness for only a few moments. She wasn’t sure that he had even been aware of her presence. She’d tried to sleep at around three, her eyes red and sore from being awake so long. But she couldn’t. Too much coffee and too much tension kept her mind from relaxing.

She poured herself an orange juice and one for Hannah. “Do you want one?” she asked Lucy.

“No thanks. I could do with a coffee, though – but I can make it.”

Julia took the drinks upstairs, thinking about grabbing a hot shower and a couple of hours’ sleep before going back to the hospital.

She knocked on Hannah’s door. There was no answer. She knocked again and pushed open the door. “Hannah?” The room was empty, the bed unmade – and the window open. Julia scanned around the room, as if she had somehow failed to see her daughter. The t-shirt and shorts she normally slept in were on the chair at the side of her desk as if she’d dressed, but her mobile phone was still on the shelf above her bed.

She put down the two glasses of juice and walked to the bathroom, calling out, “Hannah?”

The bathroom door was open – the room was empty. Julia felt her initial apprehension shift into panic. She ran from room to room, shouting Hannah’s name. Each room was empty. Running downstairs, she almost collided with Lucy who, hearing Julia’s increasingly anguished shouts, had come running.

“She’s not here,” shouted Julia, distraught.

Julia scouted around downstairs. A pair of Hannah’s shoes were missing and the back door was unlocked.

“I’ve been here all the time!” protested Lucy, her voice full of shock, her eyes wide with fear.

“What, asleep?” screamed Julia. She could only think of three possibilities: for some reason, Hannah had decided to go to school. Or she had gone out – somewhere.
But where?
wondered Julia.
And without telling anyone?
The final possibility chilled her:
could that man have crept in and taken her
?

“You just pray that she’s at school,” said Julia, picking up the phone. “You work with my husband. You know what he’s like. You know that if any harm comes to Hannah when you were supposed to be watching her, he’ll –” Julia shook her right hand in front of her, in a tight fist.

Lucy knew exactly what Ed would do. And that would probably be after she lost her job. Feeling sick, she went into the kitchen to radio back to the station.

The irony of using the threat of violence by her husband, against another woman, didn’t occur to Julia until much later.

11

As Sammy ran to the well, a large black bird that had been perched on the wall flapped its wings and flew into the trees, startling her.

Breathless from the climb, she peered inside. It was too dark to see the bottom clearly, though she thought she could just about make out a vague shape below.

Her foot kicked something. She looked down: it was a mobile phone; beside it lay the battery. She dropped the rope on the ground and knelt at the edge of the well.

“Hello?” she shouted. Her voice echoed around the well; no reply came. Despite knowing it to be useless, she shouted again.

She closed her eyes and tried to find the girl, but couldn’t. That was the problem with trying to see others’ thoughts: you couldn’t rely on it. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes very hard – and sometimes it didn’t work at all. Sometimes, Sammy could tune people in and out as if they were radio stations, yet other times everyone’s thoughts were a jumbled riot of noise that couldn’t be shut out.
Still
, she thought,
I normally feel
something
. It was a feeling of isolation with which Sammy wasn’t familiar.

It’s this place
, Sammy realised.
It’s a bad place.

It was almost as if the place itself had thoughts; dark thoughts, far worse than Sammy had ever seen, even from
that man
. It felt like a black light, radiating evil, blocking everything out. It was not a good place to be. Sammy looked around. The well was bad, but the ruined cottage was worse. She stood and walked towards it slowly, both drawn to it and repulsed by it at the same time.

Inside, the remains of the rooms were completely overgrown – except, bizarrely, one room where nothing grew at all. Sammy stood at the threshold to that room, unable to put a foot inside it. She shuddered. It made her feel just like when she’d had flu – hot and cold, nauseous and dizzy. She backed away, steadying herself against the wall.

She could feel the house talking, murmuring, but it wasn’t using words – more of a low tone, like a group of men humming and whispering at the same time. It was deeply unsettling. She turned and ran from the house.

It wasn’t that far from the house to the well, but when she reached it she was panting hard and trembling with fear. Until now she’d felt brave and almost grown-up. But in this terrible place she felt very much like the child she was: small, helpless and woefully out of her depth.

Still feeling sick, Sammy knelt at the side of the well and shouted into it once more – and was again met with silence. She was annoyed with herself for sleeping in and setting off late – and equally cross with Hannah for refusing to set off straight away. Just being a few minutes earlier could have been enough.

The minutes dragged by. Every so often Sammy would shout into the well, but always without hearing a response. The only sound was a bird’s occasional caw, which, for some reason, Sammy found incredibly unnerving.

After five more minutes, despondent, she decided to go back to the top of the quarry, to see if Becca had emerged. She stood and ran back to the gap in the wall. Just as she reached it, Hannah came stumbling through, falling face down on the muddy ground as if she had been pushed.

“Hannah!” Sammy rushed forwards and squatted down beside her. “Are you OK?”

Too late, Sammy noticed that Hannah’s hands were bound. Hannah rolled over; her mouth was covered with brown tape and the side of her face was dashed with blood.

A big, stocky man jumped down from the gap in the wall, pushing Sammy to the ground. Before she could move, one of his hands covered her mouth; the other was holding a knife.
It’s him
, she thought,
it’s the bad man.

Sammy struggled, but the man was strong – brutishly strong. The hand on her face was easily enough to keep her pinned to the ground. She kicked around with her feet, pointlessly. She had instantly known that he was the
bad man
but it was only now that she recognised him as someone she had seen often. The thought that the
bad man
lived inside someone she knew, someone who everyone trusted, made her even more terrified.

“Calm down,” said the man, insistently. “Don’t struggle.”

Sammy bit into the man’s hand. He yanked it back, swearing. Sammy shrieked and scrambled away. She got to her feet, but the man was already up. Before she could run, he kicked her feet from under her. As she hit the ground, he rolled her onto her back and then sat astride her, on her chest, pinning her arms down with his knees. She struggled as hard as she could but the man was very heavy – so heavy that he hurt her chest. She tried to scream again but the man covered her mouth with his hand; it was wet with blood.

“Scream once more and I’ll fucking kill you,” said the man, enraged. He pulled back his arm and slapped her hard with the back of his hand, across the side of her face. Sammy felt as though she’d been hit with a hammer.

The man covered her mouth again, stifling the sound of her weeping. He was talking, but she couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. He had gone blurry and the ground beneath her seemed to be spinning.

He shook her. “Did you hear me?”

Sammy shook her head; when she did, it made her feel sick.

“If you scream, or run, I will catch you. But first –” he gestured towards Hannah, “– I’ll kill her. And when they find out, people will blame you. Because you ran away. It will be your fault. Understand? I’ll kill her – but they will blame you.”

Sammy nodded.

“Do you want to live?”

Sammy nodded, terrified.

Randle gestured to Hannah. “Do you want me to kill her?”

Sammy shook her head.

“Then you’re going to be quiet? And do everything I say?”

Sammy nodded, shakily. Tears covered her face. She sniffed up, hard, her nose running as freely as her eyes. She didn’t know what doing
everything I say
would entail, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be good.
A dirty-bad-sex thing
, she assumed, shuddering.
Like bad people think: hurting not loving.

“Right,” said Randle. “I’m going to let you up. When I do, you keep quiet and don’t run. If you do, she’ll be dead before you’ve gone fifty feet. Understand?”

Sammy nodded. She knew that the man was absolutely telling the truth.

Then he spoke to Hannah, who still lay on the ground. “The same goes for you. You run, she gets it.”

Randle pulled both of the girls to their feet and looked them over. One was a touch young for him, one a touch too old – but when all was said and done, he’d done far better than he could ever have hoped.
Two for the price of one
, he thought.