Gregory's Game, page 22
‘Do you want some water?’
She turned her head towards the concerned voice and for a moment couldn’t place who he was. Then she remembered: the Asian policeman who’d been there before, with the small, pretty woman who’d said her name was Tess.
He poured her some water and she struggled to sit up. Kat could see he was torn between offering to help her and fear that it would be an inappropriate thing to do. She took the water, her hands trembling.
‘I dreamed I was with her,’ she said. ‘Then she was taken away.’
Vin sat back down beside the bed. ‘Can you talk about it? Anything you can tell us about where you were held would help.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘Tess had to go,’ Vin said. ‘Are you OK talking to me?’
‘I’ll try,’ Kat said again. ‘I just don’t know where to start.’
‘Anywhere you can. How about if I ask questions? Would that help? Can you describe the place where you were held?’
Kat closed her eyes, but even though the lights were on, darkness lurked. She opened them again. ‘An old building,’ she said. ‘Inside, there was like this big box. Desiree and I, we were locked in there. Someone gave us food and water and nappies for Desi, but I knew there wasn’t enough. I had to make it last in case they didn’t come back.’ Tears flowed and her voice failed. Vin waited patiently for her to regain control.
He felt in his pocket and produced a chocolate bar. ‘Want to share?’
She nodded and he unwrapped the chocolate, broke off some squares and offered them to her. Kat forced the tension from her shoulders and took a piece. This was just what she needed, she realized. Something really ordinary. Something normal.
‘A stone building,’ she said. ‘With wooden floors. And so quiet. I couldn’t bear the quiet. Where’s Ian?’ she asked suddenly as though the idea of her husband had suddenly occurred.
Vin hesitated. ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘He left home a few days ago and we don’t know where he went.’
She stared at him as though trying to make sense of the words, but she didn’t seem capable of formulating the questions.
‘A stone building with wooden floors,’ Vin prompted. He offered more chocolate and she took another square. She seemed so fragile, Vin thought. Ready to fall back into that hiding place inside her own head. ‘With a big wooden box inside. How did you get out, Katherine?’
‘Kat,’ she said, her attention seeming to wander for a moment.
‘Kat. Have some chocolate. Take a sip of water. You’re doing fine.’ It was like questioning a child, he thought. Like he needed an appropriate adult. Through the window into the ante room he could see a uniformed officer, chatting to a nurse as she sorted paperwork. The nurse kept looking Vin’s way, checking everything was all right. As all right as it could be.
‘How did you get out?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I heard footsteps,’ she said. ‘Two people. A woman and a man. The door opened and they came inside. The man hit me and I fell and then he picked up Desiree and he left. I could hear her screaming, crying, calling for me, but I couldn’t get up. My head …’
‘You’re doing well,’ he told her again. ‘Just take it slow.’
‘I can remember the woman bending down to look at me and I tried to reach her, but it was like nothing was working. I think I must have passed out and when I came round it was all so quiet again. Desi wasn’t there.’
Vin broke the rest of the chocolate and laid the pack on the bed. This was currency now. She told him something, he gave her sweets. He didn’t question it. Whatever worked, whatever bridged the gap and kept her talking. She took another square and stared at it.
‘In the bag,’ she said. ‘Someone left food and water and chocolate in the bag. Desi ate most of it. They left batteries too. I’ve never been so thankful for anything. They left me a light.’
She sipped more water. The door opened softly and the nurse from the ante room slipped in. She laid another bar of chocolate on the side table and then left again.
‘I’ll be sick if I eat all that,’ Katherine said.
Vin smiled at her. ‘We’ll share,’ he said. He broke off a square and ate it, taking time to let it dissolve on his tongue. ‘When you came round?’ he prompted. ‘It was quiet and you were alone.’
She nodded. ‘And I was cold. I’d kept a blanket wrapped round me but it had fallen on the floor when he knocked me down. Then I realized there was a draft. Just a little one. That the cold was coming from somewhere. Then I saw the gap in the door. It was just a crack, but when they left, they hadn’t locked the door. The woman hadn’t locked the door.’
‘So you opened the door. And then …’
‘I felt so sick. My head hurt. I wanted to drink but there was no water left. I’d given it to Desi. I pushed on the door and it opened wide. I thought they were playing with me. That I’d get out and they’d be waiting, but there was no one. The place was empty and it was cold and I could see the window high up in the wall. It wasn’t quite dark.’
‘And then what?’ Vin asked gently.
‘I managed to get down the stairs, but when I got to the door it was locked up tight. That was when I knew she’d tried to help me. She’d waited until the man was out of sight and then she’d only pretended to lock me in. But she couldn’t do anything about the big door.
‘I got back up the stairs and then I knew the only way out was the window. There were more stairs up to this kind of platform and I could reach the window from there. The stairs were all rotting away, so I tried not to walk in the centre of them. I wanted to get out, to find Desi. I just kept thinking that. I had to find Desi.’
She paused and looked fully at Vin. ‘Why did Ian run away?’
‘We don’t know,’ Vin said cautiously. He knew instinctively that he mustn’t lie to her. That she’d sense it and shut him out. But what was safe to say?
‘Maybe he went looking for us,’ she said.
‘Maybe he did.’
She held his gaze, considering his words, and he saw something die as she found them wanting. Kat looked away, her fingers taking another piece of chocolate, her brain barely noticing what she did.
‘You made it to the window,’ Vin said.
‘The glass was cracked. I picked up a bit of broken stair and I shoved at it. It broke. I cut my hands, but I managed to make a hole big enough to get through. I could see there was a creeper of some sort and I just hoped it would hold me. I didn’t really think about it; I just wanted to get out. If I’d had to jump, I think I would have.’
She finally looked at the square of chocolate between her fingers, melting now, the corners rounding with the heat of her hand. She ate it slowly, her eyes seeing something not in the little room.
‘I could see lights,’ she said. ‘So I guessed there must be a road or some houses and so I headed for them. I don’t know how far it was, but it got dark and then very dark. And then it was light and there were buildings and people and … and that was it.’
‘Can you remember the people in the pub?’
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘It’s all mixed up. Voices and bright lights and being cold.’
‘You must have been very frightened.’
She nodded. ‘Is she dead?’ Kat asked.
Again he had to balance his answer. Truth, lies, somewhere between? Worse, he didn’t know which was which.
‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘We have to go on hoping.’
She nodded. Tears streaming down her face now. She hadn’t asked about Ian again, Vin noted. Perhaps she sensed that something was badly wrong. Vin hoped he would not have to be the one to confirm that for her.
FIFTY-SEVEN
‘What was this place, do you reckon?’ Gregory said.
‘I’m guessing a mill of some kind. It’s by the river; there’s the remains of a water wheel. It’s got to be a couple of hundred years old.’
He considered for a moment, looking at the fenland landscape that surrounded them. ‘Of course, it could have been something to do with drainage,’ he said.
Gregory shrugged. They had parked the car a quarter of a mile back down the track, pulling on to the verge and tucking in close to the hedge. They had seen no one, heard no one. A couple of miles before making the final turn, they had crossed a railway line with an unmanned crossing. In the distance now they could hear a train, slow and rumbling. Freight, Gregory guessed, rather than passengers.
It was late afternoon, twilight fast approaching, but they’d heard about the search on the radio news and didn’t want to risk leaving their own until the following day. Sooner rather than later, someone would recall this ancient structure and come looking.
The main door had been padlocked. The chain and lock were new. Nathan left it alone and they circled the building looking for the way Kat Marsh might have escaped. The dyke alongside the mill house was overgrown and stagnant. Looking across the fields, Gregory could just make out another stretch of water. He guessed this one must once have been linked to that, but now it was little more than an elongated, silted pond.
‘She couldn’t have got out this way. She’d have fallen in.’
Nathan nodded and then circled back the way they’d come.
‘There.’
There was a window halfway up the wall, the glass broken. Glass on the ground glinted as Nathan shone a torch on it. ‘Blood,’ he said.
‘Looks that way.’
Ivy and a stunted ash tree clambered up the old brick. Nathan could see scrapes and breaks where she’d half climbed, half slithered down.
‘Stay here,’ Nathan said. ‘I doubt it will take your weight.’
Gregory nodded and Nathan began to climb. Soon he was at the window. Gregory watched as he slid through.
It was getting dark now. Gregory stood and listened, watching the last of the sun fade from a leaden sky. It would rain, he thought. Wash Kat’s blood from the glass and into the rich, black soil.
He leaned back against the wall and settled in for the wait.
Inside, Nathan lowered himself down carefully. The window was placed above a rusted platform; a gantry overhead indicated that it had been used for loading something. Steps, half rotten and with many missing, led down on to the upper floor. Nathan descended slowly and carefully, then paused and played his torch around the walls and empty space. He listened to the silence, the stillness. A dead place, he thought, jealous of its privacy and isolation.
It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. That what he was seeing was out of place. A structure had been built on the upper floor. From his position on the steps he was effectively looking down on to it – but not quite into it, built as it was somewhere close to the middle of the wooden floor, rising solidly amid the age and decay. Slowly, Nathan descended the rest of the steps and went for a closer look.
Pacing it out, he estimated it was something like ten feet by ten wide and about the same high. He was immediately in no doubt that this was where Katherine Marsh had been held prisoner.
His feet disturbed dust and grime and, shining his torch down, he could see clearly where other feet had done the same. Nathan crouched, but there was no detail he could make out. Just the sign that someone or several someones had walked here recently. There were signs that the floor had been reinforced to take the weight of the large wooden crate. In other places, he could see holes in the timber floor and through those holes could see the beams holding the floor in place. Even now they looked strong and heavy, Nathan thought. This place had been built to last. On the third side of the cube, Nathan found the door. It stood open now, but had been secured by two massive bolts. Nathan stepped inside. The mattress, the chemical toilet – soiled nappies piled beside it. A plastic bag, a pathetic little lantern, coarse blankets. Kat and Daisy had been kept here.
Nathan felt the anger surge and fought it down. This was time to be calm, to think, not to feel rage. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, Nathan inspected the black plastic bag lying on the floor. The remains of sandwich wrappers, apple cores and chocolate bars. Bottled water. Sustenance for maybe a few days, certainly not enough for the week or more she had been kept here. Had Daisy been here all that time as well?
Nathan backed out and flashed the torch around again, looking for any sign of others being here, leaving anything behind. He doubted there would be anything but went down anyway to inspect the lower floors. Apart from evidence of footprints in the dust, nothing remained.
So, someone had unlocked the door, Nathan thought. Someone had come here and left the door of the crate unbolted, but then locked and padlocked the outer door.
Mae, Nathan guessed. Mae, but she’d not been alone. Someone had put the padlock and chain back on the entrance to the mill. Was that when they had taken Daisy from her mother? How long had it been before Kat had realized she had a way out? Had she made her way down to the main door first and found it barred? Had she thought this was just a sick joke – released from her first prison just to find herself still confined? Or had she headed straight for that high window?
Mae – and Nathan just knew it had been Mae – would have considered she’d given Kat a fighting chance. Nathan found he was surprised that Ian Marsh’s wife had actually taken it. Reluctantly, he revised his opinion of Katherine, just a little.
He’d been here long enough and, in truth, learnt little. He guessed that Mae had wanted him to see this place in part so he understood the risk she herself had run, crossing whoever had abducted Kat and the child.
Always theatrical, Nathan thought. Always wanting to emphasize the point. Mae never seemed to grasp that there were times to be subtle. He made his way back up to the window and examined it carefully before going back through. Looking at it, he guessed that the glass had been cracked before and that Kat must have broken it, cutting herself in the process. How badly had she hurt herself? The distance across the fields to where she had been found was, he calculated, a rough eight miles. It wasn’t the closest settlement; there was a village four miles or so back down the track and then down the little B road. But she wouldn’t have known that and, looking out of the window, Nathan understood what had brokered her decision. There were lights on the horizon. Lights that looked like a road or a group of houses. She’d have seen them from up here and taken the most direct route she could to find help.
‘Good for you, Katherine,’ Nathan said.
FIFTY-EIGHT
I’m tired, Naomi thought, then remembered that she’d been up since two in the morning. It was now just after six in the evening.
Once Tess and Charles Duncan had gone they had decided to go out, unable to settle in the little flat. Naomi joked that Duncan had probably bugged the place. Then it hadn’t felt like a joke. Finally, they’d made their way to the local pub and ordered a meal.
‘You think Gregory will cooperate with him?’ Naomi asked.
‘I doubt it. Would you?’
Naomi shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t think Charles Duncan is as committed to finding Desiree as he is to caulking the sinking ship Clay left behind. I smell damage limitation here.’
They were silent for a few minutes, while both tucked into their meals. ‘You think the big Tesco will still be open?’ Naomi asked.
‘Should be. I think it closes at ten. Why?’
‘Because I think Patrick needs a new phone. Or at least a new sim card.’
‘We shouldn’t involve him, Nomi.’
‘I want him to send a text, that’s all. Let Gregory know they have company. I think when he asked to speak to Tess, he didn’t have the likes of Charles Duncan in mind. If they have the facts, they can decide what to do.’
‘OK,’ Alec said. ‘If Harry agrees, of course.’
‘Patrick is an adult now,’ she reminded him.
Nathan and Gregory had headed south again, tracking the man Mae had named. Gregory felt momentarily guilty about the woman – but only momentarily. Mae had made her choices. She’d had opportunities to get out. Clay had ensured she had a pension and an escape route, but she’d not taken it. You should know when to quit.
Beside him, Nathan shifted uncomfortably. ‘Pull in and I’ll take over,’ Gregory said. They’d both spent more hours behind the wheel lately than was good for them. Back and knees complained and Gregory was increasingly aware that he was no longer a young man. Old breaks ached; old scars grew sore.
‘You think this is a wild goose chase?’ Nathan asked, drawing into the next lay-by.
‘I think it could be. But I think she’d already committed herself. She’d got nothing to gain by lying and Phelps is one of Steadmann’s men. So …’
Nathan got out of the car and stretched. Gregory took his place in the driver’s seat.
‘She reckoned we’d got a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Before the sale goes through.’
He was talking about a child, he thought suddenly. But it felt easier, using neutral language, not dwelling too much on the realities.
‘So, we’d better get moving then,’ Nathan said.
Kat Marsh stared up at the ceiling. The nice policeman had gone off for a well-earned break when they thought she’d fallen asleep. She may well have dropped off for a few minutes, Kat thought, but she couldn’t be sure. The line between waking and sleeping and some other limbo state was no longer very well defined. She floated – no, floated sounded too peaceful and this state wasn’t peaceful. She existed in some strange, lost, amorphous place. Nothing felt real, including Kat herself. It was as though someone had invented her … and got bored halfway through, so that she was still thinly sketched and almost transparent.
She thought about her little girl. Where was she? Was she all right? Was she even still alive?
And she thought about her husband. Where had he gone and why? The policeman, Vin, had been so cautious when he talked about Ian, as though he hadn’t wanted to hurt her – as if she could be hurt more. The only thing that could stab her deeper in the heart was if bad news came about her baby.
