Using a fingernail she started scratching at the paint until a pinprick of light flared in. She worked away and the paint began to flake and soon she had made a hole big enough to peek through. She pushed her face up against the glass, blinking against the harsh daylight on the other side.
She could see a green field bordered by a grey stone wall and beyond an area of woodland, the leaves of nearby trees all autumnal: burnt sienna, rust and gold. Behind those trees a dark forest of conifers climbed a steep hill. There was no sign of any other houses, no roads, no people. Her location, wherever it was, must be remote, deep in the countryside.
Deep in the shit more like.
She focused on the ground below the window and realised she was on the second storey. If she smashed the window she would have to jump down ten feet or more and if she hadn’t sprained her ankle or worse she could run.
Where?
She scratched away at the paint again, expanding the hole until she had a better view of the back yard. A set of bean poles made a wigwam shape beside a neat row of raised beds not long dug over. A vegetable garden. In one corner a compost heap with a wheelbarrow upside down on top sat next to one of those dustbin incinerators with-
Shit!
A man stood throwing small sticks into the incinerator as flames licked out of the top. He had his back to Alice, but the black hair seemed somehow familiar. The fire roared away and the man kept feeding in sticks for a few minutes. Then he bent to pick up a cloth from a pile of rags on the ground, he held the material up to his nose and appeared to take several deep breaths before shaking his head and dropping the rag into the incinerator. Now he was stooping again and picking up something else, something bright red, an item of clothing. It looked like the blouse she had been wearing before-
Oh fuck!
It was the blouse she had been wearing, the one she had bought in the Debenhams’ summer sale. The pile of rags wasn’t rags at all, it was her clothing: her top, her cardigan, her jeans, her shoes, her underwear!
Alice turned from the window and collapsed on the mattress. She stifled a sob by biting her lip, but then the tears came and she let her emotions all out, just crying and crying and crying.
She must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing she was aware of was a sound at the door. A key turning in the lock. She grabbed the duvet and scampered under, like a snail retreating into its shell.
The door opened and a hand pushed a tray along the floor and into the room. The tray held a bowl of fruit — apples, bananas, grapes — and a bottle of spring water. The door swung shut.
‘Wait! Who are you? Please let me go!’ Alice jumped off the mattress and ran to the door.
Click. The key turned and footsteps walked off into the distance.
Chapter 16
The final time he saw Carmel was three weeks after Mitchell’s Christmas party. He wished he could purge the memory from his mind, but he couldn’t. The images would stay with him forever.
The phone had shocked him awake sometime after two in the morning. Mitchell! Mitchell? What the hell was Mitchell doing ringing at that time? He sat up in bed, half asleep, listening to Mitchell asking for help. Mitchell wanted to meet him out at Wembury, in the car park next to the beach. As soon as possible. And no questions.
Harry got dressed and went out into the night. Got in his car and drove at a crawl through town and out east across the Plym, turning south into the country and toward the sea. At one point he passed a patrol car going the other way and he willed the police to stop and turn in the road and come after him. He’d tell them all about Mitchell and perhaps then the nightmare would end.
It didn’t happen and he drove on through the dark lanes to Wembury. Down past the village and along a track to the car park that stood next to the beach. A cafe sat perched on the rocks right on the seafront and Harry recalled going there one summer morning years ago. He had drunk a coffee while he waited for the crowds to arrive.
He parked the car overlooking the bay and sat and waited. Drizzle misted the windscreen and he set the wipers to intermittent. Somewhere up in the clouds the moon cast a strange washed-out glow over the sea. Harry could see the tide was ebbing and more and more beach became exposed as the minutes ticked by. Harry remembered the last time. The hot sun, the drip, drip, drip of ice creams, the screaming kids. But most of all he remembered the girls. Their firm, young bodies, the colourful bikinis, the wet T-shirts, the curves, the smiles and the laughter. Click, click, click with his camera and their flesh was captured forever. Preserved. Harry chewed his tongue and swallowed spit. His eyes surveyed the cold, grey sand, the rocks and the dark clumps of seaweed. The place had transformed into something different now and so had he. Frigid. Empty. Plain absent.
Swish. Another five seconds. The dashboard clock glowed out 3:00 AM and he realised that he had now been sitting in the car for twenty-three minutes. Too long. Mitchell had told him to hurry so where was he?
As if in answer he saw headlights coming down the track. It was either Mitchell or he was busted. The car crept along, as if checking the roadside and then stopped perhaps twenty metres away. The lights were on full beam and it was hard to make out the make and model. Then the lights dimmed. Bright white to a dim yellow, fading all the time, first like a torch, then a candle, then a glowing cigarette, then off.
Mitchell’s Jag.
Harry was shaking now. Mitchell scared him and as he grasped the door handle to get out he was aware of the sweat on his fingers. He wiped his hands on his trousers, clambered out of the car and walked back to the Jag.
The driver’s window purred down and Mitchell sat staring ahead.
‘Harry,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God you’ve come!’
‘Well, you know-’
‘You and me, Harry, we understand the world, we understand things don’t appear as they should, plans don’t transpire the way we want them to. The brave press on. The accomplished performer improvises. The fallen runner gets up and attacks with renewed vigour.’
Harry’s mouth hung open. Mitchell spouted gibberish, but it went with the territory he supposed. He let Mitchell continue.
‘Check the boot. Bit of a problem.’ Mitchell didn’t move. He just continued gazing into the distance.
Harry went round to the rear of the car and sprung the boot lid. There was a rubber dinghy folded up and crammed in there, not the sort you could buy on the seafront, but a heavy inflatable from a chandlers. He didn’t say anything, just stared and wondered what the hell was going on in Mitchell’s head.
‘Get the fucking dinghy out and see what is underneath.’ Mitchell’s voice floated out from the window.
Harry tried to pull the dinghy out but it took all his effort to get even part of it over the lip of the boot. Then he saw the hand poking out from underneath the rubber. Pink nail varnish. The odour of perfume mixing with the PVC smell of the new dinghy.
Clunk.
Mitchell got out of the car and stood beside Harry.
‘Bit of a problem,’ he repeated, as if Harry hadn’t heard him the first time.
Harry groaned. This was bad. He didn’t need this sort of trouble. The rapes were one thing, but Mitchell had gone too far this time.
‘Let’s get this pumped up and down to the beach.’ Mitchell grabbed the dinghy, his voice calm and ordered as if they were on a day out at the seaside. The dinghy rolled over the lip of the boot and flopped onto the floor, lifeless. Harry peered in the boot. Hand connected to arm, to body, to some hessian material. The girl was hooded with a sack tied tight around her neck. He looked down at her body. Light brown skin wrapped in a baby-doll nightdress, a silver cross on a chain nestling in ample cleavage, toned muscles, a little tattoo of a dolphin high on her left inner thigh.
‘The Spanish girl?’ Harry said, feeling quite unwell and putting a hand out to steady himself against the
