‘So, we can’t protect them,’ said David bitterly. The beast’s flesh was in his loved ones, and it was his fault.
‘In a nutshell, no.’
‘Well then, we better hope that the police find Hewitson pretty bloody quickly.’
‘Oh, they will. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Time that we don’t have,’ Dennie objected. ‘If I was him I wouldn’t be sitting on my hands for three weeks waiting for the next tusk moon before I nabbed a sacrifice. I’d take as many as I needed as soon as possible and then keep moving them about until it was time to use them. He knows he’s being hunted. He’s going to act fast, if he hasn’t done so already.’
‘If someone else had been abducted we’d have heard about it by now,’ said David.
‘Not necessarily,’ Prav replied. ‘I bet quite a few of them will have seen that video and got out of town already. Communication between different county forces can be dodgy at best, and if there is another misper report they won’t necessarily connect it with—’
David felt a sudden terror hollow him out, and he grabbed for his phone, moaning a string of denials.
‘David?’ asked Dennie. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Becky,’ he muttered, past a lump of panic that was growing in his throat. He stabbed the contact icon for her. Her smiling face expanded to fill his screen, a shot taken at the beach in the south of France on their honeymoon, above another icon that said Calling…
‘David,’ said Prav, ‘there’s no way that he could know—’
‘Shut up! Who’s to say what he can’t do? Your words!’
Calling…
‘Oh Jesus, honey pick up the phone, please pick up, please…’
Calling…
Dennie tried laying her hand on his but he shook it off.
Call ended. His phone hung itself up. She hadn’t answered.
With trembling fingers he found the number for her parents and called that. It was answered in a few rings by Naomi, his mother-in-law. ‘Hello, David,’ she said brightly. ‘How are you doing? Rebecca told us all about—’
‘Is she there?’ he cut across her. ‘I need to speak with her if she’s there. Please. It’s important.’
‘Of course, I’ll just go and get her,’ she said, with that cool politeness that told him she objected to his tone. As if he gave a toss. If Becky was there he’d apologise with flowers and grovelling.
A few moments later, Naomi came back. ‘I’m terribly sorry, David, but she’s not here. I think she must have popped out to the shops with Alice. Shall I get her to give you a ring when she gets back?’
His throat was so tight he could barely speak. ‘Yes please, that’d be great.’
‘I’m sure she’s absolutely fine,’ Dennie said, but he could tell that even she didn’t believe it.
They sat in silence, lost in their thoughts while the business of the hospital bustled around them. When David’s phone rang again, it made them all jump. He snatched it up; Becky’s picture was back and Incoming Call flashed at him.
‘Oh, thank God!’ he said into it. ‘Honey, are you—’
‘Hello, David,’ said Matthew Hewitson. ‘How’s the family?’
If his earlier panic had felt like being hollowed out before, this felt like the entire room had been evacuated like a bell jar, every particle of air sucked out to be replaced be a vacuum that roared in his ears. If he hadn’t already been sitting in bed he’d have fallen to the ground. He heard himself whispering, ‘What have you done with them?’
‘Now come on, be fair, you were warned.’ Hewitson’s voice was cheerfully smug. ‘You were given something miraculous and you threw it back in our faces, so it’s only fair that you should make up for it, don’t you think?’
‘Fine, so let it be me, then. You don’t have to hurt them.’ Somewhere in the background he could hear Becky and Alice, their muffled voices crying out against whatever was gagging them.
‘You’re right, I don’t. But you killed my friend.’ The false cheeriness was gone now. ‘You and that old bitch and her fucking dog. You fucked up the only good thing that ever happened to me. So no, I don’t have to hurt them, but I’m going to have fun imagining your face when I do.’
He cut the call.
The dead phone fell from David’s hands, and he turned to Dennie and Prav. ‘How do we find him? I don’t mean the police. I mean, right fucking now. How?’
Dennie uttered a huge sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of her feet. ‘Sabrina,’ she said.
Prav looked at her in alarm. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Didn’t that nearly make you pop a blood vessel in your brain last time?’ She turned to David. ‘You can’t ask her to do that.’
‘He doesn’t have to,’ Dennie replied.
5
GUNS AND DOGS
IT WAS FOUR IN THE MORNING, AND DENNIE WAS running away from home.
She knew every creaking stair and grumbling floorboard, and Lizzie was flat out, bless her, exhausted by the last few days dealing with the police and doctors. Dennie, on the other hand, had never felt better, which was ironic given what the doctors had actually said.
They’d shown her CAT scan images of her brain, pointed to blurs and blobs on it which didn’t make any sense to her and talked about things like ‘infarcts’, ‘transient ischaemic attacks’, and ‘vascular dementia’. The upshot of all of this seemed to be that it wasn’t just her nose that was bleeding – her brain was too. High blood pressure wasn’t helping, and she had been sent home with all sorts of advice about lifestyle changes that might help to bring it down, such as avoiding sources of stress and anxiety.
Dennie was not in the least bit anxious about setting out to confront whatever Colin Neary had come
