Mark looked at Daz and raised his eyebrows. ‘None taken,’ he said to her.
‘People like Matt Hewitson don’t respond to diplomacy,’ said David. ‘Going in without a show of strength is just an invitation to get the shit kicked out of us. Anyway, nobody’s forcing you to come along. But if you do,’ he added, ‘you’re not a sergeant and you don’t get to go around treating everybody else like they’re idiots.’
‘Good,’ she shot back. ‘That means I can punch you in the face and not get sacked when you turn out to be wrong.’
‘We have to find them first,’ Dennie pointed out. ‘After that you can all be as childish as you like.’
‘Any idea of where we’re going yet?’ asked Turner. They were driving out of Dodbury and they’d soon hit the A38, whereupon he would need to know whether he was turning left or right.
‘Shh,’ said David. ‘Let her think.’
‘I still don’t see why she couldn’t have just pointed it out on a map,’ said Daz.
‘Do you want to find this bastard or not?’ David replied.
‘If you’ll all just kindly shut your traps for a bit,’ Dennie murmured. She closed her eyes and thought about Sabrina, trying to recreate that feeling of being both simultaneously distant yet focussed, of being outside her own body and yet deeply inside herself. Come on, she said to Sabrina silently. Don’t be afraid. And don’t worry about me either. I know what this will do to me, and it’s all right. Sabrina had always been a bit panicky, anxious about often being the bearer of bad news. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. But I need you now, more than ever.
The Defender slowed and stopped at the road junction. Vehicles flashed past on the wide dual carriageway in front of them. ‘Going to need a decision now,’ said Turner.
Still Sabrina didn’t show, and Dennie began to be afraid that either she couldn’t, because Dennie wasn’t strong enough to summon her and some part of her brain was too broken from having summoned her before, or because Sabrina was simply too scared. Dennie decided to try a more direct appeal to the shade of Sarah Neary that she wore. Sarah, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you more back then, but I need you to help me now because I’m going to do something that I should have done much earlier – and maybe if I had, you’d have left Colin and you’d both still be alive and none of this would have happened. I need you to help me find him, because I’m going to give him a bloody good piece of my mind.
Behind Prav, a car horn beeped. In the mirror she saw Prav gesticulating rudely to the driver behind.
‘Look, Mrs Keeling—’ Turner started.
She felt Sabrina’s arrival as a sudden pressure in her brain, as if a part of it deep inside was squeezing tightly. She opened her eyes and looked through the windscreen to see Sarah standing on the other side of the dual carriageway, looking back at her with tears in her eyes. Slowly, Sarah turned and started to walk away along the road.
‘That way,’ said Dennie, pointing.
The headache began again, and she thought this one might be the worst of all.
* * *
David thought that if there was a method to Dennie’s navigation, it wasn’t one that a waking, rational mind could comprehend. She led their tiny convoy a wandering route through mazes of narrow country lanes before taking them along the M54 for a couple of junctions and then off again along A- and B-roads with no apparent destination in mind except that the trend was always west, out of Staffordshire and into Shropshire, through the outskirts of the West Midlands urban sprawl, and down into the Severn Valley before finally out the other side into the uplands of the Welsh Marches. For the rest of them it felt longer than the two hours that his watch claimed, and for Dennie herself it must have been worse. As the journey lengthened it took its toll on her; her nose bled continually, she began to nod as if dozing, and her speech became slurred. More than once his concern almost overcame his desperation to find Becky and Alice, and he tried to make them stop so that Dennie could have a rest, but every time this roused her into a fierce denial and a determination that they keep going. By the time they were winding along yet another lane, this one somewhere between a village called Pennerley and another simply known as The Bog, he thought she’d actually passed out, but then she sat bolt upright and cried, ‘Here! He’s here!’ and slumped back in her seat, groaning.
Turner looked at the trees that crowded close on either side. ‘This place?’ he said. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘All except for that gate,’ Daz pointed out.
His father stopped the vehicle. It was a humid day of another unseasonably hot summer, and the heat seemed to push itself into the car along with a heavy silence. Prav pulled up behind, got out and started unloading the stab vests from her boot. ‘Right, let’s go and have a look,’ she said.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Turner. ‘I thought you said we’d just find the place and then call the cops and let them sort it out.’
Prav gestured around. ‘That gate could be anything. We need to be sure. We’ve got one shot at this; if we call the cavalry and we’re wrong they’ll never believe us again.’
David was checking Dennie; she was flushed and sweating, and he didn’t like what he heard of her breathing and pulse. ‘This is not good,’ he said. ‘I think she’s overdone it.’
‘Well, we can’t leave her here,’ said Prav. ‘Not on her own and unprotected. We’ll get her to a doctor as soon as we can.’ Under her breath
