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Chapter Thirty-Nine
JEN MOVED ALONG THE DARK LANE, only aware of Ross because she could hear his footsteps. She’d never lived in a place without street lights, without the background white noise of traffic, and wondered how Matthew and Jonathan could bear the silence. It made her panicky, so stressed that she could feel her heart racing. She’d hated playing hide-and-seek as a child, the tension of waiting in some dark corner to be caught, and now her imagination was running wild; she pictured Lucy in the dark, terrified, at the mercy of strangers.
To hold on to a shred of control, she let fire at Ross. ‘What is it about you and Oldham? Why do you end up doing his dirty work?’
They were walking each side of the narrow road away from the toll gate towards Braunton, occasionally shining the light from the torches into the ditches. Shouting Lucy’s name. Hearing their voices echo away into the empty space.
‘My dad worked with him. They both joined the force as cadets.’
‘Your dad was a cop?’ Jen had never heard about that. Ross didn’t speak much about his family. Only about the gorgeous Melanie.
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‘He didn’t stick it out for long. He couldn’t hack it, ended up working for Routledge. You know, the store in town? He ran the menswear department.’ Ross spoke as if that was something to be ashamed of.
Jen nodded. Routledge had been still running, just, when she’d moved to Barnstaple, but times had been hard for retail since the recession, and it had long gone.
‘Joe Oldham was still a mate, though, even after Dad left the force, still around. I think he bailed them out when Dad lost his job at Routledge. He was more like an uncle. When I was a kid, we went on holiday with him and his wife Maureen every year. They couldn’t have children.’ He stopped to shout for Lucy. Still no reply. No sound at all. Jen wanted to fill the silence, but she knew there was more to come. ‘I had more in common with Joe than I did with my dad – he encouraged me to apply for the police, joined me up to the rugby club — and there were times when I wished I was his son. I thought there was more I could be proud of.’
‘So, when he asked for favours you didn’t think you could refuse?’ Jen felt almost sorry for him.
‘Yeah, something like that.’ A pause. ‘Now I don’t know how to get out of it.’
Jen thought of Oldham, red-faced, smelling of booze from his drinking the night before, starting to lose it. ‘I don’t think he’ll be in the force for very much longer.’
There was the sound of an engine behind them. The noise split the silence, shocking, making the panic return. A car must have been parked right off the road, hidden by a spinney of trees, and now it tore down the lane behind them, going so fast that they had to scramble out of the way. In the dark and at that speed, she had no idea of the colour, let alone the make, of the vehicle.
Jen pressed her phone to call Matthew. She had signal but there was no reply. ‘I think we should go back. See if the boss is okay. That wasn’t some courting couple.’
She started running back along the track. They’d gone further than she’d thought and she soon got out of breath and needed to walk. Ross overtook her and she heard his running footsteps disappear into the distance until they faded to silence. She had another moment of panic, felt smothered by the dark so she could hardly breathe. Then she must have turned a slight bend in the road because there were lights ahead of her, a long way off, but providing somewhere to head for. Comfort. Spindrift, Matthew’s home. She passed the toll keeper’s cottage and continued towards the dunes and the beach, more confident now that she knew where she was. She’d be able to navigate her way from here.
There was no sign of Ross. He must have left the road already, taken the same path as Matthew over the sandhills towards the shore. Just as well that one of them was fit. She turned off the road and began the scramble to the ridge of dunes, needing to stop again when she reached the top to catch her breath. Looking down at the beach, all she could see was a flashing buoy somewhere in the distance. Then the brown cloud cleared and briefly the beach was flooded with moonlight. She saw something far below the high-water mark, close to the incoming tide. No colour. The light wasn’t sufficiently strong to make out more than a shape. A heap of discarded clothes, perhaps, or some washed-up debris from a passing ship. It could be a weird sculpture. Something Gaby Henry might have put together from found objects, a twisted piece of driftwood covered by seaweed. Ross was standing there and he was shouting.
She wasn’t a sporty woman. She’d never seen the appeal of Lycra and the gym, but now she ran. The strong moonlight had disappeared again, and the object she’d seen from the dunes was no more than a grey shadow, marginally darker than the flat sand that surrounded it. Ross was still shouting and she could hear the desperation in his voice.
Chapter Forty
MATTHEW WOKE TO A BRIGHT LIGHT, pain and cold. He couldn’t scream because his mouth wouldn’t open. Later he thought that had, at least, provided him with a tatter of dignity. He couldn’t yell with pain or whimper like a child. It gave him time to pull himself together. There was noise too. Somebody shouting. A voice he recognized. Ross. Then the tape was pulled from his mouth. More pain. Ross shouted again and Matthew had recovered enough by then to realize the man was shouting to Jen. ‘It’s the boss!’
Ross put his arm around Matthew’s back and pulled him into a sitting position, cut the tape that was binding his hands. ‘Lucy?’ Matthew could hear Maurice Braddick’s voice in his head, recriminating. So, they managed to save you. What about my girl?
‘Alive.’
‘Where?’
‘Here, on the beach. Not far from you.’
‘For God’s sake, see to her first.’ Matthew was pleased that he’d managed to shout.
‘Jen’s already with her. She wasn’t far behind me. And you were unconscious. I thought you might be dead.’ Ross sounded very young, as if he’d been crying. He repeated the words. ‘I thought you were dead.’ He cut the tape that had been tied around Matthew’s ankles and at the same time the clouds parted again. Matthew held on to Ross and pulled himself onto his feet. For a moment he stood with his hand on the DC’s arm. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Great work.’
He saw that he’d been lying on the sand, and about two metres away Lucy was being helped by Jen. The woman had been gagged and tied too. Matthew walked unsteadily towards her, and in the spotlight of Jen’s torch, saw her in small glimpses: a trainer, turned on one side, covered in sand. An arm, soft and fleshy, very white against the shadowy shore. An eye, open, then blinking in the torchlight, alive. Lucy had been lying helpless on her side. Even a fit person would be unable to move in that position, and she was unfit, cold and scared. Jen was pulling away the parcel tape that was wound around her mouth and her head. Lucy winced at the pain as strands of her hair caught in it.
He shone the torch onto his own face so she could see who he was. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, but she gave a grin, defiant and brave. The water was only metres from them now, sliding up the beach, a gentle and secret killer. If she’d been there an hour longer, Matthew thought, Lucy Braddick would have drowned. And if Ross hadn’t found us, I would have drowned too.
Jen untied Lucy’s hands and feet. Ross took off his coat and wrapped it around her. Together they helped her walk a little way up the beach, until she was safely away from the tide. Her legs gave way again and she collapsed onto the sand.
‘You’ll need to call an ambulance.’ Matthew had the worst headache in his life but his mind felt sharp and clear. Focussed. As if he’d OD’d on caffeine and could take on the world. ‘Tell them exactly what happened and they’ll need a chair or a stretcher to move her. Someone will stay with her and wait for the crew.’
While Ross was making the call, he phoned Jonathan. ‘We’ve found her. On the shore near the house. She’s cold and she’s been tied up and I want her checked out medically before we start talking to her. Can you come? Stay with her until the ambulance crew gets here? Ross and Jen are here, but I don’t want to leave her with strangers. We’ve moved her up the beach a bit out of the way of the tide, but we’ll need help to get her over the bank. I don’t want Maurice to see her like this.’
He could hear that Jonathan was already moving. Matthew imagined him grabbing his coat and hurrying out. While he was waiting he made the call to Maurice. The phone was answered immediately. ‘Yes?’ Hopeful and fearful all at the same time.
‘It’s all right, Maurice. She’s fine.’ This wasn’t the time to give him any details. ‘We’re getting her taken to the North Devon District Hospital just to be checked over if you want to meet her there. Jonathan will be with her, and my sergeant Jen Rafferty, so you don’t need to worry.’ He looked at Lucy, who was sitting on the sand, shivering with shock and cold. ‘Can you talk to your dad?’
She stuck up two thumbs and gave him the same defiant smile. The words came slowly. It was a struggle for her to get them out. Each syllable a small triumph. ‘Hello, Dad! Yes, I’m okay. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.’ There was a pause. ‘Can you buy some chocolate? A Twix and a Kitkat. I’m starving.’ She handed the phone back to Matthew. The effort to be brave seemed to have exhausted her and she started crying again.
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