‘I’m okay, I think I’m being moved later.’
The officer shook her head as she sat down. ‘I’ve asked them to keep you here for just a little while longer. I don’t think you’re ready to be moved.’
‘You mean you haven’t caught him yet?’
The words were out before she could stop them.
The detective raised one eyebrow. ‘Let’s just say I’d be happier if you stayed here a little while longer.’
Isobel was not unhappy at the police’s involvement. Until her memory returned she relished the safety of the cloistered environment.
‘I don’t like sugar,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Neither do I,’ the officer answered.
‘I need to tell you some things, but I don’t know if they mean anything,’ she blurted out. Now the detective was sitting here in front of her the things she had to say seemed inconsequential. Not least because she couldn’t substantiate that she’d heard either one of them while she’d been with her captor.
It could just as easily have come from her previous life.
‘Mandy. I think he may have someone else – someone called Mandy. I keep hearing the name, but I can’t recognise the voice. It might be nothing. It might be completely unrelated, and I might be sending you…’
‘It’s okay,’ the officer said, patting her hand. ‘It’s up to me to decide what’s relevant. Just tell me anything that comes into your mind.’
‘One for you and one for me,’ she blurted out.
‘What?’ the officer asked.
Isobel shrugged her confusion. ‘I know. It’s strange, but when I close my eyes the phrase plays like it’s on a loop. The trouble is I don’t know if that’s because of me.’ She felt the sigh building inside her as the tears pricked her eyes. ‘I just don’t know anything any more. I don’t know the difference between a thought and a memory. I just don’t know what’s real.’
‘Hey, don’t get upset. You’re doing brilliantly.’
The cool, firm hand was resting on her arm. The strength she felt pulsating through stemmed her tears.
‘You’ve suffered a horrendous attack that was intended to end your life. You fought yourself out of a coma, and your body is trying to heal. So give yourself a break, eh?’
Isobel noticed the absence of any false reassurances that her memory would return. They both knew it might never happen, so the officer didn’t bother to indulge in the pretence.
Her visitor stood and Isobel felt an immediate sense of loneliness. There was a security that surrounded this woman. Although her manner was brusque and unyielding, Isobel enjoyed the frankness in her face.
‘Anyway, it’s only the really famous that can carry off having only one name,’ she said, glancing at the nameplate above her bed that stated simply ‘Isobel’.
Isobel smiled at the statement as the detective squeezed her arm. ‘I’ll be back to check on you again, okay?’
Isobel nodded her thanks. She found the prospect reassuring.
With a final smile, the officer turned and walked away, her gait confident and assured.
Immediately the ward felt empty and dark, like a light had gone out.
Isobel had the sudden urge to shout after her to tell her she didn’t want her to go. She wanted to beg her to stay.
For just a short while, she had felt safe, as though nothing could reach into this ward and get her. But as the police officer walked away she felt exposed, vulnerable.
She realised that she would feel that way until the bastard was caught.
Sixty-Seven
‘How is she?’ Bryant asked as she got back into the car.
‘Looking better than yesterday. Despite her improvement I’ve asked the ward to hang on to her for a bit.’
‘You think she’s still at risk?’ he asked, pulling out of the car park.
Kim knew that the ratio of staff to patients dictated there was always someone close by. Unknown visitors did not get to walk around at any time of the day.
‘She’s not dead. So definitely not safe yet. Isobel keeps hearing the name Mandy,’ Kim said doubtfully. ‘I’ve already called Stacey to see what she can find, but it’s hard to know what’s real with her.’
‘Any nurses or staff members by that name?’ Bryant asked.
Kim shook her head. ‘No, I checked and no patients either.’
Bryant sighed. ‘Are you thinking we’re looking for another one, as well as Tracy?’
Kim tried to make sense of what she’d heard from Isobel. ‘If he had another one at the same time then where is she? We know that Westerley is his dumping ground so…’
‘Could be another old one, yet to be found.’
That was exactly what she’d been thinking.
‘Isobel also said something about one for you and one for me. She said it plays on a loop in her head.’
Kim sighed with frustration. The words meant nothing to her.
‘I can hear it,’ Bryant offered in a sing-song voice.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘That change in your voice. It’s very telling.’
Kim frowned at him. She wasn’t aware of any change in her voice.
‘It’s when a case stops being a case and becomes a personal mission.’
She shook her head and looked out of the window as the car headed towards Pedmore Road. ‘You really do talk some rubbish.’
‘It’s true. You begin each case with a desire to see justice done. Eventually, and it always comes, your motivation changes as you become more familiar with the victims and—’
‘Hang on, my visit to Isobel—’
‘Is not what I’m talking about, because I don’t only mean the living ones. It’s the same with the dead. You somehow manage to create an affinity and then the change occurs. You no longer want the killer for the sake of justice. Now it’s for Jemima, Louise, Isobel and even Tracy. It’s personal now. And your voice changes, that’s all I’m saying.’
Kim opened her mouth to argue and then had another thought as he drove along Reddall Hill towards Cradley Heath high street.
She turned to look at him. ‘How are you driving when I haven’t even told you where I want to go next?’
He pulled into the supermarket car park and nodded to the other side of the street. ‘Got a call from Stacey while you were in the hospital. Elsie Hinton, ex-dinner lady at Cornheath, works there.’
‘You know, it would be good to tell me these things as there’s a filthy rumour going around that I’m actually in charge,’ Kim snapped.
She was still smarting over his inference that she was emotionally involved.
She watched as he passed space after space in the supermarket car park.
‘Bryant, what the hell are you doing?’
‘Looking for a parent and baby spot.’
‘Just park the bloody car,’ she growled.
The café sat opposite the supermarket and was wedged between a family-run carpet shop and a building society. The area inside was small, holding six tables, but was brightly decorated with black-and-white photos of Cradley Heath high street on the wall.
The smell of bacon, sausage and coffee grew stronger as they approached the counter. Kim could tell immediately that neither of the women they could see was the one they were after.
‘Elsie Hinton?’ Bryant asked doubtfully.
‘Not here yet,’ said the younger woman. ‘And who are you?’
The question was direct but not rude.
‘We just need a word with her. Got an address?’
She smiled as though he’d tried to catch her out. ‘Nah, mate, not happening. She’ll be here in about ten minutes. Park yourselves if you want.’
Bryant looked to Kim and she nodded. She took a few steps back and sat beneath a photo of the old Christ Church that had once towered over the Five Ways intersection. It had been demolished to make way for an access road to the new supermarket.
She heard the hiss and puff of the drinks m
achine behind her and Bryant’s laugh as he shared a joke with the woman serving him.
She marvelled at his easy manner and affable nature. He was one of life’s charmers, possessing the ability to relate to most people he met.
She wondered how that quality had actually been inserted into his personality. Had Bryant been the kid everyone had flocked around at school, or was it a quality that he had grown into and perfected over the years?
Whatever it was, she was grateful for the balance he offered to their team despite his ability to annoy the hell out of her.
‘Double shot, latte,’ he said, placing a glass mug on the table. His own beverage was a pot of tea for one.
He sat down as a girl in her late teens entered the café with a double buggy. Only one seat held a child. The other was filled with carrier bags.
Bryant stood back up and held the door while the girl folded herself around the pushchair into the café.
Kim watched as the teenage mum expertly released her son from the buggy. His arms instantly reached out to be plucked from the carriage. It was a ritual understood and executed by both.
‘Storm is coming,’ Bryant observed, stirring the tea bag in the metal pot.
‘Good,’ Kim said. The cloying heat had been building for days.
Bryant shook his head. ‘You prefer rain to sunshine?’
‘Yep,’ she said.
‘I mean, how can anyone hate the summer?’ he asked, pouring the bronze liquid into a plain white teacup.
It was easy if your most traumatic memories were encased in a wall of sticky heat.
A cry sounded from the little boy as his mother placed him into a high chair. Each time she tried to sit him in it, his legs straightened so they wouldn’t slide down.
Kim looked away to hide her smile. Another routine practised and perfected – this time by the child.
‘We could be wrong about Tracy, you know?’ Bryant said. ‘She might just have needed some space to clear her head. Get away from stuff.’
Kim agreed.
A loud wail came from the little boy. He was trapped in the chair but was trying to wriggle his lower limbs free. He bucked his legs back and forth, raising them up and down.
‘I just think we’re making one hell of an assumption…’
‘Shhh…’ Kim said as she continued watching the child’s attempts to escape.
He leaned forwards, trying to climb out of his trap. His stomach smashed against the food tray before him.
‘Guv…?’
Kim ignored Bryant as the child again flailed his legs back and forth in an effort to get them free.
The back of his thighs bumped up and down on the wooden edge of the seat.
‘Yo, guv…?’
‘Bryant, shut up,’ she said, unable to tear her gaze away.
The child used his chubby little fingers to grab the end of the food tray, pulling himself forwards against the edge.
‘Oh, I think that might be our woman now,’ Bryant said, nodding towards the door.
Finally Kim turned to her colleague, dumbfounded yet sure she was right.
‘Bryant, the marks on our victims that we can’t work out…’
She couldn’t believe what she was about to say.
‘The bastard has them chained in a high chair.’
Sixty-Eight
Tracy put every ounce of effort she had into opening her eyes.
She felt like a weightlifter in a clean and jerk final, focussing every ounce of strength to lift two flaps of skin from her eyeballs.
She managed to raise them up, but initially she wasn’t sure she had. A few seconds later, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the distance strange shapes were evident in the black.
‘H-hello…’ she whispered to the shadows that danced along the wall. The returning silence was terrifying.
She could feel liquid tracing a line from the corner of her mouth and knew that it was drool travelling along her cheek towards her lower jaw.
She tried to raise her hand, but it wouldn’t move. Her fuddled brain simply caused her eyes to stare down, wondering why. She tried again before realising that her wrist was confined, but she couldn’t see what was holding her.
It took a full minute before she realised that her other hand was not restrained. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog. A dozen spiders had spun webs in her brain.
Her arm lifted as though gravity was fighting it back down. She idly wondered if she was trapped in one of those dreams where your legs just won’t move, however hard you try.
A flash of hope found her in the darkness. Maybe it was all a dream. Perhaps she would wake up back home.
Even while the hope tried to claim her, the logical part of her brain was coming alive too. The pain around her wrist was too raw, too jagged to be in her imagination. It cut right to her nerves. Her own thoughts, although slow, were real.
She knew she wasn’t asleep and silently cursed the ray of hope that had momentarily distracted her.
She tried to scoot down in the chair. Maybe she could topple the seat forwards and somehow free her wrist, but no matter how she stretched her legs, her dangling feet met with nothing but space.
She could feel a bar in the small of her back and some kind of tray in front of her.
Tracy desperately tried to think back to the last thing she remembered.
She had left the café and had been heading back to the car. A packet of sweets had been spilled all over the floor. She was looking down, concentrating on her footing and then… nothing.
She could feel the tenderness of bruises on her skin, so she guessed she had fought.
A sudden fear clutched at her stomach. What the hell was she doing trying to make sense of the situation – all she really needed to focus on was the knowledge that she was probably going to die.
She raised her right hand and shook it. The metal hit against the wood but held fast.
She tried to squeeze the whole of her hand through the perfect circle. It wouldn’t even reach her knuckles. She tried again but faster, hoping to fool the circular binding into letting her go.
A sudden bang sounded somewhere above, which stunned her into temporary paralysis; the noise travelled straight to her heart and pumped the blood around her veins.
She had waited too long. Spent valuable time trying to understand what had happened and where she was, and now it was too late. It was ironic that it was that same lethargy that had landed her here in the first place.
Tracy heard the cry that escaped from her own lips. It was desperate and strangled.
She pushed herself forwards and felt the chair rock but not enough.
She threw herself backwards. Again there was movement but not enough momentum to launch the chair.
Damn it, she had to do something – and quickly.
She reared backwards once more, using the weight of her thigh muscles. This time she felt two of the chair legs lift from the ground.
She poised to try it again as the door suddenly opened.
A shaft of artificial light surrounded a silhouette.
Her eyes stung at the sudden intrusion into the darkness. She blinked a couple of times as the shadows on the wall danced in the dim light.
The figure took two steps and switched on the light.
Tracy looked to the walls and understood the form of the shadows.
The silhouette had now moved closer. The light from behind no longer obscured her view.
Her blood froze in her veins as her eyes registered what her mind refused to comprehend.
Sixty-Nine
‘Nah, still can’t picture it, guv,’ Bryant said as the mother and child left the café.
Kim ignored him and continued to watch as the mother smoothed down the child’s clothing before putting him in the buggy. She pulled down his striped T-shirt and pulled up his green shorts.
‘Look, after fifteen minutes,’ she said.
Bryant had to turn in his chair, but he saw what she meant
. Two faint lines were visible on the back of his legs.
He shook his head. ‘The marks on our girls could be from anything.’
Kim disagreed. ‘I bet if you lift that child’s T-shirt he has the exact same line across his stomach.’
‘You’re on your own with that one,’ he guffawed. ‘No way I’m asking her if we can inspect her child.’
Kim ignored him. A part of her thought he had a point. Why the hell would the victims be put in a high chair? And yet those marks were just too similar to ignore.
‘Hey up, she’s coming,’ Bryant said as the woman who’d entered the café approached their table.
‘You’ve been after me?’ she said, standing between them.
Kim looked up into the worn and kindly face. Kim guessed Elsie Hinton to be mid-sixties with a lifetime of hard work behind her.
‘Please sit down,’ Kim said, pulling out a chair.
She nodded back towards the counter. The two women were trying to hide their curious glances.
‘We won’t keep you long,’ Kim said, as Bryant approached the counter to explain they needed a few minutes of this employee’s time.
Kim took the time to introduce them both. Elsie simply nodded with the confidence of someone who knew she had done nothing wrong.
Bryant returned to his seat as Kim continued speaking.
‘We need to ask you about an incident that happened some years ago at Cornheath primary school. We’ve spoken to Mr Jackson, who has helped us, but we’re hoping you can add to that. Dinner ladies know everything,’ Kim said. It wasn’t a compliment or an insult. It was just fact.
‘It happened in the sports hall. One of the kids was humiliated, held down and exposed. Do you recall?’
Elsie closed her eyes as the disgust shaped her mouth. She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. There were four or five of them that pinned the little mite down. And a fair few others that watched. One of them eventually ran to the staff room and got help…’
‘Tracy Frost?’ Kim asked.