well . . . We thought it might be a bit close to home, boss.’
He hit the release button by the back door and pushed through. The late afternoon air struck him with a chill that had not been there this morning. An after-effect of the storm they’d seen earlier, he guessed. ‘You’re driving.’ He followed her across the car park towards her car. ‘My son is missing, Jane. What we’re talking about now is a murdered girl. How would that be close to home?’
‘One paedo case, another potential one. We were trying to do you a favour, that’s all.’ She stopped at the side of her bright green Vauxhall Nova and pressed the button on the remote. The car beeped and the locks snapped open. They climbed in.
‘If there’s something to know, I want to know it, Jane. I’ll hear things eventually. If they’re sensitive, then maybe I’d be better hearing them from one of you, rather than some plod I barely know. Did you think of that?’
She sighed. ‘No, boss. Sorry.’ She slipped the car into gear and back out of her space. ‘Where are we going?’
*
Lauren charged headlong through the green twilight of the woods, the hail a distant clatter on the leaves far above. Down here, it was almost dry, the ground firm beneath her flying feet. She did not look back or sideways, just concentrated on what was in front of her. Running, chest heaving, jumping over brambles and ferns, darting around trees, kicking through low-growing weeds, she went as fast as her exhausted legs would carry her. She had no idea how far these woods stretched, what they held or what lay beyond. She just knew she had to run, to get as far away from that barn as she could, to have any hope of escaping the man she was sure was behind her.
Chasing her.
She had heard the twang of the barbed wire as he jumped over it, the crashing of heavy footsteps through the undergrowth. He had shouted once.
‘Hey! Come back here!’
But since then, nothing.
The noise she was making combined with the rattle of the hail on the leaves above her to cover any more distant sounds. But she knew he was still coming. He had to be. There was no way he’d have given up.
She hit a narrow trail, barely visible on the ground, and turned onto it. It was too narrow to be man-made – must have been an animal of some sort – but it had to be going somewhere and it was away from the barn, which was all she cared about for now.
She ran on.
The trail wove around trees and bramble thickets and weird little prickly bushes that she’d never seen before. She began to see light through the trees ahead. The edge of the wood? A pool? A road?
Her legs were getting wobbly and weak. Her chest and throat felt raw. It was hard to suck enough air into her burning lungs, but she had to keep going.
The brightness spread across her field of view. It had to be the edge of the woods. She had no idea what that meant but, whatever it was, she would deal with it when she got there. She just had to get there. Get away from the man behind her.
The trail was helping – it made the running easier – but she didn’t know how much longer she could go on. She tripped on a root, staggered, exhausted, put out a hand to a narrow tree trunk for balance and pressed on. She couldn’t stop. Not now. She glimpsed a grey sky between the leaves up ahead. Noticed that the rattle of hail had stopped. The storm was over. Then, lower down, she could see the bright green of leaves in sunshine. A hedge, maybe? A road?
She caught the glint of wire. A fence. The trail led right up to it and through into the long grass beyond. A huge, rough-textured oak tree stood just to the right, its bark green with algae.
She ran up to the fence, panting hoarsely and bent to climb through.
Then screamed as an arm darted around her waist and snatched her off her feet.
‘Come here!’
Traffic was queueing into the city on Heavitree Road so Jane turned left out of the station.
‘You look a damn sight better than you did last time I saw you,’ she said as she changed up through the gears.
July, Pete recalled. Annie’s tenth birthday. Jane and Dave had called round to give her a little something from the team and to let him and Louise know the latest on Tommy’s case. Not that there had been much news to pass on. ‘Yeah, well. I hadn’t been sleeping too well for a few weeks by then.’ He’d lain awake for hour after hour every night, getting up two or three times a night. Sometimes he would stand in Annie’s doorway and just watch her sleep. Other times, he would wander the house, check the doors and windows or go to his office and sit at the computer, trying whatever he could think of in a search for clues – anything that would tell him where Tommy might have gone.
‘It showed. You looked like you’d done five rounds with Frank Bruno.’
Pete grunted. ‘Thanks. Back to my normal, handsome self now, am I?’
She slowed, indicating right. Gave him a brief laugh. ‘Don’t know about that, but you certainly look a bit more normal than you did then.’
‘That’s all right then. Wouldn’t want to frighten the punters.’
She made the turn into a side street lined on both sides with parked cars and accelerated again.
‘So, come on. What’s the latest on Tommy?’
She glanced at him, meeting his gaze for an instant before returning her eyes to the road ahead. Sighed. ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s like he vanished into thin air.’
‘Except people don’t. He went somewhere, somehow.’
She took a left turn, working her way through the back streets towards the home of the Whitlocks. ‘Well, yeah. But, how are we supposed to find out where and how if he wasn’t seen?’
Pete sighed. This was not a discussion to be had with Jane. It wasn’t her problem. It was Simon Phillips’. But, one thing he was certain of – there was no way the Whitlocks were going to suffer months of the same agony that he and Louise had. Not if he could help it. Whatever it took, he would find their daughter.
‘Here we go.’ Jane turned at another junction and drove slowly until she spotted the right number on a gatepost.
‘Blimey, they ain’t poor, are they?’
The house was set in its own neatly manicured grounds behind a high, thick hedge.
Jane turned in through high wooden gates that already stood open and parked in front of the double-width garage.
‘You never been round this way before?’ Pete asked as they stepped out and made their way to the front door.
‘Don’t get too much crime up here, do we? And you know me. I come from the other side of the river.’
Pete laughed. ‘Well, that’s closer than me. Only money round Okehampton
