Gregory's Game (16 page)

She peered into the car, noting the car seat in the back of the small, four-door saloon. The driver's door and rear passenger door were both ajar.

‘The doors were open when the car was found?'

‘They were; one of the local farmers admits to fully opening the front door, just to check there was no one inside, but he reckons they were both ajar when he got here. We got his fingerprints and hers. The mother's. Got them from the uncle's place. There's no more to be had on the door handle. Wore gloves, I suppose, whoever took her and the babby.'

Tess nodded. ‘When are the CSI team due?'

‘Another hour, I reckon. I'm hanging on here. You get off and talk to the family and I'll give you a bell when they get here.'

Tess nodded, thanked him and when Vinod had asked for better directions for getting them to their next destination, they left.

‘Hell of a shot,' Vinod said, echoing Tess's earlier thoughts. ‘And why no ransom demand? Why no more communications? I don't get it, Tess.'

‘Neither do I. I've got a very bad feeling about this – I mean over and above the fact that a mother and child are missing and some poor bugger's already dead. It feels all … screwed up.'

He nodded. They had come to a junction. The satnav told them to go left; local knowledge to the right. Shrugging, Vin ignored the satnav. ‘It's a bit flat round here,' he said. ‘We took my sister's kids to Great Yarmouth one time and I thought Norfolk was flat, but this seems like it was ironed.'

A couple of miles on and he turned into a wide farm gate and up a short gravel drive. ‘This would be it,' he said. ‘Ready?'

To meet grieving family? Tess thought. Never. But the door had already opened and a pale woman with soft grey hair stood on the threshold. Here we go again, Tess thought. More pain, more grief and the thought nagged at her that in truth it had only just begun.

K
at had no notion of what time it was. She tried to work it out. She was hungry and so was Desi and they'd both slept for a while, but she wasn't certain if that meant that night had passed or if they were now into another day. She'd heard no sound outside of their cell for some time now. Had no sense that there was anyone nearby. Sometimes, straining her ears, she thought she heard the sound of water and once, from very far off, the sound of a train.

Had they been left alone?

She changed Desiree and gave her more water and one of the sandwiches. She ate the second. She was still hungry, but cautioned herself that she must make their small supply of food last. Desi couldn't go without, but she could. She was more worried about the water. Surely they, whoever they were, would come back, would not just leave them there? Kat sought comfort from the fact that they had been given food and supplies already. That was a good sign, wasn't it?

‘Go home?' Desi said hopefully. ‘Car?'

‘We'll go in the car soon,' Kat promised.

Desi got up and toddled off, evidently looking for something to play with now she was up. She stopped at the edge of the faint circle of light shed by the lamp, and turned and looked at her mother as though expecting her to do something about it. Why were they in the dark, where were her toys? Why were they here?

Desiree was too young to elucidate all of the questions Kat saw in her expression, but they nevertheless filled her with despair.

What if the light went out, if the batteries failed? What if they were left in the dark, without food, without water, without …

No
, she told herself sternly. She would not be without hope. She had to keep that alive, otherwise she'd never keep herself and her child alive. She had to believe that someone would come to bring them more food and drink and she had to believe that someone would come and find them.

Kat got to her feet and took Desi's hand, picking up the lantern in her other and together they patrolled and examined their confines.

Wooden walls, Kat realized. But thick and solid. Experimentally, she kicked hard at one of them and got nothing for her trouble but a throbbing foot. A wooden floor. She felt along the join between floor and wall. A strip of wood sealed the gap between. She lifted the lantern high, but could not see the top of the walls surrounding them. The battery lamp supplied just enough light to illuminate the two of them and a small circle. There just wasn't sufficient strength to see much above Kat's outstretched arm when she held the light above their heads.

Desi didn't like being left in the dark down below. She wittered and clung to her mother's leg.

‘It's OK, baby,' Kat soothed. She lifted the little girl into her arms and continued with her pacing, trying to get some sense in her mind of how much space they had, or if they were fully enclosed, above as well as below. She got the odd sense that there was no ceiling on their effective box. That the ceiling was high.

Their brief journey ended once more by the door. She could barely feel the gap and could only just make out where it was when she held the light very close. But again, when they had passed the far corner, where the chemical toilet had been positioned, there had been that small sense of air moving. Of a draft, or at least a change in pressure.

She sat down on the mattress again and searched once more through the bag that had been left, laying everything out on the floor. Assessing how long she could make it last.

Desi, of course, spotted the chocolate and Kat allowed her a couple of squares.

Nappies, wet wipes, three packs of sandwiches left, now they had eaten one. Bottled water, three apples. Four assorted bars of chocolate. And batteries. For a moment Kat forgot her rage and thanked whoever it was for the gift of light.

Then her heart sank again. There was so little really. She could eke it out, but Desi had to be fed, cared for and Kat was suddenly afraid that no one would be coming back. The stuff in the bag had a hurried, unplanned, ad hoc look to it. As though someone had rushed around, grabbing stuff off the shelves and shoving it into a bag without much planning or thought. She examined the packaging more closely, looking for brand names and price tags. She didn't recognize the logo on the sandwich wrappers and the price labels were white, generic, applied by one of those pricing guns Kat had seen shop assistants using in smaller shops that didn't bar-code everything.

‘A garage, maybe,' she mused aloud. ‘What do you think, Desi? Does it tell us where we might be?'

Did it tell her anything about the men who had snatched them?

She put their little stash of belongings back into the black plastic bag and tied the neck – both to stop the toddler from treating it as a toy and also to protect it from chocolate scavenging. She took a closer look at the mattress and the blankets and the clothes they had been given.

The mattress was old, springs working their way through in places. But it was clean and didn't smell. The blankets were also old with small holes here and there. They looked like the camping blankets her parents had used when she was a little kid. Those had been green and khaki, warm, slightly coarse and bought from the old army and navy store, and these looked the same. They'd obviously seen a good deal of use.

Her nightdress must have belonged to a much larger person than Kat. It hung on her and reached her ankles, and it too was well worn, a brushed cotton dotted with tiny flowers, the sort of thing Kat's Nan had years ago. Desiree's pyjamas were likewise brushed and warm, and a bit big for her, but they were clean and ironed and, when Kat sniffed at them, she could still catch the scent of wash powder and floral softener.

Where had their own clothes gone? Kat hadn't thought to look for them before, but she did now, lifting the lantern and examining the floor where she had thrown her jeans and Desi's wet tights. They were gone. When had they been taken? When the bag had been left? When the photo flash had gone off and blinded her? No, that had been before she had changed her clothes.

‘Sing.' Desiree demanded and Kat obliged, singing every nursery rhyme she could think of, clapping and playing pat-a-cake and Incy Wincy Spider. Making her baby laugh despite everything.

And as she played, the thought began to grow. Someone had planned this, obviously. Someone had found this place, wherever it was, to hold them in. Someone cruel and in control had brought Kat and her baby here. But someone had felt bad about it too. The food, maybe even the mattress and the clothes. Had they been part of the original preparation? Increasingly, Kat didn't think they had. She believed – hoped – that it was because someone had wanted to help her and Desi. Someone wanted to give them a fighting chance. Kat clung to that thought, that idea. We've got to get out of here, she told herself as she patted Desiree's little palms for the umpteenth time. I'm not going to let my child die.

‘H
ello, Billy,' Gregory said. ‘Long time no see.'

The man called Billy tensed as he heard the familiar voice and then did a stupid thing. He decided to run, taking off across the yard as though the Devil himself was in pursuit.

He managed half a dozen paces before Gregory brought him down. ‘Something wrong, Billy. I thought you'd be happier to see me.'

He dragged the man to his feet and back into the poky little office he had been heading towards before Gregory had scared the sense out of him.

‘I don't know nothing.'

‘You don't know what I'm asking yet.'

‘I still don't know nothing.'

Nathan followed them inside and locked the door. The first employees weren't due for another half-hour or so, but there was no telling when someone might decide to get in early. Even if they worked for a scrote like Billy.

‘I don't have to tell you nothing. I've got people coming. I'm a respectable businessman, you know.'

Nathan laughed softly. ‘Sit down, Billy,' he said.

Gregory eased him into a chair and stood back, looking at Billy Harding. ‘So, you've taken over from the old man,' he said.

‘I'm straight now. He retired, handed the business over. You got no call to be coming here like—'

‘We just want some information,' Nathan said. ‘Then we'll be on our way. Vanish from your life as though we'd never been.'

Billy stared at him. ‘Who the hell are you?'

Nathan perched on the edge of Billy's desk and glanced around at the dusty shelves, the stacked folders and the slightly cleaner, clearer desk opposite with a computer on top that was obviously the domain of whoever did the actual work while Billy ‘managed'. ‘Still in the removals business then?'

‘I run a legitimate show. No funny business now.'

‘Apart from the odd overseas consignment,' Nathan said.

‘No. I don't get involved in any of that. Not now.'

‘Ah, I was forgetting. The last time didn't go so well for you, did it? Two men dead and you in the hospital for, what was it, four, five months?'

Billy tore his gaze from Nathan and focused on Gregory as though he suddenly decided that might be a safer option. ‘Tell your friend. I know nothing. I do nothing. Not now.'

‘And as long as you keep it that way, we won't be bothering you,' Nathan assured him. Billy refused to look comforted. ‘We just want to find someone. A woman. Someone you used to know, before you went straight and legit and all that.'

‘I don't know any—'

‘Mae Tourino. Or you might have known her as Nancy Todd or even Michelle Williamson, or maybe even another name. She's not known for her consistency.'

Billy was shaking his head violently. Gregory stopped him, holding on to his scalp, twining his fingers into the man's gelled hair and keeping him still. ‘You're sweating and sticky, Billy. That's not very pleasant, you know.'

Nathan slipped of the desk and put a hand into his pocket. Billy strained to get away, as far away as possible from whatever he was about to produce. His relief on seeing just a photograph was almost comic, Gregory thought.

‘This woman,' Nathan said. ‘The woman in red. You've done business with her. I know that. I'd like to find her, Billy.'

Billy Harding tried hard to shake his head again, but Gregory's hold was too strong.

‘She'll kill me.'

‘She isn't here. We are. What's the greater threat?'

‘I don't know where she is. I just know where she was.'

‘Where and when?'

‘She did a job for Franks, that's all I know. Two, three months ago. Then she dropped off the face of the earth. He's been after her, came looking here. He don't know where she is neither.'

Nathan glanced at Gregory. ‘Do you think our friend here is scared enough to be telling something close to the truth?'

‘I think so,' Gregory said. ‘You want me to make sure?'

‘Might as well. Though hold off a moment.'

Nathan withdrew another picture from his pocket and showed it to Billy. ‘Look,' he said. ‘See this, Billy.'

The sound Billy made assured Nathan that he was paying full attention. ‘Someone did this, Billy, and the man took a long time to die. But I can do worse. I can make it last longer. Think about that; think about how much it's going to hurt if I find out you're lying and have to come back.'

‘I don't know his name,' Billy Harding yelped. Nathan's gazed shifted briefly to meet Gregory's.

‘So what
do
you know, Billy?'

Billy's shaking had turned violent now. He struggled and whined and tried his damnedest to get away. Gregory continued to hold him tight. Thoughtfully, Gregory took one of Billy's hands. ‘Choose a finger, Billy. Which one do you use the least?'

‘I told you. I don't know. I telled you all I know. Franks will know. Franks knows who he is and what he done.'

Gregory dropped him abruptly. ‘As we say, Billy, we can always come back,' he said. ‘If you haven't been straight with us.'