The Hidden Girl (36 page)

Dax.

‘Oh!’ she shrieked before she could stop herself. Her knees began to buckle. The beam jerked around, as she tried to make sense of this group. Faces peered into her torch beam. Madeleine, Carol, Frank, Bill, Tiggy and a younger man who looked like Dax.

‘Who let you in my house? You need to get out of my house,’ she said, breathlessly, desperately trying to sound calm. ‘Get out now, or I’ll call the police.’

Dax walked towards her. In his hand she saw the rifle.

‘Stop it!’ was all she could say, her hand jerking out in front of her. Her beam flicked desperately again at Tiggy and Frank. Frank’s eyes were fixed on the ground. Tiggy’s make-up seemed to be melting down her cheeks. She dabbed at herself, blue eyeshadow smudged on the sides of her face. Bill stood at the door, frowning, a hand on his fleshy jaw.

A hand reached out and, before she knew it, Hannah was being propelled fast back into the wall. She hit it at speed and yelped, as a sharp pain shot through her shoulder. Tears sprang into her eyes. The young man’s face was close to hers.

‘Hold her, Craig,’ Dax growled. He pushed his face into the same position. ‘Where is she?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who. Elvie.’

Her eyes met his, defiant. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

A hand came out of the dark and slapped her so hard across the face that she cried out. Carol’s face appeared in the beam.

‘Get off me!’ Hannah shouted, trying to hit her away. Craig pushed her arm behind her back so hard that she screamed. ‘Get off me!’

But he held her arms so tightly she thought they’d snap.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she said, gulping back tears.

There was no reply. Something black rose above her head and came down over it.

‘No!’ she screamed, struggling. Then someone kicked her so hard in the leg that she buckled over.

‘Shut up! Use that one – the landline, Carol,’ she heard Dax say.

‘Who are we ringing? Thurrup Taxis?’

‘Yeah. Tell ’em Woodbridge station, and he needs to hurry up, cos you’re catching the seven forty-nine to London. Make sure you say London.’

They were putting her on a train back to London, to make her go away? Hannah nearly laughed through her tears. They were mad. This had all gone too far. The blanket on her head pushed into her nostrils.

‘I can’t breathe. Tiggy, please,’ she pleaded.

She heard a small whimper.

‘Leave it, Tig,’ Dax grunted.

‘Dax, please don’t . . .’ Frank started.

‘And you too, Frank. Shut it! Too late now.’

There was a loud ‘Shhh’ and Hannah heard Carol putting on a voice that was presumably supposed to sound like hers. ‘Woodbridge station from Tornley Hall in Tornley, please. I’m catching the London train – the name’s Hannah. Thanks.’

‘No!’ Hannah shouted.

A punch came on the side of her head and knocked her sideways.

Dazed, she half-fell to the floor.

‘You were told to shut up.’ This time the voice was Madeleine’s.

‘Madeleine, come on, there’s no need for—’ Frank started again.

‘Frank, I said don’t bloody start,’ Dax replied. ‘Or you’ll be going in there with her.’

There was a small gasp.

‘And you, too, Tig. Pull yourself together. Bill, get the door.’

Bewildered, Hannah felt rough hands start to drag her across the tiles.

The darkness was disorientating.

At one point Hannah passed out from the blow. When she came to, she was lying on something hard and metal, feeling dizzy. She tried to move her arms and realized they were pinned behind her back, with something tight and sore cutting into her wrists.

Her jaw ached, and there was a metallic taste of blood in her mouth. She groaned and tried to move.

They were taking her somewhere, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the train station. She tried in vain to remember her kidnap training, but it was a desperate thought, and she knew it. This was not a kidnap.

This was not part of a training course, with a chance of a good outcome if she did the right thing. This was an act of madness, perpetrated by desperate people. The punch had told her that.

The stink of diesel entered her nose now, and the ground below her moved. Then she knew where she was.

Dax’s truck.

There was a screech and it raced along, making her head bang in hard little bounces on the metal truckbed. A foot pressed down hard on her back, expelling the air from her lungs.

Will appeared in her mind.

Tears started to fall down her cheeks. Her head ached. She wanted Will.

He hadn’t believed her. If something happened to her and he found out the truth, he would never forgive himself. He would find that message on her laptop and know he’d let her down. And, because of that, this had happened to her.

Her tears mixed with sweat inside the suffocating hood.

The truck bumped and banged over the ground, then she felt a kick below her as it jumped, and knew where she was.

She could hear the sea.

The truck swerved, and she banged into the side as it hit the shingle below.

There was another vehicle behind. Then a screech of wheels on loose stones, a skid and a stop. Engines cutting out.

Metal chinked, then hands were wrenching her from the truck and carrying her like a sack.

A door slammed. A stink of hot iron.

Samuel’s shack.

She was thrown onto the floor on her front.

Hannah lay on her stomach, motionless, too scared to move.

No, this was not a kidnap or abduction. She could tell by their voices.

Dax, Carol and Madeleine were barking commands at the others. Tiggy was sniffing and Frank kept coughing, as if trying to clear his throat.

She could smell someone’s nervous sweat as they leant down and roughly tugged at her hands. Something was pushed in between them, shooting pain up her wrists and arms, then they were tugged to the left.

‘Right, ten o’clock, meet back here. Bill, watch her. Samuel? Samuel! Look at me. You watch her, too. Do what Bill tells you.’

Hannah heard a chair being kicked, and flinched. Dax was yelling now.

‘Samuel! Listen to me. You WATCH her, when Bill gets the boat ready. And don’t speak to her. Everyone else – move it! Carol – me and you will go over to the Fox, with Mum and Craig. Tig, you and Frank go late-night shopping in Thurrup. Make sure you buy something on a credit card. When’s that taxi coming, Carol?’

‘Half an hour.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hannah heard Tiggy wail, hysteria in her voice. ‘Why are you ordering a taxi, Dax? What’s happening?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Dax yelled. ‘Will you shut her up, Frank?’

‘Tig,’ Carol said. ‘Look at me. She won’t be there, will she? The driver goes back to Thurrup and then tomorrow, when nobody can find her, they’ll finger ’im.’

‘That’s a point. You got her phone, Carol?’ Dax said. ‘Wipe it, then chuck it in a field out by Snadesdon. Ring 999 on it or summat, then turn it off. They’ll think he took her out there.’

Sweat trickled down inside the hood. Hannah tried to shake it away, but it ran into her eyes, making her blink. Dax’s voice faded, as if he’d moved away. ‘Tig, Frank, sort yourselves out. I’m not saying it again. You’re in this, same as the rest of us. Too late for whining now.’

Then there was a creak of floorboards. Stale cigarette breath blasted through the hood. She flinched, but there was nowhere to go.

Dax’s voice appeared right in her ear. ‘You’ve seen Samuel’s soldering iron. Lie there quiet, or him and Bill will take your eye out.’

She bit back a sob.

The doors crashed, and the voices stopped.

Hannah didn’t move.

She tried to hear where Samuel and Bill were – anticipating a burn on her body at any time.

She heard murmuring, doors bashing. Somebody moving something behind her head, and a diesel smell that made her push herself inches closer to the wall, terrified.

Then, gradually, her pulse started to slow. Nothing was happening. Not yet.

‘Right, I’ll be at the boat. Keep her there,’ Bill said.

The door slammed again. Bill had said he was going to a boat. A boat for her?

A new dread filled Hannah. She could hear Samuel working at the bench, mumbling to himself. Did he even know she was here?

Even though her head was dizzy, she told herself she had to take a risk. This could be her only chance, while Bill was out of the shack.

‘Samuel,’ she tried quietly, ‘I have a little girl. I need to get home for her.’

Metal clanked and then hissed.

‘Samuel?’

She couldn’t move her hands. Dax had tied them to something. So instead she pressed her forehead on the ground and tried to drag the hood off her face. It came in three moves, almost all the way to her eyes.

There was a scrape and she tried to turn her head.

Samuel stood above her with a chisel, staring down through milky eyes.

‘No!’ she shouted, flinching.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Hannah,’ she replied, terrified.

Samuel glazed over again. He walked back to the bench and continued with his soldering.

At least she could see something now, even if she was still trussed like an animal. She tried to move and couldn’t and, strangely, felt ashamed.

‘Samuel,’ she called into the floor. ‘What are they going to do to me?’

A clink and a hiss. ‘Put ya down.’

She thought she’d misheard him. The words entered her head one by one. ‘Put’, ‘you’, ‘down’. A chill ran through her as she connected them.

‘Put me down? Like an animal. What do you mean?’

‘Drown ya. With Bill’s boat. That’s what they do.’

Hannah struggled to find words. ‘Who do they do it to, Samuel?’

‘The farm girls,’ Samuel said. ‘When they’re old and sick.’

Hannah stared. ‘Farm girls. You mean Mabel. Mabel, and her daughter, C.V.?’

She was starting to feel nauseous, and tried to move her stomach off the floor.

‘That’s right. L.V. too now, when they get her. They told her to be quiet when you lot come, and she wasn’t. Dax said it wouldn’t work.’

Dax and Madeleine were hunting Elvie now, too?

‘Samuel. Why do L.V. and C.V. just have initials, and not names?’ she said, looking around for anything to help her. On the floor was an iron bar. If she could untie her hands and—

Something banged down on a table beside her, making her jerk away. ‘Don’t need them.’

‘Why?’

Samuel’s head came down close to hers again. She felt his spittle fly onto her cheek. His rheumy eyes were staring, trying to make sense of his confused mind.

‘Got no use, but do stuff. Work on the farm. Don’t give cows names, do thee?’

Samuel went back to his soldering.

Hannah lay in shock, trying to understand. What was he saying? That Dax and Madeleine had killed Mabel and her daughter, C.V. – or let them die, at least, because they’d become old and sick – then put their bodies in the sea?

From the sound of it, they were now hunting Mabel’s granddaughter, Elvie, too. Destroying the evidence, perhaps, now that outsiders had come to the village and realized that something strange had been going on there.

And she – because she couldn’t keep her nose out of other people’s business – had got in the way.

Hannah lay on the floor, the horror of it washing through her: she, too, was going to die.

Her eyes desperately roamed the dirty shack, with its clumps of mud and oil, the iron bar too far out of reach. Was this the last thing she would see, before they came to get her?

She thought again of the unsent email on her laptop, and wondered if Dax had found and stolen the computer. If he had, nobody would ever know the truth.

She thought about the report in the newspaper about Mabel Vyne.
Police are searching for Hannah Riley, 36, a charity publicist who disappeared on Tuesday evening in Suffolk. A taxi driver from Thurrup is currently being questioned.

Her parents and Will would spend the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to her.

The grief and the pain and the dizziness threatened to send her into hysteria, and she knew she had to stop it.

Bill was still outside on the beach. She had to persuade Samuel to let her go. He was so confused that she might have a chance.

As she tried to think how to make him listen to her, she felt a quiver in the floor under her body. An aftershock of movement – once, then again, but stronger. The third time it was a palpable thump under the floor.

Behind her, Hannah heard the door crash open.

‘No,’ she whispered.

It was too late. Bill was back. Or, worse, Dax.

She shut her eyes helplessly, waiting for a blow. But instead she heard a grunt. Then a sour smell filled her nostrils.

She tried to turn her head, and saw feet in their big boots. Dirty, leathery hands shot out, and then her own hands were being pulled.

‘Elvie?’

Pain shot up her arm. There was another twist and then, to her astonishment, her hands fell free behind her back. She tried to get up on her knees, but the huge hands were round her, lifting her right up.

‘Thank you,’ she said, staggering to her feet.

Elvie was filthy. Her hair was matted, and on her face was that same expression of fury. Hannah realized that Elvie was glaring at Samuel, who sat at his bench looking confused.

‘Oh God – no, Elvie,’ Hannah said.

But it was too late. Elvie flew at Samuel so fast that he didn’t even flinch. She punched the old man on the jaw. He fell to the floor, and she picked up a chair.

‘No!’ Hannah shouted. ‘Put it down, Elvie.’

Elvie dropped it. Her hands shot out and grabbed Hannah. Before she could speak again, Elvie half-lifted, half-dragged her out through the door of the shack into the dark, and then into the long grass.

There was a distant yell through the wind from down at the shore.

Bill had seen them
.

‘Run, Elvie!’ Hannah shouted.

Hannah was so sore, frightened and disorientated that she had no idea where they were going. She just knew that it would be seconds before Bill rang Dax and he’d be on his way back from Snadesdon. They had to disappear into the dark and hide.