Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 (31 page)

At first, she saw only a pair of legs wearing blue denim taking the stairs two at a time. As they reached the bottom of the first flight and turned the corner, the rest of their owner came into view.

Zoe gasped and stepped back in bewilderment.

She had seen this boy before. Or rather, his dead body. On a large, flat stone by the side of the River Tweed.

THIRTY-SEVEN

On seeing Zoe, the boy came to an abrupt halt halfway down the second flight of stairs. His legs were running so fast that he had to grab hold of the banister to stop.

They stared at each other in silence.

Of course this wasn’t the boy who’d been thrown from the Chain Bridge. Although he had the same jet-black hair and wore similar clothes, this one was even younger, twelve at the most. His arms were streaked with grime and his knuckles gleamed white through the dirt as he continued to grip the banister with his left hand. He shook uncontrollably.

‘It’s okay,’ Zoe said, trying to summon a smile to reassure him. ‘We’re here to help you.’

‘I don’t think he understands English,’ Patrick said from the top of the stairs.

The boy glanced round, his face contorted with fear, then pitched himself down the few remaining stairs. Zoe tried to stop him but he barged past, knocking her mobile out of her hand. The noise it made as it hit the concrete floor was drowned out by banging.

Someone was trying to come in.

The boy skidded to a stop. He looked back at Zoe then at the door, as if trying to decide where the greatest danger lay.

A dull thud suggested the person outside was now throwing their full weight at the door.

‘Zoe,’ Patrick called. ‘Come up here to me. We need to hide.’

‘We can’t leave the boy on his own.’

‘They’re expecting to find him. We’re the ones in danger.’

‘I’ve called the police. They should be here soon.’

‘We can’t rely on that.’

Patrick appeared at the bend on the stairs and beckoned to her. She started to climb towards him, picking up speed at another thump on the door. The old bolt could give way at any time.

Damp heat hit her as she neared the first floor, and as she took the final stair, intense light coming from the rooms off the landing made her blink. Patrick opened his mouth to speak but he was interrupted by a noise below them.

‘What’s that?’ Zoe asked.

‘They gave up on the front door and simply went round to the back. I’ve got no idea if there’s anywhere to hide up here but we have to keep out of their way until the police arrive. Come on.’

Zoe followed him into the first room on their right and gasped at what she saw. Just like downstairs, several walls had been removed from adjoining rooms to create one huge space where industrial-sized lamps suspended from the ceiling blazed with light which was intensified by curved metal shades and walls lined with reflective plastic. Below the lamps sat row upon row of plants about a metre high, their foliage buffeted by the breeze from electric fans which were scattered around the room. Above all this hung a huge white pipe resembling an oversized tumble-drier hose.

‘Don’t touch anything. Especially that.’ Patrick pointed to a board hanging off the wall into which about twenty power cables were plugged. The cables then snaked around the room, some running along the floor, others looping through the air. ‘They’ve bypassed the electricity meter. This place is a death trap.’

They dashed between the rows of plants, passing a Winnie the Pooh mural, but aside from the clutter of equipment, there was no furniture, no en suite bathroom, nowhere to hide. The noise from the fans and the extractor meant they couldn’t hear anyone approaching, so Zoe kept looking back. When she collided with a hanging cable, Patrick took her hand. ‘Let’s try the rooms on the other side.’

A cursory glance told them the other rooms were a mirror image of where they’d come from, only with smaller plants. Back on the landing, they spotted a door bearing the picture of an old fashioned bath.

‘There’s one place which must have a lock,’ Zoe said.

Getting inside the bathroom was a struggle; the door would only open a few inches. Watching Patrick squeeze himself through the narrow gap, Zoe doubted she and her bump would fit, but she breathed in and they did. She nearly tripped over the obstruction, a grubby single mattress lying on the floor parallel to the bath. Next to it lay a plate and a plastic knife and fork. The room stank.

‘They’re making him eat and sleep in here?’ she said.

‘He’s their prisoner, kept to tend to the plants. They don’t care about the conditions he works and lives in.’ Patrick manoeuvred around Zoe and the mattress to secure the door. Unfortunately, although it still had its lock, the key was nowhere to be seen.

‘Get in the bath and sit down,’ he instructed. Zoe hesitated, saw the expression on his face and obeyed. This freed up enough space for him to fold the mattress in half and lay it in front of the door. They both looked around for something else to add to this inadequate blockade, but apart from an empty soap dispenser and a filthy hand-towel, the room was empty.

Patrick tried to open the window. It was painted shut.

‘What did you do with the bolt cutters?’ Zoe asked.

‘I put them down while I was trying to persuade the boy to come out onto the landing. Big mistake, eh?’

‘The police’ll be here soon.’ Zoe felt water from one of the taps dripping down her back, which was a good thing, given the oppressive heat in the room. Her mouth felt dry, but she feared turning the tap fully on would attract unwanted attention.

Patrick didn’t reply. He leaned against the wall, hands jammed in his armpits. Despite his outward composure, his reluctance to look Zoe in the eye told her the truth. He was scared too.

The moment of reckoning came swiftly but in an unexpected form. Instead of someone trying to knock down the door to reach them, they heard a gentle knock and a quiet ‘Hello’. Paradoxically, this was all the more frightening. Zoe put a protective arm across her stomach.

‘Hello, you in there.’ The voice was deep and heavily accented, probably Eastern European. ‘Why don’t you come out? We won’t hurt you.’

Zoe closed her eyes and wished Trent’s men would hurry up and get there. She reached into her pocket for her phone then remembered it lay on the floor downstairs.

The nice-guy act was quickly dropped. ‘We have guns.’

Patrick mouthed to Zoe, ‘You stay there. Okay?’

She shook her head.

He frowned and patted his stomach.

She frowned back at him, signalling she didn’t need reminding her priority had to be the baby.

Patrick pulled at the mattress, stepped round it and opened the door just enough to get out. He closed the door behind him.

‘Tell the woman to come out too.’

‘What woman?’

‘You think I’m stupid?’

The boy must have told his captors who had breached their security. Given his young age and experience in this house, how could he know to trust Patrick and Zoe?

She climbed out of the bath, struggled briefly with the mattress and went out onto the landing.

Instead of two men controlling Patrick by pointing guns at him, she was met by the sight of him pinned up against the wall by one man holding a vicious-looking knife to his throat. She glowered at Patrick’s skinny captor, who kept running his tongue round his lips as if trying to reach the silver studs protruding from his cheeks. He stared at her stomach. This would usually make her squirm, but now she sensed her condition could be useful. Surely no criminal, however ruthless, would hurt a pregnant woman?

Cheek-studs jabbed the tip of his knife into Patrick’s flesh, producing a small trickle of blood. ‘What sort of man brings his pregnant wife to nose around someone else’s house?’ he said.

Zoe tried not to stare at the crude tattoos which decorated the thumb, every finger and the back of the hand holding the knife, or at the sinews standing out on Patrick’s neck as he strained to evade it. ‘I’m not his wife,’ she said.

‘Police, then?’

‘No. We came here because of the dog.’

‘The dog?’

‘The one outside. It chased mine. We were trying to find out who owned it.’

The man’s jeering laughter surprised Zoe and scared her even more. ‘You British and your animals.’

‘I’ve called the police. They’ll be here soon.’

‘I don’t think so. There’s no mobile signal in this fucking place.’

She didn’t argue. Forcing herself to adopt a look of defeat wasn’t difficult: she wondered if Trent’s non-appearance meant she’d got the house name wrong, or maybe that it alone hadn’t been enough for the police to trace where she’d been calling from.

Cheek-studs’ tongue continued to work round his lips. Zoe could see the predicament he was in and hoped Patrick would take comfort from it as well. Because, despite the knife, he was one man faced with keeping two prisoners under control for an indefinite period of time. His misplaced gloating about the lack of mobile coverage meant he had no way of contacting anyone to get help and judging by his agitation, he was less confident his associates were going to turn up soon than she was about the police.

They were deadlocked.

Unless, of course, he got jittery and decided he had nothing to lose by killing Patrick with one thrust of his blade then dealing with her in the same fashion.

‘Come here.’

She hesitated, weighing up not wanting to upset him against her disinclination to move into range of his knife.

A small groan escaped from Patrick as the blade pricked his flesh again. He looked pale, his eyes half-closed.

‘I have only to move my knife a little more and your friend is dead.’ Cheek-studs flashed a humourless grin at Zoe. ‘Unless he faints first, in which case he has only himself to blame.’

She took a step forward.

‘Good girl. A little closer.’

Glancing towards the stairs, Zoe thought she saw something move at the doorway to the children’s room. She forced herself to look away and move nearer Cheek-studs. If the police were here, she didn’t want to alert him.

If he stretched out his arm now, he could thrust the knife into her baby.

Involuntarily, she moved her hands towards her stomach.

‘Arms behind your back.’

She complied without comment, feeling even more vulnerable. What was he planning?

Risking another brief look along the landing, she saw nothing this time. It had been wishful thinking.

‘I have a sister who is pregnant,’ their captor said. ‘She has far longer to go than you, but even now she would do anything—anything!—to protect the child inside her. I truly believe that if given the choice between her own life and her baby’s, she would die before seeing it harmed. That is what being a mother is all about, yes?’

Zoe nodded.

‘And even if you aren’t the baby’s father, you don’t want to be responsible for its death, do you?’

Patrick, unable to move his head, raised his right hand very slightly.

‘Now we’ve all agreed on this important matter,’ Cheek-studs said, looking pleased with himself, ‘I’m going to move a little but you will both stay still. Understood?’

Zoe nodded again. Patrick opened his eyes momentarily then shut them. His left leg started to shake with the effort of staying calm while a knife was millimetres away from slicing into his carotid artery.

In a single, swift movement, Cheek-studs reached across Zoe’s body and seized her upper arm. Now she realised what he planned to do. With no idea of the relationship between her and Patrick, whether one would be prepared to sacrifice the other to save themselves, he planned to use the baby inside her to ensure complete submission from them both.

Which meant very soon he would transfer his razor-sharp knife from Patrick’s neck to her stomach.

She felt dizzy with fear.

Several things happened next.

Cheek-studs lowered the hand holding the knife from Patrick’s neck towards Zoe’s stomach.

Patrick shouted, ‘Zoe, get back!’ He propelled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against, kicked out at Cheek-studs’ legs, and pushed at the arm holding the knife.

Zoe twisted away from the men. The grip on her arm intensified. She felt herself being pulled down and struggled to stay on her feet. Just when she thought she was going to collapse, Cheek-studs released her. She stumbled backwards, nearly fell through a doorway, and grasped the wooden frame to keep herself upright. All she could hear was panting and grunting.

When she turned around, Patrick was down on one knee, both hands clasped round one of Cheek-studs’ wrists, holding it a few inches above the floor and trying to make him drop the knife. His opponent leaned into him, his free arm pressed against Patrick’s neck. Each man strained to overcome the other but neither had an advantage.

Zoe ran into one of the growing rooms, searching for something she could use as a weapon. She’d hoped to find Patrick’s bolt cutters but they were nowhere to be seen. Despite the removal of several walls, not a single brick or lump of plaster remained, unlike downstairs. A desk-fan would have been ideal but the electric fans here were on stands, making them too unwieldy.

Bending down, she had to half-close her eyes to protect them from the intense light coming from the lamp suspended directly above. The naked bulb also emitted a searing heat, and as she broke off a plant near its base and picked up its pot, a horrific image flashed into her head. She knew how the dead boy’s hands had been so badly burned.

When she got back to the landing, both men were on their knees, the knife seesawing between them as they struggled for control of it. As she approached them, Patrick toppled over. Cheek-studs, sensing victory, jumped on top of him. The knife flashed through the air.

Zoe bellowed, ‘Get off him!’ and brought the plant pot down on Cheek-studs’ head with as much force as she could muster. He grunted, fell onto his side and lay still, legs drawn up, his right arm under him.

Patrick sat up. ‘The knife, where’s the knife?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, but we need to find the knife.’