He turned to look at her.
‘You’re going to be in so much trouble when he gets hold of you. I wouldn’t worry about going to prison because you’re never going to get that far.’
He turned away from her, dabbing at his face with some kitchen towels.
‘You have taken away the most precious thing in his life; do you think he’s going to let you get away with that?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Cain is engaged to Angela, your birth mum. He’s madly in love with her, they’re getting married and if you’ve hurt her, he’s not going to let you walk away. He’s going to rip you slowly, limb from limb, and I’ll be there to help him.’
Stan’s confidence wavered a little.
‘Rubbish, why would he be engaged to her? She’s much older than him.’
‘Love knows no age limit. It’s what’s inside a person that counts, and Angela is a lovely, loving, warm woman who got dealt a crappy hand by the horrible husband she was married to. Do you think she wanted to give you up? He took you away from her because she was so exhausted and struggling with postnatal depression, and then he threw her out of her home and threatened her with the police if she made a fuss.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘I read her journal. All she had to remember you by was a faded Polaroid that she’d kept all of these years until she found you again. She wanted to make it up to you, explain that to you, and what did you do to her?’
He was fidgeting now, moving from foot to foot. His eyes kept falling onto the cupboard that she suspected her friend’s corpse had been shoved into.
‘Shut up,’ he screamed at her, then disappeared into the bedroom, where she heard him opening drawers, scrabbling around for stuff.
He was going to run. God knows what he would do to her before he did.
She frantically whipped her head around looking for a knife or something to protect herself with. Her bloodied, split lips were throbbing, but she ignored it and began to frantically workher hands against the ropes. There wasn’t much room but there was enough if she could ignore the biting pain against her wrists.
She needed something to protect herself with. There were no knives on show; he’d either disposed of them after using one of a set to kill Angela, or they were in a drawer out of sight. She didn’t have the luxury of time to begin searching. The only thing that was heavy enough to do some damage was the frying pan filled with congealing Bolognese.
FORTY-EIGHT
Ben heard his collar number echo across the airwaves radio by one of the control room operators.
‘Sarge, we had a silent nine nine nine a couple of minutes ago. We’ve managed to trace the number back to Morgan’s phone. Is she with you? Has she accidentally called it?’
‘Not that I know of, let me ring her.’
‘It’s dead now, we’ve tried multiple times.’
The sickness in his stomach made his muscles clench too tight as he fought to keep his breakfast down. All eyes were on him – they had been about to knock on Scotty’s door.
‘What’s her location?’ He was praying she hadn’t got into a car accident on the way.
‘Looks like her radio pinged at Winter Street, but she’s not answering that.’
Bigfoot was racing towards a van, and Ben sprinted after him, his heart racing, but he refused to believe she was in trouble. It didn’t make any sense.
‘That’s Stan’s street, she has to be near there. I dropped him off not that long ago. What the hell is going on?’
Ben’s mouth was dry; the all-too-familiar feeling of utter dread made it hard to speak. He was grateful for the big guy nextto him. If he didn’t have Cain to have his back, at least he had Bigfoot.
Lights flashing but no sirens, they raced to the area to begin searching for Morgan, another patrol car following behind. As Bigfoot drove into the street, Ben spotted the plain white div car that Morgan had been driving parked up. He ran towards it. Her radio was sitting there on the passenger seat but there was no sign of Morgan. ‘Fuck.’ He slammed the palm of his hand against the window.
‘Come on, it’s the big house at the end of the street. We’ll see if she made it to Stan’s.’
Ben had to give him his due, for a guy that was huge and solid, he could run. He took off sprinting. He ran around the back of the building, and Ben went in through the unlocked communal door and then realised he didn’t know which flat. He didn’t want to alert Stan if he could help it and figured if Bigfoot had gone around the back, it must be the ground floor.
