“Shut this down. And not a word to anyone.”
Charlie nodded. Helen got up and quietly, discreetly went off to talk to her superior.
51
Her head was full of fog. She struggled to her feet groggily, then shivered. Her vision was still hazy, but she could smell the damp and the chill went straight through her. Where was she?
Slowly images pushed into her mind, but each one stabbed like the worst hangover pains and she had to sit down again. The floor was hard and unforgiving. She remembered the van, Cyn, Caroline... She looked at her watch and did a double take. Had she really slept for over twenty-four hours?
The sound of retching made her look up. And there was Caroline. She’d just been sick and was now crying into her own vomit.
Get a grip. Wake up.But this wasn’t a dream. This was too weird to be made up. Had Cyn brought her here? WherewasCyn? Martina shouted out but received only a dull echo in response. They were in some kind of cellar—a brick-arched vault gloomily illuminated by an old lantern. Poky and rotting—the forgotten box room of some big house perhaps. It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense.
The door was locked from the outside. Solid metal, but she beat against it nevertheless. She beat until her hands throbbed and her headache raged—she slunk back onto the ground defeated.
“Caroline?”
She called out to her and again received no response. So she picked herself up and made her way over to her. Whatever was going on, at least they were in it together. En route, Martina’s foot connected with something hard, which went skittering across the floor. She cried out in pain, then realized that she was virtually standing on something else: a mobile phone.
Martina picked it up. It wasn’t hers and she didn’t think it was Caroline’s. She pressed a button and a lurid green glow illuminated the screen.You have one new message.
Instinctively, Martina pressed OK.
By this phone is a gun. It has one bullet in it. For Martina or for Caroline. Together you must decide who lives and who dies. Only through death will you be released. There is no victory without sacrifice.
And that was it. Martina’s eyes shot to the object she’d kicked across the room. A gun. It was a bloody gun.
“Did you do this?” she barked at Caroline. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
But Caroline just whimpered and shook her head:
“What do you mean? I don’t knowwhat—”
At which point Martina threw the phone at her.
“That.”
Nervously, Caroline picked up the phone. Her hands shook as she read the message. Then the phone dropped out of her hand, clattering to the floor, and she hung her head on her chest and sobbed. Martina looked sickened—she obviously knew nothing.
Martina could see her breath frosting in front of her. Would it get colder in this tomb? Would they freeze to death before anyone found them?
Her life wasn’t meant to end like this. She’d been through too much to die in this dank hole.
Slowly, in the fractured gloom, Martina’s eyes came to rest on the gun.
52
She was being watched.
A Transit van had been parked in the same spot for days now. But there was no sign of any activity around it. It had a plumber’s logo on the side, but there were never any plumbers in evidence, and, besides, she’d looked up the company name online—it didn’t exist. She’d had to do this on her new smartphone, as the police still had her computer.
Hannah Mickery scrutinized the van from between a crack in the curtains. Were they looking at her right now through the tinted glass, taking photos? Or was she just being paranoid?
There had been so many people in the house during the search, it was hard to keep tabs on them all. Would they have had time to bug the place? After they’d gone, Hannah had checked every possible hidey-hole. She’d found nothing. Perhaps it was all a bit too Cold War for run-of-the-mill plod.
But it pays to be cautious when there is so much at stake.
By now that snotty cow Grace would have pillaged her computer. She probably should have given them the password, but why not make them work a little harder for it? Anyway, by now they would know. It would be hard to pass it off as professional interest or even apologize for it as macabre gawping. But did they have anything to charge her with? Of course not.
