Charlton stared at Brook. ‘I can see that from the timeline.’
‘What Inspector Brook means is that apart from Caitlin, the three Polish girls and Daniela Cassetti were all abducted
before
their terminations took place,’ said Noble.
‘So?’
‘So if those women were abducted by pro-lifers . . .’ said Banach, leaving the rest unsaid.
Charlton took a second to grasp the full implication. ‘My God. You think these women . . .’
‘It’s possible that one or all of them may have been forcibly brought to term, yes,’ concluded Brook. ‘In which case we could be looking for at least four children as well.’
‘Coerced childbirth?’ said Read.
‘It’s unheard of,’ said Charlton.
‘It’s unusual but there have been cases in the US,’ said Brook.
‘That wouldn’t be an easy operation to keep under wraps,’ said Read. ‘They’d need plenty of privacy and lots of room.’
‘Not if the mothers were killed after the birth and the babies trafficked,’ said Cooper. All heads turned to him. ‘They
were
taken one at a time.’ Expressions registered objections but no one was able to challenge his logic. ‘Just saying.’
The incident room door burst open and the portly figure of Sergeant Grey popped his head round. ‘There’s been a sighting of Nick Tanner. Thought you should know.’
‘Where?’
‘Wandering round the Intu like he’s Christmas shopping,’ grinned Grey. ‘Three units on the way. I’ve alerted Intu security, for what it’s worth.’
Brook nodded at Noble, who rushed out of the incident room, beckoning Smee and Read to join him.
Nick wiped his hands on several tissues and threw them into the empty burger box. He burped happily and slid out from the banquette to make his way to the escalator. He’d bought some cookies for Jake in case he came looking for him.
Then maybe he won’t be so narked
.
He came to a halt as he turned the corner at Starbucks, a familiar figure standing in front of him. Nick smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
‘Hiya, Max.’
Max took a moment to consider before returning the smile.
Twenty-Seven
Caitlin woke to the sound of blood throbbing in her eardrums. Everything was black. She took a breath, inhaled cloth, and after a brief moment of panic snatched a thick bag from her head and sucked in oxygen.
She examined the black cotton bag. There was a scrap of paper attached.
New rule. Bag on head when u r moved.
3
knocks to warn u. Don’t forget bitch
.
‘Bastards,’ spat Caitlin, looking around her cramped and gloomy new cell. She was on her back, her legs bent and knees up to her chin, head and neck contorted by lack of space, cheek jammed up against something cold. Her hands were cuffed in front by the kind of plastic restraints she’d seen in movies, but the rest of her fetters were off, including the heavy glove with phone attached.
Slowly she stretched her aching legs to the cold tile wall and pushed herself upright until she reclined against another wall, wedged tight between it and cold, hard china. She was in a cramped toilet closet with an old-fashioned toilet bowl and could hear the trickle of the cistern high on the wall.
She flexed her legs like a newborn foal. On the ground was a small plastic food bag smeared with a creamy substance. She examined it with distaste before realising it was the chicken breast from her abortive meal with the deformed old man.
She tore open the plastic. The chicken was covered in carpet fibres, but Caitlin didn’t care and, after picking off the worst of the debris, tore the meat apart, devouring it in seconds before running a finger around the bag to lick up the creamy sauce.
In the faint light, she saw the box jammed into the space on the other side of the toilet. On top was a small bottle of water. She twisted off the cap and drank down the entire bottle with no thought of rationing. When it was empty, she retained it for a refill and read the writing on the box.
Belted Diapers for Incontinent Seniors
.
‘Jesus.’
At the same time, she registered the squelch of human waste in her own diaper and her eyes filled with tears, which she quickly blinked away.
‘No,’ she spat. ‘I’ve cried enough,’ she added quietly, taking calming breaths. ‘You perverts don’t get the satisfaction.’
She stood with as much dignity as she could muster and reached under her dress to remove her soiled diaper. With bound hands it was fiddly work, but eventually she released the garment with an unholy squelch and scrunched it tightly to incarcerate the fumes before flushing it away.
She sat on the cold white china of the toilet bowl, leaving the seat up, and stared down at the water. It seemed fresh. With a grimace, she set about washing herself as best she could, reaching back under herself with her bound hands. Eventually she was satisfied she’d done her best and dabbed herself dry with toilet paper which at least was soft.
After flushing, she knelt over the bowl to rinse her hands as thoroughly as possible. The crucifix-shaped burn on her forearm began to sting, so she bathed her arm in the fresh water. This time she didn’t dry off. Then she reached reluctantly into the box and took out a fresh diaper.
In the dim light she read the leaflet from the nappy box. ‘Suitable for both urinal and faecal incontinence. No mention of electric shock therapy. Maybe I should sue.’ She threw the flyer and diaper back into the box. ‘Going commando,’ she mumbled.
Gazing down at her dress, her expression contorted with confusion. ‘I was wearing jeans in the barn. This dress was in my rucksack, in my room,’ she said slowly. Her eyes widened. ‘So if my rucksack is here . . . Shit! I’m not even missing. People will think I’m in Belfast and Mairead will think I’m in Derby.’
She hung her head. ‘Kitty. They knew my name, where I lived. Jesus. They came for me. They wanted
me
.’ Her lip wobbled but the tears refused to flow. She remembered the old man stroking her hair. ‘I’m not the first.’ She raised her face to the sky to shout. ‘Laurie! They get you too? Are you here? Can you hear me?’ No answer. ‘Looks like you’re on your own, girl.’
She slumped on to the toilet seat and looked up the high whitewashed walls. Small rays of sunshine were illuminating the rusting metal cistern through a ventilation grille embedded high in the wall. It was an old-fashioned duct, built into the brickwork, and through it she could hear the sound of distant birdsong, which ignited a sudden pining to be outside.
She clambered on to the toilet seat, but even standing, she couldn’t get close to the grille. Cocking an ear, she fancied she could pick up the noise of traffic. Not the all-pervasive drone of the city but the intermittent roar of a car hurtling along at speed. The farm must be near a main road.
I ran away from the road. Why didn’t I turn left? Jeez, if the Devil had sat at the Lord’s right hand, I might have made it
.
She lifted her face towards the distant grille.
‘Help!’ she shouted, holding the word as long as her breath allowed. ‘Can anyone hear me?’
After ten minutes of increasingly desperate shouting, she jumped down, her mouth set, tamping down her despair. ‘You’re a rat in a trap, Kitty. Deal with it.’
She turned her attention to the solid wooden door and pushed, shoved and probed at it methodically, seeking weakness. It didn’t budge an inch and there was nothing to get hold of on her side to give her any play – no handle, no latch, nothing.
In fact the only weakness was a missing knot of wood leaving a hole, but something had been wedged over it from the other side so she couldn’t see out. In a rush of sudden anger, she banged and kicked at the door, screaming for help, feeling and hearing her voice crack under the strain. After two minutes of fruitless violence with feet and bound hands, she sat down again, appraising the walls of her prison.
It was like a public convenience, though Caitlin was sure it wasn’t cold enough to be in a separate outhouse and she didn’t remember being carried outside. Then again, she’d been unconscious. She winced at the memory of the electricity coursing through her, ran her teeth over the self-inflicted bite on her tongue.
‘Wait till I hook you up to a socket, cocksuckers. There won’t be enough juice left in the grid to boil a kettle.’
She slouched on the toilet, glancing resentfully up at the door. An eye blinked back at her through the peephole and Caitlin’s smile froze. Holding back her anger, she sneered towards her jailer. ‘See anything you like, needledick?’ She’d slipped back into her broadest Irish accent, knowing that some people found it intimidating.
She stood, lifting her bound hands under her breasts, and hefted them towards the peephole. ‘Nice tits as well, you pervert. Hey, freakshow!’ she screamed, jumping up to crash her bound hands against the door. ‘Try the internet. You can see the lot for free and you don’t need to jack off standing up.’
‘You scared my dad, bitch,’ shouted a male voice from the other side of the door.
Caitlin leaned into the wood. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. What about me?’
‘What about you, you tramp? You give yourself to men for free like the baby-killing whore you are while my dad’s all alone.’
‘
I’m
all alone,’ snarled Caitlin.
‘Then you’re made for each other,’ retorted the man. ‘And he wouldn’t have used you like those other men. A bit of hand-holding and a kiss on the cheek. Then maybe later see what develops. Was that too much to ask?’
‘See what develops?’ Caitlin’s mind was racing. ‘You fucking kidnapped me. You tortured me. And you think I’m gonna fall in love with your dad. You think we’re gonna have sex.’
‘Not sex,’ said the man. ‘Love.’
‘Love?’ screamed Caitlin. ‘He’s a fucking gargoyle.’
‘You baby-killing bitch. By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be begging to spend time with my dad.’ The eye withdrew and the peephole closed.
‘Wait. Where are you going? Give me another chance.’ No reply. ‘Are you there? Please. Give me another chance.’
Caitlin woke and stretched out stiffly on the cold floor. Sunlight poured through the grille set high in the wall. It must be morning. After flexing her neck she began to agitate. She needed food and she needed exercise. She devised some simple stretches to keep herself occupied, which wasn’t easy as she could touch all four walls of the cubicle from the toilet seat. And, of course, any physical activity created a keener sense of hunger after she’d finished.
‘Hey, how about some food in here?’ She kicked out at the door in frustration.
Eventually she sat down panting, staring at her surroundings, searching for weaknesses in her cell. There had once been a bolt on the inside of the door – she could see the pilot holes for screws. There’d also been an old-fashioned round light switch but this had also been removed, judging by the circle of different-coloured paint, which continued in a line to the ceiling, suggesting an absent cable. The distant ceiling rose was still in place but was too high to reach and contained no bulb.
Caitlin clambered on to the toilet seat and stood on tiptoes to examine the flush as best she could. Instead of a traditional handle and chain, a durable length of nylon rope hung down from the unreachable cistern, and she wondered how she might put it to use if she were able to detach it from the lofty handle. She grabbed the rope and tried to pull herself up but stopped immediately. If the cord couldn’t bear her weight, she might break the cistern, and if she damaged the flush before she had a plan, she might have no access to clean water.
Instead she felt along the old lead pipe hugging the wall to the bulky cistern. It was embedded in the plaster with no way to get purchase or her hands round it. However, as she prepared to jump to the floor, her fingers alighted on something metallic that had been jammed between the wall and the pipe. It was a rusty nail. It wasn’t part of the pipe’s support structure so must have been forced into position for some reason. Maybe someone had hidden it there, though Caitlin couldn’t think why. Nevertheless, she prised it from behind the pipe and examined it.
The nail was rusty apart from the point, which seemed a lot shinier, as though it had been used regularly. For what? Manoeuvring her cuffed wrists, she tried to force it into her plastic hand ties, but it was too difficult to get purchase and she gave up, replacing the nail behind the pipe until she could think of a better use for it. Frustrated, she jumped down from the seat, lost her balance and fell back against the wooden toilet-roll holder, which broke away from the wall bringing a pair of white tiles with it.
‘Shit.’
She sank to her knees to pick up one of the tiles. It was broken in two and the white glaze felt sharp to the touch. She sucked her grazed finger, then picked up the broken tile and set to work, holding it between her knees and forcing her bound hands across the serrated edge.
After a few misfires, the plastic cuffs fell apart and, feeling a mixture of elation and relief, Caitlin knelt to cool her sore wrists in the clean water of the toilet. As she soothed her bruises, she glanced across at the gap left by the tiles. A series of marks was gouged into the plaster in the manner of a Stone Age calendar – the sort of primitive timekeeping that prisoners might use to document captivity.
‘The nail.’
She totted up twenty counting gates – six small vertical scratches in the plaster scored through with one diagonal. Her heart sank. If one counting gate equalled one week, someone had recorded twenty weeks of confinement in this tiny cubicle.
Twenty weeks. Five months!
She pressed herself closer to the makeshift calendar, flattening her palms against the wall, feeling for further scratches. She gritted her teeth and prised away another tile, relieved to see that there were no more counting gates. But there was something just as depressing. Letters. Now Caitlin could put a name to the previous inmate. She traced each letter with a forefinger to be sure.
D-A-N-I-E-L-A.
‘Daniela.’ Caitlin was sombre. ‘What did the bastards do to you, girl?’ She looked up at the faint sunbeams, a yearning to be outside in the light overwhelming her.
‘Count your blessings, Kitty,’ she said, setting her jaw. ‘Daniela survived in here for five months. And if she could, so can I. And I promise you this, girl. If I get the chance, I’m going to hurt these cocksuckers real bad.’
Nick wouldn’t linger in a store that sold old people’s clothes, so Jake walked quickly through Marks & Spencer at the corner of the Intu mall, not wanting to lower his hood but realising that to keep his head covered would arouse suspicion. Already a security guard had registered his presence and was following at a discreet distance, speaking into a radio on his epaulette.
Jake hurried out of M&S into the anonymity of the crowded walkways, where hordes of Saturday shoppers wandered aimlessly, and made a beeline for likelier venues. There was no sign of Nick at any mobile phone stores, so he headed for Eat Central, where his brother would gorge himself for hours whenever Jake had money. No sign.
He was about to head into a sports store when he saw two familiar figures outside on the pavement. One was holding open the door of an idling black Mercedes, sleek and long, while the other dipped into the cabin clutching a bag of cookies, a happy grin on his face.
‘Nick!’ shouted Jake, setting off at a lick towards the smoked-glass doors that drowned his appeal. ‘Nick!’ he repeated at the car already pulling away. He sprinted outside and towards the vehicle, which slammed on its brakes. The driver’s door opened and a man jumped out.
Jake recognised Ostrowsky’s bodyguard grinning at him, and stared back, frozen. He glanced at Nick, happily munching away in the back seat, took a deep breath, then jogged reluctantly towards the waiting car.
At that moment, a police car pulled up behind the Mercedes and four uniformed officers poured out and headed towards him. Jake stopped cold and turned on his heel back towards the mall, pulling his hood tighter as he marched away, listening for signs he’d been recognised.