AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was a photograph. So was the next one and the next one. A mother and a baby. A bigger child on his own. Another child, a bit older. Or maybe it was the same child a bit older. It was hard to tell because the photos were very fuzzy. Perhaps because they were old.
The next photo was much better. Several adults in a group staring at the camera, and one of them, she realised with a shock, was her mother.
She held her breath. It had gone quiet downstairs. Then there was someone else talking, a woman. It sounded like Maggie. She gasped with relief, and then gulped with fear. Maggie must have escaped from the man with the gun, but suppose the fat man wanted to kill her? Would Sam let him? Did Sam have a gun? Thoughts and fears cascaded through her head. Then, suddenly, she heard Sam shouting, ‘sweetie!’ She didn’t like him calling her sweetie, but he often did. He was calling her downstairs. She pulled the memory stick out of her tablet and stuffed it back into the tissues and then back into the rucksack. She snapped the tablet shut and pushed it into the rucksack too. Then she went downstairs to see if it really was Maggie.
* * *
Maggie knew someone was in the cottage. Not just Beth, but someone else. The three pebbles she had left on the stone slab outside the front door had been moved. It could have been Beth, but she saw a footprint where the stones had been and it was much too big to be Beth’s. Besides, as she was trudging down the moor towards the house, she had had this overwhelming sense that someone was watching her. It was a sixth sense, a gut feeling. Women’s intuition. Whatever it was, she had it in spades.
But she had no option but to go inside. She wasn’t going to walk out on the kid. She wasn’t going to cut and run. She had done enough of that in the past. She was going to see it through to the end, whatever that end might be. She glanced behind her, up the hill. Her would-be killer was in sight now. He was hobbling. She still had time on her side, but she didn’t have forever. She twisted the door handle and went inside.
She saw Sam first. He was standing with his back to the window, his face hidden in shadow, hands dangling. She wasn’t sure whether she felt relief or dread.
Then she saw the other man, reclining in the armchair across the other side of the room, and she knew it ought to be dread.
‘You must be Maggie,’ he said.
‘Where’s Beth?’
The man smiled. It failed to reassure her. Sitting there in the armchair he looked podgy and unhealthy. But his eyes, grey, unblinking and magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, were cold and malevolent.
‘She’s upstairs. She’s fine. Best on all counts if she stays there.’
‘Says who?’ She wasn’t going to show him how scared she was.
‘Says me.’
‘I need to see her.’
‘Afterwards.’
After what? After she had ‘cooperated?’ After she had told him where the memory stick was? What if she refused? What then?
Sam stepped forward. ‘Tell you what, Maggs, you sit down.’ He lifted his head and shouted up into the ceiling. ‘Beth!’ A pause while they all listened. A squeak of floorboards. ‘Come down for a moment, sweetie.’
He didn’t wait for a reply, but took Maggie by the elbow and led her to the sofa. ‘Sit, Maggs.’ As if she was a dog undergoing training. Maggie’s brain was going into freefall. What was this? Sam playing the good cop? And the other guy was the bad cop? He certainly felt like a cop of some sort. Special branch, probably. MI5. The sort of cop who had shadowed them in the protest days. But if that was the case, then who the hell was Sam? Was he one of them? One of the people who had killed Ellie? Was that who he was?
Sam’s hand had shifted to her shoulder and was pressing on it hard. She sat down. Her eyes went to the stairs, where Beth’s feet had appeared. The feet came down, one cautious step after the other. When her face came into view, Maggie could see she was scared. She had put on her Snow White wig and was carrying her princess doll.
‘Hi, Beth. Are you OK?’ Maggie tried to sound upbeat and normal.
The girl nodded.
‘Sam and me and this man, we’ve got to talk about things. Grown up things.’
Again Beth nodded. She walked across the room and gave Maggie a hug. Maggie could feel her tension. She would have liked to reassure her but the words wouldn’t come. All she could do was whisper — five little words.
Beth gave a final squeeze and then ran back up the stairs as if the hounds of hell were after her. Maggie heard her slam a door shut. A patter of feet. Then silence.
‘Where is it?’ The man was leaning back in his chair, hands steepled together under his chin.
‘What do I call you?’ she said.
He considered the question, rubbing the tips of his fingers together. ‘William.’
‘William?’ she laughed, mimicking his accent. ‘I prefer Billy.’ She could see he didn’t like this. A man who hated to be mocked. A humourless bastard. They were all bastards.
‘Well, Billy, maybe you should explain what it is you’re looking for.’
