AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Definitely dark. Gray at a push.” He shrugs again, irritatingly vague. “But black, yeah,” he finishes.
“Did you get a plate?”
“No, sorry.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Yeah. No. Kind of.” He shrugs for the third time, and Adam suppresses his desire to slap him. “Not that tall. Wearing a hoodie. Didn’t see their face.” He frowns. “Had baggy trousers on, and trainers.”
“What sort of trousers? Jeans?”
“Nah … like pajamas. Thought it was odd, but …” He loses his train of thought. Adam snaps his fingers in front of his face, trying to wake him up.
Stu blinks. “They were blue. Light blue.”
“Any other distinguishing marks about the van? Was it scratched, bumped? Any stickers in the windows?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Age?”
“Look, I don’t know, dude. It was dark. I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll get my colleague to take a statement. Try not to smoke anything else in the meantime, please?”
Stu nods, and Adam calls a uniform over.
They have something. A dark-colored VW Transporter. He heads back to see Jamie. His DS is still sitting in the doorway of the van, motionless, his face blank. Adam puts a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up, his eyes red rimmed and hopeful.
“Have you found her?”
“No, sorry.” Jamie’s face drops. “But we have some leads. And I promise I won’t rest until she’s home. We need to get you away from here while SOCO finish up. Come and stay at mine.”
Jamie looks up at Adam again. “He’ll keep her alive, won’t he?” Jamie says. His voice is desperate, cracking with every word. “Like those other ones.”
Adam frowns. “I’m sure he will,” he says, pulling his friend slowly to his feet and guiding him away from his house. He doesn’t want to mention what the other victims had been through. Tied up, the cuts to their arms. The torture. Bleeding out slowly.
The thought that that could happen to Pippa—it doesn’t bear thinking about. But he agrees with Jamie’s theory. The killer obviously wants her alive. Otherwise, he would have killed Pippa there and then.
But for how long? That was anyone’s guess.
CHAPTER
24
THROUGH THE RIDE in the patrol car back to Adam’s, Jamie can’t form a coherent sentence. He directs rambling thoughts toward his friend, half-formed worries, directions about lines of inquiry that he knows Adam will have covered. Bishop’s already told him he can’t come near the police station anymore. He’s a relative now. Family. Off the case.
Adam lets him into his house and shows him toward the spare room. Together, silently, they make up the bed, putting sheets on the bare mattress, covers on the pillows. Jamie gets the impression not many people have been to stay here, if ever.
Then, at last, Adam leaves. His boss tells him to get some sleep, but how can he? He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to sleep again, knowing that Pippa is out there, somewhere, with this madman. Images of the previous victims swim in his head, their bloody torn torsos, open blank eyes. Their dread, their pain, pushing to the forefront of his mind. The little detachment he normally manages as a police officer has completely deserted him now.
He mutes calls from Pippa’s parents, no doubt notified by someone in the team that their only daughter has been abducted. He doesn’t dare phone his mother, dreading the suffocating care. The sympathy he doesn’t deserve.
They will ask him questions he can’t answer. Why did he go to the pub? Why didn’t he come straight home after work? Why wasn’t he there to protect her, as he should have been? He was her husband. A police officer. He could have stopped this. His wife, gone, because he went for a pint.
His stomach churns, he is sick with fear. He scrunches his eyes tightly shut, but all he can see is his wife—confused, scared, crying out for him.
He saw the blood spatter in the bedroom. The smears down the wall in the hallway. The mess, the overturned furniture. The SOCOs were cagey, Adam reluctant to share details, but he knows what it means. She is injured. She fought. She’s bleeding.
