‘Come on, boy,’ she said, undoing Barney’s seat belt. He squeezed through the gap and plonked himself on the passenger seat, then looked forward, as if to say, ‘What now?’
‘This is it for the next few hours, matey. We just gotta sit and watch.’
She took a moment to assess the property. She’d passed through the village a mile before turning off the main road and onto a single-track lane that wound and turned for a good half mile. She’d passed one other property close to the other end of the lane, and there was no further road beyond this house. It was a dead end. It was isolated, remote and there was no risk of through traffic. There were no close neighbours to hear any noise and little chance of meeting anyone on the road.
‘What did you say, Barney? You need to go?’ she asked, reaching to the back seat for his lead.
She needed to get a feel for the place beyond what she could see.
She clipped Barney’s lead on, and he jumped out of the car. The first thing that hit her was the silence. Rarely was she anywhere with such a deep, dark silence. Even in the early hours of the morning at her home there was a hum of something in the distance. She’d walked Barney many times in the middle of the night, and never had she felt such a thick, overpowering sense of nothingness.
She took her torch from the boot of the car. Every sound she made was magnified.
‘Okay, boy, let’s go this way,’ she whispered, stepping out of the light cast by two ornamental lamp-post tops fitted to the stone pillars either side of the wooden gate. She was not going to see anything beyond those gates or the stone wall.
There had to be a break in the perimeter somewhere. She continued walking slowly to where the tarmac ended and wild bushes rose up out of shrubbery. She felt along the wall as Barney explored all the new smells that assaulted his powerful nose.
‘Aha,’ she said as her fingers curled around the stone where it ended. She moved a few more feet in until the bushes became too dense to push through.
The wall had given way to metal fencing that was waist high, which prevented her from stepping forward or even trying to push through the dense tree border on the other side of the fence.
Damn it, there was no way to see anything.
‘Nice night for a dog walk, eh, Inspector?’ she heard from the other side of the hedge.
Her heart jumped into her mouth, but she recovered quickly and spoke over her hammering heart.
‘Yeah, you should invite us in for a little meander around your gardens.’
‘I’d love to but my own dogs, Rocky and Tyson, are the gentlest Dobermans alive, unless they think someone is trying to encroach on their domain. Then they get a little testy.’
‘You do know that we’re going to nail you if you’ve hurt one hair on—’
‘Inspector, I would expect nothing less, but I came to see if there was anything I can get you before I go to bed. Coffee? A snack?’
‘I’m good, thanks,’ she said to the hedge as she moved back towards the gate.
‘Then I’ll bid you good night.’
Kim offered no response as she forced down her rage. More than anything she wanted to scale this wall and see what was on the other side. He was watching them just as closely as they were watching him.
Was Grace in there? Was she alive? Was she scared?
‘We’re here, Grace and we’re going to get you back,’ she whispered into the hedge and then stood back.
The fact that she couldn’t see a thing made her want to get over there all the more. But she couldn’t. She had to consider that the man was goading her into making a mistake. Taunting her into doing something that would destroy any case in court.
Much as she hated to admit it, right now this man had her over a barrel and there was nothing she could do about it.
‘Fuck you, Steven Harte,’ she said, getting back into the car.
Fifteen
Alex savoured the anticipation until Emma was sound asleep.
After so long sharing a cell, she had come to know the woman’s sleeping habits quite well.
The book she’d been reading had fallen from her hands and thudded to the floor. Next had come the light snoring which then changed to mumbling, signalling that she was in deep sleep.
She took out the phone and keyed in the number she knew by heart.
The woman answered on the second ring. ‘Stone.’
Alex felt her lips turn up at the sound of her voice. She could hear the anxiety and trepidation behind that one word. She was receiving a call from an unknown number at midnight. Unlikely to be good news but impossible to ignore.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s your good friend, Alex.’
Silence.
Alex enjoyed the moment of confusion she knew the woman would be feeling after avoiding her calls.
‘I don’t have friends, and if I did you wouldn’t be one of them.’
Alex laughed out loud. Oh it was good to hear her voice again after all this time.
‘I’ve missed you, Kim.’
‘What do you want, Alex?’
Alex closed her eyes and tried to visualise what she was doing. Was she sitting on the sofa beside that ugly mutt she’d adopted? Was she in her garage tinkering with old bike parts? Whatever she was doing, Alex knew that her thoughts would be focused on whatever case she was working.
‘Well, it’s been great catching up but I’m gonna hang—’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Kim. Not least for the fact that it’ll continue to drive you mad wondering why I want to speak to you.’
Alex was already enjoying herself immensely. There was no person in the world she enjoyed interacting with more.
‘I’ll get over it, as I’m pretty sure you have nothing to say that will enrich my life.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’
‘Déjà vu. We’ve been here before. Don’t you have any new schemes in your playbook? I expected more creativity from someone as diabolically evil as you.’
And there it was. So quickly they reverted to the pattern of their relationship. An ongoing battle with minor triumphs along the way. The battles hadn’t always been psychological. Kim could still easily recall the time they had fought physically at the side of the canal for the life of a very special autistic young man named Dougie who had known what Alex was before anyone else. Kim had won and Dougie had lived. But as with their other battles, it had been close.
‘What if I told you I had the power to change your life forever?’
‘I’d say there you go bigging yourself up again. Isn’t grandiosity a staple of your average sociopath? And let’s be honest, as far as sociopaths go, you are very average.’
Oh, the inspector was in good form tonight but she knew her subject well.
‘Someone backed you into a corner, Inspector? Your worse than usual mood indicates that someone is not toeing the line.’
‘Fuck off, Alex,’ she spat, awarding that point to her.
‘I’m happy to listen. That’s what friends are for.’
‘You are neither my friend nor my therapist, thank God, and there’s nothing I’d wish to share with you.’
‘How about just a moment of your time in exchange for valuable information?’