Stolen (40 page)

Although they were on different watches, every so often their time off coincided and they would borrow a friend’s small motor boat and go fishing together. It was a beautiful day, calm, warm and sunny, and they’d both stripped off their shirts and were enjoying the sun and sea more than concerning themselves with catching fish. They’d already caught nine or ten good-sized mackerel, enough really to take home and clean and gut, but Reg suggested they baited one more line, and then call it a day.

They were sitting on the floor of the boat, the engine turned off and the boat bobbing around in the waves. Reg asked Norman if he wanted a sandwich and got up to get them from their cool-box. While he was up he looked over the side to see if they’d caught anything, and he spotted the bundle floating a few yards away from the boat.

‘Take a look at this, Norm,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon it is?’

Norman got up and looked. The wrapping was a dark green plaid with several rubber bungees holding it together. ‘The bedding of someone sleeping rough?’ he suggested. ‘They always tie their stuff up with those bungees, don’t they?’

Reg said he’d start up the boat and go a bit nearer and they could get it with the boat hook.

Norman stood by with the hook as Reg steered the boat nearer. ‘Got it,’ Norman shouted above the engine noise. ‘Turn off!’

Reg switched off the engine and went to help his brother. Once they’d pulled it to the side of the boat, Norman leaned over and ran his hands down the entire length of the bundle.

‘Holy shit!’ he exclaimed. ‘I think it might be a body!’

Bryan was just going to get some lunch when a call came in from the Bognor Regis police that a body had been found in the sea. The fishermen who found it had towed it to the shore.

When the bundle was unwrapped it was found to be a tall, red-headed woman aged about forty-five. There was no doubt it was Fern Ramsden. Air inside her body had brought her bobbing up to the surface like a cork.

The body had been taken to the mortuary where it would be examined. Bryan decided to take a ride down to Bognor and see if the corpse had any secrets to give up.

‘Nurse, nurse!’

Sister Miranda Cole sighed and got up from the desk where she was writing up her notes. Howard Ramsden was fast becoming one of her least favourite patients; he whinged about everything and everyone, always stating before he started, ‘I’m not including you in this because you’re a honey.’

His pain was the worst in the world, the food was appalling, this nurse or that nurse was rude or off-hand, there was too much noise in the corridor, no one tried to make him comfortable. The complaints were endless.

He had had nightmares for the past two nights. The nurses on duty said he was screaming at the top of his lungs and he had to be given a stronger sedative. Miranda smiled when she was told this, and hoped he was so badly frightened he would confess what he’d done. But she couldn’t hope for that just now, it was only two in the afternoon, no time for nightmares or confessions.

‘Yes, Mr Ramsden?’ she said starchily as she got to his bed.

‘My leg sure is throbbing,’ he bleated out.

‘I’ve told you several times already that this happens sometimes after a limb is amputated.’

‘But it’s agony.’

‘I hardly think it’s that,’ she said crisply. ‘And you are already on the highest dose allowed of painkilling drugs.’

‘How am I to bear it?’ he asked.

‘Maybe you should make your peace with your Maker,’ she said sharply. The moment the words came out she regretted it. She knew only too well it wasn’t right for a nurse to sit in judgment on a patient. She blamed Tony Bryan for that.

‘You are very hard on me, Sister,’ he whined.

Miranda only heard the self-pity and looked down at him with contempt. Tony had telephoned her the previous evening and expressed his anxiety for Lotte now that he had no choice but to arrest and charge her.

‘You have done unspeakable things to a vulnerable young woman,’ she spat out. ‘I might find it possible to be kind to you if you’d just be man enough to admit what you’ve done. What difference can it make to you anyway? Your punishment is assured, whatever you do or say.’

She walked away from his bed then, too angry to care what he made of that.

Bryan, dressed in scrubs, stood well back from the pathologist and his assistant as they examined Fern Ramsden. He loathed autopsies, especially on those who’d been dead for some time. The smell was sickening and the sound of scalpels and other implements cutting through flesh sent a creeping feeling down the back of his legs.

‘You say your young lady only stabbed her once with a narrow-bladed kitchen knife?’ the pathologist asked.

‘That’s right,’ Bryan said. ‘We recovered a knife from the house which was shown to her today and she confirmed it was the one she used. Six inches long, no serration, the kind you might use for slicing vegetables.’

‘I see that wound,’ the man said. ‘But there is another one lower down – the knife that inflicted this was much larger. I’d say a French cook’s knife. That was the one which killed her; the first was well above the victim’s heart and didn’t go far enough in to damage anything vital.’

Bryan overcame his squeamishness and stepped forward. It was difficult to believe that the woman on the slab, looking so grotesque and atrophied from immersion in salt water for so long, was the same glamorous, sexy redhead he’d seen photographs of.

‘But the cuts are at different angles,’ he said.

‘The blows came from different directions, and the larger one was from someone left-handed. They were not from the same person.’ The pathologist poked around the torso for a few moments. ‘I’d say the second, larger one was inflicted by a man, judging by the force required to get such depth of penetration, and the victim would have been lying down when he did it.’

‘Hallelujah,’ Bryan exclaimed and punched the air in delight. ‘So after all that sanctimonious bastard has said about how much he loved her, he killed her! Let him get out of that one!’

‘Anything else you need to know?’ The pathologist’s eyes were smiling above his mask at Bryan’s glee.

‘No, just fax the report through as soon as you’re done. I think I’ll do a spot of hospital visiting before I go back to the station.’

Bryan felt as if he was walking on air as he made his way up to the high-dependency ward where Ramsden was being cared for. It would be good to see Miranda too, but absolutely superb to shatter that man’s supreme confidence by telling him his wife’s body had been found.

Miranda was busy in the main ward. Bryan waved to her and indicated where he was going.

Ramsden appeared even more haggard than he’d been on the last visit. He was propped up on pillows but he looked very sick.

‘Just come to tell you the good tidings,’ Bryan said jovially. ‘We found your wife’s body today!’

‘You did?’ Ramsden said, and Bryan could almost see the cogs in his brain whirling as he tried to decide how he should react to this news.

He put his left hand up to his eyes and partially covered them, as if hiding his tears. ‘At least now I’ll be able to bury her and have closure,’ he said at length.

Bryan poured the man a glass of water and held it out to him. The left hand came away from his dry eyes and took the glass.

‘Left-handed?’ Bryant asked. ‘The second fatal stab wound in your wife’s chest was struck by a left-handed man. It had to be you, there was no other man there.’

Ramsden stared at him, his eyes wide like those of a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights.

‘You killed your wife,’ Bryan said quietly. ‘You killed the baby too and but for Lotte’s smartness you would’ve killed her and Dale. I can prove all this, but somehow I doubt you’ll still be with us for a trial. So I’m giving you the chance to redeem yourself and admit it all.’

‘I told you the truth the other day,’ the man said, his voice shaking.

Bryan shook his head slowly. ‘You told me a heap of shit. I’m going away now to get another officer, a solicitor for you and a tape recorder. By the time I get back I want you ready to tell me about Fern and the baby. The true story this time.’

Bryan wheeled round and walked towards the door, then stopping and turning back with his hand still on the door, looked hard at Ramsden. ‘Just so you’ll know the score, I don’t give a toss whether you get repatriated to stand trial in the States, whether you get tried here, or even if you die before any decision is made about you. All I care about is that lovely young girl you’ve so badly wronged.

‘I’ll tell you now, before I get back with witnesses, that if you give me a full and frank confession tonight, I’ll see you get treated fairly. If you don’t, you might find me leaning on that stump of yours, getting your pain relief delayed, and a dozen other nasty little tricks I know.’

He walked away then, whistling ‘Dixie’.

Chapter Twenty

‘But I must see her, please!’ David begged the desk sergeant at Brighton police station.

‘I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not allowed,’ the man repeated. He had the look of a bloodhound with saggy jowls and bags under his eyes. ‘If you want to write her a note I’ll make sure she gets it. If you want to leave her cigarettes or chocolate, I’ll pass then on to her. But you can’t see her.’

‘Can I speak to DI Bryan then?’

‘He’s out on a case,’ the sergeant said. ‘I don’t think he’ll be back here this evening.’

It was just after seven in the evening. David had been working out of the office all day and he didn’t get Simon’s message about Lotte being arrested until he got home at five-thirty and checked his voice mail. He jumped in the car immediately and drove over to Brighton, and now it seemed he’d just been wasting his time.

‘David!’ A familiar voice made him turn round to see that Simon had just come in.

‘Am I glad to see you – they won’t let me see her,’ David explained.

‘Nor me neither,’ Simon said. ‘I just brought her some smarter clothes for court tomorrow morning and her makeup and stuff. I can’t believe they are doing this to her.’

Simon put the small suitcase on to the counter and the desk sergeant said he would send it down to Lotte. David quickly wrote her a note explaining why he couldn’t see her and that he’d be at the court in the morning. He ended it with a dozen kisses saying they were all ‘good-luck-and-just-until-we-get-the-chance-for-real’ ones. He hoped that might make her smile.

‘How is she?’ David asked as he handed over the note. ‘She must be terrified.’

‘The officer down in the cells is a good sort, we don’t whack prisoners with truncheons like on the films,’ the sergeant said dryly. ‘I haven’t seen her personally but I know there is a great deal of sympathy for her, so stop worrying.’

As the two men left the police station Simon suggested David came back with him and stayed the night in Lotte’s room rather than drive back to Chichester and return in the morning. ‘We could get a pizza or something and have a few drinks. We all need something to calm us down.’

David was glad of the offer; he didn’t fancy being alone.

Down in the cells, Lotte sat on the bunk looking through a magazine one of the policewomen had sent down for her. She was looking at it, but not taking it in, for she knew that by this time tomorrow night she would be in Holloway Prison. Just the very name of the place sent cold shudders down her spine. She remembered watching the TV series
Bad Girls
, which was set in the prison, and thinking how scary it would be to be in there. While she knew the writers of the programme would exaggerate how awful it was, it was still the prison where some of the most dangerous and wicked women served their sentences, so it wasn’t going to be like a boarding school.

She opened the note from David and read it once again. She guessed he’d written it hurriedly in front of the desk sergeant, and couldn’t say much for that reason. His note, and the clothes and makeup so carefully picked out and packed by Simon, meant so much. It was comforting to know they were out there thinking and worrying about her. She had been disappointed that DI Bryan hadn’t come to see her before going off duty, but she supposed she was after all just another case to him.

She had never, ever imagined herself being in a police cell, and now she was here, with the sound of a drunk shouting out abuse down the corridor, she felt the full weight of everything that had happened to her in the last year or so.

It was strange that she hadn’t felt it before today. But as the memories had come back to her it was almost as if she was looking down watching someone else’s life. It hadn’t seemed like it had all really happened to her.

The rape in Ushuaia had been an appalling and terrifying incident, yet now it didn’t seem as hideous as being in that bed with Howard and Fern. She wondered how she managed to cope with Howard’s baby growing in her belly. Yet she didn’t remember ever hating the baby, only him.

How could they have left her locked in the basement for such long periods? Surely they must have known how frightened and lonely she was, especially when she went into labour? There were times during the birth when she thought she was going to die, the pain was so intense. She’d never known pain like that. Didn’t they realize how terrifying it was for her knowing there was no doctor on call and no operating theatre should that be needed?

It really was unbelievable that anyone could be so casual about human life as Fern and Howard were. She wondered if they had treated all the mothers whose babies they sold as callously.

And she recalled all those hours after the birth when she had stood poised on the stairs with that knife in her hand waiting for Fern or Howard to come down. She must have been half out of her mind! Would she really have been able to kill them if the opportunity had arisen? She doubted it somehow. It was only once she knew the baby was dead and they were going to kill her too that she got desperate enough to find that extra toughness.

When she thought back on all she had endured, be that pain, loneliness, shame, hunger or fear, the worst thing of all was not getting to hold her baby. How could they snatch her away as if she was nothing to her?