Killing Me Softly (15 page)

The girl looked up, flicking her hair over her shoulder with the back of her hand. ‘No! No, why should there be?'

‘I just wondered. If you do remember anything, you will let me know, won't you?'

She nodded, her eyes sliding away. Clare intervened, slipping her arm around Amy's shoulders. ‘So maybe you should be looking for this man.' She held Amy's head against her shoulder, and the girl began to weep again as they left.

As the front door closed behind them, Abigail told Jenny, ‘This is one for you, right up your street. Get cracking on this mysterious stranger, see if we can't track him down.'

Jenny looked resigned, but cheered up with the remark that at least it was something definite to work on. ‘And in that case, maybe I'd better see if Wonder Boy's come up with any names I can start with.'

‘There's a mailing list and an address book over there,' Farrar answered Jenny's request when they went back into the study, clearly having found something which was making him more cheerful. ‘And you might care to take a look at this, ma'am.'

He held up a sheet of crumpled paper. Unlike the DC, who was his usual smooth, unruffled self, despite his trying morning, the paper looked tired and creased, as if it had been around a long time. It read as though a twelve-year-old with a taste for bad B-movies had written it. Printed in ill-shaped block capitals with a black felt-tip, on cheap lined paper, without heading or signature, the message on it began baldly: ‘I told you you'd hear from me again. Look forward to hearing from me, as long as you live. You're a bastard, and you'll pay for what you've done. Leopards don't change their spots and I know what you're up to now, so watch it.'

Abigail wondered whether anyone was expected to take it seriously. ‘Where did you find this?'

‘With a lot of throw-out stuff. I nearly did throw it away.'

It was so dog-eared, anyone else might not even have read it. But that was where Farrar came into his own. Whatever else, he was alert and thorough, and rarely missed a trick. Abigail studied the paper for a minute or two. It looked like a crude threat of future blackmail. By whom? Wishart himself, maybe doodling with a rough draft that he'd had second thoughts about sending out? On account of the purple prose, if nothing else.

‘It could be someone playing the fool, but on the other hand ... We'll have it tested for prints, anyway. Well done, Keith.'

The DC flushed at the praise which he always felt he deserved, but rarely received. ‘If blackmail was the game, he was on to a dead loss as far as Wishart was concerned,' he added, unable to resist going further. ‘Doesn't appear to be anything in the kitty, though I suppose we'll only know for certain when we gain access to his bank accounts. Funny thing is, he hadn't been pulling his horns in lately. I'd be surprised if that Discovery does more than fifteen miles to the gallon, for one thing. Maybe his wife was subsidizing him, of course, or his mother.'

‘Not his mother, from what I've heard,' Abigail said.

‘Well, he'd also paid off a lot of his bills recently – to the tune of about forty thousand quid.'

‘What? From a man who was supposed to be on his beam ends, that's not bad going.' She decided to overlook the fact that Farrar had once more strayed outside his province.

‘Could be what cleared him out, though he'd borrowed money to do it. From a company called Neptune Holdings.'

‘That doesn't make sense.'

‘Maybe it does, at the low rate of interest he was paying. Wish I was only paying that on my mortgage. Still...'

She became thoughtful. ‘Have you got that photo, Jenny? Let Keith have a look at it and see if he recognises it.'

Jenny handed Farrar a photograph of Tim Wishart which Clare had given them, giving it another glance and raising her eyebrows as she did so. It was a good likeness, Clare had assured them, which had been taken at some all-male function or other, when he'd been standing with a group of other men in dinner jackets. He was holding a glass, caught smiling and half-turned to the camera, and Abigail, taking it back from Farrar as he shook his head, was immediately aware of the charm of the man, some sexual charisma which was apparent even in a casual photo.

‘Handsome devil, wasn't he?'

‘If you like the type.' Jenny screwed up her pretty face. ‘Me, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him.'

Which happened to coincide exactly with how Abigail felt.

Would she ever see daylight again?

Lying here in the dark, she was so cold, despite the blanket. The sick headache was worse, and her stomach was tight with gnawing hunger. He hadn't been back for two days.

At least, she thought it was two days, it could have been more, or less. By now, she was thoroughly confused and knew she'd lost all track of time. She'd tried to keep tally of the hours by the distant clock she could hear, though sometimes, however hard she kept her ears strained, she missed the strikes of one hour, or even two, and despite herself, she kept falling asleep, or rather, into some sort of torpor. Perhaps he'd put something in her food.

Had there been two lots of daylight hours, or three? She couldn't remember. Daylight was, in any case, merely the difference between pitch black and a rather lesser black, when a faint chink of light crept in through some sort of shutter fixed to the outside of the window.

The window was high on the wall, far above her reach. She'd thought of trying to break it by throwing something at it, hoping her shouts might then be heard through the chink, but she'd never heard anyone passing outside to shout to, and in any case, he'd see the window was broken when he came, and might move her to somewhere else. Or get rid of her altogether. The idea had soon died, anyway, for lack of anything to throw. He'd taken her shoes away and it wasn't possible to throw the water container: it was too big – the sort of plastic thing campers used, with a tap to draw off the water. There were paper cups, and she vaguely remembered him topping it up on his last visit, but the water was flat and stale-tasting by now.

Her thoughts were still disconnected and confused. Try as she would, she couldn't remember who she was, or what had gone before the time when she'd woken up in this place. Perhaps that was due to what she guessed must have been a blow on her head: she had this persistent headache, and the first time he'd come, he'd explored her skull with probing fingers, which had hurt, but he must have been satisfied to find that she wasn't bleeding, or anything like that.

What she clung to was the one thing she was sure of ... the certain fact that she'd met her captor before, though how she knew that was another of the things she couldn't work out. She'd no visual clues to go on, except glimpses of him when he came and left, before and after he blindfolded her, and fastened her to the bed, while he performed the necessary tasks. She submitted passively, having learned that it was useless to struggle, though she sensed a rough kindness in his actions. He wore a black wool balaclava with holes only for eyes and nostrils, and he was dressed head to foot in a black, baggy track suit and black wool gloves. He never spoke to her, or answered when she spoke to him.

So what was it that made up the sum of one's knowledge about a person? Their size, the way they moved, their general shape – and their smell. Every time he came near her, she tried, like an animal, to distinguish his personal scent, his own essential, chemical secretion, or to discern some aftershave, perhaps, or the scent of the soap he'd used to wash his hands; but he always had food with him, which masked any other smell.

Until now, he hadn't starved her, which had given her a faint hope that he meant to keep her alive. Each time he came, he brought food, a scant meal only, but enough to keep her going. Though once it had been a feast of fish and chips, hot and greasy, which she'd crammed into her mouth with her fingers. The memory made her salivate.

So far, her most intimate personal needs had been taken care of, and somehow, she hated that more than anything, hated him for the concession of tampons and toilet rolls. There was an Elsan in one corner. She'd thought about throwing that at him, too, when he came in, but she knew she hadn't the strength. She still felt woozy every time she moved.

When he arrived he used a low-powered flashlight, and she'd seen that her prison had just the one arched window, set high in the wall, and a heavy wooden door which opened outwards. Though he'd taken her shoes away, and the flagstones on the floor were damply cold, she was able to get up and move gingerly around when he wasn't there, and she thought, by counting her paces round the room, that it must be about twenty feet square. It was very high. At first, she'd shouted until she was hoarse, but her voice had been lost in the space above her. Perhaps it was in some part of a church.

She lay, tense and half-frozen on the narrow camp bed, willing her memory to return, striving for anything that might give her a clue as to who he was, though this was probably the wrong thing to do. Think of something else, and it would come back of its own accord. That's what you were told to do when something evaded your memory, wasn't it? Useless advice in this context. What else was there to think of, except the horror of her situation and the ever-nagging question of who she really was?

Why didn't he come?

She kept thinking of him as ‘he' but now a new thought came to her: her captor might just as easily have been a woman.

‘Make it snappy, Ted. I get the impression from his secretary – sorry, his PA – that Mr Pardoe doesn't appreciate being kept waiting.'

They were speeding towards the outer fringes of the county, having left Jenny Platt to begin working her way through Wishart's other known associates in the search for his as yet nameless visitor, the man with whom he'd quarrelled on Thursday night, while other team members were making themselves unpopular by knocking on doors, interrupting after-Sunday-lunch snoozes and
The Antiques Roadshow
to inquire about sightings of unfamiliar cars parked around the approaches to Clacks Wood on Saturday afternoon.

‘Secretary works Sundays, does she?'

Carmody was sitting clamped to the steering wheel, looking trussed as an oven-ready chicken, despite having shoved the seat back as far as it would go to accommodate his long legs. A pale sun emerged every now and then to give hope that some day the weather would get back to normal but gloom had settled on Carmody's basset-hound face. He was being very Liverpool-Irish. The presence of the mega-rich (which Mr Pardoe was reported to be) tended to bring this out, but any doubts Abigail felt about the wisdom of taking him along with her were assuage by reminders of his basic good sense. He was shrewd and dependable, there was no one she'd rather work with. She ignored his proddings.

‘I wondered about that, too.'

Cool and crisp as a Granny Smith apple, Pardoe's assistant had informed Abigail over the telephone that she was lucky to find him with half an hour to spare. She herself would, unfortunately, have gone home by then, she didn't normally work over the weekends at all, this one being an exception because Mr Pardoe had a specially important business project which he couldn't complete without her assistance. But she would make sure Mr Pardoe kept the time free, leave a note to remind him. Abigail wondered about men like Mr Pardoe, apparently incapable of functioning without some capable woman at their beck and call, organizing their lives for them.

The man in question lived in some style, in a mock-Georgian house, almost big enough to qualify as a mansion. It was set in several acres, some of it woodland, and built on top of a hill, making a large statement that was visible for miles before you reached it, even on a day like this. Stone gateposts topped with lions rampant announced the entrance to Norton House. Startled pheasants lumbered away from the car as it wound up the drive through stands of beech and oak. The trees opened out on to a wide gravelled parking space before a flagged stone terrace and a porticoed front entrance flanked by pots blazing with winter-flowering pansies. Carmody muttered something bolshie under his breath.

They crunched towards the front door.

By this time Abigail was prepared for nothing less than a butler, but Pardoe's wife answered the door herself and led the way into her husband's study. She was a tall woman, thin, flat as an ironing-board, the skinny sweater and narrow trousers drawing attention to the sparseness of her figure. She carried an unspoken air of disapproval with her like a protest banner. Abigail put her in her late forties, though her skin aged her, having the tanned, leathery appearance of having seen too much sun.

She walked them across an immense hall, where they warily skirted oriental rugs spread in dangerous isolation on the mirror-finished floor. Enigmatic modern paintings sent cryptic messages from the walls. Through open doors, opulent set-piece rooms could be glimpsed.

Pardoe, informally dressed, rose from his desk and shook hands. A warm, deliberately sincere handshake. He, too, had been in the sun, though he was less tanned than weatherbeaten; he was very dark, with a blue chin and heavy eyebrows, but there seemed little else left of any Cornish origins, other than his name. He was a big man who moved with a leisurely grace and had watchful, pale blue eyes. He and his wife seemed an ill-assorted pair, but who could account for love?

‘Sit down, make yourselves comfortable. How can I help?'

‘Just a few words, sir. We shan't keep you long,' Abigail said, bearing in mind the spirit of his PA's warning, if not the letter. When they'd entered the room, he'd swung round from a computer screen which blinked mesmerizingly in the middle of a desk littered with papers, so presumably he was at least capable of operating that without her help, in order to manipulate the affairs which had doubtless created and maintained this lifestyle.

‘We're looking into Mr Wishart's business affairs,' she began.