Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (81 page)

“You’ll go home… in time.”

Startled, she attempted to pull open the door, but it was locked.

His laugh, hard and loud, etched panic in her eyes.
Yes, dear, you should panic. It wouldn’t be fun if you didn’t.
His erection grew with the gamut of emotions clearly changing on her face.
What a turn-on.
And he hadn’t even touched her yet.
Boy, what a thrill that’s going to be.
She had to be one of the, if not the, prettiest girls he’d had the good fortune to abduct so far. The others would have paled in significance had he lined them up alongside each other—if some of them hadn’t died, that was.

The barn came into view as the moonlight seeped through a gap in the clouds. He had spent most of the day out there, ensuring that everything was in place for his little game. The nearest house was over a mile away. No one would hear her screams, even in the dead of night.

He brought the car to a standstill inside the large tin barn, then got out and pulled the huge door closed. He fastened it with a lump of wood through the handles before returning to the car and yanking open the back door. Terrified, the girl curled up into a ball. He shrugged out of his restrictive jacket, allowing his bulging biceps to feel freedom for the first time in hours, and withdrew the army multi-bladed knife from the back pocket of his jeans. Leaning into the car, he sliced through the seatbelt close to the buckle, then proceeded to pull the struggling girl from the car. The second she was standing erect in front of him, he grabbed both of her wrists and placed them in his left hand. With his right hand, he aimed a punch at her mouth. The force sent her reeling backwards, and the drink may have affected her more than he had anticipated, because she flopped to the ground, unconscious.

He picked her up and carried her into one of the stables, where he had laid out his tools in the corner of the straw-strewn area. Picking up the rope, he tied her torso to the oak post in the middle, then placed her hands in the cuffs before he lowered the hook from above. He draped the cuffs over the hook and hoisted the pulley rope attached to the side of the post. Her arms rose above her head—not too high; he didn’t want to cause her any unnecessary discomfort. He intended to keep her there for a long time. He went back to the corner and grabbed the IV stand, pulling it through the straw bed he’d put together for her, and placed it next to the post. With a piece of rope, he tied the stand around the post, just in case the girl knocked it over by accident. He placed a clear bag on the stand and inserted a needle into her arm. He had no need to worry about feeding her—the drip would take care of that.

He went back to his tools to collect the carrier bag. He took out a small bottle and a wet cloth. With the cloth, he cleaned the gunky makeup from her face. He admired natural beauty and couldn’t give a shit about the slap women threw on their faces these days. Then he unscrewed the cap from the bottle and waved it under her nose.

The girl instantly woke up. She thrashed about like a basking shark caught on a deep-sea fisherman’s line. “Please, where am I? What do you want from me?”

The man put his finger to her lips. “Sshhh… Feisty, aren’t you? The less noise you make, the better it will be for both of us. Understand?”

Her head sank to her chest and rose back up again. “I’ll be good. I promise. Please don’t hurt me.”

He stood up, gazed down at her, and smiled at her lovingly as he loosened the belt to his jeans. “Oh, I have a feeling you are going to be good. The best yet, I reckon. We’re going to be so good together.”

Her puffy eyes widened as his trousers dropped around his ankles, and she stared at his proud erection as if willing it to go limp. He knelt down and ripped open the skimpy top she was wearing to reveal a cerise-pink padded bra.

“Now let’s see if you like to co-ordinate your underwear like the others.” He lifted her hips and pulled down her thigh-high skirt to expose a matching cerise-pink G-string, stockings, and suspenders. “Hmm… nice touch.”

His hand gently teased the flesh on her inner thigh, and the girl’s eyes clamped tightly shut. His erection hardened further. He loved it when they pretended they didn’t want him—that they didn’t want it—but their resistance never lasted long. Come the end, they found him totally irresistible.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ellen rolled into work ten minutes late the next morning. Brian looked up from his computer screen and smirked.

“What?” she asked, unsure what his expression meant.

“Nothing. I’ve just never seen you wearing mummsy clothes before. I’m not sure it suits you, to be totally honest.”

She looked down at the leggings and long T-shirt Suzie had insisted she wear that morning and found herself agreeing with Brian’s assessment. The outfit was indeed more suited to a mum doing the school run rather than a professional dealing with the general public. But she hadn’t had the time to go home to change before work.

“I didn’t go home last night. What? Don’t look at me like that. I stayed at Jim and Suzie’s house.” She spread her arms out to the side. “Hence the clothes. Christ, if I had come to work wearing what I had on yesterday, you would have thought I’d been up to no good, too.” She walked over to her desk and slumped into her chair. “I can’t bloody win. Why can’t you be like any other bloke, non-observant and uninterested in what goes on around you, huh?”

His white teeth glistened as he grinned at her. “But then I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t I? How come you’re so tetchy this morning? And why didn’t you make it home last night?”

“I’m not tetchy. Is the kettle on? I’m parched.”

“Stop it!”

“Stop what?” She frowned, feigning her ignorance, but the way he was shaking his head as he walked out of the room told her that she had a long way to go before she’d be able to do that.

Brian returned and placed the steaming mug of black coffee in front of her. “There’s no point avoiding my question. You know I’ll be hounding you until I get an answer. So come on, why didn’t you go home last night?”

She lifted the mug and blew on the black liquid. “I’ve decided to leave home.”

“Hallelujah! Is your mum all right about that?”

She shook her head and avoided his eyes. “She doesn’t know yet.” That was all she was prepared to say at that point. Brian had no idea of the trouble she’d had with her stepfather, and she didn’t really want to burden him with the facts, either.

“It’ll be hard on her to see you go. However, come the day, I bet she’ll be rubbing her hands when you walk out the door.”

“I’m not
that
bad to live with,” she replied, offended.

“Don’t go flying off the handle at me. I’m merely stating facts. People treasure their own space. It can’t be much fun living in a two-bedroomed flat above a pub. I know I couldn’t share a place that small with two other adults.”

She hadn’t really thought about her dilemma in those terms before. Maybe she was doing her stepdad an injustice. She thought about that for a moment as she sipped her coffee, but then quickly came to the conclusion that no reasonable human being would have treated her the way he’d been treating her over the last few years. His tolerance levels were at a minimum when she was around him.

Brian broke into her reverie. “How did it go last night?”

“With Donna’s sister?”

He nodded, and she told him how her evening had panned out, that her visit to Donna’s sister’s house had led her to the taxi driver.

“Hmm… Interesting. Well, at least we’ve got something to go on. If the guy lingering in the shadows at the nightclub was caught on the in-house security cameras, that’ll make our lives so much easier. I’ll get on to the manager of Gypsy’s today. If nothing comes of that, maybe we should start delving into the driver’s background. What do you think?”

“That’s great. Although, I think we should look at the driver’s background as a matter of course, anyway. You do that, and I’ll continue to trawl through the address book. I want to go and see Donna’s mum later, too, if I can.”

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

They put their heads down and didn’t really speak to each other again until midday.

“I’m nipping out for a Subway. What do you fancy?”

Ellen rubbed her tummy and thought over the question. “Chicken tikka and the works for me.”

“Okay, be back in twenty minutes.”

Ellen went out back to put the kettle on, and when she returned to her desk, a woman in her late-fifties to early-sixties was standing by the front door.

“I’m sorry. Can I help you?” Ellen asked, suddenly feeling self-conscious about her attire.

“I hope so, dear. You went to see my daughter last night.”

“Ah… you must be Mrs. Shaw, Donna and Cheryl’s mum?”

The woman nodded, and her gaze dropped to the floor. “That’s right. And I wanted to come and make myself known to you. The family have agreed that I should be the one you contact when Will isn’t around. He has several competitions coming up over the next couple of weeks.”

“Won’t you take a seat? I was planning on coming out to see you this afternoon. I’m sorry to hear about Donna’s disappearance. I want to assure you that my partner and I will throw everything we have to hopefully bring your daughter back home.”

She sat in the chair in front of Ellen’s desk, upright, not looking relaxed at all. “Where do you start searching for her? I’d like to know how you begin such an investigation. Will tells me that you and your partner used to be in the police force.”

“We did. That’s right. We still have some contacts in the force who we can call on when we get stuck on a case.”

She let out a relieved sigh. “That’s good to know. I wasn’t sure how a private firm would be able to track individuals and look into their backgrounds, if someone has taken her, that is. Do you think that is what happened?”

“It’s hard to say at this moment in time, Mrs. Shaw. Our enquiries are still in their infancy. Cheryl and the taxi driver are the only people we have spoken to up till now.”

“Why didn’t the driver see her to her door? Don’t they do that these days? You hear all sorts of terrible things happening to young girls, especially when they’re drunk… Why on earth Donna felt it necessary to get that drunk, I’ll never know. She’s not the type.”

“What do you mean? She doesn’t usually drink to excess or doesn’t drink full stop?”

“Oh, she likes the odd drink, but I personally haven’t seen her drunk. Mind you, I’ve never really been out socialising with her that much.”

Ellen studied the woman carefully. Mrs. Shaw seemed as though she had a wealthy background and was used to money. Her tailored suit and well-coiffed hair told Ellen as much. “I asked Cheryl the same question, but I’d like to hear your response, if I may. Is there any reason you can think of that would drive Donna from her home, her friends, and family?”

The question appeared to puzzle the woman. “Not that I can think of, no. Are you saying that you think Donna has just taken off?”

“It’s something that we have to seriously consider. You’d be surprised the number of people who do that. Rather than handle their problems, they run or hide from them. You can’t think of anything that has occurred in recent months that might have upset Donna?”

“No, nothing.”

“What about her marriage? Do Will and Donna get along okay?”

Her hand shot up and held on to her pearl necklace. “You think Will is behind this?”

Ellen shook her head. “No, I’m adamant about that.”

“Then why ask the question?”

“I need to get some form of background, a starting point to try and find clues. At the moment, I’ve got very little to go on. Which leads me to believe that Donna isn’t a person who would just up and leave.”

“So, where do we go from here?”

“My partner is going to be delving into the man your daughters spotted at the nightclub.”

“What man?” Mrs. Shaw seemed surprised by the news.

Hadn’t Cheryl told her? If not, what was the reasoning behind her decision?
Ellen deliberated how to proceed without causing the woman any further unnecessary worry. “It was just something Cheryl told me in passing. I’m sure nothing will come of it.”