Throwaways (7 page)

Tommy’s face was etched with concentration. “If he did take those women where would he hide them?”

We were back at his place, hoping that a mug of strong tea and a few Tunnock’s teacakes would bring us inspiration. So far, it’d failed.

“Well, it can’t be his home or his rental properties. The police will have checked them. Detective Inspector Waddell’s very thorough.”

Tommy grinned. “Detective Inspector Waddell? Thought you two would be on first name terms, being best pals and all?”

Leaning over, I gently punched him on the arm. “It’s not like that. You know that.” I paused, trying not to rise to the bait, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You know he was the only one who came to visit me in the hospital…after, you know.”

My only other visitors had been my cheating ex-boyfriend and my auntie who soon scarpered when she realised I was in gaga land.

“Now, where would he stash the girls?” said Tommy. “Think.”

A thought occurred to me. “What if he didn’t act alone? The girls could be hidden at the home of his accomplice?”

Tommy frowned. “There’s nothing to suggest he had an accomplice.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What about the secure hospital where Cassidy worked? He’d know it well. I’d be a great place to hide them. Nobody would think of looking there.”

Tommy made a face. “Nah, I checked that with my contact. The place is run like a prison and they have a biometric entry system and an iris scan. It’s been stepped up since Cassidy last worked there. Before, it was all electronic key cards. Besides, he’s been banned from the place. He’s not even allowed to visit.”

“So, where does that leave us?”

We both knew, but we’d been avoiding saying it out loud because that would mean taking drastic action.

“We need to find Kim,” said Tommy.

Initially labelled as a missing person, she’d been spotted on the streets again and there was only one way we’d find her.

It was time for a career change…

“Mummy, can we have fish fingers and beans for dinner?”

A smile formed at the corners of Diane’s mouth as she looked at her little girl’s gap-toothed grin. Another tooth had fallen out that day
.
That meant it was tooth fairy time. She’d wait until Kyra was asleep and leave two shiny pound coins under her pillow
.

“Of course we can.”

Kyra let out a happy shriek and ran over to her
.

“Mummy, you’re the best,” she chirped, as she wrapped her little arms around her waist. Diane took in the strawberry scent of her daughter’s hair and closed her eyes. Right at that very moment, she was content
…

A swathe of light burned into her retinas as the door was thrown open. And with the light, her little girl was banished like she’d never existed at all
.

“Coming in, ready or not,” the voice chanted
.

He was back again
.

A line from a poem she’d learnt at school came into her head
.
Something about all that we see or seem being a dream within a dream
.

She wondered if that was what her life was now. Then he threw cold water over her and it felt like icy nails being driven into her skin. She would have shrieked, but the ball gag was back in her mouth. All she could do was watch wide-eyed as the man advanced towards her
.

“It’s time for your treatment.”

His singsong voice gave her the creeps, but she tried not to show it
.
When she saw the long needle he clutched in his hand, she whimpered
.

“It will sting a little bit,” he said as he injected it into her arm. Pain ripped through her body
…

I was talking to a Polish girl called Katya when a white van roared towards us. I barely had time to register the screeching of brakes, when the back doors crashed open and a pair of arms reached out and grabbed me, lifting me off my feet and into the bowels of the van.

Before I could protest, a fist pummelled into my jaw and I skidded against one of the wheel arches, clobbering my head off the side of the van.

As the van sped off, all I could do was stare up at my kidnapper.

The beast who’d grabbed me was as ugly as he was fat. His beer belly hung over his oil stained trousers as though his gut had been pumped full of air. His Popeye forearms were the size of my waist. He stood over me leering, hands down the front of his trousers giving himself a right good scratch. Eyeing him warily, I tried not to puke as the van lurched from side to side as though we were in the Grand Prix.

“We’re gonna have some fun, you and me, doll.” He started fumbling with his belt.

Great, another fucking rapist. That’s all I needed
.

“If any part of your anatomy comes near me, I’ll fucking bite it off.”

The threat sounded empty to my ears, but no way was I gonna let him think I was an easy target. Now, if only I could scoot over to my handbag; when I’d been bundled in the van it had come off my shoulder. It lay just feet away. Inside was pepper spray and my trusty taser.

Throwing the whole weight of my body at the bag, I dived for it.

The strap was within my grasp when the bastard booted me in the stomach. Pain exploded in my gut and the wind went out
of me.

All I could do was curl up into a ball as the kicks rained down on me.

The van shuddered to a halt and the bastard was flung to one side.

“Fuck, fuck. Some cunt’s blocked us in.” The panicked voice of the driver boomed through from the driver’s cab and my heart did a wee leap.

Then I heard Eric’s voice. “Make a move, pal and you’re a dead man.”

The back doors were wrenched open and Tommy appeared wielding a baseball bat. As the fat bastard clambered to his feet, Tommy whacked him across the middle and the thug folded, clutching his stomach like his gut had burst and groaning. Tommy cracked him again, this time over the head and the fat man went down, his head smacking against the metal floor.

Tommy stepped over him and helped me up.

His face was set in a grimace. “For fuck’s sake, Nancy. Why didn’t you use the pepper spray or the taser? If we hadn’t boxed the van in they’d have been away with you.”

Like I didn’t know that?

If my jaw hadn’t been throbbing and my head hadn’t been stuck on a merry-go-round I’d have given him a mouthful of abuse. Instead, I let him help me out of the van. He had to take my full weight when I almost fell jumping down because the world was swimming before my very eyes like I was trapped in a snow globe.

Tommy’s face was etched with concern and for the first time since I’d known him he looked worried. “You need to go to hospital.”

“I’m okeshhh.” My brain’s saying the right words, but my mouth wouldn’t comply.

I knew I sounded drunk and that I was drooling blood and bits of broken tooth, but I didn’t want to go to hospital. Me and
hospitals just don’t get on. Not after I’d spent so much time in one when I was attacked and left for dead.

Tommy slung an arm around me and helped me into the backseat of the car. The last thing I remember before drifting off is taking some painkillers washed down with
Irn Bru
and arguing with Tommy because he wouldn’t let me wash them down with vodka.

When I came to, I was lying on Tommy’s couch, wrapped in a duvet and he had his hands clasped behind his head and was saying, ‘’Shit” over and over again. His face was as grey as a Glasgow sky.

When he saw me, he said, “What was I thinking of letting an untrained civilian go in without backup?”

I was about to tell him that’s army speak and I hate army speak, when I realised I could no longer articulate the words. My jaw was numb from where the bastard skelped me in the face and I was on so many painkillers (I vaguely remember Tommy waking me to give me more), I could barely keep my eyelids open. It was as though iron weights had been attached to the ends.

The last thing I heard before I headed off to dreamland, was Tommy prattling away about needing to train me. Drifting off to images of hunky soldiers in combats, I didn’t wake up for another 26 hours and by then another woman had gone missing.

* * *

“How are you feeling, Nancy?”

Below me, I feel the crinkle of starched sheets and the smell of disinfectant snakes its way up my nose.

Bastard
, despite what I’d said, Tommy had taken me to hospital. How could he do this to me?

When you’ve been locked up in a loony bin that you thought you’d never get out of, you panic when you wake up in hospital;
any hospital.

My hands scramble around trying to find a call button. When my desperate hand closes in on one, I almost weep with relief. This was a real hospital, one you could sign yourself out of. The one I’d been in before only had call buttons for staff.

A nurse was standing over my bed holding a clipboard.

“How are you feeling?” She pauses to consult the clipboard. “Nancy.”

“A bit woozy. My jaw, was it broken?”

The words sound dumb in my mouth. Of course it’s not broken. If it was I wouldn’t be able to talk.

She shakes her head and tells me I’ve broken a few ribs. When he’d kicked me, I’d felt something snap.

“When can I go home?”

She checks my file again. “After the doctor’s done his rounds and checked you over one last time. You had quite a fall.”

So, that was the cover story Tommy used.

The tightness in my chest eased.

* * *

By four o’clock that day I was back at Tommy’s, wrapped up in my dressing gown, sipping some sort of vegetable concoction Tommy had made me in the liquidizer and trying hard not to be sick. He told me I’d need to eat if I wanted to take any more codeine-based painkillers, or they’d, “burn my stomach to hell.”

“We were bloody stupid, you know,” he said, as he eyed me whilst I forced down some soup. “Leaving you exposed like that. You’re just a civilian. You haven’t had any combat training.”

Of course I wanted to say. “Duh,” but the movement it would have taken to speak would have hurt my face. Instead, I nodded; I’d rather have been kicked in the face again than listen to what I call Tommy’s Jesus on the cross routine where he thinks he should be the saviour to everyone, including me.

Tommy kneeled down on the floor so he was level with the couch and put his hand in mine.

Christ, he was going to propose! A phlegmy chuckle rose in my throat.

Tommy cleared his throat. “When you’re better Eric’s gonna teach you how to take care of yourself. Until he does, you’re not going anywhere near those streets.”

Tommy couldn’t understand why I was cackling away like a crazy cat lady.

When I woke up the next day, I felt as though a squad of kids had been using my head as a trampoline. For once, I decided to take Tommy’s advice and spend the day resting up.

That’s what I was doing, lying on the couch channel surfing, drifting in and out of consciousness when the familiar voice of John Mackay, the Scottish news anchor, snapped me awake. Another woman had gone missing. Diane Chambers had last been seen getting into a silver car two days ago. One important factor made her stand out from the other mispers (the word we’d heard on a show about missing persons). Diane had a child.

After grabbing a mug of tea and a piece of dry toast, I gingerly stepped into the shower. I needed to drag my sorry ass out of my sickbed and go and speak to Diane’s mother. According to the news report, she’d reported Diane missing after she’d failed to collect her wee girl from school.

Nettie Chambers wasn’t hard to find. It said in the brief article I found online that she worked at a
Citizens Advice Bureau
. Due to cutbacks, there weren’t many of them left, so I phoned the few that hadn’t been forced to close and asked to speak to Nettie. I struck it lucky with the third office I phoned and spun the flustered man I spoke to a line about how Nettie had been recommended to me by a friend she’d helped.

After a lengthy wait on hold, Nettie Chambers came on the phone and I told her why I really wanted to speak to her. At first she was hesitant and asked me if I was a reporter, but I convinced her that I was a relative of one of the other missing girls. She agreed to meet me at a local café as long as I could get there within the next hour because her shift was finishing.

I was on my way out the door, when the landline rang. It was Michael. That was all I needed. My ex was the last person I wanted to speak to.

“I need to see you.”

There was an urgency in his voice and that made me want to grab him down the phone and choke him until his lips turned blue and his limbs went floppy. He had no right to ask me for a thing. Not after the way he’d abandoned me.

“We’ve got nothing to say to one another.”

There was a sharp intake of breath down the line. The man used to getting his own way, had his panties in a bunch and that gave me way more satisfaction than it should.

“We’ve got to meet, Nance. There’s something you need to know.”

Why couldn’t he just spit it out?

“If this is to tell me you and the fandabulous Donna fucking Marie are getting married, you can shove it.”

“No, it’s not that. Why would I be phoning to tell you that?” A confused pause, then, “I know we hurt you.”

Hurt me? That didn’t even come close to how betrayed I’d felt. All alone in a hospital with my parents dead, all torn up inside and the one person I thought I could rely on to be there for me, decided that this would be the perfect time to tell me he didn’t want me any more. Nah, he wanted one of my friends instead. No wonder I was fucking hurt.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but then I don’t know why you’d bring that back-stabbing bitch to the hospital.”

He had nothing to say to that.

My anger was rising. I’d thought I was over their betrayal, but I wasn’t. “Get lost, Michael.”

Before he could say another word, I’d slammed the phone back down onto the cradle.

When the phone rang again, I didn’t answer because I was already heading out the door.

After I’d clambered into my car, a text came through. Nettie Chambers had been called away. Our meeting would have to wait.