‘Rachel Hewitt just died, sir, so the odds are not on your side.’
‘You’re going to find out soon anyway, but it appears that Symes has abducted another girl.’
‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ she exploded. ‘How the hell has he managed to do that?’
‘With little care and attention for being seen by approximately seventy parents as he approached the school and snatched a six-year-old in broad daylight.’
Kim shook her head and looked to both Bryant and Leanne, who were as horrified as she was.
‘How is that possible when half of West Midlands CID is bloody looking for him?’
‘Everything that can be done is being done, Stone.’
‘Well it’s not being done well enough, sir,’ she spat. ‘What was his direction of travel? What type of car was he driving? How urgently is the CCTV being viewed? When—’
‘Stone, my original instruction stands. You are not to get involved, and I am charging your two colleagues there to ensure you don’t do anything stupid.’
‘It’s me he wants,’ she said, trying not to think of the fear those little girls were going through. ‘He’s doing all this for me. I have to stop him.’
‘My order stands, and if you can’t follow it, you will be removed from active duty.’
He ended the call, and Kim had the urge to throw the damn phone across the car park.
‘He can’t seriously expect me to stand by and do nothing, can he?’ she asked. ‘There are times when Woody gives me instructions but really means for me to—’
‘Now ain’t one of those times, guv,’ Bryant said, shaking his head. ‘There was absolutely no nuance detected in his directive.’
‘Damn it,’ she said, striding back to the car. They’d been listening out all day and there had been no report of the body of a child being found. She’d assumed he’d kill the first and then take the second. But now he had them both.
She knew exactly what Symes was doing and it chilled her to the bone.
He was trying to recreate the scene.
FIFTY
Edna Trevin prayed that each breath would be her last.
She didn’t know how long she’d been tied to the chair. It felt like weeks but could have been hours. She only knew that the pain ripping through her arthritic joints was excruciating. The nausea kept rising in her stomach, bile burning the back of her throat, but there was nothing to come up. It felt like days since she’d eaten and almost as long since she’d drunk anything. She remembered him pulling back her head and pouring something into her mouth, but she’d gagged at the sudden force of what felt like a tidal wave being forced down her throat. She wasn’t sure any liquid had made it down when she’d spluttered it all out onto her nightdress to join all the other stains, she thought shamefully.
The effort to open her eyes was too great, and she didn’t want to look anyway. She knew what her body had been forced to do in the absence of a toilet, and she hated it for letting her down. She had wanted to fight back. She’d wanted to devise a plan to free herself, but from the minute she’d been forced to sit in her own faeces, her spirit had been broken and she’d known she was going to die.
From the moment she’d regained consciousness, she’d tried to understand what he’d wanted from her. She’d told him where she kept her meagre amount of house money, since Barbra had insisted she open a bank account. He’d stuffed the money into his pockets but ignored her instruction about the jewellery. She realised quickly that he wanted nothing from her except somewhere to eat and sleep, and neither of those things were dependent on her being alive.
At first, she’d focussed on staying alive until the Wednesday phone call from her daughter but, of course, Barbra wasn’t going to phone. Why oh why had her only child chosen now to have a sulk because she wouldn’t free up any more money for her good-for-nothing husband, who had malingered his way through the last twenty years taking ‘just to get by’ money from his elderly mother-in-law?
Barbra’s latest request for two thousand pounds for a fortnight in Spain because Dennis needed a bit of sun had been met with a firm no. Had her daughter been on the brink of losing her home or facing some other financial hardship, she’d have given it gladly, but not just to give the lazy sloucher a holiday when he hadn’t worked in two decades.
Although she’d been angry at the time, it had faded. It seemed so insignificant now. It was just money, and she had it to give. But Barbra had taken the huff and hadn’t checked in on her for days.
A wave of sadness washed over her. Barbra was a good girl. She was going to feel horrible about what she’d done when her body was found. She would carry that guilt, and Edna didn’t want that.
A rush of regret surged through her, and the emotion wasn’t for herself.
She could feel the life ebbing out of her. Her breathing was becoming shallow. Her body wanted to give up and she could no longer fight it.
As the darkness approached, she had one final plea from her mind straight to God.
Please don’t let me be found by my daughter.