Killing Rachel (20 page)

The man said something. It sounded as though he was swearing. He walked away from the cottage to the far edge of the plot and turned his back. He seemed to be static in front of a hedge and then she realised that he was peeing. She moved stealthily towards the cottage and edged along the wall. She stood by one of the boarded-up windows.

Now what?

She looked at the window. Wooden planks were nailed over it. Then she saw a strip of light shining through.

There was a light
inside
the cottage.

She tried to look through the gap between the planks but it was too narrow.

Then came the tinkling sound of a ringtone. For a second she froze, completely still, because she thought it was hers. But it was a different tone and it came from the other side of the cottage. She listened while the man answered it. His voice was low and she tried to make out what he was saying. She crept back to the corner of the building and looked out. He was talking and gesticulating but his words were incomprehensible. Then she did hear something. ‘I’m losing signal,’ he said loudly, but his words blurred again and she realised that he was speaking in another language. She listened hard. It sounded eastern European. He spoke rapidly and then suddenly stopped and swore in English and said, ‘No signal!’ She edged out as he marched up the lane. He was trying to get some phone reception. She heard him say, ‘Lev! Lev!’ as if the person on the other end of the line couldn’t hear.

The name Lev rang a bell. She thought for a moment.

Lev Baranski, the son of Viktor Baranski, the man whose photo was in the notebook they got from Frank Richards. Joshua had gone to his restaurant in South Kensington a couple of days before.
Lev
. Was that what she’d heard? Or was she imagining it?

He could have said
Les
.

She watched as he walked away from the cottage. He merged into the darkness but she could still hear his voice. Perhaps he’d found enough reception and was staying put. She took small steps along the side of the cottage until she came to the corner and went round the back. There was another boarded-up window there and a door beyond but like the front door it had padlocks on it.

She went back to the window. She felt around the boards. They were nailed firmly but the corner of one was weathered and dry and when she grabbed the wood slivers of it peeled off in her hand. She picked up a broken tile from the ground and used it to gouge away at the plank until it came loose. Then she was able to insert the corner of the tile in between the plank and the window. She levered the tile back and forward until she felt the wood move a few centimetres.

She stopped, afraid of anyone hearing her or noticing anything from inside the cottage. When no sound came she continued working the tile behind the wood until a chunk came off and a small hole the size of a golf ball appeared.

She listened carefully for any sound from round the front of the cottage. There was nothing. She couldn’t even hear the man talking on his phone any more. Most likely he’d come back up the lane and was standing outside again. Was he waiting for the man in the SUV to return? Was that man
Lev
?

She stepped towards the hole in the boards and looked through. There was a table, a couple of chairs, a stool. On the bare floorboards, near the door, was a powerful torch that gave the room an eerie light which faded out at the corners.

Just then the front door opened and the man came into the room. Rose jumped back from the eyehole. When she heard him speak she looked through again. He was talking to someone who she couldn’t see.

‘You think it funny to come to Lev’s restaurant and make joke? You think Lev Baranski does not know who you are? You think he will sit by while you disrespect his father. You wait till he is here. Then see. Then see you disrespect him.’

Rose breathed in sharply. He had to be talking to Joshua.

The man walked a couple of steps and then bent over.

‘You, Johnson boy. You make joke? You laugh at this!’

Rose clenched her hands as she saw the man grab something and pull it across the floor. Then he aimed his foot and kicked it. She closed her eyes with shock. There was a yelping sound and she looked again to see the front door slam and in the middle of the room, lying on the floor, was Joshua.

Her stomach dropped at the sight of him.

Joshua was tied up, his hands behind his back. There was masking tape across his mouth but she could still see his face twisted with pain.

TWENTY

Her mind whirling, Rose stared at Joshua lying on the floor of the cottage. The Russian man knew who he was. He knew his name was Johnson. A feeling of nausea came over her and she bent over as if to be sick. When she turned back to the eyehole Joshua had wriggled himself round so that she could only see his back. The Russian man had not come back in. He must be standing out the front.

She pulled at the wood to see if she could make the hole bigger. She picked up the tile she’d been using and began to dig furiously at the wood again. Then she stopped, realising the stupidity of it. What was she going to do? Chip her way into the cottage? And even if she managed to lever off enough wood, what then?

A feeling of weakness overwhelmed her.

Joshua had been right. About the cottage and about Viktor Baranski. She had dismissed the idea and had even begun to think that Frank Richards’ notebooks were some fantasy project which had nothing to do with her mum and Brendan. But she was wrong. In some inexplicable way it was all linked to their disappearance.

Joshua had gone to the restaurant in Kensington and now Lev Baranski’s man was at the cottage in Stiffkey. He had tied Joshua up and attacked him. Lev Baranski was on his way to show Joshua that he couldn’t
disrespect
his father.

She had to
do
something.

She pulled her mobile out of her pocket. She wanted to ring 999 but then she would have to
speak
. The Russian man was only round the other side of the building. He would hear her, she was sure. Was it possible to send a text to 999? No, stupid. And in any case what would she say? How would she explain where they were? A cottage somewhere
near
Stiffkey?

She crept along the back of the building. Was there some other way to get in? The back door was firmly padlocked and the window beyond it was boarded-over. The only entrance seemed to be the front door. But while the Russian man was out there how could she get to Joshua?

And what would happen when Lev Baranski got here?

A grim feeling settled on her chest. Skeggsie had said that Lev Baranski’s father had been murdered six years before by the Russian secret service. How did this relate to her mum and Brendan? Now Lev, his son, had recognised Joshua in the restaurant in Kensington. But how? Unless he had had some interest in Joshua, pictures of him. Why would he have done that? And why was he coming to Stiffkey to the very cottage that had been marked on Brendan’s map?

There were too many questions she couldn’t answer. The most important thing was to get to Joshua and free him. Possibly the SUV was going to pick up Lev Baranski? Not all the way to Kensington? Somewhere nearby perhaps. Possibly he was sitting in a plush hotel while other people did his dirty work.

She was gripping her phone.

Do something, Rose
, she thought,
do something!

She looked down at the screen to see the words
Low Battery
. She closed her eyes with despair. How could she have let her battery get so run down? How could she? She had maybe enough power to make one call for help. But to whom? She could text Skeggsie. He could call the police for them. But what if he was still in bed ill, or working on some animation, transfixed on creating something. What if he didn’t pick up his messages for hours? She couldn’t chance it.

She looked at her mobile and remembered Frank Richards.

When he gave his phone number to her, scribbled on the back of an envelope, he’d said,
I’ll never answer this number but you can leave a message for me and I will get it
.

He said he would help her. Now she needed him.

She stood by the window and used the light from the eyehole to stab out a text.

I’m in trouble. Baranski has Josh in the Stiffkey cottage. Help me.

If Joshua was right, if the notebooks did link up with her mum and Brendan, if the Stiffkey cottage had something to do with it, then Frank Richards (whatever his real name was) would know what she was referring to. She pressed
Send
. The words
No network coverage
immediately appeared and she swore silently, remembering the Russian man walking up the lane to use his mobile.

The message she needed to send was stuck in limbo and wouldn’t go anywhere until there was a signal.

She looked through the eyehole again. Joshua was lying in the same place. The man had not come back in. If she could just let Joshua know that she was there. She stepped back and felt round with her foot. She picked up three small stones and placed one in the eyehole and then gave it a shove. It dropped on to the cottage floor. She waited but Joshua did not look round. Then she dropped the second one. He must have heard it because he moved his shoulder and tried to look back. She shoved the third stone through and it made a louder noise than the other two. She watched, holding her breath, as Joshua edged himself closer to the rear of the room and with an almighty effort flipped himself over so that he was facing the window and the stones.

Could he see her?

She got another stone and pushed it through.

He began to nod his head as if to send a signal.

He knew someone was at the window. Maybe he sensed that it was her. Now she had to do something to get him out and she had to do it before Lev Baranski got here. She walked quickly and quietly to the corner of the cottage and then along the side. She looked out and saw the Russian man further up the lane. A distant ringtone sounded and he answered his phone. She listened for a few moments. The tone of his voice was different; he sounded as if he was talking to a friend rather than to his boss. He began to walk forward. He was trying to hold on to the signal.

She willed him to keep going, to get as far up the lane as possible. He stopped but the conversation went on and she realised that this was the only chance she was going to have to get into the cottage.

She stepped out of her hiding place and walked sideways with her back to the wall until she got to the front door, previously padlocked top and bottom but now open. She put her hand on the door and pushed it back. She stepped inside the cottage and closed the door again.

She turned round and there was Joshua on the floor.

She didn’t speak, she just rushed across and knelt down beside him. His hands and feet had been tied with masking tape and his mouth gagged. His hands were icy. She pulled at the stuff round his wrists but it stayed firm. He turned his head to her and was tilting his chin up. She looked at the strip of tape across his mouth and felt herself go weak. If she pulled it off it would hurt him badly. He saw her reluctance and nodded his head more decisively. She edged up the corner of the tape and held it firmly. Joshua closed his eyes and she took a deep breath and ripped it off his mouth. He seemed to rock back with the pain but he didn’t make a sound. With tears in her eyes she patted the sore skin with her hand. He shook his head, backing away.

He whispered, ‘My bag, penknife, front pouch.’

She looked round and saw, in the corner by a cupboard, Joshua’s rucksack lying at an angle as if it had been kicked there. She went across to it and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. With trembling fingers she opened out a blade and a series of other sharp attachments came too. Isolating the blade she began to chop at the masking tape on Joshua’s hands. Then she began to slice through the tape round his feet.

All this time neither of them said a word.

Finally Joshua was free and he got to his feet and picked up his bag. Then he stepped towards her and pulled her into a fierce hug.

‘Rosie,’ he whispered in her ear.

He kissed the side of her face and she closed her eyes, the relief of having freed him making her feel light-headed. He stood back from her and looked her up and down.

‘You OK? Not hurt?’

She nodded and he went to the door and pushed it open a few centimetres. The Russian was still on the phone in the lane. He had his back to them.

They crept out of the cottage and closed the door behind them. Joshua headed in the direction of the outbuilding where the boat was. Rose followed him, glancing round to make sure the Russian was staying put. Joshua pointed to a clump of trees across open ground. It was a fair distance, maybe a kilometre, but it was the only place to hide on the otherwise flat land. Rose nodded in agreement. All the time they could hear the man talking on his mobile in a companionable way. They got to the outbuilding and paused. There was enough moonlight to see a path across the fields. Joshua went first and waited until Rose was next to him before making to climb the stile.