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CHAPTER
NINE

She awoke to the creak of lush green pines swaying gently against a beautiful, clear blue sky. She lay on her back in the grass, surrounded by bluebells and lingering frost, eyelids fluttering against the morning sun, wet hair splayed out like the shadow of a halo. She looked almost serene as she took in the ice water dripping from the trees, the soft cooing of wood pigeons. She watched her breath rising into the crisp, cold air with a dreamy fascination. And when her eyes settled on me, standing patiently over her with a welcoming smile, the recognition seemed anything but startling. She simply smiled back and took a long, luxurious stretch, looking for all the world like the contented lover she might once have been, woken from a sensual dream to the thrill of a blossoming romance, her loneliness, for now at least, behind her.

“Where are we?” she murmured, shivering a little. She rubbed her bare knees together and tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves of her coat.

I flicked the dregs of tea from my cup and screwed it back onto the thermos, tossed it into the van and locked the door.

Kerry’s expression grew quizzical and she craned her neck to peer off into the depths of the wood. “Did you kill me?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

“I don’t understand. Where are we?”

“We’re in the forest, in a place called Emily’s Wood.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “Why is it called that?”

“I don’t know.” Never occurred to me to find out.

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, lips poised for further questioning, but something had already distracted her; a far-off noise, rasping and mechanical. It rose to a crescendo, dropped off, peaked again; a distant, eerie echo stalking through the trees. It faded to unmask a different sound, fainter still, not unlike that of the breeze in the branches and yet somehow flat and unnatural. Pushing herself up onto her elbows, listening intently, she asked, “What is that?”

I stood, took in the distant murmur. “It’s traffic,” I said.

Realization dawned across her face. She sat bolt upright, eyes darting around her from tree to tree and to the dark places in between. She surveyed the narrow strip of grass on which she sat; twenty yards wide and arrow-straight for an eighth of a mile, the forest crowding in on all sides to consume it. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she gasped.

On any other day, I might have made one of those corny B-movie remarks upon an understandable case of mistaken identity, but today, for some reason, my heart wasn’t in it.

Kerry leaped to her feet, whirled around on the spot, panic flashing. “What the fuck!” she shrieked. “Oh, my God, what the fuck?”

“You’ve come here to die,” I said.

She hitched a breath and staggered in a vague half circle, shaking her head as if to deny me.

“Probably.”

Streaming tears, she spun around to face me, lost her footing, fell back down on her tender rump. “What?” she cried.

“All depends on you,” I continued. “We’re going to play a game together. That sound you can hear is the sound of the main road. If you can work out which direction it’s coming from, and make it there with a two-minute head start before I catch you, then I’ll let you go, and you can hitch a ride home, or walk, or I’ll give you a lift if you want.” On my way to the airport. “Whichever you prefer.”

“A game...” She stared up at me for several moments, seemingly trying to take in what I’d offered. “And you’ll let me go,” she repeated.

“Yes, if you win. Don’t get too excited, it hasn’t happened yet. And the catch,” I continued, snatching up the catch from the ground behind me so that she could see it, “is this hundred-pound competition hunting bow.” Kerry froze; even her tears stood still as she stared at the weapon. “I’m only going to use one arrow. It’s aluminum, fifty-five grain, flies at around two hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, so I’d suggest you don’t stop for a cigarette. The ground’s prickly, and it’s going to hurt your feet, but you’re going to have to run through the pain, because I guarantee the arrow will hurt more. If you don’t stop moving, two minutes will get you a long way, and if you head in the right direction, there’s a good chance that you’ll make it to the road. Straightforward enough?”

She nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the bow. “This—” she sniffed “—is a fucking joke, right?”

A tight shake of the head told her that it wasn’t. “That’s the game,” I said.

“That’s not a game, it’s a fucking...” Bloodsport? Whatever, she couldn’t find the word, but her unwavering, unblinking stare signaled that, whether or not she realized it yet, we had ourselves a deal. “What if I don’t want to play?” she ventured, though we both knew the question was rhetorical.

Sound travels through the forest in a strange and magical way. A squeaking trailer at two miles and a squawking crow at thirty feet can often sound very much alike. As such, Kerry didn’t have a clue which way to run. The moment I started counting, she simply bolted straight for what looked like the clearest path through the trees.

As promised, I held station for the full two minutes. She’d taken off like her tail was on fire, and she’d been out of sight within twenty seconds, but I could still hear her crashing through the undergrowth as I shouldered the bow and assumed the hunt.

The direction she’d chosen was not the easiest. The generously spaced pines this side of our starting point range no more than two hundred feet before they give way to tightly packed elm, their branches low and intertwining, trunks enveloped in thigh-high nettles and prickly gorse. No place for the bare-legged.

Initially, tracking Kerry was an uncomplicated affair. There was a clear path of least resistance which, in a state of blind panic, a fleeing quarry could be relied upon to follow. And as the underbrush thickens, so the passage of animals becomes quite conspicuous. There were numerous flattened paths through the gorse, but in only one were the thistles still visibly unfolding. If a deer had bounded through here, it had been hot on the hooker’s heels.

I paused momentarily to take in the sweet, fresh aroma of damp bracken; the air was thick and cosseting, like a cold woolen blanket. The swishing and crackling of Kerry’s flight had trailed off, leaving nothing but silence. The distant motorway roar was inaudible here.

I pressed on, and at fifty paces I passed a half-dozen strands of dark brown hair, snagged on a splintered outcrop.

At seventy five the first drops of blood appeared on the thorns.

At a hundred, I snatched up a torn strip of black fleece, complete with washing instructions, claimed from the lining of her jacket.

And at a hundred and ten, amid the thistles and the dew and the dappled sunlight, I discovered the most heartening thing of all: the sudden, complete, dead end of the trail. Kerry was playing the game, and she was playing smarter than I’d expected.

Logic suggested I turn around and retrace my steps. Instinct, however, dictated otherwise. I used my arrow to part the nettles in front of me and, sure enough, she was bluffing. She’d taken a running dive and, not six feet in, had sprawled headlong into the weeds before regaining her feet and scything ahead. I had to admit, the girl had guts.

She was fast, too. I reached the far side of the thicket at full pelt, and she was nowhere in sight. The trees spread out and grew taller, the ground between them carpeted in dead leaves and fallen branches. The canopy was thicker, the light patchy; I had, however, a two-hundred-yard line of sight through a hundred and eighty degrees and not a creature was stirring. I stopped dead, crouched down close to the ground to listen. The silence was heavy, unnatural. Deceitful. She was there all right; I could taste her blood, sweat and tears in the air. She was rigid, holding her breath, skin pressed tight against bark. The deer, the squirrels, the crows could all smell her fear, and they mocked her silently, knowing as well as she did that sooner or later, she’d have to breathe. And it was deathly cold out here.

I scanned the shadows. “Give yourself a chance, Kerry,” I called. “It’s hard to keep still in this cold when you’re only half-dressed. You’ve got strong legs, I’ll give you that, but as soon as they start to shiver, you’ll give yourself away. You’re weak-willed, your stamina’s all physical. Use it while you can—it’s still fifty-fifty that you’ll outrun me.” I stopped still, cocked my head theatrically at an imagined sound. “Oh, wait.” I smiled. “Too late. I’ve seen you.”

The lie had the desired effect. Amid a raucous crackling of twigs, she obligingly bolted from the shadow of a twisted elm not fifty feet in front of me. Head down, bloodied arms pumping, she exploded across the forest floor like a wounded bear, charging directly across my path before I’d so much as unslung the bow. She was headed for a spray of daylight, a glittering oasis some five hundred feet distant. I made a break for the same target, my diagonal path through the wood more of a gentle loping slalom than the obstacle course facing my quarry. She hurdled fallen branches, stumbled through patches of nettle and fern, skittered over loose bracken and leaf mulch. Even at thirty feet and in spite of the resounding racket, I could hear the rasping, heaving panic in her breath. Bearing down on her, the bow on my back a mere accessory now, I made the last ten feet airborne, arm thrust out superheroically before me, hand brushing the back of her neck, fingers closing around streaming hair.

And then she was out of the trees. The sunlight hit her like a bullet, knocked her straight to the ground. Her flailing limbs slapped against concrete, mimicking the sickly sound of dropped oranges, and she lay there, screwing her eyes tight against the glare as I sprawled in long, damp grass just inside the tree line, a dozen strands of wet brown hair clutched in my fist. The traffic noise drew nearer by the second; the rumble of heavy axles, the swoosh of displaced salt water. And then the deep, grumbling roar of a big diesel engine, closer and louder, drowning the air, the earth trembling under its weight. Kerry yelped and sprung to her feet, eyes wide, disoriented, flinging herself to the safety of the verge as the truck thundered past—twenty-five yards away, beyond the copse into which she stumbled.

She stood motionless, staring off toward the road. A steady stream of cars hustled by, their reflected sunlight shimmering through dripping thaw and rising mist. She turned to me across the narrow farm track, her jubilant face crossed with hesitation, as though seeking my permission to turn and run. Her eyes widened, the corners of her mouth drawing back into a grimace as she stared down the shaft of my arrow. I held her in the sight as she stumbled back, turned to run in a whirlwind of elbows and hair, all wintry soft-focus and adrenaline-rush slow motion. I thought of Lindsay Wagner, briefly. And then I fired.

CHAPTER
TEN

My biggest flaw, I think, is the attachment I have to my comfort zone. Sure, I like to challenge myself from time to time, but the unknown is something I consider best avoided.

It was with trepidation, then, that after a long afternoon on the road I found myself in something called a “New Look,” uncomfortably unsure of what I was looking for and, indeed, at. I was surrounded by low chrome rails, hung in a seemingly random manner with numerous headache-colored garments. The racks were overfilled, making it virtually impossible to examine their contents; those items hung on the ends of each rail, which apparently were representative of the stock in general, appeared entirely inappropriate for the season.

The staff was no help—two girls of around school-leaving age, preoccupied with inspecting their nails. They were big on teamwork where the customers were concerned; it took one of them to ring up each sale, and the other to fold and bag the merchandise. A single trained chimpanzee would perhaps have been more cost-effective. Needless to say, neither saw fit to offer me assistance, and I was left alone in my bewilderment.

The problem with being lost, of course, is that it naturally makes one
look
lost. As a consequence, I imagined every eye in the shop to be trained on me, deriding my helplessness, thanking their lucky stars that they didn’t have one like me at home. Or maybe just questioning my motives for loitering in a women’s clothes shop. The frustration and self-consciousness gnawing at my spine signaled a crushing defeat and so, with an affected expression of disappointment, I hastily tur—

“What do you think? How does this look?”

Oh, no.

Stay calm. Appear unfazed. Drop shoulders. Smile. For Christ’s sake, say something.
“I’d say you were about three months early with it, but I like it, it suits you.” A town of twenty thousand people, and I have to get caught browsing ladies’ underwear by this one.

“It suits me?” Caroline, or possibly Rachel, threw me a smirk and turned to the full-length mirror screwed to the wall. “What does that mean?”

It meant that her arse looked fantastic in it, and I wanted to bite her perfectly toned ankles as they peeked out below the hemline, but “I mean it looks like it was made especially for you.”

“Should I take that as a compliment, or are you saying I look like a gypsy?”

“Well, I
meant
it as a compliment.” As if it wasn’t written all over my face.

“Well, thank you, then, that’s settled.” She turned to offer me a warm smile. Those eyes held mine for a fleeting moment.

“I probably wouldn’t buy it, though,” I added. “It’s too pale. It’ll get dirty easily. And it’s cotton so you’ll have to hand-wash it every time.”

She regarded me with something halfway between suspicion and amusement. “That’s a fair point,” she agreed. “But if my bum looks good in it, I don’t care.” She skipped back toward the fitting room with a wide grin. “Wait right there,” she instructed.

I complied without thinking. Loitering at the fitting room door colors a man patient and loyal, and attracts far less attention than perhaps it ought.

Caroline-until-further-notice reappeared within a minute, the intended new skirt draped over her arm. “Okay,” she said, “why are you still standing there empty-handed?” She looked as though she could hear the cogs grinding in my head. “Hmm, let me guess. It’s your wife’s birthday, and she’s seen a sexy little set she likes, but you weren’t listening when she described it.”

I laughed at her accusatorially raised eyebrow. “I’m not married,” I assured her.

“Girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No.”

“You like dressing up?”

“Um...”

“Mind my own business?”

“Yes, my niece,” I blathered.

“Ahhh...” She allowed herself a brief, satisfied nod of approval, just long enough for her to tie up the loose ends. “Wait, you’re buying underwear for your niece?” She cocked her head at me, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. I opened my mouth to respond but she cut me dead. “No, you don’t have to answer that. Really. None of my business. I shouldn’t—”

“No, it’s fine.” I smiled. The lie was unusually slow in formulating. “I mean, I
am
buying underwear for my niece, but that’s only half the story. I’m actually buying
everything
for her. She’s...got no clothes.” I wasn’t helping myself here. The returned expression was one of bemused concern. I laughed as confidently as I could under the circumstances. “I wish we could start this conversation again,” I said.

“Yes, let’s.”

It came to me. I took a deep breath, swallowed my frustration. “She’s down on business and she’s staying at my house. When she arrived last night she put her suitcase down in the station, and someone walked off with it.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes. So she’s had to go into work wearing the clothes she traveled down in, and because she’s in meetings all through the weekend and into next week, she’s not going to get a chance to pick anything up, so I said I’d help her out.” The plot holes were apparent even before I’d finished speaking.

The spark, however, had returned to Caroline’s eyes. “Well,” she said brightly, “that’s very noble and a huge relief. I thought I was going to have to start backing slowly away from you.”

“Of course, I don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m doing. I can confidently tell you that your skirt looks good when you’re wearing it, but on a hanger? I couldn’t even tell you it
was
a skirt.”

Caroline held up her free hand, signaling that enough was enough. “Okay, stop.” She laughed. “I can spot a hint, but I don’t often take them. If you want me to help you, just ask.”

I couldn’t have hoped for a finer recovery, and I didn’t need a second invitation. I cooed in exaggerated helplessness. “Will you help me, please?”

“On one condition,” she warned.

“Anything.”

“When we’re done, you buy me a cup of tea and some cake. My time most certainly doesn’t come for free.”

Despite the butterflies, I managed an honest smile. “Sold.”

It took Caroline two minutes shy of two hours to model virtually everything in the shop and a further fifteen minutes to locate the approved outfits in a size twelve. She made a vain, token effort to explain how, with an extra four inches in height to offset her less-pronounced curves, she could require a smaller dress size. Since I was growing increasingly hungry, and the exercise showed no sign of condensing itself into a neat Roy Orbison-backed montage, I only pretended to understand. I did, however, gain a new concept of the price of a good time. As pleasantly as I’d been surprised at my ability to relax and enjoy Caroline’s spoof mail-order poses, set to the sound of her own infectious giggle, I was painfully aware that I was now four hundred pounds the worse for wear. Erica was becoming quite an investment.

My discontent was weak, however, and vanished altogether as Caroline’s Danish pastry flaked all over her jumper. “Balls,” she muttered, the tangled, wiry wool foiling her attempts to swipe the crumbs away. “That’s not gone well. God, I’m so ladylike...”

I stifled a grin. “You know, the sole purpose of that cake is to be enjoyed by you, and you can’t enjoy it properly if you’re worried about making a mess. Savor it, make more crumbs. Get some in your hair.”

She laughed, shook her hands free of worry. “That’s funny. You’d be amazed at what I manage to get in my hair sometimes.” She sipped her tea and winced. “Don’t think too hard about that,” she said. “It came out wrong.”

I nodded in sympathy. “I took it as it was intended,” I assured her. She thanked me graciously.

Outside, the sky darkened abruptly. The rows of dim spotlights set into the ceiling cast a warm but unnatural glow across Caroline’s face. The shadows of mugs and menu stands lengthened across the checked tablecloth. A sudden gust of wind snapped at the coattails of shoppers passing by the window. One by one they turned up their collars as the first drops of rain struck the pavement.

“So, here’s a question.” I gulped down the remainder of my tea. It was hotter than I expected. Caroline recoiled on my behalf. “How is it that you’re single and working on a supermarket checkout?” I held my breath, silently willing her not to contradict me.

“Who said I was single?” She laughed. I resisted the urge to stare into my own mug. “Although, actually, you’re right, I am,” she conceded. My sigh of relief was unintentionally audible and, I knew, glaringly obvious. Happily, she overlooked it. “And more to the point,” she said, “what’s wrong with working in a supermarket?”

“Oh, nothing at all.” Furious mental backpedaling. Christ, this was difficult. “It just...”
Turn it into a compliment while you’ve still got the chance.
“You seem intelligent and free-spirited, and I find that hard to equate with something so repetitive and enclosed.”

“Ah,” she agreed, “but that’s just the thing. I could get a job doing something I care passionately about, but once your interests become responsibilities, it’s kind of hard to keep enjoying them. I want to
choose
to pursue them, not be forced into it. And what I do takes up such a tiny percentage of my concentration that I can spend the whole eight hours thinking about whatever I want to think about and not be too mentally exhausted to do what I want to do when I get home. And when I’m not busy, I can just close my eyes and go lie on a beach in the Bahamas, and get paid for the privilege. Not many people can say that.”

“Holiday reps, perhaps,” I suggested. “And lifeguards.”

“Yeah, and I don’t particularly aspire to be either. I burn too easily.”

“So what
do
you aspire to?”

“Just to be happy,” she said. “Corny, but true.”

Outside, the heavens opened. A rumble of thunder heralded the arrival of a downpour. Fat drops of rain pounded the windows, hit the ground hard enough to bounce right up from the pavement.

“There’s nothing corny about it,” I said. “I’m sure we all aspire to that.”

“In different ways.” She blew gently into her tea, took a thoughtful sip.

“And what’s your way?” I glanced at the thick sleeves of her jumper, stretched down almost to the tops of her fingers as they curled protectively around her mug. “What makes you happy?”

The trace of smile left her lips then; her gaze turned inward for what seemed like minutes. “As soon as I figure that out,” she said finally, “I’ll let you know.”

I turned to look out into the storm-ravaged street. Shoppers clamped scarves and hats to themselves as they scurried for cover. Umbrellas turned inside out. A shop board skittered a few feet across the pavement before collapsing into an inch-deep river of rainwater. Leaflets and plastic bags swooped like deranged kites, clinging to awnings and rubbish bins and the occasional windswept child. Thunder cracked ominously overhead. “Jesus,” I said. “You know, whether you like it or not, you’re certainly safer in here with me than you are out there.”

“I think you’re right.” She laughed. “After all, my mother never said anything about strange men and coffee shops.”

And then I lost my breath. With a wet
slap
, the front page of the
Evening News
pasted itself to the window mere inches from Caroline’s face. She frowned as Kerry Farrow glared at her through the glass, a mess of tangled hair and glazed eyes beneath the bold, simple headline: Fears Grow For Missing Vice Girl.

“Of course,” Caroline said, “she’d never forgive me if I got into a car with you.”

I attempted a smile. She took another bite of Danish.

* * *

“I don’t know, I’m starting to wonder if we’re not just living in some sort of Bermuda Triangle.” Caroline swiped the mist from her window with a sleeved hand. “I mean, I’ve got this friend at work. Conscientious as you like, always there, always on time. Never had a day off sick, never turns her phone off in case someone
else
calls in sick... She leaves work on Friday, waves bye bye to everyone, ‘See you Monday’ and all that, happy as can be because she’s got the whole weekend off for the first time this year, and then come Monday morning, she’s just not there. Gone. Vanished. And I mean
vanished
, as in without a trace.”

I know what you’re thinking, but I had nothing to do with it. I flicked the wipers onto full speed, edged a car-length or two closer to the lights. “She never told anyone where she might be going?” I suggested.

“Nope. Not a word. If she’d told anyone, I’m pretty sure she would have told me—she got on better with me than she did anyone else. But no, the first I heard of it was ‘Rachel, can you get in here as soon as you can? Caroline’s gone AWOL and the fish needs laying out...’“

Aha! “Rachel.” I nodded, hopefully silently to myself.

“Uh-huh?”

Shit. “Mmm?”

“What?”

“Sorry, no, I didn’t...” This was awkward and might take some getting used to, but at least I’d be subliminally seeing the right name everywhere from now on.

“No, go on,” she insisted.

“No, nothing. Really.”

“No, you can’t do that. You have to tell me now. It’s the law.”

“Call a policeman.”

“I will.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” She laughed.

I studied her as she gazed out over the traffic, gently tapping her fingers in her lap to a song on the radio. She blushed a little, but seemed perfectly at ease; no self-conscious scratching of her ears, no humming along to break the silence.

“Still,” she said. “That’s just the way it goes for some people, isn’t it? Here today, a mystery tomorrow.” She offered me a pensive frown. “And then forgotten by the middle of next week.” I nodded in silent, sad agreement. “Whereas you—” she smiled, brightening as suddenly as she had darkened “—you’re different, you’re already a mystery. I bet I won’t have forgotten
you
by then.”

I laughed, though inside I truly hoped she was wrong.