Looking Good Dead

Where do you think she is?’
    ‘We don’t know, Mrs Stevenson,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘As soon as we find her, we’ll call you. Mr Bryce really didn’t say where he was going?’
    ‘Going to find Kellie, ’e said.’
    ‘He didn’t say where?’
    She shook her head. The screaming got louder still. Grace and Branson exchanged glances – a question and a shrug.
    ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ Grace said. He gave her a smile, trying to reassure her. ‘We’ll find your daughter.’

68
    Tom, driving Kellie’s Espace slowly north out of Brighton, holding his mobile phone in his hand, was shaking. The road was quiet, just occasional headlights coming the other way and, from time to time, lights appearing in his mirror, then passing him.
    Indistinct thoughts flitted in and out of his mind, like the shadows made by his headlights. His whole body was clenched tight. He leaned forward, peering through the windscreen, shooting nervous, darting glances into the mirror, fear riddling his stomach.
    Oh my God. My darling, where are you?
    He did not know what he was doing here or what to expect. His brain felt locked; he was unable to think out of this box, unable to think beyond those words on his computer screen.
    He had visions of the girl, Janie Stretton, in her room being butchered by the hooded man with the stiletto blade. But it wasn’t Janie Stretton now, it was Kellie.
    He couldn’t imagine where Kellie was nor what was going through her mind. He just had to get to her, whatever it took, whatever it cost.
    Money. That’s what they would want, he suspected hazily. They had kidnapped Kellie and now they wanted money. And they would have to believe him when he told them he did not have very much, but he would give them everything he had in the world. Everything .
    A road sign loomed up. cowfold. haywards heath .
    Suddenly the display on his mobile lit up and it began ringing:
    Private number calling
    Nervously, he pressed the answer key. ‘Hello?’
    ‘Mr Bryce?’
    It was DS Branson. Shit . He killed the call.
    Moments later there was the double beep of a message waiting.
    He played it. It was DS Branson, for the third time, asking him to phone him back.

    Kellie, my darling, for God’s sake call me!
    Headlights loomed in his mirror. Although he was only doing forty on a dual carriageway, this time they stayed behind him, right on his tail. He dropped his speed to thirty. Still the headlights stayed behind him. His throat tightened.
    His phone rang again. On the caller display was a number he did not recognize. He answered, a cautious, shaky, ‘Hello?’
    A male voice in a guttural eastern European accent said, ‘Mr Bryce, how are you doing?’
    ‘Who – who are you?’ he said. The lights were right behind him, dazzling him.
    ‘Your wife would like to see you.’
    Finding it hard to see the road ahead, he said, ‘Is she OK? Where is she?’
    ‘She’s fine, she’s great. She is looking forward to seeing you.’
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘There is a lay-by coming up in half a mile. Pull into it and turn your engine off. Stay in your car and do not turn round.’ The phone went dead.
    He did not know what to do. Some distance ahead, as he started down a long hill with signs to a garden centre on his left, his headlights picked up a blue p sign for a parking area.
    Then he saw the lay-by.
    His heart was thrashing like a crazed bird inside his ribcage, and his mouth was dry with fear. He tried desperately to think clearly, rationally. A voice somewhere inside his head was screaming at him not to pull over, to keep going, to call DS Branson back, to let the police handle this.
    And another voice, a much quieter, more logical one, was telling him that if he did not pull over, Kellie would die.
    Her scream of terror on his computer echoed all around him. That scream had been real.
    That woman on his computer last Tuesday night being cut to ribbons by the stiletto blade was real.
    He indicated left, slowed, pulled over.
    The headlights followed him.

    He braked, switched off the engine, then sat rigidly staring ahead, frozen in fear but determined to stick this out, somehow.
    The headlights in his mirror went off. Darkness. Silence. The engine pinged. He thought he saw shadows moving. Behind him tiny pinpricks of light appeared. They grew larger. A lorry roared past, shaking his car, and he saw its red tail lights fade slowly into the distance.
    Then both rear doors of the Espace opened simultaneously.