Not Dead Yet

wasn’t Gaia,’ Grace said to the Line Producer, ‘then where is Gaia?’
    He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe still in her trailer?’
    Grace felt his earlier panic returning, gripping and twisting his insides. Still in her trailer?
    Jordan and Katz went back into the building.
    ‘Want me to go and check?’ Katz said to Grace.
    ‘No, I’m going.’ He turned to Branson. ‘Glenn, get the building surrounded, put someone on every exit, no one leaves, okay? Not even the damned Curator until I say so. No one leaves the grounds, either – I want a total lock-down, and right now.’
    ‘Right, chief.’
    Grace ran along the drive then across the lawns, then stopped by the two police officers standing guard near the front of Gaia’s motorhome. Two of Gaia’s own security guards were chatting a little further back, one smoking a cigarillo.
    ‘Has anyone gone in or come out of this since you’ve been here?’ he asked the two officers.
    Both shook their heads. ‘Not since Gaia left to go on set, sir,’ said one.
    Grace went up to the door and rapped hard on it. He waited a moment, then rapped again. Then he pulled it open, calling out a cautious ‘Hello? Hello?’
    Silence greeted him.
    He climbed up the steps and entered. And felt as if a fish hook had suddenly and viciously snagged him in the gullet.
    For an instant the entire interior of the motorhome seemed to swivel on its axis, its walls shrinking in, then expanding again. His ears popped in terror at what he saw.
    ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’

117
    Grace shouted at the two officers on guard outside the mobile home. ‘In here, quick!’
    Then he dashed over to the three bodies on the floor, each bound head-to-foot, and gagged, with a mixture of twine and grey duct tape. The eyes of all three were moving, thank God, he thought. One he recognized as one of Gaia’s assistants. But neither of the other two was Gaia.
    ‘I’m a police officer, are you all right?’ he asked each of them, in turn, and got frightened but positive nods back. Carefully removing the tape from their mouths, he established these other two were the hairdresser and the make-up artist.
    He turned to the two officers behind him. ‘Call for three ambulances, then try to free them, but be careful, that tape’s bloody painful.’ Then he went through to the rear, pushing through a curtained-off section, checking that a shower on one side and a toilet on the other were both empty, and then opened a door into what appeared to be the master bedroom, which smelled of Gaia’s perfume but was empty. A few clothes were strewn on the unused bed. He looked around carefully, pulling open cupboard doors, then went down on his knees and peered under the bed, just in case, but to no avail.
    Gaia wasn’t in this motorhome.
    He radioed Ops 1, and moments later was through once more to Inspector Andy Kille. He gave him a quick summary.
    ‘So we can’t be sure of the time she was abducted, can we, Roy?’ Kille asked.
    ‘Any time between 4 p.m. and two minutes ago.’
    ‘Over three hours. She could be anywhere. I don’t think there’s much value in road blocks – they could be too far away by now.’
    ‘I think the perp’s in the Pavilion with her,’ Grace said. ‘I agree,no point in road blocks. Is Hotel 900 or Oscar Sierra 99 available?’ Hotel 900 and Oscar Sierra 99 were the call signs of the two helicopters of the South East Air Support Unit.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Get one up and over the Pavilion, in case he’s up on the roof somewhere. There are lots of spaces up there. They can also see if he tries to leave.’
    ‘I’ll have it overhead within ten minutes, tops.’
    Please God let her be alive , Grace prayed, silently. His mind was spinning, trying to get traction. He’d worked on child abductions and on kidnap cases, and was a qualified hostage negotiator. From his experience, he knew how badly the odds were stacked against them. In child abductions, forty-four per cent of the victims died within the first hour. Seventy-three per cent were dead within three hours. Just one per cent survived more than one day. And forty per cent were dead before they were even reported missing.
    Those figures applied to children, but if the psychologist Dr Lester was right, inside Eric Whiteley’s warped mind, now that Gaia was no longer his lover, he might well be viewing her as a child who needed to be taught a lesson.
    Every single second mattered right now.
    ‘We need a PNC