The burly policeman who was tasked with driving Maggie home was in a chatty mood. He was one of those men who was comfortable with life, and when he wasn"t talking he was humming a tune under his breath. How he managed to keep so cheerful in his job, Maggie didn"t know, and more than anything she wanted him to shut up. Every inch of her body ached from the stress of holding herself together, and if the drive had gone on for much longer she thought she might have screamed at him to be quiet.
She was desperate to see Josh and to do whatever she could to repair the inevitable damage that had been inflicted on her child that night. He had heard every word she had said to Samil, and much as she hadn"t wanted that to happen it had seemed a better option than Josh staying with her. Imagine if he had seen what they had done to that poor girl Leo? Or, Maggie couldn"t help thinking, if he had seen how his daddy had seemed quite willing to kill her. She shuddered at the memory.
When the police car pulled up on the drive of Maggie"s home, the policeman insisted on seeing her into the house, to make sure all was well there. As she opened the front door and walked into the hall, Maggie was still trying to convince him that he didn"t need to come in.
The sound of her voice must have penetrated the sitting room, because the door was flung open and she was. .h.i.t hard in the chest by Josh"s bullet of a head. He was sobbing with relief.
"It"s okay, Joshy. Everything"s okay now, sweetheart. It"s all over they caught the bad guys."
She hugged him tightly and then crouched down so she could look him in the eye. "And they caught them because of you, Josh. The police told me you were really, really brave a bit of a superhero."
Her sister appeared in the doorway and looked at Maggie, tears running down her cheeks. Maggie wanted to pour out her heart, tell her sister everything. But she couldn"t. That would make her sister into a criminal too, because Maggie knew she was going to have to lie to the police, and that didn"t fill her with any pride or joy.
"Everything okay here, ma"am?" the policeman asked Suzy with a smile. "Would you like me to check around?"
Maggie declined the offer. Samil and his friend were under lock and key, so they were safe. The policeman was kind, but she just wanted him out of her house so she could focus on her family, and he finally took his leave.
As Maggie closed the front door she turned to her sister. "Thanks for being here, Suze," she said, which brought fresh tears to her sister"s eyes. "Let"s all go in the sitting room and have a chat, shall we?"
Maggie didn"t want to pack Josh off to bed yet. He needed time to settle, and she needed time to be with him, to block out the rest of the night. She wasn"t surprised to walk into the sitting room and see Lily curled up asleep on the sofa. Maggie looked at Suzy.
"I wanted us all together in one room. I know she should be in bed, but..."
"It"s fine. I"m glad she"s here."
"Shall I make you a cup of tea or something to eat?" Suzy asked.
"No, but can you pour me a very large Scotch do you think?"
Suzy laughed, thinking she was joking.
"Check my coat pocket," Maggie said. She"d had to beg the policeman who drove her home to lend her some money and stop at an off-licence so she could buy the whisky. Now she realised she had forgotten to give the money back to him. She felt a stab of guilt and for a second marvelled that she still had any conscience at all given the lies she was going to have to tell.
"What about you, Josh?"
"Could I have some juice, please?"
"Of course you can."
And then Josh asked the question. The one question she hadn"t yet prepared an answer for.
"When"s Daddy coming home?"
It had taken over an hour to rea.s.sure Josh that he was safe, and although he was still anxious he was also totally exhausted, so Maggie had tucked both him and Lily into her double bed. She wanted to spend the whole night with them next to her where she could feel their precious bodies warm against hers. She read them a story to settle them and made her way downstairs for a last much-needed drink.
Suzy was still sitting where she had left her, staring into the flames of the decrepit old wood burner that had come with the house. Maggie had loved it on sight, and when filled with flames as now, it was so comforting.
"How are you feeling," her sister asked. "I can"t imagine everything you"ve been through tonight. It"s more than anybody should have to face in a lifetime."
If only she knew, thought Maggie.
"The whisky"s a good a.n.a.lgesic." She tried again to smile, but she was feeling wired with adrenaline and at some point she was going to crash.
"I thought you answered Josh"s question about Duncan well, but I could tell that you don"t know what to say. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Duncan"s not coming back. I haven"t worked out how to explain to the kids. I need some time. But he"s not coming back."
Suzy looked at her, and Maggie could see the understanding in her eyes. She looked away.
They were both silent for a while, and Maggie knew her sister was waiting for her to speak. She felt the words forming, and then they stuck in her throat. She couldn"t tell her. She couldn"t make her a party to all of this horror.
64.
Monday "Is one of you Tom?" A young nurse stood at the entrance to the waiting area. It was five in the morning. Ellie and Max had arrived a few hours previously, but none of them had been allowed to see Leo.
"I"m Tom," he said, standing up. "Is she okay?"
"She"s a bit groggy, but she"s asking for you."
Tom had started to cross the room towards her cubicle when the young doctor pushed his way through double pale blue swing doors and strode towards them.
"Sorry to interrupt, but before you see Leo, I"d like to give you an update. We"re worried about her arm. When she came in we treated her with antibiotics but we were concerned about bacterial infection necrotising fascilitis. We took a tissue sample, and the tests show that the bacteria is present, so we need to remove some of the tissue in her arm to stop it spreading. We"ll do whatever we can to save her arm."
Ellie started to cry. As a nurse herself, she knew exactly what this meant, and understood how serious it was.
"Go, Tom," Ellie said through her sobs. "Go and see her. I"ll be in in a minute."
Tom swallowed and tried to fix his face into a neutral expression with a trace of a smile to welcome Leo back to consciousness. The nurse showed him into the cubicle and kept a discreet distance, checking the monitors.
"Hey," he said, sitting down next to the bed, close to her face. "Good to have you back with us, Leo." He reached out a hand and stroked the hair back from her face.
Leo made a noise deep in her throat.
"Don"t try to speak, love. It"s okay. You"re safe."
She made a gurgling noise in her throat. "Got them?" He finally made out what she was trying to say and understood why she had wanted to see him.
"Yes, don"t worry about a thing. We"ve got them."
He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, and as he sat back down he heard a sound behind him.
"Tom?"
He turned his head.
"Louisa," he responded, the emphasis on the second syllable as if surprised to see her here.
Louisa stepped fully into the cubicle. Dressed in scrubs, she looked as beautiful as she had when he had last seen her, but her face was neutral her professional expression, Tom supposed.
"I"m going to be Leo"s anaesthetist for the operation. Have you any questions you would like to ask me?"
"None, and it"s not my place anyway. Her sister"s outside, and she may have some." He smiled, but before he could say another word, the phone in his pocket vibrated. He pulled it out. It was Becky.
"Sorry, but I"m going to have to take this." He leaned over Leo again and whispered gently, "Got to go, Leo, but I"ll be back. I"ll see you later." He dropped another kiss on her forehead and turned to Louisa.
"Take good care of her, won"t you?"
"Of course. We"ll do our best to get her back to you as soon as possible."
"I"ll catch up with you later. Okay?"
For a moment Louisa"s eyes met his as if she wanted to ask him a question, but instead she just nodded.
Tom went out into the corridor and answered his phone. "What"s up, Becky? I thought you would have charged them and gone home to bed by now."
And then she told him about Ben Coleman"s phone and the website they had found open on it.
65.
This time last week Maggie had believed she had a happy family and a job she loved. In the s.p.a.ce of a few days her life had become a nightmare. Now she would have to face questioning from the police. She knew they would want to talk to her about how she and Josh had been captured, and they would expect her to be nervous and edgy. But she felt constantly on the verge of vomiting.
It was going to be all right, though. It had to be all right, for the children.
Since they had got up Suzy had kept Josh and Lily occupied and fed, but to Maggie it felt as if the air in the kitchen was crackling with the tension spilling from her body. Duncan had told her not to mention him when the police came, but she didn"t think she could do that. Surely the other two men would have said something? And what about the girl, Leo?
Maggie hoped and prayed the poor soul would survive, but would she remember there was a third man in the room? Would they think she was hallucinating?
She had spent the night writing lists of pros and cons what she should tell, and what she shouldn"t. It was impossible. Lying to the police went against the grain in every way possible. But how could she explain Duncan"s involvement without telling them everything? Was she ready to do that?
She felt so emotionally battered and bruised that she didn"t feel capable of logical thought. And what about everything that she had already kept from them? Was she any better than Duncan? If she had told them about the photo on Duncan"s phone, would the second woman have been murdered?
But n.o.body else was going to die now. The two men were in custody. She didn"t have to decide about Duncan that minute. She needed more time before condemning her husband to a long prison term. Time to think.
Maggie thought the two men were unlikely to mention Duncan. Samil had been adamant that the police wouldn"t be able to pin the two recent murders on them, and they had certainly done a good job of cleaning the van. If they had left no traces, they could only be charged with kidnapping Leo and Maggie. Their treatment of Leo would result in a fairly heavy sentence, but if they were found guilty of the murder of two victims they would get life. The minute they involved Duncan, the question of the murders twelve years ago would come up, and maybe they hadn"t done such a good job of covering their tracks then. So logic suggested that Duncan"s name would be kept out of it altogether.
Her head was so muddled, so confused. It seemed she never had a chance to work out what to do before the next horror struck. She felt as if she was being dragged along on a rip tide and wasn"t actively making any decisions at all. The horror of the one decision she had been about to make struck her. How could she even have considered abandoning her own children? Choosing to be the one to die because it was the easiest option? Josh and Lily needed her. Her body shuddered involuntarily.
Now she was out of time. The doorbell rang. The police were here.
Maggie had to let them in even though she wanted to bury her head in a pillow and sleep until this nightmare was over. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping her tense limbs would relax. It had no effect. She opened the door and in a voice that was barely audible even to herself, invited in the two detectives. She indicated the door to the sitting room and let them lead the way. For a moment she caught hold of the door jamb, certain her legs were going to let her down.
"Mrs Taylor, I"m so sorry for the terrible events last night. You must be feeling dreadful," DI Robinson said.
Maggie glanced at Tom Douglas, and his eyes seemed to pierce the thin shield that she was erecting around her conscience.
"Please, have a seat," Maggie said.
Maggie was about to offer them a drink so she could escape for a few minutes" respite in the kitchen when her sister popped her head in the door and smiled warmly at the police officers. "Sorry to disturb, but would you like a cup of coffee?"
Both detectives looked as exhausted as Maggie felt, and seemed grateful for the offer of coffee.
Maggie lowered herself into a chair, feeling twice her age. Every bone in her body ached and her head felt too heavy for her neck.
"How"s Josh this morning?" Tom asked.
"He"s okay, thanks. He seems to be coping, although who knows how much he"s hiding."
"Well, it"s partly thanks to him that we found you last night. We have two men in custody, as I expect you realise. The one who abducted you and Josh is Ben Coleman. He"s a surgeon at Manchester Royal. The second man is Adam Mellor, a corporate lawyer. But they"re not talking. They"re saying nothing at all, in fact."
Maggie realised that her mouth had dropped open. A doctor? She should have realised when she had seen the sutures holding the plastic tie in place, but that a doctor could have let that poor woman suffer in such a way was beyond belief. They hadn"t mentioned Duncan, though. That made her decision easier or at least it did for now.
Becky Robinson was speaking, and Maggie forced her concentration back onto the conversation.
"At the moment all we have on them is yours and Josh"s abduction, and the unlawful holding of Leonora Harris the woman who I believe you saw there before we arrived."
"How is she?" Maggie asked.
"She"s not great, but they"re operating on her arm today, and we"ll see where she goes from there."
Maggie noticed an extra layer of strain around Tom"s eyes as he spoke, and Becky gave him a sympathetic glance. Obviously this Leonora girl meant something to him.
"So what can I do for you?"
"We believe these men are guilty of at least two murders as well as the abductions," Tom went on. "Very possibly they are guilty of other murders, including two here in Manchester twelve years ago. We think they killed the two recent victims in the mill where we found you, and then transported them in the back of Adam Mellor"s van to the sites where their bodies were found. The van"s clean, but we"re searching every inch of the mill."
Maggie had been in that van, sat where those girls" bodies had lain. An image flashed into her head of the three of them together. Two dead, one waiting to die. She mentally shook herself as Tom Douglas continued.
"It"s possible that they"ve been thorough enough to cover their tracks as thorough as they have been at cleaning the van so that"s why we have to make sure the abduction case against them is watertight."
Maggie"s body tensed. These men had to go down for a long time or she would never feel safe again.
Tom continued: "We need you to tell us everything that happened from when you arrived at the park to pick up Josh after his football. We know from Josh that"s when it all started."
And so Maggie filled them in on everything from the moment she first saw the two men waiting for her until the moment she stood by the police car. Or almost everything. Would Leo remember that there was another man in the room? She doubted it. If the men weren"t talking, what risk was she taking?