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‘Look in the blue bag. There was a bar, and some crisps, if you haven’t eaten them already … We’re nearly home.’
‘I ate them,’ Milo informed her. ‘I shared them with Becky. Can we stop at McDonald’s?’
‘No. We aren’t going that way. Look, sweetie, can you just cope until we get home? There’s a stew I put in before we left. It’s your favourite,’ she said encouragingly. There was another car taking the bend behind her, its headlights in her mirror making her blink. She didn’t really like driving in the dark anymore. Maybe she was getting old.
‘Did you put my hoodie in the boot?’
‘Yes. It was all muddy. Why?’
‘I left some sweets in the pocket. Coach said we were so good he gave us all some Haribo, and I forgot to eat mine. Can I climb over and get them out?’
‘No. Sorry, darling, but can you just last out?’
‘No. I’m starving. I scored four tries today.’
‘I know, and I’m super proud of you …’ The car behind was far too close, right on her tail. She accelerated a bit, but the road glistened wet and dangerous, and she knew there were a few hairpin bends coming up. Her jumper clung to her back, her T-shirt wet with sweat now, the sour, icy sweat of fear. She muttered, cursing the driver.
‘What arsehole needs to get back, Mum?’
‘Sorry, bad word. The person behind us is a bit close, that’s all.’
‘I’m still hungry.’
Hidden in her bag, Holly’s phone beeped with another text. Her hands were shaking again, clenched on the wheel, panic rising in her chest. Why couldn’t he just fucking leave her alone? He had what he wanted … But he didn’t have everything he wanted.
The other car was so close now, its lights were almost blinding her. She moved her rear-view mirror to one side, taking the reflection away from her eyes. Was the driver flashing his lights?
No other traffic, the rain was hammering down now, and the shadowy forms of tree trunks like cage bars on the high banks either side of the road. It wasn’t like she was going exceptionally slowly … Forcing herself to stay calm, she navigated the two sharp bends, before she noticed movement in the back. Milo’s legs were waving in the air as he nosedived into the boot, clearly in search of food.
‘Milo! Get back to the seat and strap yourself in,’ she yelled.
‘I’m just getting …’
‘No! Sit down.’
She risked another glance. He was climbing back now, bag of sweets firmly clasped in one hand. She should pull over … But the other driver was still so close. She even thought he was flashing his lights again – once, twice. Did he want her to pull over? Was there something wrong with the car, or was this just a ploy to get her to stop? On this lonely road in the darkness, there was no fucking way she was stopping unless she had to. Maybe she should call the police. A wave of fear ripped through her body, made her gasp, but again she forced herself to calm down. She was just tired, stressed out. It was only some fuckwit who wanted to get home quicker. There was no way of overtaking in this tiny lane. He could just wait. It was bound to be a man …
Milo landed back in his seat with a thump. ‘My seatbelt’s all twisted.’
‘Well, untwist it.’ She shot out from the tree cover and accelerated along a straighter bit of road. There was a long drop on one side now, which eased the claustrophobic feeling, but the car behind stayed on her tail. The lights seemed to flash again, making her blink. They were going around corners at speed, and the headlights of both vehicles were slashing through the shadows, bouncing off the blackness. She slowed a fraction to take in another hairpin bend. At any moment he was going to touch her bumper. But she didn’t have her hands-free kit with her, and she wasn’t going to stop and get carjacked or worse.
Carefully now, considering the options, she reached over and eased her phone out of her bag, placing it between her knees. What if this was more than some idiot trying to race home? What if the driver behind succumbed to some kind of road rage and actually tried to bump her car?
Holly risked another quick glance at Milo and slowed. To her relief, the other car drew back a little, but she kept the phone where it was. As she wondered if she was actually freaked enough to call the police, it beeped again and the screen flashed up another message:
You aren’t fit to be a mother, bitch.
The abusive tone was exactly the same. Why would he send her something like that? Holly shivered, swinging round the next corner, wincing as the driver behind kept pace, his headlights almost blinding her. Her windscreen wipers whined as she turned them up to max, trying to clear the torrent of rain. Desperate now, her shaking fingers were fumbling with her phone, trying to press the buttons.
Lights blinded her in an eerie white flash as another vehicle approached at high speed, from the opposite direction. She thought it was a van, and the driver was making no effort to pull over to his side of the road, but continued to aim straight at Holly. She hit her horn, hard, driving as close to the side of the road as she dared. The wheels crunched on grit and she felt the pull of mud on the tyres, as they swung off course. She yanked the wheel, her phone tumbling into the footwell as she straightened the car. Missing her by a hairsbreadth the other vehicle stormed past, away and up the hill, red brake lights flashing before it vanished. Holly slowed again, shaking.
The car behind hit her with a bang. The force of impact jolted her violently forward, before flinging her back against the headrest.
‘Milo? Are you okay?’ They were still moving, slowly but she didn’t dare stop. Her neck was twanging with pain.
‘Mum, what’s happened? Did we crash? Mum!’ His voice was sharp with fear.
Holly’s heart was racing, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, and her head was pounding. What the fuck was going on tonight? She glanced back at her son, opened her mouth to say everything was fine, and at the same time tried to kick her mobile away from the accelerator pedal where it had fallen.
Milo screamed out a warning, high-pitched and terrified, ‘Mum, stop! There’s a deer!’
A dark shadow plunged across the road, its eyes briefly illuminated by her headlights, before Holly hit the brakes as hard as she could. The car swung from side to side, before it aquaplaned across the road, and for the second time, she felt the impact of the car behind. She was yelling for Milo, hands locked on the wheel, still fighting with the vehicle, as they slid off the road, and the car began to tumble down the long slope to the woods below.
It was a kaleidoscope of pain and blurred shadows. She screamed at Milo to get down, and ducked her own head, closing her eyes. There was a sharp pain, and then a bang in front of her, and after that nothing but darkness.
***
Holly opened her eyes. The steady drum of rain on the windscreen, the stench of wet earth and trees, the stillness and the cold, took a moment to sink in. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. Her face was sticky and wet. She licked her lips, blinking. Blood. She could taste blood, sour and metallic. The rain was pouring through the shattered windscreen. Oh dear God, she had crashed the car. She had been trying to get her phone … Guilt mingled sourly with the pain, and Holly retched. The blackness spun, sending her back into her nightmare. Milo, where was Milo?
The nausea woke her properly, and she wriggled, aware of sharp stabbing pains in her neck, her back, and her chest, but ignoring them. ‘Milo!’
There was no sound from the back of the car, and she couldn’t turn any further. Panic flooded her body, hot and vicious. It gave her the strength to wrench herself free from the space between her seat and the detonated airbag. She was half kneeling now, one leg on the passenger seat, pushing away a mess of sports bags and camping gear that had been thrown from the boot. Tears and rain were washing the blood from her face, and she was shaking with the shock and cold.
The car was battered, but at least the right way up. At some point she remembered it rolling over, surely … But apart from the bonnet and windscreen, it seemed fairly intact. Some freak of engineering meant the headlights were still on, their twin beams sending dancing white paths of light into the woods. But the darkness and the shadows gathered all around the light, overwhelming it, jostling and claustrophobic.
Both windows on the right-hand side, Milo’s side, were smashed. His seatbelt was hanging free. She could see his hand, still and pale, stretched out across the seat, but she still couldn’t get far enough to see more. Her hands were shaking, but she continued to rip away the debris. As she struggled, one foot caught the driver’s door, hard, and it opened with a bang. Abandoning any thought of wriggling through the narrow space between the seats, she squeezed frantically past the airbag, out into the woods.
The rear door was stuck fast and she hauled at it with all her strength. It wouldn’t budge. Holly screamed, and the rain-savaged woods echoed with her son’s name. She kicked viciously and uselessly at the metal like an animal caught in a trap. The smell of rotten wetness, tainted with fuel fumes brought her back. She needed to keep it together. Christ knew where her phone was. The pain in her leg and chest was excruciating, but she carried on yanking the door. Inch by inch, resisting her sweaty, bloody fingers, it finally opened, slowly and with a protesting whine of metal. There were the stabbing pains in her neck and back again, but she ignored them, panting through the pain.
‘Milo!’ She was in the car now, scrabbling for his hand. ‘Milo, are you okay? Can you hear me?’ Of course he couldn’t or he would have answered, but the sound of her own voice was a small comfort in this nightmare.
Holly wriggled further across the back seats, clinging to the headrests, fumbling in the shadows. There was a torch in the towrope bag in the boot but who knew where that had ended up. Milo was half sitting, half lying on his side. There was a cut on his head, and a small stream of blood was snail-trailing down his cheek onto the seat. His small chest was rising and falling in a reassuring manner, but his skin was cold under her frantic fingertips. Where was her bloody phone?
But as Holly shoved her way further in, moving another bag out the way, she saw Milo was no longer alone in the back. Another boy, also apparently unconscious, but with no visible injuries, was sitting in the other seat. His head was lolled sideways, his face a pale blur against the shattered window.
‘What the fuck?’ Holly realised she had spoken aloud again, her words thrown into the sullen, spattering rain, echoing up to the silent trees. A ghost, it had to be a ghost, this child who had materialised inside her car. Either that or she was actually unconscious and dreaming the whole thing.
She reached a shaking hand across the car and touched the other boy. As her fingers met his cheek she had to force herself not to recoil. His skin was cold and clammy, and she thought she could see a head wound, but, as with her own child, she could see the steady rise and fall of his chest. Holly let out a long breath and inched back towards Milo, squeezing his limp hand, reassuring herself. A high-pitched whimpering made her jump, until she realised it was herself making animal sounds of fear. Where the fuck had he come from?
Squinting towards the road, she could just about make out the path of destruction the car had made as it left the road and hurtled into its final resting place against this cluster of giant trunks. There was no sign of the other vehicle that had rear-ended them, and no clue as to how her other passenger had arrived in her vehicle.
Realising she was wasting time staring blankly at the two children, Holly yanked herself back to reality and started yelling for help. Her cries echoed through the trees, seemingly futile in the vastness of the wood. Perhaps she should try to climb back up to the road, flag down the next car. But she seriously doubted she could make it, with the injuries that shot pain along her limbs and stabbed inside her head. Anyway, she couldn’t leave the children. Not one, but two children … She shouted again.
What if the other driver had meant to run her off the road? He could have stopped his car further along, and could be climbing down to … To what? She squinted into the shadows, icy fingers caressing her spine. Had he already been down and left another child in her car? There didn’t seem to be any other explanation, because she had sure as hell only had one passenger when she left the road.
A sound made her gasp, and it took a moment for Holly to realise it was her phone ringing. She blinked round, puzzled, finally locating the illuminated screen a few feet away half buried in the leafy forest floor. Relief flooded her body and tears coursed down her cheeks, stinging her cut face. Holly wiped them away and took a deep breath, glancing back quickly at the boys.
She staggered towards her phone, checked as an electric flash of pain reminded her she was injured, and went down on her knees to crawl instead. Every movement made her wince now, as the adrenalin wore off, and by the time her trembling hand touched the plastic casing of her phone, tears were streaking her cheeks again. The missed call was from an unknown number, and they hadn’t left a voicemail. It seemed to take ages to tap out the three digits she wanted, and all the time she stayed half sitting, half lying against a wet tree trunk, her eyes on the two children who sat so still and pale in the back seat of her car.
Finally, as she was starting to worry about the lack of phone signal, she got through to the operator, and waited again, patiently, answering the necessary questions as best she could.
In a surprisingly short time blue lights and sirens pierced the blackness. The rain was clearing, or at least she was sheltered, so deep in the woods. Holly was back at the car. With difficulty, gasping in pain at every movement, she had dragged an old picnic blanket out of the chaos, and tucked it carefully around the boys.
Checking their breathing, she wiped away the blood from Milo’s head with a folded T-shirt from his bag, careful not to move either child. The jelly sweets were strewn carelessly across the seat, and Holly bit her lip at the sight of them. Please, God, let Milo be okay …
The rear passenger seats were reasonably dry, roof still intact, but the front of the car was trashed. She couldn’t stop herself from gently touching the other boy’s cheek again, almost to reassure herself that he was actually real. This time she smoothed his hair back as she had Milo’s, and a rush of emotion hit. This poor child had been abandoned in her car. He wasn’t a ghost or a dream, but a real boy who someone had dumped in a crashed car. Perhaps whoever did it had thought she was dead, had hoped they would all die …
His hair was dark brown, and now she was closer she could see it was indeed streaked with blood from his head injury. There was something about the shape of his face that prodded her memory. Had she seen him before? He was about Milo’s age, perhaps a little older. At school, perhaps?
Shouts from the road cut into her thoughts, and soon a reassuring number of people were climbing carefully down to her car. She shouted back, in answer to their quick questions, and waited as they manoeuvred carefully through the undergrowth.
Holly stayed where she was, wincing at the clinical harshness of the floodlights, trying to ignore the pain that burned through her body. In one hand she held her son’s cold, white fingers, but her eyes still dwelt protectively on the other child as well.
Her phone, thrust deep into the pocket of her bloodied top, buzzed with a message, and automatically she drew it out with her free hand. The tone was vitriolic and the number familiar.
‘Fucking bitch.’
Chapter 2 (#ulink_d710d3f2-2da9-594a-99d9-c6696e6c693d)
Holly kissed Milo’s head, resting her lips on his now warm forehead for a long moment. He was still unconscious but the doctor told her the scans were clear. They just had to wait for him to wake up. His left leg was broken in two places, and the head wound required five stitches. It would leave a scar, which she knew he would be perversely pleased with. Her darling boy. Nothing else and nobody else mattered.
But even so, after checking her son was still sleeping, she wheeled herself away to ICU. The other boy was lying still and silent too. He was in a worse condition, with more severe head injuries and some swelling to the brain. She watched him through the narrow window, her brow furrowing, pressing her fingers to the glass.
Had she seen him at rugby? Or was he the kid who had a laugh with Milo in the queue at Tesco? Had she seen him at the pool? If he opened his eyes, if she could see his expression, it might fix that nagging feeling that she did recognise him. The big white clock on the wall ticked towards nine o clock. She had been up for almost twenty-four hours and her brain simply wasn’t working anymore.
The child’s long lashes and the slightly hollow cheeks gave him an air of vulnerability. She had supposed, and the doctors confirmed, he was around eleven or twelve years old, but skinny, with his bony hands lying neatly outside the white sheet. Almost too skinny for a boy his age, she thought. His dark brown hair lay tousled and greasy on the pillow around his face. There was a bruise on his cheek, and she knew he had stitches in the back of his head.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. ‘Where did you come from?’ The dreamlike feeling of unreality had extended when Holly had been told that no missing children fitting this boy’s description had been reported in the area. He was a still a ghost child, or a phantom. Her heart wrenched to think that somewhere surely his parents were searching for him … Or was it more painful to think that they were not, that her first guess had been correct and somebody meant them to die?
Someone had dumped him in her car like an unwanted stray. It couldn’t have been premeditated, because who could have predicted the crash? Even if either of the reckless drivers from last night had intended her to drive off the road, how could they have counted on her swerving for the deer or known she’d be knocked unconscious whilst they popped another child in her car? None of it made any sense. Perhaps she was going mad. She tried to remember if she had seen anything out of the ordinary yesterday. But she was sure it had been no different to any other Sunday, right up until they drove down Mill Road.
Troubled, Holly took herself back to her son and with some difficulty transferred herself from the wheelchair to the armchair next to his bed. Her leg was bruised, with a possible torn ligament, and the wheelchair they had insisted on was only until a scan hopefully gave her the all clear. But the headache was back and she couldn’t sleep. Too many questions whirled in her brain, too many worries danced behind her eyes. She pushed back her long hair away from her face, tied it into a knot, and rubbed her sore eyes.
Holly’s phone vibrated and she snuck a guilty look at the other patients, before glancing at the illuminated screen. Messages from her friends and Aunt Lydia, but none from her ex-husband. None from her dad either, but that was hardly a shock. Lydia said she’d been round and told him what had happened. Holly knew her aunt had been hoping for a reconciliation between father and daughter for years. Donnie Hughes was slowly drinking himself to death, and hadn’t featured in her life since she’d walked out of the Seaview Estate as an emotion-driven teenager. She smoothed a thumb across the screen, thinking about her dad.
He’d tried to stop her leaving, even though he had seen what the trial did to her, seen how much she needed to escape the twisted memories and leave everything behind. Her exhausted mind drifted back to her teenage years.
‘You can’t just fucking walk away! You’re my daughter, and you’re the only one left who can take care of the business.’ Donnie had been waiting for her after the trial. It had always been ‘Donnie’. Never ‘Dad’. His voice was a pitch lower than it had been in her childhood, and he broke off to cough violently, peering down at her from under a greasy fringe. His face was ruddy, and his eyes bloodshot and hung with violet bags.
She’d gone into her room and grabbed her bags, already neatly packed and awaiting her final exit. But Holly was still shaking, still high on fear and grief, her mind replaying the judge’s words and her answers over and over, like a crazy recording she could never erase.
‘What made you think she was dead?’
‘When did you last see your brother?’
Holly had made it back down the stairs to find her dad leaning firmly against the front door, his mouth set in a scowl.
‘Get out of the way, Donnie. You didn’t even bother to come to the trial, and you don’t actually give a shit about anything except your business.’ She reached the door and extended her hand towards the handle. ‘I’ve got news for you. Your business is finished. The Nicholls have won, and all you’ve done is fuck everything up – Mum, me, Jay. You’re a sad, deluded old man.’
He didn’t move, didn’t speak. The towering giant of her childhood reduced to this shuffling, glowering creature. But as she moved forward, his hand wrapped around her wrist, sweaty fingers pinching the skin.
Holly pulled away, but he held on, yanking her closer. She turned her face away from the stench of his foul breath. ‘You don’t know shit, girl. You could have been something, taken us back to where we were, and yeah, even taken on the Nicholls brothers. I know what goes on with Nicholls Transport, and the human cargo that gets stashed in the back, the girls they bring down here to work in their brothels. It’s sick, and now you’re running away from all of us. Well, don’t ever fucking come back, you useless bitch!’ He spat right in her face.
She’d stood frozen in horror, just for a second, before she wiped the glob of spittle away, warm and wet on her cheek. ‘I won’t be coming back,’ she told her father.
As he raised a hand to hit her, she snapped her wrist away, and sidestepped, already up on the balls of her feet. Years of training had made her moves instinctive. His hand whipped past and he made another futile grab at her shoulder, tearing her shirt.
Holly moved her body, jabbing with an elbow, bringing herself nearer the door, throwing the man aside with effortless ease. The horror of her dad’s words, his attack, would sink in later. She was trying to leave it all behind, but Holly was a trained fighter, and she accepted that probably wasn’t ever going to change.
Donnie collapsed, panting against the peeling wall of the hallway, yelled a few breathless obscenities after her, and she cut him off by kicking the door shut.
The heat of late afternoon had blasted through her jeans and T-shirt, and she could feel sweat beading on her face, but she’d kept on walking.
***
A nurse rattled past with the drugs trolley, jolting Holly out of the past. She glanced quickly at Milo, reassuring herself before purposely keeping her thoughts in the present. Hell, it wasn’t like there was a lack of drama here either. And a whole load of swirling fears.
Whoever the other boy was, she had still been looking at her phone moments before the crash, and driving at the same time. The guilt and anger at her own stupidity in allowing herself to be distracted by her phone made her breath short now. She was always so careful! The vicious texts danced through her brain. They had only started a couple of weeks ago, and at first she had refused to believe that Tom would be so vindictive. But now, each time they arrived, she tried to make herself pick up the phone and confront him, and each time, so far, she had funked it. She could hardly tell the police her own ex-husband was bullying her by text. It sounded so stupid, and she didn’t trust the police anyway. Well, with her upbringing, why would she?
She woke to footsteps and the curtains around Milo’s bed being drawn apart. Holly blinked hard, pushing herself upright in the chair, trying to drag herself back to consciousness.
‘Mrs Kendal, I’m DI Harper, and this is DC Marriot. If you feel up to it, we just need to ask you a few questions.’ His voice was low, rumbling, and deceptively gentle.
She got a sick feeling deep in her gut at the sound of his name, at the sight of his long face, with its sharp cheekbones and prominent beak of a nose. This couldn’t be happening. How was he still on the scene? Surely he should have retired, leaving everyone in peace by now? The long, thin nose had a dent and was twisted out of shape.
‘And you fuck off, you bloody nosy copper! My wife has been murdered and all you can do is accuse me. Go and find out who did it, because if I get there first, I’ll string them up from that tower block …’
‘We are trying, Donnie, we just need to ask a few more questions. Perhaps you should come back down to the station with us?’
The sickening crunch as her dad broke the police officer’s nose had almost been drowned by his exclamation of pain. It was fair enough, Holly had thought at the time. Bloody Harper had been sniffing around for years, chipping away at her dad’s business interests. Luckily it was only the Nicholls’ dealers that got banged up, and they deserved it.
Holly studied the familiar police officer now, this tall, gaunt man, with white tufted hair and hollows under his eyes. Fuck. Of all the people to turn up. Detective Inspector Harper. He’d clearly landed a promotion since they last met. He stood a little apart from a serious-looking blonde woman, whose thin lips were currently pursed with apparent disapproval as she glanced down at her phone.
Feeling Holly’s gaze, she looked up and smiled. It was a cool, professional smile and it didn’t reach her glacial blue eyes. The DI was talking again. ‘We understand your son is doing well? A broken leg and some concussion, I think the doctor said.’
Holly pulled the regulation blue and white hospital gown tighter around her body, and blinked sleep from her eyes, wishing Lydia would hurry up and get here with her clothes. Her aunt had come straight to the hospital last night when Holly called, but went home around eleven when she had been reassured that her niece and Milo were not in any life-threatening condition.
‘He’s still unconscious, but the doctors say he’s going to be fine. I guess he’ll be furious about having his leg in a cast though …’ Why was she babbling like she was guilty of something? Best get it out in the open. She had told the uniformed PC last night, but she needed to explain, to make them understand that it was wasn’t her fault. ‘There was a car behind that was far too close, and then another car came the other way and nearly hit us. I had to go on the verge and …’
‘It’s okay, Mrs Kendal, we’ve read your statement,’ DC Marriot told her, cutting her off mid-sentence. ‘We can talk about that later. For now, we just have a few more questions.’
Holly nodded, uneasily, her eyes still on the man. They didn’t care. They wanted to know about the other boy. Well, that was okay, because so did she.
DI Harper nodded. He stood next to the window, arms folded. Did he recognise her as she did him? Of course, she was Holly Kendal now instead of Holly Hughes, but surely he must know. And wasn’t it odd that a DI would come for a chat with a car crash victim? But it was a car crash with a twist, and she figured he knew all right, and he was as curious as hell.
His grey eyes were faded now, sunk deeper under bushy grey brows, but he still had that aura of energy, alertness, and that distinctive voice. Her mum had always said he was clever for a copper. She had instructed both her children to keep away from the police who came snooping around their family home. But that was in the past, and with a dad like Holly’s it was no wonder her mum had been cautious. She could never have known that this ‘clever’ copper would be the one who investigated her own death. Investigated, but never bloody found out who did it. Holly switched her thoughts quickly back to the present. It was like being dragged through a mud bath, the past swilling over her, sticking in patches, reminding her she might have walked away but she could never completely escape.
‘Did you find out anything about the other boy?’ Holly asked tentatively now. She passed her tongue nervously over sore lips.
