Audrey caught her breath and looked around. Walking towards her, trotting down through the narrow lane, was Pete. He was alone.
“THE KIDS?!”
“I saw Jake! On the corner! I left the kids with a Guide and ran but he disappeared. He’s still here!”
“Was he alone?”
“I don’t know. I caught a glimpse of his hood and turned to tell the Guide to watch the kids. I ran to the corner where he was but he was gone.”
The Guide who had put out the call for Jake reassured her that no one could leave the castle without passing two gates. If any child came that way they would stop them. They had CCTV everywhere as well. It would be all right.
He sounded so confident that Audrey covered her face and cried with relief. Peter held her shoulders. “Come on. We’ll find him.”
Audrey was out of breath. She put her head between her knees and caught up with herself. A lady from the cafe brought her a glass of water. She thanked her and drank it. Her throat was terribly dry.
Finally she said, “Let’s go back. He might appear again.” She wanted to see Hannah and Simon. She wanted to hold them.
Pete kept his arm around her shoulders as they walked back up the steep path. They were in the narrow, crowded alleyway when they heard the scream. Bare and animal, it was a cry of visceral panic. They ran back down.
The crowd in front of the cannon were arranged around a blonde woman. She was standing back from the wall, hands wide at her sides, her mouth open in shock. The Guide reached her and the woman screamed again, quieter this time, and pointed a shaking finger to the wall. The Guide went over and looked down. He staggered back. He stood still for a moment.
Moving very slowly, he lifted his hand across his chest and reached up to his walkie-talkie. He muttered something and then his head dropped to his chest.
Audrey broke away from Pete and ran to the edge, shoving through the startled crowd to look.
Jake. Broken on the cliffs below. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Finished. He was finished.
Pete was there. He looked and saw it too. Far down on a cliff ledge lay a tiny body. It was face down, the blue hood turning red, redness creeping through the blue was the only movement. Legs bent in wrong ways. Inaccessible from above and below.
Audrey staggered backwards and curled over her knees. She vomited acid chunks of cake.
The Guide had moved everyone back from the wall when a sudden flurry of movement heralded the arrival of more red anoraks and other men in black fleeces. The air crackled with radio messages, to and fro, fast voices. Pete was sitting on the ground, head dropped, hands resting on his knees. He looked drunk.
“I’ll get Han and Si...” Audrey backed away on rubber legs.
She turned and walked blind. No, she thought now, a new mantra. No. No. Nonononononono. No.
The tourists in Crown Square were oblivious to the tragedy unfolding below them. They moved in audio guide trances, slow, lazy, diffident. Audrey barged straight through them. She turned the corner to the National War Memorial and climbed the steps. When she saw the Guide’s face she knew he had heard. He was shocked. He stood to attention when he saw her.
He touched her shoulder, tilted his head, search her face for eye contact. Audrey shook her head at the ground. “Can’t,” she hissed. “I can’t.”
He understood. She couldn’t feel this now. He stood straight, shoulders back and spoke very clearly. “What can I do for you?”
“My other children. Boy and girl. Here. Who are they with?”
He searched her face again. “With me. Their brother came and got them.”
He had misunderstood.
She took a breath and said it again: “My daughter and son were left with a Guide while we looked for the boy in the blue hoodie.”
He nodded. “They were left with me, ma’am. The wee laddie in the blue top with the hood all tied up tight, that wee fella’s came up and said they were to go with him. Ten minutes ago.”
She couldn’t process that but the man was certain, “He was just himself, I made sure of that. The call just came that you couldn’t find him and a minute later his Dad spotted him and ran after him. Then he came back and said his Daddy said to bring the wee ones. They all went down that way.” He pointed to David’s Tower, “I’m a father myself. I thought you’d be over the moon. He was bringing them to you—”
Audrey ran as fast as she could down to Pete, to the crowd, to the shocked guides and the men in black who were lowering a thick black rope over the wall.
A stretcher and paramedic in a harness were preparing to go over. An ambulance was rumbling up the hill towards them.
“He came back,” she said quietly. Pete looked up from the ground. “After you ran. He came back and said you’d sent him for Hannah and Simon. They left with him...”
The police sealed the castle. No one was allowed to leave. The ambulance parked on the forecourt of the cafe, the doors propped open.
At first the other tourists were sympathetic. They thought it was a terrorist attack. They became angry when they realized it was about careless parenting and lost children. Tour organizers approached the cops and made their cases angrily: they had a flight to catch, a restaurant booking, tickets for other attractions. But no one was allowed to leave.
The Guides were kind. Chairs from the cafe appeared for Pete and Audrey. There was still no sign of Simon and Hannah. They asked them what sort of kids they were? Sensible? Nervous? Naughty? A complete search of the castle grounds was organized. The police were led by the Guides to all the sneaky corners and hidden places.
Audrey and Pete sat side by side on chairs, upright, watching the black rope snaking over the wall. They couldn’t tell the police or the guides what might have happened. What could have happened. Who they were dealing with.
Men formed a tight circle around the rope and a pulley was fitted. They watched the rope tug and tighten. Jake was coming up.
Audrey stood up, legs so stiff with terror that she nearly fell over. Pete had to catch her.
They stood, watching the men crank the pulley, lifting the basket stretcher up to the battlement walls. The stretcher was for an adult. The slack little body barely half filled it. He was strapped in tight with neon yellow belts, turning pink from all the blood. He had a tiny neck brace on, his face covered in a bloody cotton wool with a hole in the middle for the oxygen mask. His chest wasn’t moving.
Audrey could tell from thirty feet away.
So could Pete.
The blue hoodie was too long.
Her knees buckled. It wasn’t Jake in the stretcher. It was Simon with Jake’s top on. Pete didn’t catch her this time. She slipped slowly down to the ground as the red plastic stretcher was placed into the ambulance. A shocked quiet fell over the crowd, as if they were all praying in their many languages, to their many gods.
Suddenly the police walkie-talkies crackled to life in a chorus: a girl matching Hannah’s description had been found deep in the bowels of David’s Tower. She had been strangled with her own coat. Don’t tell the parents yet.
Too late. They could see Audrey and Pete had already heard.
Pete sank down next to Audrey on the ground. Crowds shrank away from the couple as if their sorrows were a stain, as if they were contagious.
In the silence Audrey could hear the wind, the rumble of the ambulance engine, Pete breathing, short despairing puffs.
A voice behind her, familiar, loud, pleased.
“I’m finished, Mummy.”
The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing
Danuta Reah