Gerry glanced back at the bridge and saw the water was now covering the ledge where Maureen had lain. Smashing to and fro against the sides. There was only one way to safety, and that was up the bank. Up there, on the higher ground, they would be safe. She would get Maureen into her car with the heater on, then drive her to the hospital. But the only way to get Maureen up the bank was to drag or carry her, and Gerry wasn’t sure she had the strength left. Maureen was so frozen with fear and her circulation had been cut off by the tight ropes, so she could hardly do anything but whimper.
The fireman’s lift wouldn’t work. Not that Gerry couldn’t bear the weight — Maureen was a slight enough figure — but carrying her like that would unbalance her, and she would surely slip back or sink into the bankside mud and slide down to the water. She couldn’t make it up the slope walking upright. The only way was to get Maureen to cling around her neck without strangling her, and for Gerry to crawl on her stomach and claw her way up the slope with her hands, feel for footholds with her feet. It was slow going, even slower than the journey back from the arch. Once, they slid back and almost went over the bank into the water. But Gerry held on and set off again.
At last, she felt she had got far enough and had sufficiently dug in with her feet to take a breather. The water still roared in her ears. She glanced over her shoulder, past Maureen, and saw that it now almost filled the whole arch of the bridge.
Gerry took a deep breath, gathered all her strength together and grabbed on to whatever she could find in the bankside for the last haul — clumps of grass, a half-buried rock, an exposed tree root. Finally, they made it. She dragged herself and Maureen on to the roadside, unhooked Maureen and rolled over on her back, where she lay gasping for breath. Maureen lay still, a few feet away, also on her back. It was only twenty yards of easy paved path to Gerry’s car now, but she wasn’t sure whether she could make it. Her whole body hurt, every muscle, every joint. She had to struggle just to fill her lungs with air on every breath. The water roared in her ears. She felt her head spinning, the world receding from her. She wanted nothing more than to sleep.
Then she heard what she thought was a slow handclap and turned her head sideways to see a figure dressed all in black standing over her.
‘Well done,’ Mark Vincent said. ‘That was a heroic effort. Pity it all has to come to nothing.’
Chapter 17
Banks cursed under his breath and drummed with his hands on the steering wheel. They were stuck in a long line of cars at a set of makeshift lights west of Eastvale, the already narrow country road down to one lane. They were on the north side of the river, as the main dale road was now closed. At the front of the line, beside the temporary red light, a man in a yellow slicker stood holding a lollipop sign that said STOP. Just a few yards beyond the traffic disruption, they would be able to turn left along the lane towards the Riverview Caravan Park and Swainsford Bridge. But the red light seemed to be taking for ever to change. A patrol car had spotted a beat-up old Clio with two people in it heading west towards Swainsford Bridge not long before. Banks guessed that had to be Vincent and Maureen Tindall, and that Gerry was either already there or on her way.
‘Calm down,’ said Annie. ‘There’s nothing we can do. Gerry’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.’
‘But what if she can’t?’ Banks said. ‘Vincent’s had survival training. He’s seen action, for crying out loud. He may be armed.’
The rain was pattering on the car roof in time with Banks’s nervous tattoo. The patrol car in front of him had its light flashing, but that did them no good. Even if they tried to jump the queue, there was not enough space to manoeuvre without ending up in the ditch.
‘There’s no reason to think he’d still be hanging around,’ Annie argued. ‘He’s probably miles away by now.’
‘She’s not answering her phone.’
‘Maybe there’s no signal out where she is. You know what Yorkshire’s like. Or maybe she can’t hear it for the rain.’
‘I don’t like it. Ah, here we go.’ The gears crunched as Banks revved up too fast and set off, almost rear-ending the patrol car in front. When they had got through the one-lane closure, both he and the patrol car pulled out and speeded up, overtaking the other cars that had been in the queue and both turning left so sharply that the lead car had to brake so fast it almost skidded into the ditch. The driver honked his horn furiously. Banks ignored it and carried on following the patrol car towards Riverview.
‘Be careful!’ said Annie. ‘It’ll do nobody any good if you drive us or the lads in front off the road and get us killed. Slow down.’
Banks drove on, but not much slower.
‘Look,’ Annie said. ‘There’s the caravan site. Shall we go in?’
‘No point,’ said Banks. ‘She was on her way to Swainsford Bridge. Gerry’s like that. She only tells you she’s going to do something dangerous when she’s already past the point of no return.’
Annie quietened down and Banks drove on. Once again, he tried Gerry on both her mobile and the police radio. Nothing.
It didn’t take him long to cover the mile and a half from Riverview to the turning for the bridge, and he slowed briefly to take in the overturned sandwich-board and the broken police tape. ‘She’s here,’ he said. ‘The only question is whether he’s here, too.’
Then he turned left and drove on.
Gerry was too weary to fight. The rain fell in her eyes and flowed like tears down her face. She thought this blurred view of the dark figure against a background of darkness might be the last thing she would see.
‘I was never far away,’ he said.
‘Don’t do this,’ Gerry said, dredging up all the energy she could to even speak. ‘Please. There’s no point. It’s over now. The police will be here any moment.’
‘Do you think I care about that?’ He moved closer. ‘Once she’s gone, I’m finished anyway.’
Gerry felt a small ray of hope that he meant he was only going to kill Maureen Tindall, and spare her. The surge of relief made her also feel guilty and ashamed, but she didn’t want to die, not like this, in the rain, covered in mud, at the hands of a mass murderer, the man who had killed Katie Shea and her unborn child.
Then she realised that what Vincent had said had merely been a figure of speech, and there was no way he was going to spare her. He had killed innocent people before, both in the army and at the wedding, and he would do it again with no compunction. Aunt Jane had told her as much.
She desperately cast around in her mind for a means of escape. There were no weapons to hand, not even a brick or a stone. Only her Swiss army knife, and that was in the depths of her pocket. Any attempt to reach for it and open it would surely alert him that she was up to something. She strained her ears and thought she could hear the sound of a patrol car in the distance above the roaring of the water below. Please let it be them, she thought. How could she keep him from killing Maureen until they got here?
‘Can you hear it?’ she said. ‘The police. They’re coming. Give it up, Mark.’
‘I can’t hear anything,’ he said, now almost so close she could reach out and touch him.
Then he did something she hadn’t expected. Maureen was lying on the edge of the bank just a few feet away. Gerry wasn’t sure whether she was still conscious, but she hadn’t moved or spoken since they had made it up the slope.
Mark Vincent walked slowly over to her and kicked her hard in the ribs. She cried out. He swung back his leg to kick her again, and Gerry seized her chance. With all the power she could muster, she thrust her leg up under his ankle, where it met the foot, and lifted it higher. As Vincent seemed to totter and lose his balance, Maureen Tindall found enough strength to swing both her legs at the shin of his other leg, whipping it from under him. He seemed to hang there for a moment, then scratched at the air as he pitched forwards over the bank.