‘Come on, you old pile of junk!’ she ordered the car, and it ignored her. She felt the rear tyres swing alarmingly as she rounded another corner, narrowly missing a series of parked cars. Panic welled up within her; she saw a one- way sign and took the street, the wrong way. A brief thought flickered in her mind that she was ordinarily such a law-abiding person. Wouldn’t even throw litter on the ground. Never put a step out of line her entire life. That particular Stephanie was long gone. Too many things had happened. Now it was survival at any cost.
On either side of the car was a stretch of waste ground where once there had stood rows of back-to-back houses, the sad reminders of the bombing during the Blitz, land due for development shortly according to the signs on the wooden fence that encircled the area. She checked the rear-view mirror; she was clear of them, lost them somewhere.
Her attention returned to the road a split second too late for her to slow down to take the bend ahead. She yanked the wheel hard, the car hitting a patch of black ice and spinning wildly in the middle of the road. The Volkswagen mounted a curb and ran headlong into a concrete street lamp. Stephanie Jacobs’ head lurched forward as the front of the car crumpled up like tinfoil. With no seatbelt to protect her she smashed into the windscreen, her world engulfed by a deafening blackness.
The Rover came to a halt beside the wrecked Volkswagen. Petrol was leaking onto the road, as if the car bled away its lifeblood. The windscreen was completely shattered. The front of the car a mangled, unrecognisable lump of distorted metal. Two men exited the Rover. One of them glanced nervously around him but there was no one around.
‘Shit!’ he said. ‘What a fucking mess!’ He wasn’t simply referring to the car. He went over to the Volkswagen, peered through the cracked glass of the heavily dented driver’s door. Stephanie’s head was resting against the wheel, a cat’s cradle of deep gashes, her entire face lathered in blood. ‘Christ, she wouldn’t win any beauty competitions now,’ he said.
The other man came to his side. ‘Is she dead?’ he said dispassionately.
‘She’s moving, Mr Tremain. I reckon she’s only just this side of alive.’
Randall Tremain was angry. So fucking angry. Bitch, he thought. For her to escape on his watch was not what he wanted to hear. He was in danger of slipping down the ranks because of this, unless he could put some of it right. He yanked open the door. ‘Pass me your flashlight, quickly,’ he rasped.
He handed him a heavy-duty metal flashlight from the Rover’s glove compartment. ‘What are we gonna do, Mr Tremain?’ he asked. ‘It’s one hell of a shit hole we’re in now.’
Tremain turned on the flashlight, shone it at Stephanie’s bloodied face. He lifted the torch then brought it down hard on her head, three, four, five times. The sound of splintering bone caused the other man to step back, his face screwed up in horror. Tremain calmly handed the torch back, reached in and took Stephanie’s pulse.
‘Now she’s only just this side of dead,’ he said.
The Rover drove away, its exhaust fumes lingering over the Volkswagen like a sad spirit that whirled in the still air and quietly faded into the chill night.
6
He checked his watch again. She should be here now, he thought, scanning the country road, his breath being pumped out in clouds into the frosty night air. He’d pulled off into the entrance to a farmer’s field, the spot where they’d agreed to meet up. But there was no sign of Stephanie’s Volkswagen.
He took one last glance at his watch. He’d already hung around for half an hour longer than they’d planned. He couldn’t wait any longer. He clambered back into the Commer van and reached under the wheel for the ignition keys. They weren’t there.
The next second there was a screwdriver held at his throat, pressing through the scarf and into his flesh. He gingerly lifted his hands away from the steering wheel.
‘Who are you?’ she said, pushing the screwdriver harder.
He gave a little groan of discomfort. ‘Put it away,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean you any harm.’
‘Are you from Doradus?’
‘Doradus? No, most certainly not!’ he turned his head to look at her. ‘The point of all this is to save you and your babies from him, from anyone who seeks to harm you.’ His voice was slightly muffled by the scarf. ‘Stephanie risked her life to save you. Who knows what’s become of the poor woman. This isn’t helping us; we have to be moving on.’
‘Take off your scarf, let me see you,’ she said.
‘I’d rather not.’
She drove the screwdriver deeper. ‘I’d rather you did,’ she said.
He lifted a reluctant finger, hooked it into the folds of his scarf and peeled it down from his face. His skin was an alarming bubble of growths, like cists, ranging from very small to an inch across. He sat in silence for a while and then pulled the scarf back into place. ‘It’s part of a condition I have to live with. Sunlight doesn’t agree with me. They’re not malignant, yet, but I realise they’re not pretty either.’
She lowered the screwdriver and then tossed it into the footwell. ‘We all have our cross to bear,’ she said. ‘So you say you’re not with Doradus, or with Gilgamesh. So who are you? Stephanie called you Pipistrelle.’
‘A nickname. Otherwise known as Charles Rayne.’ He nodded at the bulging midriff. ‘You are due in April.’
Her hand brushed the firm rise of her pregnancy. ‘So they tell me. Where are we headed?’ She handed him the ignition keys.
‘Somewhere safe,’ he said, gunning the engine. But he hesitated, his hands planted on the wheel. Then he took another look at his watch.
‘She’s probably dead,’ she observed.
He took in a slow, deep breath. ‘Yes, probably. That was always the risk,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t make it any easier.’ He reached over, lifted the blanket she had let fall. ‘Cover yourself; this old thing hasn’t got a great heater and it’s freezing cold outside. Keep yourself warm, we’ve got a long way to go tonight.’ He drove the van off the track and onto tarmac, out of the corner of his eye seeing her pull the blanket right up to her chin.
He was reluctant to wake her. She looked so peaceful, as still and as perfectly formed as a porcelain doll, he thought. Unconsciously Charles Rayne ran a light finger over his own blemished cheek. She was pretty. Perhaps her pregnancy added to that, he thought, as is the way with some women. His heart sank again when he thought of Stephanie. But there was always hope, he thought. He eased over and tapped the woman on the arm.
She snapped awake like a trap jumping to its prey, her eyes saucer-wide and immediately on the alert. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Home,’ he returned, getting out of the cab. She followed.
It was still very dark. They were in a village, but there were few streetlights to illuminate the few stone buildings. Against the slightly lighter grey that was the sky she made out the rise of bleak, brooding hills. There was even more of a chill in the air here, and snow lay in faintly luminescent swathes on the ground, lining the base of snaking dry-stone walls, capping some of the high hills.
‘Where is home?’ she asked.
‘Derbyshire. A small place called Elldale,’ he explained. ‘This is my house. Quickly, get inside before you catch your death of cold.’
The house was constructed of dark, severe stone, solid and oppressive, she thought, with a low grey slate roof and small windows. It was set back from the side road, in grounds of its own, and sat in total darkness. She felt the cold touch of snow tapping her warm cheek.
‘Careful, let me give you a hand over these rough stone slabs,’ he offered, reaching out to help her, but she shrugged him off with a fierce glare. ‘I have a room prepared for you,’ he said, opening the door. She paused at the doorstep, her expression one of fretful mistrust. ‘It’s OK, you’ll be safe here.’