Before It's Too Late Page 12

  Davies tried to question Graeme more, but his answers were vague and he seemed distracted now that his son had arrived. She placed her tea cup on the tray. “Well, I think we have everything we need for now, Graeme. I’ll send a colleague around to take a statement. Thanks for your help.” She stood, held out her hand and Graeme shook it. Her hand juddered inside his. “If you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to give us a call.” Davies gathered her bag. “Thanks for the tea.”

  Carl followed her out to the pathway. When they reached the car he spoke again, “There’s something you should know.”

  She rounded to face him.

  “My dad.” He shot a furtive glance back to the house. “I’m not sure how useful his information will be.”

  “And why is that?”

  “He’s got dementia.”

  “Has it been diagnosed by his GP?”

  Carl pulled a face. “It’s only in the early stages. But he often sees things, hears things that aren’t really there. And he gets confused.” Davies raised her eyebrows as Carl continued. “The other week he called me out because he’d heard an intruder downstairs. Two in the morning it was. I came all the way out from Stratford and there was nothing here. The house was locked up – no sign of a break-in. Even Flick wasn’t barking. And he puts things away in the wrong cupboards. He couldn’t find his milk yesterday. We searched high and low and he’d put it in the bin. A full carton too.”

  Davies stared down the road at the gates to the Manor House. The heat of the day was really kicking in now, leaving a soft haze in the air around them. She looked back at Carl. “Thank you. We’ll certainly bear that in mind.”

  But as she climbed into her car, a wave of uncertainty washed over her. Were these the ramblings of a senile man? Or had he seen the van? She quickly fished her mobile out of her pocket. Whatever it meant, she couldn’t afford to ignore it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I woke to the sound of crackling from above, like dry kindling tossed into a flame.

  I lunged forward, held my breath. Almost immediately silence filled the air, punctuated only by the rustle of leaves in the distance. I sat back. Maybe it was the rats. But they scratched and scuttled. This was different. I shook my head, to disperse the paranoia nagging at my brain. I’d been here too long. I was imagining things.

  The rough concrete had left gravelly indentations on my forearm. I rubbed the loose pieces of dust and stone away.

  The slice of light that seeped through from the outside world indicated daylight. I looked back at the rough concrete beneath me, around at the walls and thought back to last night: the depression, the desperation. Grandmother. I couldn’t even picture her in my mind today. Even my memories were starting to desert me.

  I moved forward and then froze. There it was again. Not crackles. I strained my ears. It was more like… shuffles. Shuffles on powdery, old concrete. Footsteps.

  The shuffles became louder and more frequent, scratching at times like sandpaper on plaster. I stared up at the grill. The movements flashed intermittent shadows into my den.

  Suddenly a thought struck me. What if it wasn’t him? What if it was someone else? Someone that had stumbled across the area. Someone that didn’t know a woman was kept captive in the darkness, only metres below.

  “Help!” My voice was weak, barely a whisper. I coughed, tried again. “Help me, please!”

  The sound stopped. My stomach lurched. I shouted again at the top of my voice, “P-Please, h-e-l-p me!”

  A shock of sunlight tore at my pupils as the cover was lifted away. I squinted, shielded my eyes. I could see the battered remains of an old roof above. I must be in an old house or barn. Sporadic gaps stood out where slate tiles were missing, exposing bare patches of rafter.

  I’d just lowered my hand when something pounced into the pit.

  I gasped, jumped back. Dark eyes peered through slits in a black hood.

  The man dropped to his knees. I shrunk back into the corner.

  There was a bag beside him. I glanced from one to the other. I needed to jump up, fight, escape. But my limbs felt as though they had been turned to stone.

  In a flash, he reached for the holdall, rummaged inside and retrieved a roll of tape.

  He grabbed my arms and pulled them roughly together in front of me. The duct tape made a loud rip as he released it from its roll and wound it around them. I pulled back my legs in a feeble attempt to resist, but he quickly reached up and secured them.

  “Please… No… ” I squawked the ailing words out. Tears spilled over. He leant forward, his breath hot on my cheek. Trepidation turned my stomach, round and round.

  A gloved hand reached out to my face. I braced myself.

  It cupped my chin. A finger from his other hand gently swiped the tears away. For a moment he paused, stared at me.

  In desperation, I narrowed my eyes, tried to peer through the slits in his hood. Instantly, he jolted back. Then, as if he had never stopped, he again reached for his bag. I could smell the glue as more tape adhered my lips together. Finally he pushed my head forward and tied a piece of material around my eyes. And the world turned black.

  I started to shake, every muscle trembling in unison.

  The blindfold was uncomfortable. Specks of dust made my eyes itch. It wasn’t tight though. In some strange way he went about his business with the deftness of a mother carefully but firmly dressing a toddler.

  But this was no dressing. He bound my hands in front of me and my feet together.

  I felt him move away. Scratches and shuffles as he cleared up his bag.

  I became aware of space around me. I was alone once more. I sat, still hunched in the corner, waiting for the familiar sound of the grill being replaced, the chain being locked.

  I wasn’t going to die. Not right now. Relief swamped me. The muscle spasms subsided into a million questions. Why tie me up now? How was I supposed to eat? What did he have planned?

  Time stood still as a deluge of thoughts swam around my mind. Fear mingled with confusion.

  At that moment my bladder kicked in. I needed the toilet. That’s the last thing I wanted, trussed up like a pig in an abattoir. I was just wondering how I would manage it, how I would attempt it, when I heard another noise.

  A thud. A presence beside me. Thick breaths came fast and quick. He was back. The tearing of more duct tape. I listened hard trying to make sense of what I could hear in the background. Grunts, murmurs. But no fixed words.

  Movements around me. Swishes of air oscillating as he worked.

  A crash – soft this time. Was it his bag being bundled out? I strained my ears. Finally, the grate of the grid being replaced jerked my head up. The jingle of the chain. Then nothing. Silence pervaded the room. Apart from the sounds of slow rasping breaths, closely followed by a gentle picking. Almost like drips falling from a tap. I realised then that I was not alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Situated in the quaint village of Milcote, just outside Stratford, Broom Hills Nursing Home was a red brick Georgian structure set within six acres of sculptured gardens. Jackman and Celia navigated the long driveway in silence. The main house sat majestically on the peak of the hill, the Wisteria that snaked around its entrance a dazzling carpet of purple in full bloom. Yet any beauty it held was lost on Jackman, clouded by the memories of what it represented: a prison for his sick wife.

  Jackman’s shoes squeaked on the parquet flooring as they entered the lobby. Gilt-framed Monet prints decorated the walls and floral curtains were tied back over the leaded windows. A pretty blonde receptionist with hair coiffed into a tidy bun looked up from her computer and smiled a greeting as they signed in the visitors’ book and moved into the main building.

  They passed a library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and leather easy chairs, a resident’s lounge that was filled with floral comfy sofas, chintzy cushions and elegant china figurines, and took the lift to the third floor. Alice’s room, the room that had been her hom
e these past eight months, was just out of the lift, second on the right. Her window overlooked rolling countryside to the rear of Broom Hills.

  Alice was sat in a green easy chair beside her bed. Blue straps, just visible beneath the hands folded into her lap, were clipped together to keep her from falling forward. At first glance she looked asleep. Her head was laid at an angle on her chest; a line of spittle had collected in the groove beside her mouth. But as they drew nearer they could see her blue eyes hung open.

  “Mum, you’ll get a bad neck if you sit like that,” Celia said cheerfully. She pulled her satchel strap over her head, leaving it to fall beside the bed and lifted her mother’s head back before wrapping her arms around her.

  Jackman hung back and swallowed. It wasn’t the lack of response that bothered him. Over the months he’d grown accustomed to that. It was Celia’s voice. The fact that she managed to remain upbeat and positive in the face of so much adversity choked the hell out of him. He waited for Celia to move aside, then stepped forward and embraced his wife briefly.

  Jackman watched his daughter retrieve a tissue from her bag and wipe her mother’s mouth before she emptied a pile of cards onto the bed, then sat beside them and proceeded to open each one and read the contents out loud. It had been a while since they’d visited together and her actions saddened him. He perched himself on the other side of the bed and, as Celia chattered away, let his mind wander.

  Having joined the Royal Marines at seventeen, Jackman had been set on a career in the armed forces. But five years in, on home leave, he met Alice, a microbiologist, originally from Denmark and two years his elder. She was different to any woman he’d ever met and shared his passions for the great outdoors, camping and hiking. For a while they squeezed their relationship into his short periods of leave. At first it had seemed exciting, almost clandestine. But as the intensity grew and the relationship deepened, it soon became obvious to Jackman that the long periods they spent apart distressed them both, more and more.

  It hadn’t been an easy decision to leave the Marines, affecting almost every aspect of his life but, almost two years after their initial meeting, they married and Jackman, lured by a job that boasted the excitement of daily challenges, joined the Metropolitan Police Service.

  He recalled how they spent their early days, languishing on the sofa during their evenings together, making plans to visit the Pyramids, trek to Machu Pichu, skydive over the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t exactly that they made a pact not to have children, more that their dreams simply didn’t allow the room. It was an exciting time of new beginnings, dreams and adventures.

  But within a year of their wedding, Alice’s hormones had made a U-turn that took them from a B-road to a dual carriageway over night. She suddenly started cooing at babies they saw in the street, waved at toddlers in shops and restaurants, bought magazines on nursery design and layout.

  Pregnancy agreed with Alice and she wandered around the house singing like a dawn chorus over the months that led up to the birth. In contrast, Jackman was wracked with a mixture of excitement, apprehension and dread at the turmoil that was about to be inflicted on their lives.

  But as soon as Celia was placed in his arms the love he felt for the pink, wrinkled bundle with the tiny fingers and full head of white hair was instant and, what’s more, so powerful it was frightening. And in the days, months and years that followed, that protective urge developed into an all-encompassing shell.

  He recalled the moment when he taught her to ride a bicycle, her little voice squeaking, “Please don’t let go, Daddy,” as he ran alongside her clutching the back of the saddle, the small of his back protesting angrily. He remembered when he went to her first parents’ evening and looked through her school work to find a picture she’d drawn of her best friend with the words written beneath in her disjointed handwriting, ‘my daddy’. The little girl who gripped his hand tightly in crowds and, even as a young teenager, was too shy to order her own food in a restaurant.

  He looked across at her now. She’d retrieved a brush from the bedside cabinet and was gently pulling it through her mother’s hair. A year ago, Celia had been a normal, confident nineteen-year-old, home from her first year at university. The accident that summer changed her life forever. Yet, she coped with Alice’s condition so much better than he did.

  Part of Jackman hoped that Alice would had some recognition, something that would incite an improvement in her condition one day, maybe even bring some of her old self back. But, as awful as it was to admit, another side of him wished she had died that night. He switched his gaze to Alice. Her eyes were pointing absently in the direction of the window as Celia continued to tease the brush through her hair. He wondered if she dreamt, and hoped that if she did, her dreams were visited by happy memories. Because that was all she had left.

  Jackman excused himself and headed down to reception to get them coffees. While the machine was pouring what resembled dirty water into a cup, he reached for his mobile. The X in the corner indicated no signal. He waited until the coffees were made, emptied a sachet of sugar and a couple of mini-cartons of milk into Celia’s, then placed them on the side.

  He nodded at the receptionist who was tapping away at her computer, ventured outside and checked his phone again. Still no signal. Frustrated, he wandered around to the side of the main house. A line flickered for a split second, then disappeared. Broom Hills might offer excellent views and a beautiful rural setting, but when it came to mobile signals it was hopeless. Jackman turned, glanced up at the house. He could see the birthday cards that lined Alice’s window ledge from here and the sight injected a twinge of guilt. He paused, inhaled deeply, then pocketed his phone and headed back inside.

  Celia almost pounced on him as he walked back into Alice’s room. “Dad, Mum just moved her eyes.”

  He steadied himself, relieved he’d placed lids on the coffees.

  “I asked her if she wanted the blinds turned down because the sun was coming through and she shifted her eyes to the right!”

  He looked at his wife. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead. “That’s great, honey,” he replied with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

  Celia’s smile melted. She moved around to the other side of the bed, sat beside her mother and grabbed her hand protectively. “You don’t believe me.”

  He passed a coffee across. “Of course I do. It’s just, well… ” He sighed. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d watched Alice at the hospital, asking her questions, willing some sort of reaction. It was easy to make a gesture and mistake an errant blink or eye movement for some sort of recovery, then repeat the process and get nothing. “Don’t get your hopes up. It could have been a coincidence.”

  Celia took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed. “I wasn’t imagining it, was I Mum?” she implored.

  Jackman approached the window. “It’s going to be another beautiful day,” he said.

  A movement behind him made him turn back. Christine, one of Alice’s carers had entered the room. “Good Morning, Alice,” she said in her cheery Irish tone. “How are we today?” She nodded at Jackman and Celia. “And you’ve got your family come to see you on your birthday. How nice!”

  Jackman moved to the bedside. “How’s she doing?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Christine said.

  “Have you noticed anything?” Celia said. “Any recognition?”

  Christine rested her hands on her hips. “Can’t say I have, but it’s early days.”

  Celia explained what she thought she saw.

  “Did she, now? Clever girl,” she replied and patted Alice’s arm affectionately. Christine, with her smile that lit up her ruddy face was just the sort of person that Alice would have liked. Jackman was glad.

  Christine bustled around the room, smoothing Alice’s bedclothes, fluffing up her pillows and commenting on her array of cards. Jackman moved across and sat on the armchair in the corner.

  “Can we put a book beside the bed?” Celi
a asked. “To keep a note of when Mum shows some recognition? So that we can see if a pattern emerges.”

  “Well, I shall put it in her notes in the office,” Christine said, “but of course you can keep a book yourselves. Nothing wrong with that.”

  The thought of Celia’s optimism formed a lump in Jackman’s throat. It was easy to imagine something, cling onto a tiny thread of hope, only to find it snap off in front of your face.

  He suddenly felt a warm hand on his shoulder and looked up to find Christine staring back. “We never lose hope,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty

  I sat there, huddled in the corner listening to the staccato of ‘picks’ beside me. The noise was disconcerting. Pick, pick, pick, interspersed, every now and then, with an intermittent throaty tear.

  My new company was bound. Just like me. And somehow they were working on their tape, gradually pulling at the adhesion of the glue.

  Another tear, then a rip. A shuffle. More picking. Though different, louder this time, as if there was more control. Another rip was followed by coughing and spluttering.

  I shrank back. Terror pressed down, suffocating me.

  There was more fidgeting next to me. It seemed to go on for ages.

  Eventually a voice spoke out, “Min, is that you?”

  Goose pimples skittered down my arms. I concentrated hard. The inflection in his voice betrayed his roots. He was Chinese, although not from my province and he spoke in English. Why was he here? I tried to grunt back, but the sounds merged together into a muffled din behind the tape.

  “It’s me, Min. Lonny.”

  Relief choked my voice. I let out a huge whimper. It was somebody I knew, somebody from the college.

  I felt him reach forward. “I’m just going to remove the blindfold.”

  Again in English. But this time I knew why. Lonny was from Hong Kong. His native language of Cantonese couldn’t be more different to my own Mandarin. My mother always said that I shouldn’t have put all my efforts into learning English at the expense of other languages closer to home.