Chasing Can Be Murder (27 page)

After sliding the heavy door open, Ben shone his torch inside. Twenty pens on either side, each wide enough for a pig to stand but not turn around or lie down in comfort. Under the fear for Erin’s safety, I felt anger biting away at my insides and vowed never to eat bacon again. Living conditions for these porkers was on a par with battery hens. Evidently the pigs in the outside pens were kept for breeding and the ones inside were fattened for market.

We peered into the first pen. Immediately every pig in the barn woke up and began squealing in excitement. Probably thought it was feed time.

“Jesus!” hissed Ben. “I bet the guy who looks after this lot wears earplugs.”

“Switch on the light, Ben. There’s no windows in the barn so the most anyone will see from outside is a slit under the door. If Erin’s in here we don’t want to miss her in the dark.”

Ben reached up with one long arm and yanked on a cord dangling from the ceiling. Instantly the big shed was bathed in artificial light, so bright, it made me blink.

“Okay, we’ll check it out and then vamoose before the owners return.”

It only took a minute to realize Erin wasn’t in any of the pens. Hell, there was barely room for a pig.

Ben shook his head in defeat. “That’s it then,” he said and reached up to turn off the light. “We ring the cops and pray they find Erin before she’s hurt.”

That’s when I spotted what looked like a large cupboard set smack up against the back wall.

“Hang on,” I said grabbing his arm. “What’s in there?”

“Probably more feed,” said Ben, moving out of reach of an inquisitive pig that wanted to smell his crutch. “What else would they store in a pig barn?”

“If it’s only feed—why is there a dirty great padlock on the door? There must be something they don’t want anyone to find. Pigs are clever but not clever enough to need a padlock to keep them out of their feed cupboard.” I grabbed Ben by the sleeve and tugged. “Come on, let’s look for the key.”

There was no garden gnome nearby. No key strategically placed on a large nail on the wall beside the cupboard.

And it was four minutes to kenneling.

“My Grandma always kept her spare key in a biscuit barrel,” Ben informed me.

I was down on hands and knees searching the pit at the end of the sewerage drain for the key. I glanced up, gave him a
duh
look. “And that’s going to help us because…”

“There’s a biscuit barrel over on that shelf.”

“Well, don’t stand there catching flies,” I told him deciding there was no key in the drain and scrambling to my feet. “Look inside.”

Crowding up against him, I watched Ben lift the chipped china lid, draw out a large key and hold it in the air. He grinned.

“Okay, okay, you’re a genius. Don’t waste time crowing, see if it fits the keyhole.”

The key slid easily into the lock and turned. Heart forgetting to beat, I held my breath while Ben unhooked the padlock, slid the bolt across and threw the door wide open.

“Aaaaaaaaaargh!”

A dark whirlwind hurled itself through the open doorway. Head-butted Ben in the stomach and when he hunched over with an
oomph,
bashed him on the head with a great lump of wood.

I stared in horror as Ben staggered, let out a muffled groan and sank to his knees on the dirty cement floor.

26

“Erin?”

The small creature stopped in mid-swing and stared up at me. Eyes hostile, hair matted, teeth snarling like a cornered animal.

And here I was expecting to find her a cringing wreck.

Bottom lip quivering, Erin slowly let the lump of wood slide from her fingers. “What took you guys so long?”

“Come here,” I squealed, opening both arms wide. She threw herself at me. “Your father says he’s going to lock you in your room until you’re twenty-one,” I told her, sniffing back tears and hugging her. She clung on tight, both arms wound around my waist, her small body trembling. “Thank God we’ve found you.”

There was a low moan from the cement floor. I looked over Erin’s head. Oh yes…Ben. Clutching his stomach with one hand and his head with the other, he stumbled to his feet and blinked.

“Jesus! What hit me?” Still holding his stomach, Ben bent over, scooped his hat off the ground and shakily returned it to his head. “Don’t suppose you caught the number of the truck that ran over me, did you, Kat?”

I squeezed Erin harder.

“Sorry, Ben,” she mumbled into my chest. “I thought you were one of them mean guys come to hurt me again.”

“’S all right, kid. I’ll survive.” His face screwed in a grimace, Ben rubbed the side of his head and let his breath hiss through his teeth. “I think.”

Erin gave Ben a defiant look. “I wriggled the leg off the bed.”

“Clever girl.”

Holding Erin close with one arm, I poked my nose into the cupboard and my brain frosted over. Jesus, with my claustrophobia I’d have been screaming and battering the walls within two minutes of being locked in there. The cupboard was smaller than a bathroom, and even with the lights on in the barn the space was dark—with the door closed and the lights off Erin would have been trapped in smothering blackness. I looked at my
pain in the butt
tormentor with renewed admiration. For two days that kid had been sitting on a tiny makeshift bed with one pillow, an army blanket, a plastic bucket for a toilet and the remains of a candle stump in a bottle.

Erin snorted when she saw me check out the candle. “The mean guy said I might burn down his stupid barn so he took away the matches.”

I hugged her tighter. Never again would I call this little girl
Devil’s Spawn
.

By this time Ben had staggered towards the barn door and cranked it open. “Ring Jake,” he yelled over the noise of the pigs. “And then let’s get the hell out of here, while we still can.”

I glanced at my watch. Two minutes to kenneling. Scooting towards the barn door, I punched in Jake’s number, let it ring three times then disconnected.

No chewing gum for Lofty tonight.

I’d just tapped in Tanya’s number when Ben, who’d been scouting around outside, ducked back behind the barn door and grabbed me by the arm. His fingers so insistent, they almost cut off my circulation.

“A truck just turned into the driveway.”

“Tanya!” I yelled into the phone. “We’ve found Erin and she’s okay. Can’t talk now. Gotta go.”

Ben stole another peek around the door just as a strong white light illuminated the front of the barn. “Looks like three of them,” he said. “One guy’s got a searchlight and another one’s jumped off the back of the truck. Oh! Uh! He’s coming this way.” Ben withdrew his head so quickly it’s a wonder the blood didn’t burst through his ear drums. As he swiveled around to speak, the white-faced, incredulous look he gave me almost made me wet my pants. “Jesus,” he whispered, eyes as big as Ferris wheels, mouth down around his knees. “He has a fucking machine gun!”

For a moment his words failed to compute. And then survival instincts kicked in, snapping my mouth shut and kicking my brain into top gear. We needed a distraction. And we needed it fast.

“Let the pigs out!” I screamed and began running along the aisle.

Fortunately, Ben cottoned on immediately. While I opened the gates on one side of the barn, he covered the gates on the other side. Erin, still surprising us with her fortitude, shouted and shooed the milling pigs toward the open barn door.

“Okay, I think we’ve outstayed our welcome!” I yelled. “Keep together, crouch down and use the pigs as a shield.”

Grabbing Erin’s hand I bent double and followed Ben, pushing through the sea of squealing pink until we were outside, running along the blind side of the barn.

Almost to the end of the building, I glanced over my shoulder and froze, heart rate hitting triple figures. The goon with the Big Momma of a machine gun had turned the corner and was aiming the lethal weapon at me. Time slowed and almost came to a standstill. As I thought,
why isn’t my life flashing before my eyes
and answered my own question with—
probably because until now it had always been so bloody boring
—a hundred pound porker, intent on following his mates at any cost, smacked into Big Gun Man. Sent him sprawling in the mud, face first. Then as Big Gun Man flailed around on the ground, the gun fired a flurry of bullets into the air and another six pigs, screaming in terror, trampled the shooter even deeper into the mud.

“Kat!” yelled Ben, grabbing my arm and dragging Erin and me behind him. “Stop gawping and move!”

Earlier, Ben had parked his van in an empty driveway about a mile away and we’d approached the piggery by foot. Now, after a frantic 000 call to alert the police of our sticky situation, we took off through the scrub in the vague direction of the car. Ben fell over a log and I cut myself on a barbed wire fence, but torchlight was vetoed for fear of being followed—yet, if there’d been an Olympic event that included racing across country in the dark, I reckon we would have been awarded the gold medal.

Totally exhausted, we finally found the van and scrambled inside. My wheeze was louder than a freight train. Even Ben was gasping. Erin, although covered in mud, was the only one not breathing like there was no tomorrow.

“We going home now?” she asked clambering over me to position herself in the middle of the front seat.

“Sure thing, kid,” Ben gasped and puffed and fished around in his pocket for his mobile. “But first we have to stop off at the police station.”

“But I want to go home.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll text your mum and dad. Get them to meet us at the Owen police station and they’ll take you home from there.”

While Ben sent off a text message to Tanya, Erin wriggled closer to me, finally dropping her head on my chest.

“You okay, love?” I asked, smoothing damp hair away from her forehead.

“Mmmm.” She wiped her nose on her shirt sleeve. “Just wish I’d hit one of those mean guys ’stead of Ben.”

“Me too, little mate.” Ben, message dispatched, leant over and gently wiped a tear from Erin’s cheek. “You sure pack a wallop, kid. Guess I’ll have a headache for a week.”

At that moment six police cars, sirens screaming, red and blue lights flashing, hurtled past the driveway, doing at least a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour.

“Let’s hope the cops get there in time to catch the kidnappers,” I growled turning on the car radio to listen to Lofty’s race.

“Rotten mongrels,” agreed Ben.

“Mean guys,” snarled Erin.

By the time I’d tuned the radio into the racing station, greyhounds were being boxed for the eighth race at Globe Raceway. I crossed my fingers and grinned at Ben. In a disbelieving voice, the race caller was informing the betting public that Big Mistake had drifted to the extraordinary long odds of 6/1, while Forever Mine had shot into short-priced favoritism.

“The bunny’s on its way.” The caller’s low-pitched voice held a note of anticipation. “And they’re racing. Big Mistake jumps straight to the front….”

“Go, Lofty!” I shouted performing a sitting-down version of a Snoopy dance with my feet, hands, and head.

The further the race progressed, the further Lofty increased his lead, until he flew past the post ten lengths ahead of the field. My dance grew wilder and my grin broader.

“Woo! Hoo! There’ll be a bowl of ice cream with your favorite topping for you tonight, Lofty, you big gorgeous boy.”

“Well, that should make Peter Manning happy,” Ben said slipping the key into the ignition. “Who knows, he might even throw you a decent trainer’s bonus this time.”

Bonus or not, Lofty was the winner and Mr. Big the loser. Still buzzing from the win, I grinned down at Erin. Her returning smile, barely twitching the corners of her mouth, plunged my euphoria into the vicinity of my boots. Erin had wriggled so close to me during the race she was almost sitting on my lap. What nightmare must this kid have been through?

“Do you want to talk about it, sweetie?”

She didn’t answer, just played with the end of her ponytail as though it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“After you spoke to me on the phone, someone knocked on the door. Was it the kidnappers?”

She nodded. “I thought it was Dad’s mate...you know...come to pick me up,” she told me, her voice reed thin and coming in short bursts. “But when I opened the door there were two men there. They yelled at me and pushed me against the wall and I got real scared. I-I think they put a rag over my face. I dunno. I must have gone to sleep.”

“And when you woke up?”

“I felt heaps giddy and my stomach hurt. I wanted to chuck. And…and it was dark...and...I really, really wanted my mum.”

She buried her head in my chest, muffling the sound of her tears. As I rocked her trembling body I heard a soft expletive from Ben. “It’s okay, love,” he said, his voice strained, as though holding back a string of virulent swear words. He reached over and rubbed her back. “No one can get to you now. You’re safe with us.”

Erin slowly sat up, sniffed, and looked up at me through wide wet eyes. “And then the real gross one, the one with hair in his ears, he came in with this other guy. Said he’d cut my tongue out if I didn’t do as he said. I was so scared, Kat. Specially when he showed me this real sharp knife he had in his hand.” I watched, helpless as shivers jagged through Erin’s body. But the torturous memories didn’t stop her from continuing. “I told them my mum would beat them up if they hurt me. They just laughed. Then the gross one punched me in the stomach and made me spew up. And then...he locked the door and I was in the dark again.”

Hot tears prickled behind my eyes. With teeth clamped in my bottom lip, I held her against me. What sort of lowlife scumbag mongrel terrorized a kid, punched her in the stomach and then locked her in a dark cupboard? Over the top of Erin’s head, I watched Ben’s eyes grow fierce, his lips grimace into a snarl and we exchanged a silent pact—if the cops didn’t catch Erin’s kidnappers, we would.

“I tried not to be scared,” Erin snuffled. “I even thought up a plan.” Suddenly defiant, she pulled away from me and turned toward Ben. “That’s why I twisted the post off the bed,” she told him. “My plan would have worked too. Wouldn’t it Ben? I’d have knocked one of those guys out with the wooden post and escaped. Wouldn’t I?”