No Good Reason (12 page)

“Hey,” she said, and Emily jerked her head up. She began to stand, but Meg waved her down and walked to the foot of the bed. “Great minds think alike, eh?”

“Apparently so.” Emily was perched uneasily on the edge of her chair. She touched her fingers to the bed sheets, several inches away from the woman’s hand, and then leaned back again without making contact. “I’m on my break.”

“Yeah, me too.” Meg felt a twinge of guilt. She had been so intent yesterday on running the trauma and keeping an eye on Sanne that she hadn’t thought to check how Emily was. Judging by the dark shadows beneath her eyes and by her presence in the ITU, she was far from all right. She also appeared to be on the verge of bolting, so Meg shifted her scrutiny to the woman’s chart instead, which provided her with a conversation opener.

“Did you read this? She’s a hell of a lot better than I expected.”

Emily’s demeanour brightened a fraction. “I know. Dr. Maxwell was here when I came in. If she continues to improve at this rate, he’s going to try waking her tomorrow afternoon.”

Meg nodded, her finger tracking the lines of figures and notes. After coping well with the surgery, the woman had responded to the drugs treating the cerebral oedema and shown no further signs of bleeding. She was running a mild temperature, but otherwise her observations were within normal parameters, and her latest blood results were promising. Taking the opportunity to look at her without having to focus on her injuries, or what treatments might be necessary, Meg saw a woman who must have been slim even before her recent weight loss. Her broad shoulders spoke of an athleticism probably associated with swimming or climbing, but whatever her sport, her fitness had stood her in good stead. It would have allowed her to quickly metabolise the drugs her assailant had pumped into her, given her the strength to escape, and helped her to survive the additional insult of her severe injuries.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Emily’s soft question cut into Meg’s train of thought. There were tears brimming in her eyes.

Meg gave her a canteen napkin and sat in an adjacent chair, watching her try to avoid smearing her mascara. “I’ve treated rape and assault victims, but nothing where the suffering has been so prolonged or so fucking vindictive.” She took a breath that smelled incongruously of crumble and antiseptic. Although the arm lying across the woman’s abdomen was wrapped in bandages, Meg couldn’t forget the damage concealed beneath. Like an animal trapped in a snare, the woman had almost degloved her hand trying to undo her bonds.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Emily whispered. “I couldn’t even lie in bed. I just walked, room to room. I tried to watch something or read something, but mostly I just walked.”

“Didn’t do too brilliantly myself,” Meg said. “Do you need to speak to someone? There are counsellors in the department, peer support…” She trailed off as Emily shook her head.

“It’s okay. This has helped. Thanks.” Emily began to collect the pieces of the napkin she had unconsciously shredded. “They won’t let me come in here again if I leave a mess.”

Meg gathered a couple of strips from the floor and dropped them into Emily’s palm. “If they’re okay with me bringing my lunch in, I think they’ll overlook a bit of tissue.”

“It smells really good. What did you get?” Emily asked, and then looked mortified when her stomach rumbled.

“Enough apple crumble to feed the five thousand. I’ll go and cadge another spoon and dish from the nurses.” Meg tapped the overbed table with her plastic spoon to overrule Emily’s weak signs of protest. “You’ll be doing me a favour by helping me eat it. If you make me finish all this by myself, I’ll curl up in the corner there and sleep through the rest of the shift.”

*

“G’back, g’back, g’back!”

A tan-and-white ball of feathers shot up from the heather in front of Sanne and hurtled out of harm’s way, its warning screech giving an air of foreboding to hills blazing beneath a glorious sunset.

“What on earth was that?” Nelson had his hand on his heart, as if checking for a terror-induced arrhythmia.

“Grouse,” Sanne said. “I think they get a kick out of scaring folk half to death.” The birds were a common feature of the moors, lying out of sight until unwitting hikers happened upon them, and then flying to safety in a clamour of wings and cackling.

Nelson dabbed his brow with his hanky. “No wonder people shoot the buggers.”

Her answering smile faded as Carlyle’s voice came across the comms.

“Jensen, Turay. Status report, please.”

Nelson gesticulated in a way that would have made his mother blush. Sanne slapped his arm.

“At least he said please,” she mouthed silently. Then, speaking aloud, “Just reached the tarn, Sarge. Nothing found so far.”

“Copy that,” Carlyle said, and Sanne listened to similar negative updates from the remaining officers on Corvenden Moss.

After hearing about their earlier find, Carlyle had become keen to lead the second stage of the search. The team up top hadn’t wasted daylight waiting for him to join them, but as soon as he had made it onto Laddaw Ridge, he had taken great delight in interfering. On his orders, Sanne and Nelson had followed a path that meandered through rocks for twenty minutes before trying to lead them off a precipice.

Considering that particular assignment at an end, they had spread their map out across the heather, and, on Sanne’s prompting, decided to take a narrow track toward a tarn near the base of Gillot Tor. The tarn itself wasn’t large enough to warrant a name, and the area around it appeared isolated, hemmed in by a succession of rock formations and the cliffs of the tor. On the map, a sporadic rash of red triangles to its west marked blocked-off potholes and unsafe entrances to a rudimentary cave system.

The warning icons pulled Sanne in like a siren’s call. She knew there were other possibilities, most of them more likely than this one, but she couldn’t move away from the thought that, somewhere close by, the perp might have constructed a makeshift dungeon. Although Gillot Tor was a mile beyond the established search boundary, that boundary was only an estimate. Another mile might not mean much to someone running for her life.

Afraid that Nelson would advise caution, Sanne hadn’t voiced any of this to him. One word of dissent and she would have had to cede to his better judgement. But it wasn’t as if she was planning to go potholing. She just wanted to get near enough to Gillot Tor to get a feel for it, and if they got to the tarn and then decided to go a little farther, where was the harm in that?

In the end, Nelson’s ineptitude with a map had made things simple for her. He had followed her lead without question. All that remained for her to do was convince Carlyle it had been his idea.

Her toes just touching the spongy shore of the tarn, she knelt and dipped her fingers into its water. This one was clearer than the last. Instead of disappearing in its murky depths, her hand remained visible, tinted brownish-orange and coated with tiny flecks of peat. The water was warm on the surface, so she plunged her hand deeper, allowing the chill to numb her fingers, before pulling them out and placing them onto her forehead. She closed her eyes in pleasure as the heat there dissipated. The crack of Nelson’s knees and a soft splash of water told her he was following her example.

They didn’t rest for long. There was no obvious path, so they used the patches of vegetation as stepping stones to circle the tarn without soaking their boots. The air was cooler here, the rocks and the steep hillside channelling the wind and casting the moor into shadow. The droplets of water at Sanne’s hairline soon made her face cold, and her damp shirt clung to her unpleasantly.

“Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the sun.” She could see goose pimples rising on Nelson’s arms as he nodded.

“That poor girl,” he said. “Escaping from God only knows what and finding herself in the middle of this.”

Sanne had spent the day trying not to think about such things, and the unwelcome reminder sent a prickle of goose pimples across her own skin. If the woman had screamed, the only response she would have heard was an echo. It must have been terrifying.

Shaking off the image, Sanne returned her attention to the ground, scanning for signs that anyone had recently passed that way. The cotton grass and heather sprang back into shape the moment she lifted each foot, making it unlikely they would find a discernible trail, but there was a chance that the peat would hold a footprint.

“This is bloody daft,” Nelson muttered, pulling his leg from a bog he hadn’t spotted. The peat made an obscene sucking sound as it released his foot. “We’re both knackered, we can’t see properly any more, we’re miles away from the pick-up point, and I need a wee.”

“Go for a wild one.” Sanne consulted the map, altered her heading slightly to aim for the caves, and set off again. “I promise I won’t look.”

“Of all the people on this moor, San, you’re the least likely to sneak a peek.”

“True. Carlyle would probably insist on comparing sizes.”

Nelson let out a bark of laughter. “He’d lose,” he said and ducked between two rocks.

Leaving him to it, Sanne scrambled into a grough that threaded up toward the side of the hill. Wind gusted through the passage, blowing grit into her eyes and lashing the straps of her rucksack against her. She heard Nelson shout her name, and as she took a breath to reply, the cold air made her cough. Her eyes watering, she sneezed twice and fumbled for a tissue to blow her nose.

“Nelson?” She pulled the tissue away from her face and sneezed again. “Fuck. Nelson?”

“San? You okay?” He appeared over the ridge of the grough. Crouching down on its edge, he regarded her with a concerned expression.

“I can smell smoke,” she said. “Can you see a fire?”

He scrambled quickly up out of sight again, no doubt sharing the same thought: that the recent hot weather had left the moor as dry as a tinderbox, and one carelessly discarded cigarette would be enough to spark it up.

“I can’t see anything,” he yelled back. Then, softer and closer, as if he’d got down from a high vantage point, “No smoke. No fire. Are you sure?”

She had walked farther up the grough, and she was sure. Her pulse beat against her temples, and she cried out when a hand closed around her arm.

“Fucking hell!” She whipped around, leading with her fist and forcing Nelson to step hastily out of her range.

“Easy, partner.”

She bent over, panting. Somewhere beyond the sound of her own gasps, she heard him sniff the air experimentally.

“Definitely smoke,” he said as she straightened. “I’ll call it in, just in case.”

She put her hand on his, stopping him from activating his radio. “And then what? We just wait for Carlyle’s Cavalry to arrive?”

That gave him pause. He allowed her to lower his hand.

“Why don’t we see what there is to call in, first?” She could hardly believe she was making the suggestion, but they were going to get summoned back to the pick-up point within the hour, and she couldn’t bear the thought of going home empty-handed, when they might be on the verge of a genuine break in the case. “Ten minutes? If we don’t reach the source by then, or we spot a moor fire, we’ll call it in.”

He checked his watch and nodded slowly. “Okay. Ten minutes. Go.”

She set off before she could second-guess her decision. The gully was gently sloping and easy to negotiate. Keeping to its centre and away from its friable edges, she broke into a trot. The smell of burning gradually became stronger even as she became less convinced that the moor was on fire. In her earpiece, Carlyle barked an order to regroup on Laddaw Ridge. Ignoring him, she dragged herself above the lip of the grough and crouched there, coughing against the irritation in her throat. By the time Nelson joined her, she had her torch pointed at a thin plume of grey.

“Bingo,” she said.

The torch picked out a dark circle, half buried by a rock fall, almost invisible except for the thread of smoke guiding the eye.

Without speaking, Nelson helped her up, and they walked toward the narrow gap. She could hear him breathing heavily as they drew closer, and wondered whether he too was afraid that someone might be lying in wait to attack them. They had no weapons, nothing with which to defend themselves, and their backup was currently heading in the other direction, toward Laddaw. She strained to listen for any sounds that were out of the ordinary, but there was only the crunch of heather beneath their boots, and the rustle of wind through the cotton grass. She was beginning to relax, when Nelson grabbed her arm.

“Jesus! What?”

“Look.” He swirled his torch beam to direct her attention.

She saw what he was indicating, and dismissed her fears of ambush. Whoever had started this fire must be long gone, otherwise he would have ensured that nothing was left for them to find.

“I’ll have to call it in now, San.”

“I know. I guess he didn’t pitch that tent after all.”

She felt like crying, not out of sadness but out of anger that someone could have dragged another human being to a place like this, bound her, abused her, and then left her alone. She stared at the hole that led into the depths of Gillot Tor. In front of it, smoke drifted and danced in the breeze. A little came from the cave itself, but most was rising up from the remains of a wooden pallet by the entrance. The wood was charred but not destroyed, and even from a distance Sanne was certain of one thing: it would be a match for the splinters SOCO had pulled from the woman’s feet.

The rock was coarse and unforgiving beneath Sanne’s buttocks. She wondered whether the old wives’ tale was true, whether sitting on cold, hard surfaces for a prolonged time really did cause haemorrhoids, and, if so, what exactly a haemorrhoid was and how she would know if she had one. She made a mental note to ask Meg, whenever she was finally allowed to go home.

“So, can either of you explain that to me? Jensen?”

In front of her, his hair aflame in the glow of a torch, and his face only a shade less red, Carlyle seemed to be waiting for a response. As she had missed the first part of his question and couldn’t tell him why she’d not been paying attention, she looked to Nelson for assistance.