Rosie (71 page)

Rosie froze. She had no doubt Seth was ruthless enough to torch the house. He had nothing more to lose. She had to do what he said.

‘I haven’t come to hurt you. But you got me into this mess and you’ve got to get me out of it,’ he said very softly into her ear. ‘So I’m going to tie you up, then lower you out the window. But just remember when you’re out there in the garden and I’m up here, one sound – just one squeak from you – and I’ll start the fire.’

Rosie knew he meant to hurt her whatever he said, but there was no alternative but to obey him. She couldn’t risk him striking a match. Maybe once they were outside she’d be able to get away.

He rolled her over face down, secured her hands behind her back with a piece of rope, tied her ankles with another, then a third thicker one went around her waist like a noose. For good measure he tied another rag round her mouth to make sure she couldn’t spit out the gag.

As he lifted her up in his arms to bundle her head first out of the window, all Rosie could do was pray that Thomas would hear something and raise the alarm, but she knew that above the noise of the storm it was unlikely.

Rosie only weighed about eight stone, but it was still a heavy load for Seth to hold on to. As he humped her body further and further over the window sill, she had visions of the rope slipping from his hands and her skull crashing on to the terrace below. She had been in this position with him before when she was four or five, dangled head first over the wall of a pig-sty. But then he hadn’t really dared to hurt her.

She was wearing only the skimpiest of nylon pyjamas, and the rope around her middle was cutting painfully into her skin. Miraculously she landed quite gently, but even if she hadn’t been tied hand and foot there was no escape. Seth was still holding the other end of the rope, and as she looked up he was climbing out of her room to join her. She held her breath, afraid he would throw a match before leaving. But he didn’t. He just came silently down the trellis like a monkey.

Thomas woke up suddenly from an unpleasant dream. It was an old one that hadn’t troubled him for some time: all the men were lined up in the boiling sun for ‘Tenko’, waiting for the Japanese guards to discover there was one man missing. The dream was always vivid, and he’d kind of learned to wake himself out of it. But it always left him with the same gut-wrenching terror and cold sweats, even without reaching the part where one of the guards made them kneel on the ground, heads bent, and then proceeded to walk along the line with his sword raised to select someone to behead.

Thomas never understood why this dream persisted. He’d seen men beaten, whipped and shot by guards, but not beheaded. A psychiatrist at the hospital had said he thought the sword was merely symbolic of everything Thomas feared. Perhaps it had come back tonight after months of respite because of his anxiety about Rosie.

When he heard a clap of thunder, Thomas smiled to himself. It was just a storm that had prompted his dream and he got out of bed and hopped across the room to watch it from the window, taking deep breaths of air to banish his nightmare for good.

Lightning flashed and for a second the whole garden was illuminated. He blinked. He thought he’d seen someone running across the lawn with a bundle over their shoulder, but suddenly the garden was in darkness again. For just a second he stood there, swaying a little as he balanced on his one leg, peering out, sure it was a figment of his imagination. But the image didn’t fade from his mind.

He had no crutches or walking stick. So with his empty pyjama-leg flapping, he hopped his way to Rosie’s room and as he opened the door he saw her empty bed and the wide-open window with the curtains blowing in the wind. He also smelled paraffin.

There had been many times since his capture by the Japs that he’d felt utterly impotent, but never quite as badly as this. His mind told him to jump out of the window in pursuit, but he knew it was impossible. Instead, all he could do was scream like a banshee to Frank and Norah as he hopped across the landing.

Donald appeared from his room before Thomas reached his parents’ door.

‘Go and telephone the police,’ Thomas yelled at him. ‘Seth Parker’s got Rosie. He’s making his way over the field at the back.’

He expected Donald to stare at him vacantly, perhaps wasting precious minutes asking questions, but Donald shot along the landing, past Thomas and straight down the stairs, taking them three at a time.

Frank emerged from his room rubbing his eyes, hastily followed by Norah. Thomas told them what he had seen.

‘Check that Donald’s telephoned. I’ll go and put my leg on,’ he said.

He hadn’t even got to his room when Donald called up the stairs.

‘The phone won’t work. It doesn’t even make a funny sound,’ he said with alarm in his voice.

‘I’ll get the policeman outside,’ Frank said, running back to his room to grab his dressing-gown.

Thomas was just finishing strapping on his leg when he heard Norah yell out from the kitchen. He pulled on his trousers over his pyjamas, grabbed his jacket and shoes, and rushed downstairs.

Norah was standing in the kitchen, wringing her hands, her expression one of utter terror. The doors on to the terrace were wide open. Rain was lashing into the room.

‘Donald’s gone after them,’ she cried. ‘Oh Thomas, he’s no match for that man.’

Thomas comforted her as best he could, but there was little he could say to make her feel better. Donald was strong and fit, and he knew his way about the fields. But the chances were that he would blunder after them like an enraged bull and make the situation even more dangerous.

Frank came back in as Thomas was making Norah some tea. He was soaked through, rain running down his face, purple with anger.

‘Some bloody guard! He wasn’t there. I had to bang them up next door to use their telephone,’ he exploded.

‘Are the police coming?’ Thomas asked.

Frank nodded, adding that he hoped they’d send men a little more competent than the one they’d left outside. ‘Let’s hope they switch their sirens on. It might make that animal dump Rosie and run for it.’

As Thomas told Frank about Donald, the older man blanched. ‘Damn him,’ he exploded, thumping a fist on the kitchen table. ‘He’ll just complicate things further.’

‘He went for all the right reasons,’ Thomas reminded him. ‘If I had two good legs, I’d be out there now too.’

When the first lot of police arrived some ten minutes later, along with the one who should have been outside, both Frank and Norah had dressed. While two of the men went out into the garden with flashlights, Thomas took the third man, an older officer, upstairs and showed him Rosie’s room. The smell of paraffin was still strong, but there was no sign of any having been spilled. They thought perhaps Seth had got it on his clothes while he was holed up somewhere.

Thomas demanded to know why the man supposed to be guarding the house had disappeared, and why indeed they hadn’t watched the back of the house too. The officer said he would look into it, and hurriedly left to join his colleagues, who were now over the wall and into the field.

It had been twenty-five past two when Thomas came down to the kitchen to hear that Donald had gone. He reckoned it must have been about fifteen minutes earlier that Rosie was snatched. Now as they waited in the kitchen, desperate for news or something constructive to do, the minutes seemed like hours.

For some time after the police had left, they all reassured one another by speaking of the reinforcements the police had said were coming, the road-blocks being set up, and the promises they’d been given that Donald would be found and brought home immediately. But as time went on they all sank deep into their own thoughts.

Norah silently busied herself by making a pile of sandwiches and a large thermos of coffee. She covered the sandwiches in a damp tea towel, took a pile of small plates from the cupboard and placed them in readiness along with some cups, almost as if she was anticipating a party. But her fear was evident in her jerky movements and her compulsion to constantly wipe down surfaces. Her usually calm, grey-blue eyes were dark with anxiety; her lips trembled as if she was on the verge of breaking down.

Frank appeared to be in a stupor, his chin embedded in his chest. His customary ruddiness, which had always advertised his good health, now seemed dangerously livid. The veins in his forehead were swollen and throbbed visibly.

Earlier they had spoken of Michael and Susan and discussed briefly how, even if their phone line hadn’t been cut, it would be unfair to wake them with bad news. Yet Thomas knew they both wished their two older children would suddenly appear at the door.

Thomas felt deeply for this couple he had come to know so well. Some time ago they had told him about that day years ago when the little girl from their village went missing. He knew they were reliving it now, experiencing the same terror her parents had felt all through that long night as search parties combed the woods and fields.

Donald might be a man in most people’s eyes, but to them he was still a small boy, who was out there, barefooted in a storm, following a murderer who might very well kill or maim him too. He could almost hear their agonized thoughts. Why hadn’t they sent both Rosie and Donald to their son’s in Tunbridge Wells for safety once they knew Seth Parker was the killer of the two women? And why had they been foolish enough to trust the police to be vigilant?

But while Thomas acknowledged Frank and Norah’s plight, he felt his own pain was far greater. The war had robbed him of his mother, his youth and his leg. As if that wasn’t enough, his sister had been taken from him too. Then, like a miracle, his friendship with Rosie had wiped out the bitterness inside him. Right from the time that she’d written those first letters when she was with the Bentleys, she’d enriched his life with her courage and endurance.

Now he might never see her again, and there was so much he wanted to share with her – that he’d finally been brave enough to show his paintings to Paul Brett, an art-gallery owner in Hampstead, just the day before coming down here; that he felt he was on the brink of something wonderful.

Rosie had inspired him, and yet now she might never see that painting which had impressed Paul Brett so much. He’d painted it from memory: a little curly-haired ragamuffin with defiant eyes peeping from behind a wild rose bush.

He couldn’t even go outside and join the search for her. One step on uneven and slippery ground and he’d fall over. He was about as much use to the woman he loved as a chocolate fireguard.

Donald, meanwhile, wasn’t quite as incapable of thinking clearly as his parents believed. Though he was angry and upset, he still had the presence of mind to grab a dark mackintosh that had once belonged to Michael from a peg in the hall, slip his feet into his gardening shoes, and take the big torch his father used for looking at his car engine in the dark.

He also knew from comics that if you wanted to catch someone by surprise, you had to be quiet and stay invisible. The moment he got out in the field he rubbed mud all over his face and hair. He’d seen someone do that in a film.

Being quick seemed to be the most important thing at first, so he ran like the wind across the field until he reached the stile at the far end, but from there on he flashed the light every now and then to check for tracks. There were clear boot marks in the mud, and imprints of bare toes, which had to be Rosie’s. The bad man was taking her to the woods.

It was only as Donald approached the woods that he became scared. He’d never been in them before at night and every tree trunk had a nasty, leering face on it. He stopped for a minute, too frightened to go any further, but as he stood there he heard noises above the drumming of the rain on the trees – cracking, rustling noises and not that far ahead of him. Knowing that Rosie was there, even more scared than he was, gave him new courage. His eyes had grown more used to the dark now, and he did know the woods very well. He didn’t dare switch on the torch again, so he tucked it into his pocket and picked up a big stout stick.

He kept to the well-worn path. The man and Rosie were over to his left and pushing through the undergrowth, but his path gradually wound round towards their direction. If he was quick and quiet he could get in front of them, just like the Wicked Wolf did in Little Red Riding Hood.

His plan worked. After walking quickly for about twenty minutes he stopped to listen and he heard them coming towards him.

‘Move it,’ the man said in a gruff voice, and Donald heard a sound like a cane swishing through the air. It was as if the man had beaten her, but Rosie didn’t cry out; there was just a noise like one of them stumbling over something.

Donald hid behind the biggest tree trunk. He wished he’d brought his balaclava he wore in winter. He was afraid his blond hair would show up.

But all at once they stopped moving. Donald strained his ears to listen. He could hear strange sounds but couldn’t identify them. He waited, not knowing what to do now, and then the man spoke again.

‘This is as far as you’re going,’ he said.

Donald was relieved at that. He thought the man was going to leave Rosie there and go on alone. He must know the police would be coming to get him. That made it much easier for Donald: he would just wait till the man had gone, and then take Rosie home.

But as the minutes ticked by and the man didn’t move in his direction but just stayed there making funny rustling noises, Donald got anxious. He began to creep closer towards them.

‘Keep still, you bitch. I can’t get it in,’ the man suddenly exclaimed, and instinctively Donald knew he was trying to do something very bad to her.

Rosie was beside herself with terror. From the moment Seth had hiked her roughly over the garden wall, then untied her feet so she could walk, she knew he was planning to either kill her or leave her so badly hurt she’d wish she was dead. She couldn’t get away from him. He still had the rope tied tightly around her waist, and if she stopped walking he just dragged her or kicked her along. The cloth in her mouth was making her feel sick, and the one he’d used to keep it in place stank of paraffin. All at once she realized that he’d fooled her back in the house. He hadn’t spilt paraffin, it was just this cloth she’d smelled.