Kim wasn’t sure if she was imagining the grudging peace that had settled between them. A few spores of animosity seemed to have dispersed, despite the silence.
She had never told a soul what had happened between them in the locker room or the events leading up to it. That day had been totally out of character for the man beside her. She had known there was something wrong with him. His mood had been pensive but contained, until that cocky fifteen-year-old had spat at him. Most police officers Kim knew preferred to be hit than spat at. But it hadn’t warranted her colleague pinning him to a wall and punching him in the stomach. More blows would have followed had she not pulled him away in time. Back-up had arrived seconds later. He had refused to offer any explanation as he’d driven them both back to the station.
Had she known the truth, perhaps she wouldn’t have followed him into the locker room, demanding answers. Maybe she would have given him the space he’d asked for, begged for, before lashing out.
She parked the car and, in what had now become a familiar pattern, Travis began walking away before she’d locked the doors.
But two steps later, he paused and waited.
‘Listen, about…’
His words trailed away as her phone began to ring.
‘On our way,’ Kim said after Doctor A’s name flashed onto the screen.
‘Where exactly are you?’ she asked, breathlessly.
‘Walking into the hospital,’ Kim said.
‘Then I suggest you stop walking and run.’
Doctor A ended the call, and Kim quickened her step. Travis did not follow. She looked behind.
‘Listen, Stone, I need to say something.’
And much as Kim wanted to hear what Travis had to say, it would just have to wait.
Doctor A’s request was urgent.
SEVENTY-TWO
18 OCTOBER 1989
Jacob had heard nothing since Devorah had been taken from the room.
He was guessing it had been about an hour but time was doing strange things in his head. The darkness around him seemed to have infected his mind, burrowed in through his ears and left a dark mist of confusion.
He hadn’t had a drink since the drugged water, and he wasn’t even certain now when he’d last eaten. The only thing he knew for sure was that his body was rebelling against him. Exhaustion, hunger and fear had sapped every last ounce of energy from his muscles and yet he knew he had to be prepared for whatever opportunity might appear.
Eventually they would come for him, and he had to be ready.
He pushed himself to a standing position and shook his legs one at a time. He raised his bound wrists high above his head to stretch the tension from his back and shoulders.
He brought his right knee up towards his chin, trying to shake the fatigue from the muscles.
He pictured the Rocky films where Sylvester Stallone used every basic method at his disposal to train for a big fight. All he had was a floor and four walls. How could he prepare his body for a fight in a square box?
He could move, that’s how, he told himself. He could walk; he could bend; he could flex and stretch. Or he could do nothing.
He paced forward in the darkness.
His right foot met with something on the floor. He reached out and felt in front of him. There was nothing. He had not hit the wall.
His mind registered that the object was not hard or cold like the brickwork surrounding him. It was fabric.
He moved his foot around, as though stroking the object.
There was something solid beneath the cloth. He prodded it with his toe.
Nothing.
He dropped to his knees and began to feel around. His hands landed on something firm beneath the fabric. He squeezed.
‘Oh no,’ he whispered into the darkness.
He felt his way to the end of the material.
He reached a sewn in cuff at the bottom of a trouser leg, and then flesh.
His stomach travelled up to his throat as his mind seized on a horrific possibility.
‘Devorah?’ he whispered.
No response.
‘Devorah?’ he cried out.
Nothing.
He grabbed the ankle hard and began to shake it.
‘Wake up, please, wake up.’
There was no movement.
How had they brought her back when he’d been conscious since she’d been dragged away? Hadn’t he? He was no longer sure of anything.
His touch landed on something cool and hard. A shoe. He used both hands to feel around it. Leather upper, no heel and bigger than the average female.
The person lying in front of him was a man.
‘Mate, wake up,’ he said, shaking the leg.
He worked his way up the body, pushing and rocking as he went.
Was this another victim? Had this poor soul been snatched too?
Perhaps he’d been drugged by the water just like him.
Come on, he prayed silently as all kinds of scenarios flashed through his mind. With two of them, they had a chance.
‘Mate, you gotta wake up,’ he called out as his hands worked across a broad set of shoulders. The figure was half lying and half sitting against the wall.
He shook the man forcefully. He felt the weight of the head loll sideways.
An unwelcome thought began to form in his mind.
His fingers travelled up from the shoulder blades to the neck and stayed there, praying for a pulse.
He waited, while silently willing to feel something.
He moved his fingers around and waited again.
There was nothing.
The man before him was dead.
Jacob felt the threat of tears at the back of his throat. He hadn’t cried in years. Not since losing Freya to leukaemia but right now he was struggling to hold them back.
For just a few moments, hope had surged within Jacob. Hope that he could escape. Hope that he would be reunited with his daughter. The hope had been sudden and unexpected and now cruelly ripped away.
He had no strength, no weapon and no clue as to why he’d been snatched from his life.
But he now knew with certainty that he was never going to see Adaje again.
The sudden sound of the key in the lock startled him.
Whatever it was that he’d been chosen for, whatever use they had for him, had arrived. The only things in this room were himself and a dead man, and there was little more they could do with him.
‘Where’s the girl?’ Jacob asked, as three torchlights shone right at him. ‘Where’s Devorah?’
‘None of your fucking business, now get to your feet.’
Jacob stayed where he was.
‘Just tell me, what’s happened to her?’ he asked.
The men laughed in a way that chilled Jacob to the bone.
‘It’s all right fella, you’re about to find out.’
SEVENTY-THREE
‘What’s the urgency?’ Kim asked, stepping through the doors.
Kim immediately noted that Doctor A looked paler than she had all week. She looked to the gurneys.
Doctor A came to stand beside her.
‘That is all the bones we are having,’ she said quietly.
Kim looked along the row. She knew victim one to be Jacob James. Victim two was an unidentified male around the age of thirty.
‘Victim three?’ Kim asked.