26

IT WAS A DARK and stormy night and the last bus was late. Or Becky Cobb had missed it. She was so drunk she kept forgetting which was most likely.

She frowned at the watch Jordan had given her for her eighteenth birthday, and saw that it had stopped. She shook her wrist and it started again. It really was a piece of shit, but how could she not wear it? He’d only want to know where it was if she didn’t. It was a fake Rolex he’d got in Morocco for Asda price and it looked great – apart from the green mark it left around her wrist – but when it came to telling the time it was as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Becky shivered. Seizures Palace was always hot – warmed by the sheer number of bodies on the dance floor and crowding the bar – so Becky was wearing long black boots, a micro-miniskirt and a pink polo-neck sweater that was all neck and barely any sweater, because it showed off her belly ring. It was her latest acquisition and therefore demanded to be displayed, whatever the cost to her health. Now the warmth of other bodies was wearing off fast and she rubbed her arms and looked up and down Bideford Quay, as though she could conjure a bus out of thin air.

She decided to call Jordan. He’d be cross that she’d woken him, because he worked shifts, but it was his fault for buying her a fake watch, so she didn’t feel too bad.

For a moment she thought she had already called him, and wondered how long he would be and did she have time to nip behind a car for a wee? Then she remembered that she hadn’t called him, and needed her phone if she was going to.

Becky staggered a little with the effort of peering into her handbag. Why didn’t they make them white inside, so a person had a bloody chance? Especially in the dark.

‘Sorry to wake you, Jordy, but my watch stopped and I’ve missed the last bus home.’ That’s what she would say when he answered.

When he answered.

The phone went to voicemail, so she hung up and tried again.

Still Jordan didn’t answer.

‘Bastard,’ she said.

‘Pardon me?’ said a man walking his dog.

‘You too,’ said Becky.

The man shook his head and walked on.

Becky dialled again. Jordan was a deep sleeper. She’d once had a ten-minute shouting match with that old cow next door right under their bedroom window, and he hadn’t stirred. And now he couldn’t hear his phone. Becky had imagined it on the bedside table, but now she adjusted her mental picture to it being on the kitchen counter, or in his jacket pocket in the hall cupboard. All those things were just as likely.

‘Come on, Jordy, pick up the phone.’

He didn’t.

Becky left a message, then hung up and shivered again.

A car pulled up alongside her and the window went down.

‘Need a ride?’

She put one hand on the roof of the car to steady herself, and peered through the window at the man. She couldn’t really see him in the dark, but he sounded nice enough. She was half tempted. But he was a man alone in a car and she was a girl alone on a dark and stormy night, and she still had options. Jordy might call her any minute now, and she could probably get a cab.

‘Naah,’ she mused. ‘Better not.’

‘You sure?’ said the man. ‘You’ve been waiting a while.’

‘You been watching me?’ said Becky. ‘That’s fucking creepy! My boyfriend’ll smash your face in.’

‘Be like that,’ said the man, and drove off, leaving Becky without the car to keep her upright. She stumbled and would have fallen into the road if it weren’t for the lamp post.

Of course, as soon as he drove off, Becky realized that the driver wasn’t a mad axeman, that she’d have been perfectly safe in his company, and wished he’d come back.

‘Come back!’ she shouted. ‘Oi!’

He didn’t, and she was back to square one.

Jordan didn’t call and finally Becky hitched up her tits and wobbled her way across the road to Key Cabs. She knew she didn’t have enough money in her purse for the fare, but she was sure they’d take her home on a promise of payment at the other end. Becky wasn’t quite so sure that Jordan would have the cash when they got there, but by then it would be the cabbie’s problem, not hers.

‘Can’t do it,’ said the big man behind the Formica counter in the tiny Key Cabs office.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Becky flirtatiously. ‘I bet you do it all the time!’

The man was immune. He took a bite of kebab and shook his head.

‘Never do it,’ he said, letting Becky see lamb and lettuce swirl in his mouth. ‘Been conned too many times.’

Becky wasn’t used to being refused when she was wearing this skirt. ‘Can’t you do me a favour? I’ve missed the last bus.’

‘Get a watch,’ he shrugged.

‘I’ve got a watch.’ She showed him and then pouted. ‘But it stopped.’

The man glanced at it and said, ‘Get a proper watch.’ Then he took a more ambitious bite. This time the shredded lettuce hung from between his lips like barbels, and some kind of thin orange sauce trickled down his chin. He sucked in the lettuce noisily and cleared the sauce with the back of his hand, which he then wiped down the side of his leg, somewhere below the level of the counter.

‘Fat pig,’ said Becky, even though she knew it sealed her fate.

He shrugged again and said, ‘Enjoy the walk, slut.’

Becky headed back towards the bus stop because she didn’t know where else to go.

She tried Jordan again and mentally cursed him to hell and back for his deep sleep and his lousy gift. She should get a new boyfriend; one who would come and fetch her from a girls’ night out. When she got home, she might break up with Jordan.

Becky waited another few minutes. She hoped for the last bus; she hoped the man in Key Cabs would relent and wave her back across the road; she hoped Jordan would wake up and wonder where she was, and call her back.

When none of those things happened, she put up her umbrella and started to walk. What the hell – she was young and healthy and more than capable of walking the four miles to Weare Gifford any day of the week. It was on an unlit, tree-lined country road without pavements, but she’d just have to be careful, that was all. She wasn’t that drunk. She’d be fine.

By the time she passed the police station four hundred yards up the road, she was feeling less confident. She was that drunk, and kept veering off the pavement and perilously close to the road. Once she hit a dog-mess bin and had a little cry because she’d touched it with her bare hands. Also, her boots weren’t made for walking. They’d cost her thirty-five quid in the New Look sale, but they were starting to leak, and squelched coldly with every step.

She had almost left the lights of Bideford behind when a car pulled over and rolled slowly to a halt right in front of her.

Brilliant. Becky almost cried with gratitude.

The door opened and the driver stepped out and walked towards her, and Becky Cobb felt her whole body prickle in fear.

The man didn’t have a head!

For a ghastly, free-falling moment Becky thought she would faint with the horror of it. Then she realized he was wearing a balaclava. Black and woollen, with holes for his eyes and mouth. That was hardly any better. She was transfixed by it; she couldn’t move – couldn’t even look away.

He pointed at her face. ‘When I say get in the car, you get in the car,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s easier for everyone.’

She hit him with her umbrella. It didn’t hurt him, because the umbrella was open and the drag slowed it through the air, but it hit his arms and stopped him being able to grab hold of her properly, so Becky turned and ran back down the middle of the dark road, towards the lights. ‘Help me!’ she screamed, horrified by how small the noise sounded. ‘Help me!’

The man yanked her off her feet so fast that all the breath left her as she hit the ground, and she was dragged away from the lights and towards the car, the wet road grazing the small of her back and rolling her micro-mini down around her hips as she kicked and struggled and flailed about for something to grab on to.

They were at the car. The back wheel passed her peripheral vision and she twisted and grabbed hold of it, hugging the tyre like a long-lost lover while the headless man yanked at her arms and prised her fingers.

‘Let go, bitch!’ He picked her up so that her body and legs were completely off the ground, but Becky didn’t let go. She clung on to the wheel, screaming and shrieking, with her cheek pressed to the tyre.

‘Hey!’ someone shouted. ‘Hey!’

She twisted her head. There was a person running towards them – silhouetted gloriously against the last streetlight in Bideford, like Jesus in a sunbeam.

The man dropped her.

Just like that.

One minute Becky Cobb was being kidnapped by a maniac and the next the car door slammed, the engine gunned and she was lying face-down in the road – wet, filthy, and sobbing like a helpless child.

Within minutes Becky Cobb was at Bideford police station, waiting for the doctor and DCI King to arrive, and telling the desk sergeant, Tony Coral, everything she remembered.

It was remarkable how much Becky did remember, given how drunk she still was.

Tony Coral took down everything she told him methodically and accurately. He couldn’t remember hearing a more detailed description in all his thirty-one years on the force.

Sadly, it was a description not of a kidnapper, but of a wheel. Four bare bolts, the black cable tie holding the hubcap in place, the crack in the plastic shaped like a dolphin, the metal valve cap and the zigzag pattern of treads on the tyre.

‘I’d know that wheel anywhere,’ Becky slurred vehemently every time she woke up. ‘Anywhere.’

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