Wrong Time, Wrong Place

2

‘All there is up here is bloody trees,’ said Guy, sounding knackered and pissed off. ‘I hope you two know where you’re going, because I don’t.’

‘Course we do,’ said Ash, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

The weekend was only a few hours old and yet she was already bitterly regretting coming away on a walking trip with Guy and Tracy. It wasn’t that they were bad people — they weren’t — but they were Nick’s friends rather than hers (Nick and Guy had gone to university together). And they both had this hugely irritating habit of talking about how much fun they had living in Singapore, where Guy earned squillions and paid only 10 per cent tax, and Tracy lived a relaxed expat lifestyle. This seemed to consist solely of tennis, drinks parties and luxury treatments, but despite Tracy’s best efforts at bigging it up, it sounded to Ash as much fun as having your teeth pulled out.

‘I don’t miss this country, you know,’ continued Guy as the four of them walked down a slight incline towards a pine forest that led to the lodge they’d booked. ‘You pay all these taxes and what do you get for your money? Sod all.’

Ash and Nick, who were walking a few yards ahead, exchanged glances, and Nick raised an eyebrow. It was clear to Ash that he wasn’t having the time of his life either.

‘Well, you get views like this,’ said Nick, stopping and looking back down the hill they’d just climbed to the forest-covered valley below, where a river wound away gently into the distance. ‘I bet you don’t see many sights like that in Singapore.’

‘That’s true,’ said Tracy, who’d been banging on less than her husband about the joys of their new home. ‘It is beautiful.’ She closed her eyes, basking in the last rays of the early evening sun, looking like she was enjoying herself for the first time that day.

Guy wasn’t convinced. ‘Lombok in Indonesia is just as beautiful. And a lot warmer too. We’re thinking about buying a holiday home there.’

‘I don’t know about you lot, but I could murder a pint right now,’ said Nick, trying to change the subject.

‘I concur,’ said Guy, who liked using big words where little ones would do. ‘Is there a pub round here anywhere?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Ash. ‘I did say the lodge was in the middle of nowhere when I booked it.’

Guy looked annoyed. ‘You weren’t lying.’

God knows what they were going to do tomorrow, thought Ash. Or Sunday. They’d come to this isolated part of Scotland to walk. It was something the four of them had done together a couple of times before. But as Ash thought back to those weekends now, she remembered that actually they’d been more about sitting around drinking, smoking dope and having a natter rather than going for proper all-day hikes.

She and Nick had changed since those days. They appreciated the great outdoors for what it was — a much-needed escape from the grim routine of London life. It was clear that Guy and Tracy didn’t feel the same way, although at least Tracy was making an effort.

‘Who the hell is that?’ said Nick, as they all turned round, following his gaze.

At first, Ash couldn’t see what he was looking at, then she saw someone running towards them through long grass about a hundred metres away. It looked like whoever it was had just come out of the line of pine trees along the ridge above them, and they were clearly in a real hurry.

‘Is she naked?’ asked Guy, sounding genuinely interested in something for the first time that day.

‘Jesus, she is,’ said Nick. ‘I wonder if she’s all right.’

The girl was indeed naked, and young too, with a thin spindly body and long blonde hair. She was coming towards them at a sprint, stumbling as she went. Instinctively the four of them started towards her.

Tara was exhausted, and panting so hard she could hardly breathe. She sprinted towards the four people with the packs on their backs. They looked like hikers. They could help her. Take her somewhere warm and give her something to eat. After that, she didn’t care. She just wanted to go home. Back to her family.

She’d been running for a long time now. Her feet were torn and cut, and her body was covered in scratches. Thankfully there was no sign of the man who’d been following her. She’d outrun the bastard.

As she reached the group of hikers, she collapsed to her knees, unable to continue any further. Tears rolled down her face.

It was hard to believe but, for the first time since she’d come to this terrible country, she was actually free.

‘It’s OK,’ said Ash, crouching down beside the girl. ‘We’re here now. What’s happened?’

In between sobs, the girl said something in a foreign language that sounded Eastern European.

‘I think she might be Polish,’ said Guy.

‘What happened to you?’ asked Tracy, putting an arm round the girl’s shoulders.

The girl flinched.

‘OK, let’s give her some space,’ said Ash, taking off her jacket and giving it to the girl so she didn’t have to sit there stark naked. ‘It’s obvious she’s had a bad experience.’

She stood back up, noticing that the girl had a vivid red mark round one ankle where the skin had rubbed away. It looked like she’d been shackled or something. Nervously, Ash looked up towards the line of trees, wondering what had happened to the girl in there.

‘Can you speak any English?’ she asked the girl as gently as possible, using all the skills she’d learned in her job as a primary school teacher to put her at ease.

The girl shook her head, wiped her eyes, then suddenly pointed back towards the trees.

‘Do you think she’s been raped?’ asked Guy.

Tracy gave him a look. ‘Guy … don’t say that.’

‘I’m just asking.’

Ash tensed. ‘Something bad’s happened to her. I think she was being chased.’

‘There doesn’t look like there’s anyone chasing her,’ said Tracy.

‘Either way, we need to get an ambulance. She’s been through a trauma.’

‘I’ll phone one,’ said Nick, taking out his mobile, then almost immediately cursing. ‘There’s no reception up here.’

Ash checked her own phone, as did Guy and Tracy, all with the same result. One of the reasons Ash had chosen this place was its remoteness. Nick was always getting out-of-hours calls from work, and she’d wanted this weekend to be different, so she’d been happy to be somewhere where his phone wasn’t going to ring constantly. Now she realised just how far they were from any sort of help.

‘Jesus, what the hell’s wrong with this country?’ grunted Guy, staring with disgust at his phone. ‘I can get perfect reception in any Third World hellhole, yet here-’

‘Shut up, Guy,’ Nick snapped. ‘We don’t need your moaning now, all right?’

‘There’s a landline at the lodge,’ said Ash, ‘and it’s only ten minutes away. We’ll call an ambulance from there, and if we have to, we’ll drive her to a hospital.’

‘But we don’t even know who she is,’ said Tracy, sounding as put out as her husband.

‘Exactly. And she can’t tell us. So we need to help her.’ Jesus, thought Ash. What was wrong with these people? Had their time abroad sucked out all their humanity?

She put a hand out to the girl and helped her to her feet. As she did so she noticed something on her wrist. It looked like a plain black wristband, but it had a hard plastic casing and was an extremely tight fit.

The girl seemed to notice it too, almost for the first time. She tried to take it off, but it wouldn’t budge.

‘What do you reckon this is?’ Ash asked her husband, showing him the wristband.

They both examined it.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. ‘It just looks like a bangle.’

‘Except it’s locked on to her wrist.’

The girl pulled her arm away, tapped her finger on the wristband and then pointed back towards the trees. There was fear in her eyes.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Tracy.

Guy put an arm round her. ‘Me neither. If we’re going to hang on to her, then let’s get going before it gets dark.’

The sun was dropping behind the opposite hill and the air was feeling colder.

As one, the group turned and started walking towards the lodge, the girl moving faster than any of them, and every now and then looking back over her shoulder.

He watched them go from his position a hundred metres away, and cursed. He’d almost had the little bitch earlier. It had been easy enough to track her progress using the GPS clamped to her wrist. He thought he’d cut her off, but she’d been faster than he expected. She had the kind of stamina that he wouldn’t have thought possible in someone who’d just spent the last two weeks chained in a cellar. Then again, as he knew all too well, desperation does strange things to a person.

Now, though, he had a real problem.

They all did.