Darker Read online

  Now he planned nine days’ relaxation with his family: pottering around the garden, a couple of day trips and basically doing a lot of nothing in particular.

  But, inevitably, the shit had already started to fly fanward.

  He’d had a phone call from his wife’s brother who, over the years, had managed to become the consummate running sore. The reason for brother-in-law Joey’s phone call? Yet another frigging stupid scheme that would put them all on the fast track to bankruptcy.

  All he needed, now was for lightning to smite the TV aerial and everything would be flaming well tickety-boo.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ called his wife, sounding startled.

  ‘I’ve only gone and found our marriage certificate.’

  ‘Good grief, Richard, I thought you’d severed an artery or something.’

  ‘I thought this’d disappeared years ago via the Family Young black hole.’

  With a clash of pans Christine called, ‘Has it expired?’

  He could imagine her mischievous grin as she spoke and he couldn’t stop himself smiling as he replied, ‘No such luck. You’re stuck with me for life.’

  He pulled out more ancient guarantees for clock radios, irons, lawn mowers, electric tin openers, some of which had been trashed years ago. ‘Do you think everyone’s cursed with something like this?’ he said, half to himself. ‘Tins packed with old bank statements, expired insurance policies, telephone bills that are … six years old. My God, there’s even ticket stubs for a U2 concert we saw before we were married.’

  Richard Young guessed that just about everyone was. Even though three quarters of this was basically waste paper that could be safely bagged and burned there was something about even a dead insurance policy with its grave black print that made you afraid to dump it – just in case.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Will you tell Amy her tea’s ready?’

  ‘Okay. Where is she?’

  ‘How the heck should I know? I’ve been slaving in the kitchen for the last hour, darling husband …’

  Richard knew that when Christine used the endearment ‘darling husband’ it was time to get his backside in gear.

  Suppressing the craving to put a match to the documents and dance howling with glee around the blazing pile, he headed for the living room.

  ‘Amy? Grub up.’

  The television dutifully showed a Tom and Jerry cartoon to an audience of empty armchairs:

  ‘Amy, come and get it before we feed it to the beasties at the bottom of the garden.’

  Richard dropped to his hands and knees and prowled the carpet like a dog. ‘Wuff, wuff. I’m going to chase you. Then I’m going to bite you on the bum!’

  His four-year-old daughter had a devilish passion for hiding whenever she was needed.

  Favourite hiding place: behind the sofa. And despite an afternoon’s worth of irritations at not being able to crash out in the sun with an ice-cold tinny and the latest issue of Q, he began to grin, anticipating Amy’s eardrum-busting squeal when she realized she’d been found. A squeal that managed to fuse terror with delight. Shrieking and laughing she would run from the room, looking back at her pursuer – not where she was going, which tended to leave her with no shortage of bruises. Not that she minded. Bruises were something she prized beyond gold.

  ‘Gotcha.’

  Amy wasn’t in her usual den. Buggeration, he thought, mildly surprised. She’s found a new hideaway. Then she did have a trick of folding herself up into a football-sized lump of arms and legs from which beamed a huge grinning face, complete with a pair of eyes that twinkled like diamonds.

  He checked the video clock. Time had donned its trainers and was rapidly running out. He decided to speed up the search on two legs.

  Behind the door?

  No. Only her rag doll with a red smear down its white T-shirt where she’d tried force-feeding it baked beans.

  Behind the curtains?

  No.

  Beneath the sideboard?

  Nope.

  Under the coffee table?

  Zilch.

  ‘Give me strength,’ he muttered. ‘One of those days, all right.’

  But Richard Young, thirty-three, didn’t know the half of it.

  Because on that blistering day in June his life would change for ever.

  First: his daughter, Amy, managed to make herself vanish from the surface of the Earth.

  Second: although Richard Young didn’t know a damn thing about it, the stranger moved into their house.

  Richard quickly checked all the downstairs rooms then headed upstairs.

  ‘Amy? Tea’s ready. Come and get it.’

  No reply.

  Bathroom? Empty. But toilet clearly not flushed. He flushed it then cut across the landing in the direction of his daughter’s bedroom. He was intercepted by his ten-year-old son, Mark, who looked troubled.

  ‘Dad. It’s happened again.’

  ‘Have you seen Amy?’

  Richard looked into Amy’s bedroom. Nope, it was Amy-free.

  ‘Dad, it’s gone and done it again.’

  ‘What? You’ve not gone and dropped the TV remote down the back of the radiator again?’

  His son nodded, those widely-spaced blue eyes of his looking massive as he expected an irritable outburst from his father.

  ‘Sorry, Mark. I haven’t got time to fish it out again. Have you seen Amy?’

  He shook his head. ‘But the wrestling’s on in ten minutes and I can’t change channels.’

  Richard suppressed the rising tide of bad temper. ‘Look, Mark, I haven’t got time for this. Amy’s slung her hook somewhere, I’ve still to find my passport and I’ve got to be at the doctor’s soon.’

  ‘It’s just that it’s the title match. I want —’

  ‘Mark,’ he said, gently pushing the boy back in the direction of his bedroom. ‘If you want to watch it that badly go ask your mother to fish it out for you.’

  ‘It’s not that important,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll leave it till later.’ Then he smiled, suddenly resolving the problem. ‘If Amy isn’t watching cartoons I’ll watch it downstairs.’

  ‘On second thoughts, Mark, you can help me track Amy down. Your mother’ll go nuts if Amy’s not sat to that table in two minutes flat.’

  ‘Someone’s left the landing window open. Maybe she’s climbed out.’

  ‘From an upstairs window? I very much doubt it.’

  Mark grinned. ‘I’ve not heard a wet thud, anyway.’

  ‘Not funny, Mark. And don’t let your mother hear you say things like that. Now, start hunting.’

  ‘I’ll look in the garden.’

  ‘Good lad,’ Richard said gratefully. ‘Don’t worry about the remote. When I get back from the doctor’s I’ll hook it out with the coat hanger again.’

  As his son thumped heavily downstairs Richard checked their bedroom. It wasn’t unknown for Amy to hide in the built-in wardrobe. He opened the door and slid aside the clothes on the rail. He did this carefully. Nothing was guaranteed to raise Christine’s fury more than finding creased clothes on hangers.

  The first thing he saw brought an explosive sigh to his lips.

  ‘Great … You find your passport but you lose your daughter.’

  Above his head a biscuit tin sat on a shelf. Wedged right in the front in plain view was his passport along with the airline ticket for Egypt. Just the sight of it made him prickle with anger. Now he remembered why he had stuck the thing in the wardrobe: because every time he clapped eyes on the ticket he felt a surge of bitterness. They couldn’t afford it. Worse, deep down, he knew the Egyptian trip would be yet another case of chasing the wild goose that would get them damn-all in return.

  As he closed the door he was gripped by the urge to throw the ticket onto the pile of papers on the table downstairs and burn the bloody lot.

  ‘Richard?’ Christine called from downstairs. ‘Any sign of Amy?’
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  ‘Not yet. I’ve sent out search parties.’

  ‘Make it snappy, love. Her tea’ll be cold.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ he called as he hurried downstairs and through the front door into the garden.

  Although the house itself wasn’t at all large, it stood alone in a huge plot of land. Because it fronted a busy main road they’d had it fenced when Mark was a baby, so Amy couldn’t have wandered far.

  He found his son pointlessly poking a stick into a gap between the shed and fence that was so narrow it wouldn’t have admitted a mouse never mind a four-year-old.

  Richard asked, ‘No sign?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Best check the garage; she might be playing in the car.’

  ‘She’s not allowed.’

  ‘I know she’s not allowed but she still does it. I’ll check the back.’

  Damn, what time is it now? He didn’t know how long he’d got before he had to leave for his doctor’s appointment. When his brother-in-law railroaded him into this stupid Egyptian trip he’d not realized he’d need a whole series of needles shoved into his butt to inoculate him against typhoid and polio, not to mention the gamma globulin shots. Chuffing marvellous, Joey, thanks a bloody lot.

  ‘AMY!’

  The girl had vanished. The late-afternoon sun was still sufficiently hot to raise his own internal temperature enough to tempt him to dish out a couple of stinging slaps when he got his hands on the little hooligan. At the bottom of the garden was the privet hedge. Conceivably she might have been able to crawl through the twiggy gaps at the bottom, although she’d never done so before. But where kids are concerned there’s a first time for everything.

  He jogged to the bottom of the garden where he’d built a brick barbecue. He rarely put together anything actually visible with his hands and the barbecue was something that gave him a solid wedge of satisfaction every time he looked at it, or used it to barbecue the occasional beefburger-and-burnt-sausage feast. Now he used it as a look-out post.

  He climbed on to it and looked over the hedge into the tract of open land beyond. Officially it was known as Sunnyfields, but he had dubbed the two hundred acres of grassland and clumps of woodland Misery Meadows or, when in a melodramatic mood, The Pastures Of Pain. Gold is found everywhere; you will even find gold in your own back garden – albeit in piddling quantities of one part per million. But Richard Young was in no doubt at all that there was bugger-all gold in Sunnyfields.

  They say that when you marry, you also marry your lover’s family. Try telling that to a love-struck teenager and see if they believe you, but come Christmas or some domestic crisis and they’ll suddenly realize it’s the truth and nothing but the whole damn’ truth.

  Only Richard managed to go one better. He married the girl, the family – and something unexpected. Something that had the power to give him more than one or two sleepless nights in twelve years of marriage. And that something was Sunnyfields. Owned jointly by his wife and brother-in-law that two hundred acres was a towering, monumental, epic pain in the ass.

  ‘Dad, I can’t find her.’

  Richard looked down at the boy from the top of the barbecue. Something in Mark’s widely spaced eyes signalled alarm as clearly as a hundred-decibel siren.

  A sudden jab of guilt ran through him. He’d been so busy grousing about Joey, Egypt and Sunnyfields he’d been short-tempered with his son; worse, he’d been treating the hunt for Amy like a hunt for a lost sock.

  Alarms began to buzz in the back of his own head.

  ‘Do you think she’s got out of the garden, Dad?’

  ‘She’ll not be far, kidda. Probably in the shed tormenting spiders.’

  ‘She isn’t. I’ve looked.’

  Jumping down from the barbecue he put his arm around the little lad’s shoulders and playfully gave him a wrestler’s bear hug.

  ‘Come on, we’ll find her together.’

  They searched the garden. Richard’s anxiety increased. This wasn’t like Amy. Normally she wouldn’t miss Tom & Jerry. She’d sit in front of the TV frozen, every shred of concentration locked onto the screen.

  ‘Amy!’ Mark shouted her name constantly now, his expression showing concern. ‘Amy … Amy? Amy!’ He moved faster, his head twisting from left to right looking for her, or ducking to peer under a bush.

  ‘We’ll try Sunnyfields,’ Richard said. Both father and son unconsciously transmitted to one another the urge to run.

  They ran through the bushes to a gate that led into the field.

  ‘Amy!’

  Adopting an instinctive hunting formation, they spread out as they called her name.

  Richard was unnerved to see his son’s frightened eyes, scanning the field for a sister who sometimes tormented the living daylights out of him. Now all Mark wanted was to be walking hand-in-hand with his sister back to the house saying in that scolding way he’d picked up from Christine, ‘Now, Amy, you must never run away like that again. It’s dangerous.’

  Dangerous.

  The word loosened up the flow of fear through Richard. He willed himself to see his daughter peering through the long grass, eyes twinkling, impish grin across her face.

  But suddenly, despite the hot sun, he felt cold.

  Mark stopped, struck by a shocking idea. ‘Dad. What about the pond?’

  ‘She wouldn’t go there alone.’ Even as Richard said the words he started to run. No. She wouldn’t go there alone. Would she? Fear gushed through him freely now, swirling terrible images into his head.

  The pond was deep, with steep dirt sides. Easy to fall into. Hard to climb out. Particularly if you’re only four years old.

  Leaving his son behind, he raced to where the pond lay hidden within a ring of trees and bushes.

  An image came hard into his mind. Bob, the cameraman, at the office; he was saying, ‘I’m sorry to hear about Amy, Richard. She was such a beautiful little girl.’

  Shut up, he told his imagination that was starting to run rogue inside his head. Just damn well shut up.

  He bounded through the trees.

  There was the pond.

  At the side nearest him something floated in the water. He saw a soggy white T-shirt; a mass of dark hair floated around it.

  Amy lay face down in the water.

  He’d already gauged how far he had to jump to grab his drowned daughter when he actually identified what his imagination had so sadistically distorted.

  ‘Hell fire, Richard. Don’t do that to yourself.’

  He breathed deeply and shook his head at the sheet of newspaper that his jittery mind had morphed into Amy.

  On the way back to the house he met Mark running toward the pond.

  ‘Not there, son. Come on. We’ll try the garden again.’

  ‘Find Amy, Dad. I’m worried about her. I’ll catch you up.’

  Again he felt a rush of affection for his son. ‘OK. We’ll have her found by the time you get back.’

  As he ran back through the gate into the garden his rogue imagination supplied suggestions of what might have happened to her:

  A stranger leans over the driveway gates. Calls Amy closer. Then leans over, snatches her and runs to a waiting car.

  The old well in the garden. She’s managed to lift the iron grating and fallen down.

  Shit, Richard. Even you and Joey together couldn’t shift that grating when you tried last summer.

  Nevertheless, pure fear for his child now powered him across the lawn. Still at a run he decided to follow the inside perimeter of the fence round to the front garden.

  Come on, Richard, it’s a process of elimination now. If she’s not in the house, not in the garden, not in Sunnyfields then she must be – hell, no – she must be out on the road.

  The main Sheffield road ran straight as a laser through the countryside. The kind of road that murmurs to drivers, ‘Come on, put your foot down. No cops here. I’m nice and straight; why not ride me hard. You know you’ve always wanted to see that
speedo needle kiss one hundred. So what if a little kid should wander out? She’ll never know what hit her, and no one’ll ever know who did it. Keep on driving. Keep on …’

  Shit!

  The main gates were closed. She couldn’t climb them. She couldn’t climb the six-foot fence. The only other exit was a gate they never used tucked away behind the shrubbery.

  Panting, he ran hard through the bushes.

  He saw the gate. It lay open.

  He blinked. Maybe like the newspaper in the pond it was just his imagination running rogue again.

  It wasn’t.

  The bastard gate yawned wide open.

  He ran at it. The cars sounded overloud now, roaring along the road like dragsters.

  He ran along the grass verge, now searching with a terrible fatalism for a lump of bloody clothes in the road.

  But she couldn’t be here. She’d have more sense than to walk dumbly out into the traffic. Wouldn’t she?

  Trucks roared by buffeting him with gusts of air.

  ‘Amy?’

  Cars howled by, overtaking the trucks. A nightmare torrent of steel and rubber moving at insane speeds.

  A horn sounded, a pumping, bleating noise, sounded by a driver desperately trying to warn someone.

  He looked in the direction of the sound.

  Then he froze. A sight met his eyes that locked the breath up inside his lungs; even his heart seemed to stop in mid-beat; the sound of the traffic dropped to a muffled rumble; it all happened in a second, but it could have been hours as he stared in horror, unable to believe that what he was seeing was actually stone cold-hearted reality.

  ‘Amy!’

  Richard Young had found his daughter.

  Chapter 5

  Darker and Darker

  Moonlight. An open meadow. A tree, its upper branches starkly naked. An abandoned house with two windows shining like wide, sightless eyes. The night air closes around her body like the ice hand of a dead man. And then comes the groan that rolls across the night-time countryside. It sounds like the dying song of some lost and long-forgotten god.