‘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.
3
‘Let’s get the poor thing some clothes, she’s freezing,’ said Ash as she unlocked the door to the lodge and stepped inside. ‘Come on, sit down.’ She led the girl over to the sofa.
The girl sat down, grabbed a cushion and hugged it. She looked terrified.
Ash gave her a reassuring smile. ‘It’s OK. You’re safe now. Do you have a name?’ she said slowly. ‘What is your name?’
The girl just shook her head and looked away.
‘She can have some of my clothes,’ said Tracy. ‘I packed a load of things.’
‘Trace, are you sure?’ whined Guy.
‘Course I am. Jesus, Guy. Look at her shivering. Have some heart.’
Tracy ran upstairs to her suitcase while Guy stared after her. Ash was pleased to see the look of shock on his face. The man could be a real idiot at times. She wondered what her husband had ever seen in him.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ said Nick from the corner of the room where he was holding the landline phone to his ear.
Ash felt her chest tighten. ‘What is it?’
‘The bloody phone’s out of order.’
‘We’ll have to drive her to the nearest hospital.’
‘Jesus,’ sighed Guy. ‘That’s all we need.’
‘Look, I don’t want to have to do it either, Guy,’ said Ash, turning on him, ‘but we haven’t got any bloody choice.’
‘What is it?’ said Tracy, coming back down the stairs with a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a garish pink hoodie. She handed them to Ash, who’d clearly been chosen as their main contact with the girl.
‘The landline isn’t working either,’ Guy told her.
‘You two don’t have to worry,’ said Nick. ‘Ash and I will take her. There’s booze in the fridge. You just stay here until we get back. We’ll try not to be too long.’
Guy nodded. He and Tracy both looked relieved, having been let off the hook.
Ash handed the girl the clothes. ‘Put these on. We’re going to take you to the doctor now.’ She spoke slowly and carefully, as if this would somehow help the girl understand her.
The girl nodded silently and put on the clothes.
‘All right, let’s go,’ said Nick, grabbing the keys to their Land Rover.
Gently, Ash lifted the girl to her feet and together they followed Nick out of the front door.
It was nearly dark and the wind was picking up, sweeping through the trees that surrounded the lodge on every side. When they’d arrived that morning in the sunshine, Ash had thought it was a perfect location, far from the city crowds. But now that this mysterious girl had arrived out of the blue, naked and bruised, it had suddenly taken on a more menacing air. Something had happened to her out in these woods, something terrible, and Ash was suddenly glad that they were leaving.
She got in the back with the girl, putting a protective arm round her shoulders, while Nick started the engine and pulled away in a crunch of gravel.
Almost immediately the car seemed uncontrollable. Nick turned the steering wheel, trying to right it, but the car seemed to have a mind of its own. It bumped up and down as if it was being shaken. Nick brought the car to a stop and pulled up the handbrake.
‘What is it?’ Ash asked him.
Nick didn’t answer. Instead he got out, took a quick look round the car, then pulled open the back door. His expression was grim. ‘Let’s get back in the house. Now.’
He grabbed Ash by the arm. In normal circumstances, she’d have yelled at him to let go of her. Ash didn’t like being manhandled by anyone. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Nick looked scared, and that scared Ash, because usually he was the calmest person she knew. It was why he was such a damn good lawyer.
‘What’s going on?’ she said, pulling the girl out with her.
‘Someone’s slashed the tyres,’ he hissed, leading the two of them back to the lodge, his fingers shaking as he unlocked the front door.
Ash risked a look over her shoulder, and immediately saw the gaping tears in each of the nearside tyres. The girl looked too, and let out a frightened, animal-like whimper.
Guy and Tracy had already sat down on the sofa with the TV on. They both jumped up like guilty teenagers caught groping each other when the others came back in.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Guy, looking past them to the girl.
‘We’ve got a situation,’ Nick told them, locking the door behind him and pulling the curtains as he explained what had happened.
‘You mean, all four of the tyres have been slashed?’ demanded Guy.
Nick nodded. ‘All four of them. So it’s deliberate.’
‘But who’d do that?’ asked Tracy, her voice rising several tones.
‘I have no idea, but whoever it is clearly has a problem with us.’
Guy looked angry and put-out, like a spoilt child. ‘Why? We haven’t done anything to them. It must be something to do with her.’ He pointed at the girl, who shrank away from his accusing stare. ‘Whoever’s after her knows she’s with us. I say we let her go. It’s her they want. We don’t even have a clue who the hell it is who’s after her. We don’t even have a clue who she is.’ He took a step towards the girl. ‘Go on,’ he shouted, ‘get the hell out of here! Now!’