Written In Blood Read online

  2

  Lucy was pleased with how her visit with Zack Wild had gone; he had not come right out with a declaration of interest, but she knew when someone was attracted to her, and was sure that attraction would get her what she wanted. He had already agreed to her returning with her manuscript so he could look it over – she was not vain enough to think that her, as yet unfinished, novel was perfect, it needed work, and that was where Wild came in - and help her make it better. More importantly, he had agreed to get his agent to read it when it was done.

  With her mind occupied by her successful visit with Zack Wild, it was no surprise that she was unaware of the Land Rover until it skidded to a halt, practically on her heels, as she took a short-cut home. It startled her out of her thoughts and made her jump; when she came down she spun around to see what had caused the noise – it was a green Land Rover, identical to the one she had just passed in Zack Wild’s drive, though she couldn’t tell if it was the author behind the wheel for the sun was reflecting glaringly off the windscreen.

  Lucy remained blinded as the driver’s door opened, and so had no idea who it was that shouted at her.

  “Whore! Cock-teasing whore!”

  There was such anger and hatred in the voice that it was impossible for her to be sure who it belonged to. Her inability to tell who was speaking, she could tell that it was a man but that was it, combined with the anger and hatred to make her concerned, even a little afraid.

  “What’s your problem?” she demanded as she moved around the Land Rover so she could start back the way she had come – it occurred to her that leaving the road to cut across the field was not such a good idea, and returning to it was probably the best thing she could do.

  “You. You think people don’t see what a cock-teasing whore you are, but they do.” The anger in the voice increased. “You dress like a tart; you act like one as well. You make everyone think they can have a piece of you, if they do what you want. You buy your grades with your body, you buy everything with your body, and you don’t care who you buy it from. You’d fuck Sir Virgil if it’d get you something you want.”

  The verbal attack, especially the suggestion that she would sleep with her own great-uncle, struck Lucy like a physical blow and left her reeling. She wanted to say something, anything, to defend herself, but no words would come.

  “It’s time you learned what happens to cock-teasing bitches.”

  Lucy wanted to break into a run, she was a good runner, and was sure she could outpace whoever the Land Rover belonged to, but she realised she should conserve her energy until she needed it. She also realised that running would put her in danger of tripping on the uneven ground - she had seen enough horror films to know what happened to pretty young girls when they were chased by a maniac.

  “You’re just like Georgie.”

  Lucy felt a ball of cold dread settle heavily into her stomach at that; Georgina had been missing for a week, and now she had the unpleasant feeling she was going to find out what had happened to her fellow teen. That knowledge didn’t help her, though it did intensify her desire to get away before she suffered the same fate.

  It was just as well she had one eye over her shoulder, for He suddenly rushed around the Land Rover and lunged towards her. She reacted the moment she saw him get close; pivoting, she slid her bag off her shoulder and swung it with all her strength. Her timing could not have been more perfect, the bag crashed into her would-be attacker just before he reached her, throwing him into the side of his vehicle, from there he fell to the ground at the edge of the waist-high golden corn.

  Dropping the bag, Lucy ran for the gate. She couldn’t be sure if she was being pursued, she didn’t dare risk looking back in case she lost her footing, but she believed she was. The thought spurred her on until, after she had covered about a third of the distance to the gate, what she had feared would happen did, she stumbled and fell, her momentum sending her sprawling along the dirt path.

  Winded more than hurt, she scrambled to her feet, where she discovered she had sprained her ankle. She was reduced to a hobble after that, and over her own, too slow, footsteps she could hear Him getting closer. She thought about calling for help, but decided she was better off saving her breath for her flight; the only person who might hear her was Constance Hawkins, and that was doubtful given how far away her house was.

  She made it about half-way to the gate before being caught. One moment she was moving at a fast hobble, the next she felt a sharp pain as she was yanked off her feet by her hair. She landed on her back and was then spun around to face Him, before being pinned to the ground as he sat on her.

  “Think it’s funny d’ya, hitting someone with a bag of books?” The question was snarled in a voice that remained unrecognisable, though there was something familiar about it that time. “How ‘bout this?” He smashed his fist into the side of her jaw. “Think that’s funny? How ‘bout this?” He hit her again, and then reached down to grab her skimpy top, which tore as he gave it a quick yank.

  Lucy was dazed by the two blows but she was a fighter. She couldn’t see clearly enough to be sure of where she was aiming, but that didn’t stop her lashing out. She bucked and heaved, writhed and twisted, but most of all she struck out again and again with her fists as she sought to make Him either get off her or shift his weight so she could get away.

  When her efforts failed to get Him to move, or even to stop his painful groping of her breasts, Lucy changed tactics. Instead of lashing out blindly, landing blows that had barely any strength, she sought to use the only weapon she had that might do some damage – her nails.

  Lucy had only a moment to enjoy drawing blood and a quick curse, for her defiance inflamed his anger. He hit her again and again, until he succeeded in knocking out two of her teeth, one of which she managed to spit out before it went down her throat, the other she didn’t. She was unconscious before her jaw broke with a sharp crack, which was a blessing since it meant she couldn’t see the lust-filled expression on His face as he finished tearing her top in two, and then ripped from her the scrap of bright orange that protected the last vestiges of her dignity.

  3

  Michael Black was elbow deep in soapsuds when the front door banged open. Since the weather was pleasant, he could only conclude that someone had entered the station, an angry someone since calm people didn’t bang doors.

  Knowing that angry people didn’t like to be kept waiting, he pulled his hands from the sink and grabbed a tea-towel to dry off with as he made for the reception counter.

  “Good evening, Mrs Goulding, how can I help you?” he asked when he saw who was waiting for him.

  Theresa Goulding fixed the constable with her sternest look. “There’s nothing good about this evening,” she said stiffly. “My daughter is missing; I want you to find her.”

  “Your daughter – Lucy?” Black queried.

  “Of course Lucy, who you did think I was talking about? I have only the one daughter, as you should know.”

  Black flushed at that but didn’t respond, instead he said, “When did you last see Lucy?”

  “What difference does that make?” Theresa demanded. “She’s missing and I want you to find her, that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, Mrs Goulding,” Black said, wishing that he were not the one stuck dealing with this problem. “Lucy is sixteen…”

  Theresa flared up again. “I know how old Lucy is, what difference does her age make to her being missing?”

  “A lot. Being sixteen, Lucy cannot be reported missing until she has been gone for at least a day, unless you have cause for concern. Given her history, and her habit of doing whatever she wishes, I think it likely the inspector will insist that we wait until Lucy has been out of contact for forty-eight hours to make a search. There’s every chance she’s off with friends, probably in town. She’ll turn up when she’s finished having fun.”

  “Forty-eight hours! You want me to wait two days before you’ll consid
er looking for Lucy? How can you even suggest such a thing? Especially when poor Georgina Ryder is still missing after a week, and you have no clue what’s happened to her. Don’t try and deny it,” Theresa said sharply when Black opened his mouth to respond. “Did you even look for her after the first day?”

  “We searched for her,” Black said defensively. “We searched the entire village, and we spoke to just about everyone; no-one saw her after she headed up the road to the Wright Farm, though. We’ve searched again and again, throughout the week, but there’s been no sign of her.

  “ You can’t compare the two situations, though,” he told her. “Georgina Ryder has never been in trouble, and she’s always told her parents exactly where she was going, what she was doing, who she was meeting, and when she would be home. The same can’t be said for Lucy; Lucy has a long history of bunking off school, staying out all night, getting into trouble, and associating with people she would be better off avoiding.”

  “I am well aware of my daughter’s history, more so than you, I imagine. It is irrelevant on this occasion, however,” Theresa said. “No matter what she might have done in the past, or how she may have acted, I can assure you, Lucy is missing on this occasion.”

  “Can you tell me what makes you so certain the circumstances are different this time?” Black asked, curious to know why Theresa, who had never been concerned about her daughter before, was concerned now.

  The look on Theresa’s face suggested she thought the question rude in the extreme, nonetheless she answered him. “I’m certain Lucy is missing because she was supposed to meet her father, myself, and her great-uncle, Sir Virgil, for dinner at The Oaks. She was supposed to be there early to greet Sir Virgil, he comes to stay every couple of months, when his work permits – The Oaks was his first hotel and he has always been especially fond of it, and when he visits he expects to be met by Lucy. She wasn’t there, nor did she show up for dinner.”

  “Perhaps, on this occasion, Lucy decided she didn’t want to have dinner with her great-uncle,” Black suggested. “Maybe there was something she preferred to do, and that’s where she is now.” He braced himself for an explosion that didn’t come.

  “Under other circumstances, Lucy might well have decided not to do what her father and I wished; when it comes to her great-uncle, however, she’s a different person to the girl you know. She’s polite, punctual, respectful, considerate, everything you could want of a daughter.”

  Black tried to reconcile that description with the Lucy Goulding he knew, and found it difficult. “Okay, so you have reason for concern,” he conceded. “But there could be any number of reasons why Lucy wasn’t at the hotel to greet Sir Virgil, or at the family dinner. She could have gotten involved in something and lost track of the time, she could have missed the bus, or been unable to get a lift back to the village.”

  “If that had been the case, she would have called either myself or her father, or Anna. Sir Virgil is a stickler for punctuality, Lucy would have called if she was going to be late, so we could give her apologies. I was put in the most uncomfortable position of having to lie to Sir Virgil; I told him that Lucy was at home, ill. I can only hope he never discovers I lied to him, he hates liars, even more than he hates people who aren’t punctual.” Her unhappiness was clear. “Something has happened to Lucy, that’s the only possible answer, and I want you and your colleagues to find her, without your usual bungling and bumbling.”

  Black ignored that comment; instead of reacting to it he chose to act as though Theresa Goulding had a case to be dealt with. “When and where did you last see Lucy?” he asked, pen poised.

  “What on earth difference does that make?” Theresa wanted to know. “She isn’t a set of keys, to be found in the vicinity of wherever she was last seen.”

  “Of course not, Mrs Goulding, I’m sorry if that’s how it sounded, but to find Lucy I need to know where and when she was last seen, what she was wearing, who she was with, and, if possible, where she was heading.”

  Theresa scowled at the constable before sighing. “I last saw Lucy this morning before she left for school, Anna will be able to tell you what time that was; she was wearing her uniform, so I assume she was intending to go to school. That’s as much as I can tell you,” she said. “Anna may be able to tell you something more.”

  “And she hasn’t been seen since then?”

  “Since lunchtime.”

  “Who saw her then?”

  After taking all the details Theresa could provide, Black promised to look around the village, and to make sure that both the inspector and the officer on duty in the morning knew Lucy was believed to be missing.

  As soon as she was gone, slamming the door to make it clear how dissatisfied she was, he locked up the station and completed the end of shift chores he had been in the middle of when Theresa arrived.

  He was about to get into his car, so he could do as promised and drive around the village looking for Lucy, when he thought better of it. Instead of getting into his car, he wandered down the road, stopping at a house a short distance from the station, a house rented by a trio of troublemakers, one of whom was the person Lucy Goulding was supposedly dating. If Lucy was in the village, he thought it most likely that she would be there with Ollie Ryder.

  The house being quiet and dark, he doubted anyone was home, but he thought it best to knock before making a tour of the village, just in case. He didn’t want Theresa to be able to say he hadn’t done everything he could to find her daughter.

  4

  Lucy Goulding stirred at the sound of an approaching vehicle. Her chin lifted from her chest so she could search the darkness that surrounded her; the movement was minimal, but enough to reawaken the pain caused by her arms being tied above her head so that she was suspended from something, she didn’t know what, the pain that had earlier made her decide it best to stay as still as possible.

  She wanted to scream but didn’t, she knew it would be pointless; not only was her jaw broken, a gag had been stuffed into her mouth while she was unconscious. Even if she could make a noise, it wouldn’t go anywhere.

  It was a minute or so after she first heard the approaching vehicle that it came to a stop, and the sound of a door opening and then slamming reached her. A few moments later a door was opened across from her and light flooded in, revealing her prison; she had been hung, naked – she had no idea where her clothes were – from a beam in an old barn. She had suspected she was in an abandoned building of some kind from the smell, which she now knew was that of rotting straw, but had no idea where.

  There was no time for her to look around and see any more than that, her attention was caught by the figure that entered the barn. For a moment there was nothing but a black silhouette, then He moved closer and she was able to see him more clearly. She couldn’t believe who had attacked her; she was so astonished that He reached her naked figure before she could recover from the surprise.

  “Let me go.”

  “What was that, I couldn’t make it out. You’re mumbling.” He reached up to remove the gag.

  “Let me go,” she said again, trying to make something more than a barely audible, unintelligible noise.

  He cocked his head to one side, as though he was trying to listen more closely, and then he shook it. “Nope, can’t make out a thing, you’re still mumbling.” He reached a hand up, as though to caress her cheek, and grabbed her jaw, sending fresh pain shooting through her as he waggled it back and forth. “You need to move your lips if you want people to understand what you’re saying.”

  The comment amused him, and he laughed at his own wit. His laughter died quickly when Lucy lashed out with her feet; her left foot struck him in the arm, which he ignored, but her right caught him in the groin. His eyes widened, and his face went white with pained shock as he doubled up.

  Lucy was pleased she had hurt him, but couldn’t help wishing she had hurt him more seriously.

  “Think that was funny, do you?” He demanded when h
e recovered. “You’ve obviously learned nothing about behaving. I guess you need a lesson.”

  The pleasure Lucy felt at having hurt Him disappeared when she saw him pull his belt off and fold it in half. She felt a cold shiver of fear run up and down her spine. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he smacked the belt emphatically into the palm of his other hand; the sound it made spoke eloquently of pain.

  “My dad used to take a belt to me when I did something wrong, or he thought I had,” He said, staring up into her face in a way that made her wish he would pay more attention to her naked body. “Let’s see if it’s as good at making you behave as it was me.”

  Lucy anticipated what was to come and prepared herself as best she could; despite that, the pain that came with the first lash of the belt was still a shock. Again and again he whipped her with the belt, making her body jerk and twitch. She would have screamed if she could; not only did the blows hurt, but the way her body moved in response to them made her shoulders howl in protest.

  How long the assault continued for, she had no idea. All she was sure of was that by the time it ended, she couldn’t tell where the pain was coming from, it seemed to be originating from every nerve in her body.

  “That’s the lesson out of the way,” He said, his voice ragged from the exertion of whipping Lucy, as he tossed the belt aside. “I hope you’ve learned to behave, because it’s time for playtime.” He took a large lock-knife from his pocket and cut her down, letting her fall to the floor, while he began stripping the clothes from his sweat-soaked body.

  Even before He unbuttoned his jeans to reveal his arousal, Lucy knew what he had in mind for her, and what he must have done with Georgina. She hoped her fellow teen had fought him, she didn’t like to think that Georgina had simply given up and let him do what he wanted; there was no way she was going to do that. She hurt, worse than she would have believed possible, but she still intended fighting with every last ounce of energy she possessed.