‘Hi, Ava! Are you okay?’
Ava wiped sweat from her forehead and spun round. ‘Shit, Pen, you scared the life out of me.’ The six-mile run from Leo’s house down to Big Water had been hard, but the snow was packed tightly so for much of the way her trail shoes had been able to get enough grip for a reasonable pace. She had fallen a couple of times, into innocent-looking drifts that were actually a couple of metres deep, but she was in good shape. The bait she had laid earlier had been taken and the final stages of the game could commence.
‘Sorry, I came down with the Land Rover, but I had to leave it at the top of the track. It does well in the snow, but there is a massive drift down by the gate. We’re missing about thirty sheep, so I’m out looking this side of the hill, and Dwaine, he’s the shepherd, is out the other side. Sometimes the daft beasts come down this way because it’s lower, and a bit warmer, but if they huddle they can get trapped in the snow and… I don’t have to remind you, do I? You lived here!’ Penny’s blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her cheeks slightly pink from the walk up the hill. She had a green waxed jacket with big pockets, and she carried a small red rucksack over her shoulder. ‘I heard the snowplough out early this morning. Paul’s at the hospice until four, so I really hope they clear it by then. Ava, is something wrong? It’s not those freaky text messages again, is it? Have the police said anything about the suspect?’
The two women stared at one another, and Ava could feel the tension stretching between them as she didn’t answer immediately. She would wait for Penny to make the first move, and hope that her knowledge would be enough to keep her one step ahead. Had Penny really come on her own, or was Paul hiding somewhere?
‘Yes. I had another message, and I think I might know where Bethan is. It’s just over the hill.’
‘Just over the hill? Surely that was already searched.’ Penny snuck a wary glance across the white landscape, and shoved a hand into her pocket. ‘Ava, I know you’ve been really stressed out lately, and I can see why, but this person is dangerous. We can’t go trying to rescue Bethan ourselves.’
So, she was still playing the happy wife, still pretending. Ava mirrored her, answering as though she too believed that Penny and Paul had nothing to do with Bethan’s disappearance. ‘I have to. Penny, she could die! That’s if she hasn’t already.’
* * *
Ava had waited and waited, as the feeble stabs of morning light crept across the darkness, for any sign that the police were on their way. In the end, frustrated beyond reason, she had called Sophie, who told her curtly that the road was still blocked and the helicopter was rescuing a couple of climbers off the side of Naddglyden.
For another hour she had paced Leo’s silent house, checking her phone for updates on the road. But the local authority website and social media feed merely informed her the road into Aberdyth was still blocked. She would wait, she would not do anything to screw up Bethan’s chance of rescue. And then the next text came in, again in Welsh, and this time accompanied by another photograph. With an effort, she translated:
‘If you leave a flower without water for too long, it starts to die. If you leave it too late, and the sun comes out, there is nothing but blood on the stone. Time’s up, Ava Cole.’
Naturally she had scanned the photograph for signs of life, but Bethan was stripped naked again in this one, hands and ankles tied tightly, and the cave was bare of any supplies.
‘Sophie, I’m sending you a message and pic,’ she had told her quickly. She waited on the line for the DI to look at the message contents.
‘Fuck! This bastard is really playing for fun today, aren’t they? Okay, we’ll be maybe another hour. The hill is unstable, so it’s tough going for the road team clearing the snow. The good news is, the helicopter crew just cleared from their last job, so they’ll be up here as soon as they’ve refuelled. Just keep me updated.’
‘Will do.’
Ava had rung off and got ready to go out. Remembering the conversation, the sheer sweat-dripping frustration in Sophie’s voice, weighed against the horror she had felt at doing nothing to save Bethan, Ava shivered, suddenly aware of her cold feet, her numb hands. Her running gear was designed to keep out the cold, and yet let her body breathe, and it was expensive kit. Bethan had been naked in the photographs…
* * *
Penny frowned. ‘Ava? What makes you think you know where she is?’ A weak ray of sunshine slid through the layered grey cloud and sliced a path of gold through Penny’s hair.
‘I had another weird message, I told you. Come on.’
The two women started up the hill, Penny swinging her red rucksack onto her back.
It was tough going. The snow here had blown up into great hard-packed ridges, and by the time they crested the hill, they were both panting. Ava’s stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since last night.
‘I need to rest a minute – sorry, Ava, I’m exhausted. Paul was in a lot of pain last night, and then the stupid sheep missing this morning… Paul’s been so vile the last few weeks, I really do think he’s struggling with it all more than he lets on.’
Wary, Ava looked over her shoulder and reluctantly slid to a halt as Penny unzipped her rucksack, but she still seemed so normal, and there was no sign of anyone else on the hill.
‘Here, I’m going to pick up Stephen after this, and I made this for him, but hell, if we find Bethan, I’m sure he’ll understand. He’s been going out of his mind with worry, poor love. I think they have a snowplough and gritters trying to clear the main road, so I suppose the other contestants will be driven back to the hotel in Cadrington. Are you all right, Ava?’ Penny took a blue and silver flask from her bag and unscrewed the cap. ‘Beef soup. I made it this morning. Go on, you might as well, and I know how much you liked that stew the other night. I’ve got biscuits too.’
Hesitating, her smile frozen on her lips, Ava realised how hungry she was, but also how stupid she would be to accept the drink. Her mind flashed back to the spiked drink at the pub. Who had done it – Penny, Paul, or even Huw? But Penny was watching her, her own smile lighting her face, waiting for Ava to take the cup. ‘Actually, Pen, I’ve had a bit of a dodgy stomach the last couple of days, so I might stick with the biscuits, if that’s okay?’
Penny shrugged. ‘Of course, lovely, all the more for Stephen. The amount teenagers eat these days is shocking. I’ll have to get some extra food in for when he comes home.’
Ava stayed alert, muscles tense, scanning the daisy meadow. At this time of year, and covered in snow, there was no trace of the idyllic pocket of flowers, but she could gauge the area she needed to search, and it wasn’t large. Somewhere under the snow, if she had guessed correctly, Bethan was dying. If she had to tear every tussock out by hand she would find the girl and bring her home. Meanwhile, what to do about Penny?
The blonde woman opened a tin of biscuits and offered them to Ava, before pouring herself a cup of soup. She was still smiling, still chattering about Stephen, and how she really hoped Bethan was okay. There was no urgency in her voice or mannerisms. ‘Do you remember how I had that little leather book for pressing flowers? We brought it down here, didn’t we, for the beautiful daisies.’
Ava did remember, and the memory stuck in her throat, clogging it with emotion at the image of three children picking flowers. How had it come to this? It was tough, but to keep her going, and to appease Penny, she ate a couple of flapjacks, and was just about to swing the conversation around to the daisy meadow again, when her phone rang. She glanced down. ‘Sorry, I need to get this.’
‘I got your email about the latest message. Sounds like it’s nearly time to finish the game,’ Jack said. His voice was faint and the weak signal made the line buzzy and indistinct.
‘Yeah, I got that too.’ Ava kept one eye on Penny, who was munching happily, and clearly not in a hurry to get on and rescue Bethan. Her own heart was thundering against her chest, and her breathing was short again, the icy air almost painful as it hit her lungs in sharp, anxious bursts.
Jack continued. ‘Right, I have some more… information that might help, and although I have Sophie’s details, I thought I’d call you first…’
‘I’m listening. You’re really faint, the signal is so bad up here.’ In her mind’s eye she saw the bloody daisy chain, coiled like a snake in the tissue paper. Was it Bethan’s blood, or the killer’s? If it was the killer’s that would mean they had identified themselves, and after all their cleverness, it must be deliberate. Did they want to be caught? Was that how the game ended? She moved a little way down the hill, away from Penny, but she could feel her friend’s eyes on her.
‘So, Zack told you we traced the person who was putting the photographs up. We’ve got more now. It was slightly odd in the end, almost as though this perp started off trying to cloak their identity, but then led us along a trail right to their own website. It’s a whole site dedicated to sick porn, and snuff videos. All kinds of fucked-up shit.’ Jack hesitated.
‘Go on.’ Ava indicated to Penny that they needed to get on, rolling her eyes in an attempt to convey boredom at the person on the other end of the phone. But this mattered, she could feel it, and the sweat on her forehead wasn’t just from the climb up the hill. ‘The site is linked to Penny’s Bakes and Makes. She’s Paul’s wife, isn’t she? All the emails and photographs linked to him, but this is a direct hit on her.’
Ava froze, heart hammering, and then covered her reaction quickly, zipping her running jacket up tighter, stamping her feet. She dragged up a picture in her mind of Penny’s bright colourful site, and heard her light, pretty voice explaining that Paul made the website because she didn’t understand technical things… and Leo did the photographs. ‘Tell me how.’
Jack sighed. ‘So, the tech guys tell me this kind of site often lives right underneath a legitimate site. Hard to describe, but imagine an island – your wholesome sand and palm trees on top, but underneath you got a load of sharks and weed…’
‘Very lucid. I get you,’ Ava said dryly, desperately trying to process this new information.
‘This dark web site feeds off the same images as the legit one, JavaScript, and whatever – not my thing as you know. You go onto the legit site, you click a specific image selection – in this case, it’s a photograph of a cake, and then an icon – and it takes you down below to the sick shit. A couple of things that stand out – it’s her site, but the website and all the email accounts are registered to her husband. Did you…’
The signal gave out and she swore, apologised to Penny and explained it was a work call. She rang him back, hoping it would connect… Fuck, she was going to have to stop the soft approach and hammer Penny. All the time she tried Jack’s number again, she was scanning the hill below for signs of Bethan. Underground. There must have been a hidden cave entrance they had missed when they explored up here as kids. Or perhaps an old mine entrance had opened up in the years between her escape and now. It did happen. She remembered that there had been a big news story a while back about a whole house disappearing into a sinkhole, because so many mines were never mapped.
Jack was back, and she gripped the phone so hard it hurt her palm through her glove. ‘Lost you for a minute. Now, it could be that they are in this together, or he could be using her as a front. You said he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer? It could be the trigger that started all this off. Say he was responsible for the rape and murder of your friend, and say his wife doesn’t know, but suspects…’
‘Oh really? Well, maybe. Look, I need to call you back later, I’m right in the middle of something.’ Ava’s mind was racing. Could it be Paul, or was this a team effort between husband and wife? Had they brought her back for this all along?
‘Are you with someone?’
‘That’s right – just a girlfriend.’
‘Paul might or might not be your perp. You’re with her, aren’t you, the wife?’ Jack said sharply. ‘Does Sophie know where you are? Do you want me to update her?’
‘Yes she does, and yes please, as soon as you can. Thanks, speak later,’ Ava said quickly. Penny? No way, and yet it fitted in so many ways. But she wouldn’t be doing it alone. If Paul was involved, it must be because he attacked Ellen that night. Fuck, Penny… She felt nausea creeping up her stomach into her throat, and beside her, the blonde hair shone in the sun, the pale green eyes fixed on hers…
‘So. who was that?’
‘It was just my boss back home. We’re halfway through a tricky case and he wanted my take on it.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you remember the daisy meadow, Penny?’
Her face lit up. ‘Yes, I do… It would be right below us on the side of this hill, wouldn’t it? Do you think Bethan is there? That would have been searched, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes it was, but I think she is being kept underground.’ Ava met Penny’s gaze. Again, there was nothing but a pretty farmer’s wife, a soon-to-be-bereaved wife. Her childhood friend. ‘Penny, we need to find her!’
Still no reaction from the blonde woman, so Ava started to climb. She could hear Penny following her but didn’t look back. They slithered down the hill, grinding to an unsteady halt approximately halfway down. This side of the hill, as they sank beneath the snow, was matted with bramble cables and bare scrubby vegetation, and the usual muddy ruts that caught unwary boots.
Ava jumped onto a ledge of jutting rock. Nausea made her head swim, but she brushed the feeling away. There was nothing obvious here, after the fresh fall of snow, and yet she was sure this was the place.
‘Could the place be a bit further over?’ Penny asked doubtfully, dumping her rucksack on the ledge next to her friend.
‘I don’t know, it might be. What do you think?’ Ava challenged her, her voice sharpening. ‘Where do you think Bethan might be, Penny?’
‘I don’t know. How could I? It’s you who have been getting the messages, isn’t it, lovely, so it must be up to you to find her.’ Penny was smiling blandly, charmingly, with no hint of fear or sadness.
So that was it. She glanced quickly down to check her phone, which was now displaying the ‘no signal’ icon, but still displayed the map she had saved earlier. ‘I’m thinking a natural fissure in the rock that is well hidden from the outside, or possibly even an entrance to some old mine workings. We need to check every bramble patch, and every ledge from here downwards. What do you think?’
‘Oh, I think you’re pretty clever to have thought of that,’ Penny said softly and started moving to the right, shoving aside clumps of snow, parting the scrub, scanning along the rocky outcrops. ‘Let’s see now…’
Ava let her lead, whilst she was pretending to search further up. Penny wanted her to find Bethan, so she would trust that if she couldn’t find the cave, her friend would guide her. They searched for a few minutes when Penny suddenly shrieked. ‘Oh my God, Ava, get over here!’
Elated, Ava abandoned her search area and ran towards her friend. The nausea returned, making her head spin. She forced the feeling away. Gut instinct had been right. Unless it was an extreme coincidence, which she didn’t believe, Penny had rung last night to gauge how things stood. Penny and her husband had decided she would come down and meet Ava after the last message, and pushing towards an unknown end goal, Penny would show Ava where Bethan was. The question was, now what?
Penny was excitedly tearing at undergrowth with her gloved hands, chucking up mud-laced snow, ‘Look! It’s an opening, but it has boards over it. It must be an old mine entrance or something. Do you remember that one we used to go exploring in over Manrith way?’
If you didn’t know where to look, it would have been almost impossible to think that the snowy ridge held an underground entrance. In normal circumstances the SAR teams would have covered this area with more advanced equipment, and probably discovered something, but the weather had been on the perp’s side from the beginning. Ava felt herself sway and frowned, putting a hand out onto a stunted hawthorn to steady herself, but Penny was still moving grass and mud and didn’t appear to notice. ‘Penny, I know,’ Ava said quietly.
Penny swung round, breathing heavily, a smudge of mud on her forehead, her cheeks red from exertion. ‘I know you do. It certainly took you long enough. You started off well, but, goodness, lovely, you could have saved Bethan days ago.’ She shook her head sorrowfully.
Ava froze, tense and incredulous. To have her admit her guilt, with about as much emotion as if she was ordering bread at the shop, was sickening. ‘So tell me, because I’m having trouble with this. You were my friend.’
‘Oh, I still am your friend, Ava.’ Penny chucked another tussock of brown, winter grass down the hill. She paused, and met Ava’s gaze. ‘I will always love you, but there are things I need to do.’
‘Is Bethan alive then?’ Ava checked that the rucksack was still way above them, balanced on the ledge. Penny’s coat was slim-fitting and belted. The pockets couldn’t possibly conceal anything more than a small knife. Whilst Penny was obviously moving towards a very definite goal of her own, she seemed to be taking Ava to Bethan, so unless that changed, she would keep things civil, even though her stomach was churning with horror. As she spoke, Penny was nothing but a pretty, empty shell, devoid of emotion.
‘Oh yes. She’s not in a good way though. You’d better hurry.’ Penny heaved the last board away and threw it into the snow.
‘Is Paul with her?’ Ava enquired.
‘Paul? Of course not. He’s at the hospice like I told you.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘It’s just you and me, lovely, and that is how it has always been.’
‘Did you kill Alex?’
Penny ignored the question, placing a gentle hand on Ava’s arm. ‘This is where it all started you know, so it is so lovely we can finish in the same place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ava, you made me a daisy chain.’ The green eyes were wide and innocent, lips slightly parted from exertion, but there was something behind the expression, some hardness, or wildness that had never broken through before.
Ava took a step towards the dark hole and Penny smiled approvingly. It was a tunnel, just wide enough to crawl along, giving off into blackness. The air smelled of earth and dead things. ‘I still don’t understand why you would do this. Did you kill Ellen?’
‘So many questions, and you’re always harping on about Ellen, aren’t you? Yet you made my daisy chain before you made Ellen one. I have loved you, Ava, as much as I could love anyone. Paul has been my rock, and you were my fix, and now for one last time I have the both of you together again. One last time. You see, on the outside everything has always been perfect, but underneath I am rotten, and squirming with maggots. You look shocked. Now, I can hear that helicopter too, lovely, but we have a few more squares to cover before we get to the finish, so we need to get a move on. The police will be here soon, but they can’t come yet. I’ve planned it all so carefully… Ava, are you all right?’
* * *
Was it night again? Ava’s head was thumping, and she groaned. Her eyes were gritty, so she raised her hands to rub them, childlike. Her fists bumped wood. Slowly, clarity returned, but the darkness remained. She tasted musty wood, earth and damp on her tongue, and as she shifted a foot, that too knocked up against wood.
Memory returned, and snatches of Penny’s soft voice urging her forward, into the darkness, her arm around her shoulders, and her just wanting to lie down. Panic flooded her brain, and she jerked both feet downwards, fists hammering upwards, eyes wide in the darkness. She was locked in a box. What the fuck had happened to Penny? She yelled her name, but the air inside her box just seemed to get a little hotter, a little harder to breathe.
The box was just big enough for her to lie on her back. If she raised her hands, she had maybe fifteen inches until her nails scraped wood.
The memories burned in her mind, and suddenly she was thirteen again, locked in a box under East Wood, whilst outside Huw counted down the minutes remaining. It was ‘True Lies’ all over again. But how long would she leave her in here? Surely she had been telling the truth when she said that the game wasn’t over. How long before the air gave out, and where the fuck were the police?
Ava searched her mind. She remembered nothing else. The helicopter had been circling though, the rotor blades thunderous in the silence of the icy valley. Sophie and her team knew where she was. It wouldn’t be long.
The back of her head was very sore. Was there blood? She couldn’t reach to check it out, but she managed to turn her head so her cheek pressed against rough wood, easing the pain a little. The nausea and the dizziness had come on before she even entered the cave, hadn’t they? In trying to coax Penny into taking her to Bethan, making sure she didn’t upset her, she had eaten the biscuits. Had they contained a drug? Had Penny hit her as well? She tried yelling for Bethan, then for Penny again.
The silence was ominous, the minutes ticking by. Furious, she kicked out at the box again and again. She tried to distract herself, much as she had done years earlier, playing ‘True Lies’…
* * *
‘You really gonna do it, Ava?’
‘Of course. I’m not scared, if that’s what you think.’
‘I wouldn’t dare.’ Penny was looking on with wide eyes, but Ellen pushed her to the side.
They were all watching. The darkness swirled around the wood like a living thing, and in front of her the box gaped like an open wound. Leo was grinning, a cigarette hanging from his fingers. ‘Go on, Ava, you lost, babe, so in you get.’
She did.
The lid was thumped closed and the claustrophobia hit. She couldn’t breathe. She could hear laughter, followed by a thump of earth on the lid of the box. She jumped, heart pounding so hard it felt like her chest would burst.
Outside they counted down her time underground, and she blocked the terror and counted with them, visualising the numbers in her head as big neon digits.
‘10, 9, 8, 7… oh, the watch has stopped. Sorry I need to start again…’ Huw was laughing.
‘Huw! Just fucking get on with it.’ That was Rhodri, his voice edged with worry.
‘Okay, all working now, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5…’
* * *
Ava had no idea how long she’d been down there. It was too dark to see her watch, and every breath seemed magnified a thousand times. She could do this. If she was right, Bethan had a chance as long as, she, Ava, played the game.
She must have passed out again for a while, but a sound of digging, a spade hitting earth and clinking off rock, roused her.
‘Hallo? Who is that?’ No answer. She still didn’t know for sure that Penny was working alone.
‘Penny?’
The noise abated, and she thought she heard the clunk of boots. Then silence again. She screamed, but her screams echoed around inside her head. Then another sound caught her attention. The buzz of a phone receiving a message. What the fuck? How was there a phone signal underground? Unless she wasn’t far from the entrance. Hope surged through her, giving a fresh burst of energy. Without thinking further, she thrust her hands upwards again and this time the roof of her prison moved. Just a little. Desperation gave her strength, and she shoved as hard as she could. The lid of the box moved sideways and she sat up, head spinning. It was still dark, but there was a torch on the floor, casting a beam of yellow light onto her phone.
Ava crawled out of the box, inching towards the phone, grabbing it and pulling it close. There was a signal, very weak, but there was a signal. She hit the number for DI Miles, and waited, propping herself against the cave wall.
‘Ava? Where are you?’ Her voice was distorted, and she asked something else but she couldn’t make out the words. ‘Ava?’
She took a deep breath. ‘I’m in an old mine working under… It’s obvious, the entrance hole to the tunnel is… I… Penny is… Hallo?’ But with a buzz and a bleep, the phone gave out again.
Ava shoved the useless object in her pocket and picked up the torch. Her knuckles were cut and bleeding from battering at the box. She slowly swung the light around. It was a large cave, with a passageway passing through either end. She studied the two exits, trying to work out what to do next. A wrong move, and it could cost Bethan’s life, and her own. And at every turn she expected Penny to appear from the darkness, knife in hand. It was then that she saw the chalk message on the wall.
‘Congratulations, Ava Cole. Next question. After Leo went in the box that night, what did Huw have to do before Ellen arrived?’