Thirty-Six

As they drove off, Lindsay broke into tears of relief. Rex passed her a roll of paper towels from under his seat, and she tore off a wad and blotted her hair dry. Alistair turned up the heat in the car and she removed her damp blazer. Something fluttered from her sleeve.

She picked it up, clearly not wishing to litter Alistair’s immaculate interior.

“Is that a stamp hinge?” Rex held out his palm and carefully placed it in his wallet.

“It was caught in the cuff of my sleeve.”

“Those pesky little hinges.” Alistair glanced round with a smile.

“He has an album with stamps from different countries, which he’d let me look at. They reminded me there was a world outside the caravan and made me think I might never get to see any of those places.”

“Now you will,” said Alistair.

Rex surmised that if Sutter had the album, he had probably taken the other items as well. “What sort of watch does he wear?” he asked Lindsay, checking his own, amazed to see how little time had passed since they had left the Masthead, in spite of all the ensuing action.

“A gold-plated one with a stretchy gold bracelet. Why?”

“A watch and stamp album went missing from a house in Canterbury.”

“He did more than burgle the house, didn’t he?”

“Perhaps.”

“He killed that girl in Edinburgh.” She began to cry again.

“Tell me, Lindsay, did he say anything else on the subject of the other girl?”

“Only that he forced her into his car as she was walking home from school and took her to his basement flat. He had to get rid of her, he said, because she wouldn’t be quiet and do what she was told, and he dumped her body in a dark alley.”

“Skinner’s Close. It made national headline news, but you’d have been too young at the time to remember.”

Alistair turned onto Victoria Place where the buildings and shopfronts glistened and the lights showed blurry in the rain. They had not gone far along the road leading out of town when a lone police car sped by in the opposite direction, tyres swishing on the wet tar and siren wailing. Alistair slowed down.

“Keep going, please don’t stop,” Lindsay urged in a strangled voice from the back seat. “I just want to get far away from here.”

Alistair kept going.

“He took my phone. I need to ring my mum,” she pleaded.

Alistair gave her his mobile while Rex called the police on his to explain that they had rescued Lindsay Poulson from the campsite in Brightlingsea and her abductor, Dan Sutter, was possibly in one of the local pubs. While Lindsay spoke to her parents, alternately crying and reassuring them, he told the dispatcher where exactly the caravan and repainted van were located, in case the police car they had passed had not been responding to their emergency after Alistair’s call.

They parked in a layby and waited in the event Sutter tried to leave in the van by the main road out of town. After an emotional exchange with her younger sister Christie, Lindsay passed the phone back to Alistair and wiped her teary face with her sleeve.

“Dan Sutter can’t have been here all the time,” Rex said to her. “He was in Edinburgh two weeks ago.” At Pruitt’s flat.

“The first Sunday, he left for two days. An elderly woman came to guard me. She had a Scottish accent too. She didn’t say much. She brought me a pork pie and heated up some baked beans on the gas hob. The rest of the time it was just toast and Marmite. She never took me to the communal facilities, and I had to use the porta potty. She said if I tried to escape it would mean trouble for me, and for her.”

“I have some bottled water and date bars if you’re hungry,” Alistair said, glancing into his rear view mirror. “We had no idea we’d find you; we came looking for Sutter on another matter, so I’m afraid we came ill-prepared.”

“I’m not hungry, thank you. I just want to go home.”

“I know, and you will soon,” Rex promised her.

He imagined her family rejoicing back in Dover, and yet anxious to see her and make sure she was all right. He could still scarcely believe that she was safe. Pale and no doubt more traumatized than she let show, but not physically hurt, it appeared.

“Did you happen to notice if he kept a spare tyre in the van?” he asked.

“There was one in the back. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I kept thinking the police were bound to find me because someone must have spotted his ugly brown van.”

“Two witnesses came forward, but he whitewashed it.”

She took a deep breath. “What if he gets away?”

“Unlikely,” Rex assured her, twisting around in the front passenger seat to face her. “We sabotaged his van.”

She responded with the shadow of a smile, the first.

It would take a while for Sutter to change his tyre once he discovered it was flat. First he would go searching the campsite for Lindsay, imagining perhaps that she had managed to get free on her own. On the other hand, he might borrow or steal a car.

“What should we do aboot the wee creep in the motorhome?” he suddenly asked Alistair, having forgotten about him in the excitement of saving Lindsay.

“Let the police find him and his stash of illegal DVDs.”

“Aye, let him stew for a bit. Did a young man by the name of Justin Tims have anything to do with your abduction, Lindsay?”

“No, it was just Danny and the woman.”

“His mother, I believe. How did he snatch you? Take your time; he can’t get to you now.”

She blew her nose noisily. Rex and Alistair exchanged paternal smiles, relishing the calm before the storm. There would be the police and an onslaught of publicity to contend with soon enough.

“I was walking home from school, just like the other girl,” Lindsay began. “He was parked by the pavement. There was a brick wall on my other side. He was opening the back doors of the van when I went by. I didn’t think much of it. I was on my phone. He grabbed me, ripped it from my hand, and bundled me inside. There were no windows in the back compartment, just a pile of mouldy old blankets. When I realized I couldn’t get out, I started to cry. He told me he wouldn’t hurt me if I was good and didn’t try to escape. He said he was protecting me.”

“From what?” Rex asked.

“My father, he told me later. I don’t know why. My father’s never done anything wrong in his life! I don’t think that man Danny is all there.”

A swarm of squad cars with flashing roof lights converged at the turning to Brightlingsea and set up a road block. Rex got out. The rain had stopped and a sliver of moon glimmered ethereally in the murky sky, reflected in puddles on the road.

He informed the first officer he came upon that Lindsay Poulson was in his colleague’s car and not in need of immediate medical attention as far as he could tell.

He prepared himself for the inevitable series of questions and statements at the police station, only too happy to comply. His only concern was that, in spite of what he had told Lindsay, Dan Sutter might still escape.