It was quarter to ten on a Saturday night, and like every night Lorna Cunningham hit the pavements running in her hi-tech Ultraboost trainers and pink and green running vest and tights.
Her friends, even fellow exercise freaks, were always amazed when they learned that she went out for a run on Saturdays too.
‘Seriously, babes?’
‘You owe yourself some downtime.’
‘You need to live a little bit, at least.’
Lorna smiled to herself as she lolloped across the housing estate. It wasn’t a graceful running style, but she had long, lean limbs and she covered the ground quickly and effortlessly. Fitness was a big thing these days, but so many people played at it. Not Lorna. She was the real deal, getting herself into shape so that she could compete, denying herself chocolate, cakes and nights on the town so that she could bring her best game to the running track and the volleyball court. So that she could win. But that required mental strength as well as physical, which was exactly what she was demonstrating now: sticking rigidly to her routine, coming outside and putting herself through it on club night.
Even Alex, her boyfriend of several years and a three-times Ironman competitor, was fascinated by the discipline this required. Not that he was hugely supportive, though that was more out of concern about the lateness of the hour and the quietness of the streets.
Lorna simply told him not to worry. It was true: unless you were in the very centre of town, Crowley was usually quiet on a Saturday evening. The few cars on the roads were taxis and minicabs and there were almost no pedestrians. In his eyes that made it dangerous for her to be out alone, but Lorna always argued the opposite. Anyone of a thuggish inclination would probably be down in the bar and nightclub district, where they would find more than enough violent action.
However, Alex’s unease had transferred itself to Lorna a little. He wasn’t being overly protective; she knew there was some sense in his words of caution. A woman jogging solo after dark … well, you couldn’t be too careful, could you, whatever night it was? Which was why, over the previous year, she’d devised this particular route and now followed it religiously. The first part, which she’d almost completed, led mainly through middle-class housing estates, where it seemed unlikely there’d be anyone hanging around looking for trouble. After that, she’d be out of sight completely, so there’d be no one at all to bother her – and she was almost at that point now.
Her breathing steadied, her pace increasing, as she circled around the top end of Queen Alexandra Park and joined Leatherton Lane. This was one of the busier roads in Lorna’s part of town, but even here only a single vehicle flitted past, a blue transit van, its two occupants paying noticeable attention to her, though that was no surprise. Lorna had a tall, coltish figure but was freckled and pretty, her copper-red hair cut in a fetching pageboy bob.
It didn’t matter anyway, because she now diverted from the pavement, vanishing into a passage between two maisonettes. It was an unlit cut-through, which, once it passed the back of the maisonettes and their rear gardens, sloped downward for fifty yards before joining the towpath on the north side of the Bridgewater Canal. Still sticking to her normal route, Lorna followed the towpath east, lengthening her stride alongside the night-black water, her feet thudding on the dry cinders. It was quite dark along here, the only light filtering down from streetlamps on bridges or over the tops of factory walls, but she had come this way so often in the last few months that she felt she could have run it blindfolded.
Some of her friends thought that she was extra-brave for coming this way. This was possibly the quietest stretch of the canal, with no residences, no houses or narrowboats. If pressed on the matter, Lorna supposed that, yes, it would be an ideal place for some weirdo to launch an ambush. But firstly, why would some predatory individual hang about down here, where he wouldn’t expect to find anyone? And secondly, she had faith in her physical abilities. She was now two miles into the run and still travelling at a pace well above jogging speed. She might be hot and sweaty, moisture pooling on her brow, but she had plenty of energy left. Her lungs were going like the clappers, her hamstrings and the backs of her calves steadily tightening, but she was fit, and actual fatigue was still far away – she could keep going for hours yet and was certain that she could easily outrun the average person.
She’d just reached the Navigation Lock, however, where the gaunt shell of a pub stood on the other side of the water, its windows boarded, when she suddenly sensed that there was someone else on the towpath. She glanced behind her and was just able to distinguish a diminutive shape some fifty yards away. Disconcerted, she glanced back again, this time for longer, trying to get a proper view of whoever it was.
The shape passed through a patch of streetlighting, and Lorna glimpsed a slim, girlish figure in a pale-grey tracksuit, wearing what looked like white trainers, with a mop of light blonde hair.
She ran on, uncertain why she still wasn’t happy. Almost unconsciously, she increased her speed a little, legs now pumping, lungs working furiously, until she was moving at what felt like a half-sprint. That wasn’t really a good idea. She still had about three miles to go, and if she kept this up she’d be exhausted long before she reached that target. She decelerated again, glancing over her shoulder a third time.
Inevitably, the figure had fallen behind a few yards and was in dimness again, so it was difficult to identify anything about her aside from her sex. That alone should have made her presence less threatening, but Lorna still couldn’t help thinking it odd that the other runner had come upon her seemingly from nowhere. Of course, that made it sound more sinister than it possibly was. The girl or woman might have been jogging along the canalside anyway, Lorna coming down the cut-through from Leatherton Lane just ahead of her. There was no reason why it couldn’t be as innocent as that. But again, at the risk of thinking like Alex, it was late, the towpath was dark and that other runner was a lone female.
Lorna had assumed that only she was bold enough to take a route like this so late at night.
She glanced behind one final time. The other runner had fallen a significant distance behind. It wouldn’t be long before she was out of sight altogether.
Now, several hundred yards past the pub, the wall on Lorna’s left gave way to rusted wrought-iron fencing and, on the other side of that, flat open ground. She knew from having run this way earlier in the year, when the evenings were lighter, that it was mostly allotments over that way; the terraced houses to which they belonged were still visible about three hundred yards distant, but only in outline. A little past the allotments, the fencing ended and the garages began. There were six of them, a terraced row, all backing onto the towpath, all disused. They were decades old and built from cheap wood: flimsy, teetering structures, their sagging tarpaper roofs ready to fall in.
Lorna passed them by without a second glance, driving relentlessly forward, her breathing more ragged now, but her feet still pounding the cinders. Further iron fencing appeared on her left. Whatever lay behind that was lost in total darkness. Then, from somewhere not too far behind, there came a sharp cry of pain.
Lorna glanced backward again, once and then twice, the second time looking for longer, trying to focus through the dimness.
The second runner, the woman or girl, appeared to have fallen, and now rolled about on the path alongside the fourth of the garages, both hands gripping her left knee.
Lorna continued forward, determined not to be distracted from her schedule, though already her heart was sinking because almost immediately she’d realised that she was going to have to go back. She was a civilised being, after all; you couldn’t just ignore it when someone had an accident. She tromped on along the towpath for a dozen or so yards, glancing backward again and again, hoping against hope that the diminishing figure would be getting back to its feet. But increasingly difficult though it was to see, it looked as if the woman, whoever she was, was still on the ground.
With no other option, Lorna slowed to a halt, turned and, with shoulders heaving, trudged back along the path.
‘You all right?’ she asked, as she approached the fallen shape.
‘I’m so sorry,’ the girl whimpered, sitting upright on the path but still clutching her knee. In the half-dark, it was difficult to be sure, but she sounded young, no more than a teenager. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know … I’m just glad you came back. I didn’t want to be stuck here on my own.’
‘Let’s have a look.’ Still breathing hard, fresh sweat glinting off her arms and shoulders, Lorna knelt down to make a quick examination. ‘If you can just roll up your—’
The girl stuck her in the bicep with a syringe.
‘Hey!’ Lorna jerked backward. ‘What the hell do you …?’
Instantly, she lost focus, the towpath seeming to tilt, her words slurring. When the girl reached up and grabbed her by the wrists, she resisted as much as she could, struggling as they grappled with each other, trying to roll back onto her heels and push herself away – but suddenly Lorna couldn’t maintain even that minor effort. Within moments, all strength and coordination had left her. She slumped sideways onto the cinders, while the girl got hurriedly to her feet, panting. A deep, sluggish cold now surged the length of the athlete’s body. She was only vaguely aware of the rough ground against her cheek, her blurring vision fixed across the water on the towering brick structure of a mill, which overlooked the scene of her defeat with broken, empty windows.
Then a thunderous impact sounded on the other side of the back wall of the fourth garage. Lorna watched from the corner of her eye, unable to make sense of it as the rotted timbers broke apart, a sledgehammer’s head appearing, and then a heavy-booted foot kicking savagely and repeatedly at the lower planks until they too were smashed. By the time a dark-clad shape had fought its way through, Lorna’s eyes were fluttering closed. As her vision faded completely, two pairs of hands gripped her and turned her roughly onto her face. The last thing she knew, her wrists were folded across each other in the small of her back, and a tight plastic cord bit into them.