Huntress Read online

  Claudia looked at the door. “Terrorists come in different shapes and sizes,” she said.

  “So, terrorists help with the washing up, do they? They teach you how to use the computer, eh?”

  Claudia looked at Beryl again. “Most terrorists fight for a cause; they don’t just commit random acts of violence. They believe what they are doing is right.”

  “Sounds like you’re defending ‘em.” Beryl folded her arms.

  “I’m not. It is a part of my job to understand who I’m looking for.”

  “Well, if that’s your aim then I can assure you that you won’t be finding them.” Beryl started to close the door.

  “What makes you say that?” Claudia asked.

  Beryl stopped and looked at her through the gap in the door. “If you’re looking for hardened criminals, hell-bent on hurting people and causing mayhem, then you won’t find those two. They are kind and generous. They gave me money for food, which they didn’t have to do. Amy saved my dog, she didn’t have to do that. Kerry cleaned the kitchen so much I can see my face in the kettle—”

  Claudia had heard enough. “Did they say where they were going?”

  “Wales.” Beryl smiled. “Or was it Plymouth?”

  Claudia let out a breath. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but people’s lives are at risk.”

  “Yes, two young girls. They haven’t done nothing wrong.” Beryl slammed the door shut.

  Claudia heard multiple locks and chains being fastened. She stepped forward and posted her business card through the letter box. “Just in case you change your mind.”

  19

  Bert Junior

  The phone alarm beeped loudly, indicating that it was seven in the evening. Claudia turned it off. She lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Thankfully, she had managed to get three hours of sleep. A long career in chasing people down had taught her the importance of spontaneous deep sleep.

  She’d spoken to the owner of the main shop in Choppington, and he’d seen the girls earlier that morning. They were heading in the direction of the nearest town with a train station, Morpeth.

  Claudia had spent four hours in Morpeth, questioning everyone she came across. No one had seen or heard anything. While Mark ran projections on where they might have gone, Claudia took the opportunity to sleep in a bed in a local hotel.

  As she woke up, all the case details started to filter into her consciousness. She couldn’t shake the discussion she’d had with Beryl. Of course, anyone harbouring a criminal thought they were doing the right thing. The best of criminals were charming and got away with things by virtue of their personality.

  It wasn’t lost on Claudia that Amy was a Sociology graduate. She could easily use that knowledge to manipulate people. Maybe she was even manipulating Kerry?

  She rolled off the bed and used the bathroom to get ready. She had no idea when she would next be able to take a break, so she used the opportunity to take a shower and wash her hair. Military service had taught her to use her time wisely, and in under fifteen minutes she was ready to go again.

  She picked up her overnight bag and walked out of the hotel room. The building was very old, four hundred years old, if the manager was to be believed. It was clear that it was either built by drunks or had suffered from severe subsidence since. The stairs were all different heights and often slanting in different directions. From the bed to the shower was a downhill slope. As much as she had been relieved to be in a real bed, she’d be just as relieved to be back on solid, flat ground.

  She carefully walked down the rickety stairs. She wasn’t surprised when the hotel manager appeared around the corner.

  “Did you sleep well, Miss McAllister?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mr Simpson.” She handed him the key.

  “Please, call me Neil.”

  “Neil,” she offered.

  “Good luck in finding your runaways,” he said. “By the way, did you speak to Bert?” He walked back towards the hotel reception desk and hung up the key on the corresponding hook.

  “Who’s Bert?” Claudia asked, the name sounded familiar. She had spoken to so many people that afternoon.

  “The train station master,” Neil said.

  “Oh, yes, I spoke to him first thing.”

  Neil handed her an invoice. “Bert Junior or Bert Senior?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Excuse me?”

  “Father and son, they both work as the station master. Bert Junior works until around lunchtime and then Bert Senior takes the other shift.”

  “I think I spoke to Bert Senior then.” She took the invoice and handed over her card. “Where would I find Bert Junior?”

  Neil swiped the card and handed it back. He turned around and looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh, you’ll find him in The Partridge and Pheasant around now.”

  She took the card. “Perfect. Thank you.”

  “Don’t forget to rate your stay on the Internets,” Neil called out after her.

  Claudia didn’t bother to reply, she was already on her way to the pub. The town seemed to be filled with pubs, not surprising due to the lack of anything else happening in the area. She knew there were only two ways the girls could leave the town, hitchhike or train. The buses out of town were so infrequent that there hadn’t been one all day. While she knew they were partial to hitchhiking, she had a suspicion that they would have tried to get a train.

  She entered the pub and approached the landlord, whom she had already spoken to once that day.

  “Hello again,” he greeted her warmly. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you. Is there a Bert Junior here? The station master?”

  The landlord nodded and gestured his head to the end of the bar where a man was nursing half a beer and reading a newspaper. She walked over to him.

  “Excuse me, are you the station master?”

  He closed his newspaper and looked at her appraisingly. “I am. How can I help you, young lady?”

  She pulled out a poster and showed it to him. “Have you seen these two girls?”

  He took the poster from her and looked. “Oh yes, I saw these two this morning. They asked how to get to Edinburgh.”

  Claudia felt her heart beat a little faster. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, normally we run a direct service, but with the engineer works they had to go to Newcastle and catch a train from there.” He looked at his watch. “If they made their connection, they would have just arrived in Edinburgh.”

  He handed the poster back to her.

  “Thank you so much.” She pulled a five pound note out of her pocket and handed to the landlord. “Buy this man a drink,” she told him before turning and rushing out of the pub.

  20

  Two Steps Behind

  Claudia yanked the handbrake up and shut off the engine. A moment later she was exiting the car with her coat in hand.

  “I’m near the station,” she spoke into her earpiece.

  “I’m pulling the CCTV footage now, but there’s a lot to go through and the connection is lagging,” Mark replied.

  She shrugged on her coat and descended the stairs two at a time to enter Edinburgh Waverley Station through the side entrance. The journey from Morpeth to Edinburgh had felt much longer than it was. In the back of her mind, Claudia knew that every minute was a minute her subjects could spend evading her. Ten minutes was a reasonably small amount of time unless it was in the hands of a desperate person fleeing.

  “I’m searching the station now, call me as soon as you get anything concrete.”

  She paused as she entered the station. Hurrying was sometimes the biggest mistake a hunter could commit. A second or two surveying the landscape could be the potential difference between a successful capture and a loss.

  The train station was undeniably beautiful in its architecture and retained a lot of original features. It was also extremely busy. Claudia knew that Waverley was the second biggest train station in the UK, and right now it f
elt it.

  A glance at the departures board demonstrated what a busy station it was, even later in the evening. Claudia wondered if this was the girls’ destination or if they were simply using it to get elsewhere. The station was a major junction. It would be very easy for someone to head in any direction in a matter of minutes.

  She shook her head and walked down a flight of stairs towards the main concourse. She couldn’t worry about that now. Her best course of action was to assume they had remained in Edinburgh and to search the surrounding area, until she knew otherwise.

  The concourse was quiet due to the late hour. Claudia walked purposefully, looking into each shop and coffeehouse as she went. She stood under a large clock and turned around, taking in every corner of the large station. Each person was quickly analysed and categorised. A couple of times she paused and brought up the pictures of the girls in her mind before moving on.

  The station was clear. She pulled her gloves out of her pocket and put them on. She headed towards the exit and into Edinburgh itself. Outside the station, the dim street lighting made it harder to scan the crowds. Claudia stood by a pillar and carefully looked around. There was a chance that they were waiting for a train, or planning to hitchhike. The last thing she wanted to do was spook them and send them running off.

  Someone caught her eye. Her heart beat a little faster, and her muscles began to twitch. She pulled out her phone and accessed the last few CCTV stills that Mark had sent her and then looked up again. Amy Hewitt was just across the street.

  She pocketed the phone and stepped out into the road. Weaving around cars, she zeroed in on her target. The girl seemed none the wiser as she slowly walked along the pavement.

  Claudia was right behind her, easily within grabbing distance if the girl decided to run.

  “Amy Hewitt,” she said loudly.

  The girl kept walking.

  “Amy Hewitt, you’re under arrest.”

  The girl turned around and looked confused. “Are you talking to me?”

  Claudia paused. She felt her adrenaline drop. This was not Amy Hewitt. The woman in front of her was around the same age but unkempt and presumably living rough. From behind she was the spitting image of Amy. Her mind raced. It was the hair and the coat. A very distinctive coat.

  “Where did you get that coat?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  Claudia handed over a ten pound note. “I am.”

  The girl eagerly took the money. “Some posh girl. Came out of the train station and switched coats with me.”

  “So, she has your coat?”

  The girl shrugged. “Suppose so.”

  “Can you describe your coat?” Claudia asked.

  The girl stuck out her bottom lip and looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure I remember it.”

  Claudia rolled her eyes. She took a twenty pound note out of her pocket. “I will give you this if, and only if, you give me a full description of your coat, a full description of the girl who took it, tell me exactly what she said to you, and where she went.”

  Claudia knew it was cruel. The girl clearly needed the money. But she was on a mission, lives were at stake if she didn’t find Amy and bring her in soon.

  “It’s a black pea coat, I bought it in ASDA about three years ago. It’s got hardly no padding and there’s a rip on the left sleeve. The posh girl was about my height, she had an auburn bob, short like. But it totally looked like a wig to me. She was walking past when I was sat outside the station. Then she stopped and asked if I wanted to swap coats. She said hers was warmer.” The girl shimmied a little inside the thick coat. “And it is. I asked if she was kidding. She said no, by then she was already taking her coat off. I didn’t want to say no because my coat was bloody freezing. We swapped and that was it.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She didn’t say. She walked up towards the Royal Mile. She was with another girl, but she’d walked off ahead. I really didn’t get a look at her at all.”

  Claudia looked at the girl for a moment. She was satisfied that she was telling the truth. She reached into her pocket and pulled out another twenty pound note.

  Handing the girl both the notes, she said, “Okay, look after yourself.”

  The girl took the money. She turned and hurried away, clearly keen to put some distance between them. Just before she crossed the road she turned back and muttered a thank-you before vanishing.

  Claudia tapped her earpiece and waited to be connected.

  “Bad news, they’re disguising their appearance,” she said.

  Mark let out a breath, and she heard a mug angrily hitting the desk through the line. “Well, that explains why I’m having so much trouble finding them.”

  “Amy is using a wig, auburn and styled into a short bob. I don’t know about Kerry. Also, after they left the station, Amy exchanged her coat with a homeless girl. She’s no longer wearing that coat; she now has a black pea coat with a rip on the left sleeve.”

  “Okay, I’m going to go back through the CCTV with this new information.”

  “Good man. I’m going to ask around and see if anyone else has seen them. If we can’t track them on CCTV, then we’ll need to get new posters done with an identikit picture.”

  She hung up the call and started heading towards the Royal Mile. She knew Edinburgh well, the hilly capital having been a place she’d holidayed in the past. Edinburgh was split into two parts. One part was the elegant Georgian New Town, the other the medieval Old Town. Unluckily for her, Amy and Kerry were in the Old Town, complete with its narrow streets and alleyways, arcades, and many, many pubs.

  The only way to do this was methodically. She approached the first pub she saw and stepped around the group of men standing just outside its door. Inside she pulled off her gloves, using the delay to have a good look around the large building as she blocked the main exit. The pub was moderately busy but not rowdy, and she set about walking around the area. Once she had completed a full circle, and she was reasonably satisfied that the girls were not there, she headed towards the bar.

  She leaned on the bar and continued to look around.

  “Hi, what can I get you?”

  Claudia turned to the young bartender. She unfolded the poster and handed it to him.

  “Have you seen these two girls?”

  “Yep.” He smiled and handed the paper back to her.

  She blinked. “You have?” She couldn’t believe her luck.

  “Yeah, they were talking to David and Michael a while ago. They had some food, and then they all left,” he told her.

  This might be easier than I thought. “Who are David and Michael?”

  “David and Michael Chapman. They are regulars, great guys. They live down in Niddrie.”

  “How long ago did they leave?” Claudia was already walking away.

  “About two hours ago, I think.”

  Claudia didn’t wait to hear anymore. She headed out of the pub and jogged back towards where she had parked her car. She tapped her earpiece.

  “Hey,” Mark answered.

  “David and Michael Chapman, living in Niddrie, I need an address now,” Claudia said.

  “On it.”

  She heard Mark typing in the details. Her heart was racing. She was right behind them, and they had no idea she was coming for them.

  “Got it, number seventeen Mountcastle Drive. Sending it to your phone now.”

  “How far is it from my current location?”

  “About a fifteen-minute drive.”

  “Perfect. I have a solid lead; I’ll call you back when I know more.”

  21

  Suspicion

  Amy gripped the blanket in her fingers. She slowed her breathing and listened. The house was quiet apart from the usual house noises. In the garden, she could hear the leaves on the trees rustle. Upstairs she could hear the whir of the heating pump.

  But there was something else bothering her. Something she just couldn’t put her finger on. It wasn’t
a new sensation, but it had been building all day. Uncertainty ate away at her.

  She pushed the blanket away.

  “Kez, we have to go.” She sat up from her makeshift bed on the floor and started to roll up the sleeping bags.

  “I’m comfortable and warm. Why on earth do we have to leave?” Kerry asked her from her cocoon on the sofa.

  “We have to go,” Amy repeated. She shed her pyjamas and started to get dressed. She knew she would feel better once she was dressed. At the moment, she felt vulnerable, wearing her duck print pyjamas with damp hair from the shower.

  Kerry sat up. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” Amy said honestly.

  “Okay, calm down and tell me what you’re thinking.” Kerry stood up and gently took her shoulders.

  Amy took a deep breath. She knew she could always rely on Kerry to listen to her. Even when she was having a freak-out for no reason.

  “I just feel... wrong. Something is wrong. We have to get out of here. I can’t explain it.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just wigging out for no reason? I know you’ve been on edge for a while now.”

  “I know, I know I have. But this is different. I feel like I’m having a panic attack or something. I just need to get out of here.”

  Kerry stared into her eyes for a couple of seconds. She nodded. “Okay, let’s go then.”

  Amy sighed in relief. She threw on her thick sweater. Her breathing was still coming in short pants, but at least they were going to be on the move soon.

  Kerry started to get changed.

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Kerry reassured her. “We’re best mates, this is what best mates do. If you’re having a freak-out, then we’re going to deal with it. Don’t forget to grab the rest of that bottle of water.”

  Amy was reaching for the bottle when a bright light illuminated the living room. Kerry froze what she was doing as both girls looked towards the curtained window in terror.