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  Of course, he had never imagined that Lotte would have a chance of surviving. She was so small, thin and weak, a wisp of a girl that he hadn’t even expected could swim. But even a really strong swimmer in robust health would be unlikely to get to the shore from where he pushed her in for the water was icy so early in the year.

  Yet somehow she managed to survive, and her face was splashed across the papers and on the television news. He couldn’t take the chance that she might recover her memory, there was too much at stake, so instead he took the risk of going to the hospital to throttle her.

  Again he was thwarted, by some young man bringing flowers for her. It was fortunate he’d had the presence of mind to park his car outside the hospital grounds and knew of a short cut through a hole in the fence to get out unseen. But it was a close shave.

  From then on his life had been a living nightmare, on edge, unable to sleep at night, just waiting for the police to come knocking on the door. Fern had always said he didn’t think things through, though how could she claim that when if it hadn’t been for her getting all wound up in Lotte, he wouldn’t have got into this mess?

  Jarvis, an old friend and business partner, put him in touch with the two men who found out where Lotte was and grabbed her. Jarvis had been his and Fern’s distributor fifteen years before when they had been smuggling heroin from South America into Holland. Cruise ships were a good cover; everyone knew that only middle-aged people who wanted to see the world in safe, sanitized, bite-sized pieces went on them, and he and Fern fitted in perfectly, playing up the Born Again Christian act, which was an excellent way of keeping other people at a distance. They chose a South American-bound ship which sailed out of Rotterdam.

  Most of the passengers would join an organized bus tour when they got to any port, particularly in Colombia, for they found the dirt, noise, overcrowding and higher than average quota of beggars, ruffians and pickpockets too intimidating. They’d be gone for some six hours seeing mountains, forests, waterfalls and pretty touristy villages, returning to the ship laden with handmade souvenirs, believing they’d experienced Colombia.

  But he and Fern would cry off, saying they wanted to visit the churches. They would slip away to meet their contact and exchange American dollars for the goods, often concealed in some kind of artefact.

  Jarvis had been based near Rotterdam then, and it had been a breeze going through Customs with bags stuffed with crummy trophies from every port of call. The Customs men were looking out for young, poor smugglers, not wealthy cruisers wearing designer clothes and carrying bags of stuff guaranteed to grace the windows of a charity shop within a month. They certainly weren’t interested in checking every last tacky hand-carved monkey, parrot or stationery box that passed by them.

  Jarvis had given up the heroin business after a close shave with the law and moved to Southampton to open a bar. He was part of the reason Howard and Fern had bought a house near Chichester harbour, for they liked and trusted him and intended to carry on working with him on some project or other.

  As it turned out, they never did work together again, for Jarvis had his own interests, namely providing muscle for anyone who needed it, and they were doing just fine with the lucrative adoption business.

  But they carried on cruising a couple of times a year, for the ships were full of promiscuous girls who’d signed on as waitresses and stewardesses so they could see the world. These girls often became pregnant and were usually very unhappy about it. Fern didn’t need to do anything more than act sympathetic and give the girls a number for them to call her for a ‘chat’ when their contract was up. Two out of every five girls did ring her, and one could usually be counted on to go for the service they were offering.

  Much as Howard trusted Jarvis, when he contacted him and asked for help, he didn’t tell him that Fern was dead. Somehow he doubted the man would help him without her around. He just told him the girl found on the beach had enough information on him, Fern, and Jarvis too, to get them all put away for life and she had to be captured.

  The men wouldn’t use their own transport so he had to buy this van and lend it to them, but he hadn’t for one moment expected them to snatch the other girl too. Once they’d dumped the girls in his house they took their fee and said they wanted nothing more to do with it, however much money he offered. Even Jarvis said he thought Howard had only wanted to scare the girl, and if he’d known killing was the plan he wouldn’t have got involved.

  So Howard was well and truly up shit creek. He was fairly sure Jarvis wouldn’t grass him up, but he wouldn’t lift a finger to help. He couldn’t let the girls go because they would expose him. He couldn’t just let them starve to death in the house either because he wanted to sell it and get the hell out of England. And now, before he’d been able to come up with a foolproof plan, the police were crawling over the entire area.

  He had gone to the house this evening to check the little window. Lotte had broken it the time before, and he’d had to board it up from the outside in case someone heard her yelling.

  He’d put the house on the market after he’d dumped Lotte and Fern at sea. It had taken a whole day to clean the kitchen and get rid of every trace of Fern’s blood, and another to put new glass in the basement window and make sure the room was spotless.

  But he had to postpone viewings of the house once he’d got the two girls in the basement. When Lotte was there alone it was doubtful her voice would be heard from that window because of where it was situated. But with two of them yelling out of it they might very well be heard.

  As expected, they had smashed it out, and his ears were still ringing with all the abuse the girls had flung at him. He’d had to kneel in the rain to fix the boards back on and they hadn’t let up for even one minute.

  He didn’t actually mind being called a pervert or a cold-blooded killer, it was the things Lotte said about Fern which got to him. She said he’d been Fern’s puppet and asked if he knew that she was having it off with two of the officers on the cruise ship. She implied Fern was bisexual too and that was why she wanted Lotte with them. She even said Fern had told her he was useless in bed, and that she’d had dozens of affairs because he couldn’t satisfy her. Then Lotte suggested he came inside and went to bed with both her and Dale and found out what real women were like.

  It had been tempting, for they were both so fresh, young and pretty, even though he knew it was just a ploy to get him down there in the room with them so they could overpower him and escape. He was both shocked and stimulated by some of the things meek little Lotte had said she’d do to him. A big part of him wanted to believe she meant it.

  But the stuff she said about Fern hurt, for he couldn’t be certain she was lying. Fern had been a remarkably beautiful woman with a voluptuous body and any man would want her. He knew there had been two officers on the last cruise who flirted with her, and she admitted to having fantasies about making love to women. He had often felt, too, that he didn’t fully satisfy her.

  Had Fern confided in Lotte? Was this whole thing about having the baby some plan of Fern’s to oust him and have Lotte as her partner?

  The first time he had sex with Lotte, with Fern right there watching and getting turned on, was the most thrilling experience of his life. He had wanted it again and again, but Lotte got pregnant almost immediately and that ended it. He had the idea that Fern was jealous because she was afraid he preferred Lotte to her, but maybe she was jealous that he got to make love to Lotte?

  She needn’t have worried. To him, Lotte was just another common tart, even if she was pretty. Fern was his whole world, without her he felt lost, scared and worthless. He kept telling himself that he would be OK once he got back to the States – today he’d even been tempted to jump on the next plane immediately and forget everything that had happened here.

  But the house was worth at least two hundred thousand, and he owned it free and clear. People said it was ugly, and while he and Fern had never agreed with that – they loved it
s quaintness – a new owner could tear it down and rebuild it. Howard couldn’t bear to walk away and lose so much money. So he had to get the girls out of there. It would have to be real quick, for the police were everywhere and people in the village had been alerted so they were all looking for anything suspicious.

  He parked his van some distance from the harbour and walked the rest of the way past the pub to the shore to see if there were any police down there. He was getting nervous about the van now it had been mentioned in the press that the police were looking for a blue van; he wished he’d got a white one, they were really common.

  The sun was setting and it had turned the water a beautiful pink and mauve. It had stopped raining at last, and as he looked across the harbour towards Bosham with its pretty old cottages and the square tower of the church, the beauty of the scene made Howard feel quite emotional.

  It had been this view which made Fern and him look for a house here. They had seen this place as a sanctuary, a place where they would always be safe, no matter how hot it got for them back in the States. They had their boat, each other and enough money never to have to worry again. They didn’t socialize with anyone, they didn’t need anyone, or so he had thought until Fern got this idea about having a baby of their own.

  There were many people around, including four policemen stopping to question them. In fact Howard could sense a kind of buzz in the air as if everyone was expecting some kind of drama very soon. His boat was bobbing temptingly on its mooring, but as much as he wished he could just go out on it and forget everything, he knew he couldn’t.

  He realized he couldn’t possibly use the boat to get rid of the girls now, not in the middle of the night or anytime in the near future. He’d be stopped the moment he drove anywhere near the water’s edge. So it would have to be plan B. And he needed to implement it now before the police found him and his house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘He’s come back!’ Lotte hissed when she heard footsteps up in the hall above them.

  Dale was on top of the wardrobe, trying to push the boards off the outside of the window. ‘What do we do?’ she whispered.

  ‘Get down off there.’ Lotte beckoned with her hands. ‘You go into the bathroom and if he comes down here you pretend to be unconscious. I need to get him to relax his guard for a moment, so I’ll get all hysterical about you. As he starts to walk towards the bathroom to see you, I’ll jump on him with the Stanley knife.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you ran for help?’ Dale suggested. ‘I know you haven’t got any shoes and running will be hard, but I don’t think you’ll be able to stop him with that knife.’

  ‘I doubt he’ll leave the door unlocked when he comes down anyway,’ Lotte said. ‘He probably won’t believe you’re sick either. Not when we were screaming at him less than an hour ago. We’ll just have to play it by ear.’

  Dale climbed down from the wardrobe and they both listened intently. ‘Where is he now?’ Dale asked.

  ‘In the office,’ Lotte whispered back. ‘I’d say he’s collecting up papers. Maybe that means he’s scared the police are on his tail?’

  They could hear drawers being opened, the odd dull thump of stuff being dropped into a box. Then he went out of the front door and they heard the sound of a car door being opened.

  ‘He’s running scared,’ Lotte said gleefully. ‘Taking anything incriminating from here. Time to make him more scared.’

  She ran up the flight of stairs and began screaming ‘Help!’ at the top of her voice. She was making so much noise she couldn’t tell whether he’d come in and shut the door or not. Dale scuttled away to the bathroom.

  ‘Howard! If that’s you, come quick,’ Lotte yelled. ‘Dale’s had a kind of turn, she’s not breathing.’

  Even as the words came out of her mouth it occurred to her that one of them not breathing would solve at least half his problem, but she was banking on him reacting as any normal person would.

  ‘I’m busy,’ he called back. ‘Now shut that row.’

  ‘I’m scared, I don’t know what to do,’ she shouted back. ‘Please come and look at her.’

  She hammered on the door with Dale’s shoe, guessing the constant banging would annoy him enough to act. She kept yelling and pretending to sob. He took something else outside, she could feel a draught coming from the open front door, and she yelled still louder.

  ‘Shut the fuck up or it’ll be the worse for you,’ he snarled as he came indoors.

  Somehow she knew he was bracing himself to come down and get them and that had been his intention all along. She guessed the men who snatched her had let him down, probably because the police were pulling out all the stops to find them. She’d observed Howard for long enough to know organization didn’t come naturally to him. He was too used to being told what to do by Fern. He had never struck her as a violent man either, but a frightened animal was a dangerous one, and she knew she mustn’t underestimate him.

  All at once she heard the key in the door and he opened it just a crack to see where she was. ‘Please, please help Dale,’ Lotte whimpered from her position at the bottom of the stairs. ‘She’s out cold.’

  When he was boarding up the window she had been surprised to see how rough he looked: several days’ worth of stubble on his chin, his eyes bloodshot and his hair badly in need of a cut. Now as he slunk round the door, quickly locking it behind him, she thought he must have been sleeping on his boat, or in his car, for his trousers were crumpled and very stained and his shoes were white with salt water. The pockets in his old brown waxed jacket were bulging and a piece of rope was dangling ominously out of one of them.

  ‘Shut up, for God’s sake!’ he said as he came down the stairs and she continued to wail about Dale. ‘Where is she anyway?’

  Lotte had the Stanley knife in her hand with the sleeve of her tee-shirt covering it. ‘She’s in the bathroom,’ she sobbed out. ‘Get a doctor for her, please. I don’t want her to die!’

  He gave her one of his withering looks. ‘Get in the bathroom ahead of me so I can see what you’re doing,’ he said.

  That foiled her plan. She’d intended to jump him from behind. Dale was doing a fine acting job, lying just inside the door, legs and arms sprawled out. Lotte had no choice but to step over her, and now she couldn’t see how she could attack Howard.

  He kicked Dale in the side, and she winced involuntarily. ‘Just as I expected,’ he snarled. ‘I didn’t believe you for a moment. But I’ve gotta take you to a new place, so you just stay where you are while I secure you.’

  He pulled the rope from his pocket, and before Lotte could even gather herself to speak he had bent down, flipped Dale over on to her front and was starting to tie her hands together behind her back. Lotte grabbed the towel rail and kicked out with her bare foot, catching him on the shoulder. She hadn’t got the strength to really hurt him, he merely swayed back, but as his head came up to look at her, she leapt forward, knife in hand, and slashed him across the face, screaming manically.

  Dale leapt to her feet, shedding the rope from her hands which hadn’t yet been secured, and brought her knee up into Howard’s groin.

  He was cut right across his cheek and it looked like a deep cut for it wasn’t bleeding much. Lotte thought they’d got the better of him then, for he began to lurch back into the bedroom. Dale went after him, her shoe in her hand, intending to inflict some further damage. But suddenly he had another length of rope in his hands which he whipped over Dale’s head, drawing her backwards towards him with it tight against her windpipe.

  Lotte’s stomach lurched. Howard’s eyes were burning like a crazy person’s, and Dale looked frozen with terror. ‘A knee in the small of her back as I pull on the rope and she’ll be dead in four seconds,’ he said. ‘I learned that trick in the army.’

  Lotte had no idea if that was true, but Dale’s eyes were already beginning to bulge with the pressure on her throat. Lotte still had the knife in her hand but she couldn’t use it,
not while he held Dale that way.

  ‘Let her go,’ Lotte said, her voice cracking in fright. ‘She doesn’t know anything, she can’t hurt you. You’ve got me, do what you like to me.’

  ‘If you don’t want me to strangle her, you come and tie her up,’ he said, a wolfish grin on his face. ‘And put that fucking knife down.’

  Lotte hesitated.

  Dale made a strangled kind of moan, and Lotte saw he was tightening his grip on her neck. ‘OK,’ she said, placing the knife on a chest of drawers close to Howard. ‘Just don’t hurt her.’

  Howard continued to hold the rope tightly while Lotte secured first Dale’s wrists and then her ankles. When she didn’t tie the ankles tightly enough for his liking, he kicked out at her. Blood was running down his cheek now, making him look fearsome.

  Dale’s face was chalk white and she was trembling with fear. It was clear that Howard was going to kill them both, if not here, wherever he planned to take them, and in desperation Lotte played the only card she had left.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to fuck me one more time?’ she asked, looking right into his eyes and forcing herself to smile at him as if that was what she wanted. ‘Or if not a fuck, how about a blow job?’

  She saw Dale’s eyes widen even more, for close as they’d been as friends Lotte had always maintained a kind of purity, never speaking of such things.

  ‘You’re just playing for time, hoping rescue will come,’ he said dismissively. ‘Help won’t come though. It’s dark now and anyone who was out there searching will have gone home.’

  To Lotte that sounded as if police had been around today in the village and that was why he needed to move them.

  ‘You’ve got me wrong. I hoped if I pleased you that you’d let us go,’ she replied, doing her very best wide-eyed dumb blonde look. ‘Don’t you want to find out if I’m good at pleasing you?’