She pulled again at the ties. She felt Catherine’s hand on her hip. Fuck, she was being rolled over onto her back.
As she turned she felt the ground disappear. There was nothing beneath her legs and nothing beneath her shoulders.
She tried to visualise it in the light of her memory. Damn it, she’d been rolled onto the bridge between the two graves. Beneath her legs was rotting Vera and beneath her shoulders was rotting Jack.
If Catherine managed to turn her around she’d be heading straight into the sunken grave to join them.
She pulled frantically on the ties as she sensed Catherine bending down towards her. She shuffled away in the darkness, careful not to turn. As long as her back remained on the bridge she was safe.
She felt her feet being lifted from the ground. A strong grip around her ankles.
‘What the hell…?’ Kim cried, but her voice was lost in the deafening thunder roar.
With her arms tied, she couldn’t stop what was happening and she tried to kick out her feet but they grasped firmly. Catherine had a strong hold on her ankles and was using her body like a lever to swivel her around. She felt herself being turned in a clockwise direction.
She had to pull her hands apart. It was the only way she could live.
It was coming. She knew it was coming.
She could feel the sweat mixed with the raindrops travelling down from her hairline. Catherine was using her legs like a wheelbarrow handle to turn her around.
Two more turns and she’d be lying lengthways on the bridge between the two graves and then one good kick would leave her on top of one of the corpses.
The wire would not snap.
Catherine pushed on her feet one more time and Kim realised that the woman needed the rigidity of Kim’s limbs to help her make the turn. The struggling and fighting was helping Catherine to turn her to the exact place she wanted. While she was thrashing around fighting Catherine off she could use the momentum of the movement to manoeuvre her body.
The lightning struck right behind Catherine as Kim stilled her body and bent her knees. The unexpected folding of the limbs caused Catherine to stumble into her. For a brief second, Catherine’s weight was resting on Kim’s folded, limp legs.
She focussed her energy and shot her legs straight back out, catapulting Catherine backwards, giving her a second to try the wire one more time.
‘You fucking stupid bitch,’ Catherine hissed.
Kim worked frantically to weaken the wire. Catherine was disabled for only a couple of seconds. With her hands still tied behind her back, Kim remained the one at a disadvantage.
She pulled frantically at the wire behind her back. Her wrists burned from the hundreds of wire cuts that were deepening with every movement. The scars from a recent knife wound on a kidnapping case were throbbing beneath the pressure.
The first thrust appeared to have no effect on the wire at all.
Her shoulders throbbed from the effort of trying to separate her hands.
On the second burst, it came free, and her arms exploded away from her.
Kim pounced on Catherine’s back and wrapped the string around her neck. Catherine’s hands reached up to try to hook her fingers underneath, but Kim pulled on it hard as she slid down the back of Catherine’s torso.
Catherine’s additional inch or two drew Kim up onto her tiptoes. The woman tried to writhe from her grip, but Kim pulled even harder, hearing a soft choking emerging from her throat.
She dragged Catherine two steps back so that the torch on the ground would illuminate the immediate area.
The blood dripped from the score of marks on her wrist where the cuts criss-crossed and blended with each other. For a second, Kim stared at her own wrist.
It took only a moment for the pieces to fall into place and by the time Kim felt the tap on her shoulder she knew who Graham Studwick really was.
Ninety-One
Tracy writhed on the ground. She felt like a limbless worm trying to burrow along. Her arms and legs were so weak it was as though they had been removed from her body, leaving just a torso and a head.
The grass was long and slippery, and she didn’t know which way would lead her to safety. She only knew that for the moment she was on her own.
Her back still smarted from him pulling her out of the van by her legs. She had managed to crane her neck and hold it rigid so the back of her head did not thump to the ground.
He had begun to drag her across the gravel path. A hundred needles had pierced her skin as her flesh was punctured by the countless bricks and stones that either scraped her bare skin or burrowed deep into it. She cursed the drugs that were paralysing her muscles but not her skin.
Beyond the thunder a sudden noise, a voice, had caught his attention and Tracy had heard it too. He had dropped her legs to the ground and started to run.
She had been left lying on her back, staring up into the night, unable to move her limbs but knowing she needed to do something.
She had ignored her arms and legs and focussed all her energy into her hip and waist area. On the third attempt she managed to rock her body to the left and then over onto her stomach, and now she had to choose which way to go.
Tracy buried her chin into the soaked ground and tried to use it to help her move along.
She could hear activity at the top of the hill.
She wanted to crawl away from the sounds. Graham had been distracted by something, and she knew it was her only opportunity to escape.
This was where Jemima had been murdered and left, and if she didn’t try to crawl away, that would be her fate too.
A tear forced its way out of her eye as she remembered that fateful day at school. Just for a while she had taken the easy way out, allowed someone else’s pain to relieve her of her own.
And even now, in her early thirties, she was doing the same. The article she was writing forged into her mind. Negativity, hatred, blame. Again she was pointing away from her own pain by picking at the imperfections of someone else.
The shame brought a torrent of tears she could not hold back. Some of them were for the person she was now but most were for the person lost. And some were born from the knowledge that she would never see her mother again.
The thought of her mother brought fresh, raw pain to her heart.
I wish I could have made you proud, Tracy’s heart screamed into the rain.
She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was danger at the top of the hill.
She sobbed uncontrollably as her gaze moved to the left and the possibility of her own personal safety.
The years of being alone had erased the instinct of putting someone else before herself.
Tracy turned her body and began the climb.
Ninety-Two
Kim whipped around, still holding Catherine by the throat and looked into the face of the killer.
Although his thick black hair had been flattened against his head by the pouring rain, she was looking into the eyes of the man she knew as Duncan.
It all made sense now. Why they couldn’t find anyone by the name of Isobel Jones. Because she didn’t exist.
Something had struck Kim as odd when he was feeding his girlfriend. Her attempted suicide scars had been on her right wrist, meaning she was left-handed. But he’d been helping her to eat with her right hand.
He had offered false facts so they would be searching countless records, knowing they would never find her.
Kim took a step back, dragging Catherine with her. Kim could feel the fight leaving Catherine’s body, but she couldn’t let her go. She couldn’t fight both of them.
She had missed her opportunity to call out to her team. They would never hear her now amongst the claps of thunder and pounding rain. For now, she was on her own.
‘One step closer and I’ll kill her,’ Kim threatened as the rain poured down between them.