A candle flame wavered in a jam jar on the side of the empty swimming pool, the only pinprick of light in the cold musty air of the place. Meredith felt a deep chill – the temperature seemed to have dropped by ten degrees from the summer night air of the grounds outside. At first she couldn’t make out anything apart from the tiny flickering light – Caitlin had switched off the torch function on her phone.

Where was her own phone, Meredith wondered? Was it still in Caitlin’s pocket or had the woman left it behind?

The pool house seemed so still. Caitlin must have thought so too because she called again, a faint tone of irritation in her voice: ‘Graeme!’

Graeme? Who was Graeme?

50

Meredith

‘Here,’ came a strange, high-low, echoey voice in reply, seemingly from the depths of the empty pool.

That voice, speaking just one word, triggered something in Meredith, some long-suppressed memory. A black-gloved hand snaking through the hole kicked in her bedroom door and grabbing her ankle. Being driven away in the black interior of a Luton van, death reaching for her with cold fingers under its metal door. The shouting, the flash of the knife plunging into the back of her hand … the terror.

It was him.

Meredith made a sound, an involuntary gasp, and felt her knees buckle. Warm urine released from her full bladder and streamed down her legs, filling the chill air with a sweet, straw-like smell, the exact same reaction she’d had when this person had broken into her bedroom. Just for a moment the relief of pressure in her belly, and the warmth on her cold skin, were welcome.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered, on her knees. ‘Help us.’ He’d rescued her before. Now they needed another Mr Martindale…

‘Ugh,’ said Caitlin in disgust, her voice suddenly loud in the darkness. ‘She’s pissed herself. Gross. Where are you?’

‘Checking on the brother. He’s down here, in a right state. Not sure how we’re gonna get him out.’

Meredith’s head shot up. ‘What have you done to him? Pete! Pete? Can you hear me?’

‘Shut up, bitch,’ snapped Caitlin. ‘One more word, one movement, and I’ll shoot you both right now.’

She flicked the torch function back again and shone it into the empty pool. Pain pierced Meredith’s heart as she saw Pete caught in the yellow beam, curled up naked on the blue-tiled floor, not moving. That … person knelt over him.

It was the first time Meredith had seen the man’s face, and with yet another shock she realised it was a face she recognised. She gasped again, but didn’t dare speak, not with the glint of the gun barrel pointing in her direction.