Someone Who Isn't Me, Danuta Kot [good books to read for adults TXT] 📗

And out of character. Andy Yeatson was a good cop. And because he was a good cop, he followed the rules. A bit of information from the pub, fine. Serious digging around? At the very least, he would have put Becca Armitage on the list of registered police informers, and she wasn’t there. Dinah had checked.

Someone had exposed her to danger without caring – getting her to ask questions and sleuth around. Andy, a trained and experienced DC, had been blown. Becca, with no training at all, would stand out like a neon light on a country lane.

Dinah was as certain as she could be. Andy would not have done that.

And now, no one knew where Becca was. She had a horrible feeling she could work out what had happened.

She was aware of a sudden surge in activity and went across to where Hammond was talking urgently to two men. She waited on the edge of the discussion, listening.

‘The drugs were taken from here – this is the first storage place. We think the house was supposed to be empty, but there was some kind of cock-up at the estate agents and it got let accidentally. They’d got word of the pub raid, and they were moving the latest consignment to a safe place. Only it wasn’t. We’ve got them. Most of them.’

‘Sir,’ she said.

Hammond turned to her. ‘Dinah.’

‘Becca Armitage. I think someone was using her as an unofficial informant in the pub. I don’t know what was going on there, but she got in the way of something and they’ve taken her.’

‘We’re aware of that, Dinah. I’ve got people out—’

Before Hammond could finish, a man came running over, his face urgent. ‘Sir! We’ve just had a report in. A car’s been dumped in the estuary at Spragger Drain sluice.’

Dinah felt the hairs on her arms lift as she heard Hammond’s ‘Jesus.’ Becca had arrived here, and then she’d vanished. Now, Dinah knew where she was. There was no way a car would stay afloat in that water for more than a few minutes. Her whole body went cold.

Becca was the worst kind of evidence – a walking, talking witness. ‘Sir!’ she said urgently. Hammond’s eyes met hers, and she saw the same understanding and the same horror.

Then a car pulled up, slewing half across the road, and Curwen jumped out. In the flashing blue lights, his face was white. He must have heard the news via his radio. ‘Come on!’ he shouted.

And she was scrambling into the front seat beside him as he pulled away and turned his car towards the estuary.

Becca rolled over and tried to kick the lid of the boot, to force it to open and release her. Her breath was coming in short gasps; her face was tingling and she was dizzy as if she didn’t know up from down.

She was trapped, she was buried alive, and they were going to…

She couldn’t get enough air!

Better to die now than trapped in the sinking car. She was going to drown and there was nothing she could do. Her face was wet with tears, and the skin on her face felt raw from where the tape had pulled it when she’d tried to scream.

Soon. Soon she’d feel the car slow down, stop, and then it would start moving again, roll forward and…

Becca.

Calm down.

It wasn’t Matt. She knew it wasn’t Matt. It was just words in her head, but it used Matt’s voice because that meant she would listen.

If she wanted to escape, if she wanted to survive, if she wanted not to drown, trapped in the car…

Panic yammered in her head.

No. She had to think. She forced herself to breathe slowly.

No Becca here. No Becca here.

The hammering of her heart slowed and her thoughts began to come together. To escape, to get out, she needed her hands.

Then she realised she was breathing more easily. Her nose was blocked up, but she could still get air – because the tape round her mouth was loose, was coming free. She had no idea how, but she shook it off and breathed in deeply.

Then she remembered the tears running down her face, and suddenly she was back in the supermarket, opening boxes, ones that had been left out in the rain. She’d tried to lift one, and it burst open, sending tins across the floor. The wet tape hadn’t held.

Her hands were behind her. The tape was tight, she knew that, she’d struggled against it.

But…

She worked her wrists against each other and gradually – yes – she felt the grip on her arms start to ease.

She pulled one hand out, and for a moment had to lie still as pain shot through her shoulders.

She’d wet herself in her panic. Now the tape round her wrists was wet, and now her arms were free.

Come on, Becca! No time!

The car was moving fast. Suddenly, it swerved, then straightened up again as the horn sounded. Then it lurched round a corner, and jolted, bouncing her back so that she hit her head against the metal sides. She crammed her hands against her mouth to stop herself from shouting out with the pain.

She heard Lewis cry out, and the same dead voice say, ‘Shut up.’

She was working frantically on the tape round her legs. The car turned again and now they were off the main roads and bumping along a track. The estuary must be so close, and she was still trapped, locked in the boot.

Would they open it? Would they check that she was still in there? And if they did, what were her chances of getting out, even though her hands weren’t tied any more?

Her breath was coming in sobs as she struggled to focus.

Stop it, Becca. If you want to live, stop it!

The catch. There had to be a way of operating the catch from the inside.

She made a kind of gasping noise and tried to focus on the lock that was holding the boot shut. Her hands groped