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

place where the car had gone over. Was he going to dump Toby in the estuary as punishment as well?

If Lewis died, if Toby went in the river, there’d only be her who could tell anyone. She scrambled to her feet. Her legs felt like pieces of wet string. She hated Toby, but she didn’t want him drowned, not like that. ‘Don’t…’ she began, then saw that Russ was cuffing Toby’s arms to an unbroken part of the fence, securing him.

She looked up at him. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m leaving them a present. They’re sending a launch down – they’ll take care of that piece of shit. Your lad there needs to go to hospital. You should go too.’

She didn’t know what was happening with Russ, or with Johnny Dip either, but she was beginning to understand they were on her side.

‘What about you?’ His fingers were bruised and bleeding, but he shook his head.

‘The bitch cut Champ. It’s not much but he needs fixing. Once the launch is here, we’re off.’

She could see Johnny Dip waiting by the side of the track, his bike beside him. She turned back to Russ. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I told you before, love, only you didn’t listen. Leave it alone.’

Then she heard the sound of a car as it pulled up by the hardstanding. Curwen’s car. She recognised it. And she could see Dinah Mason with her fair hair and red glasses, pushing the door open almost before Curwen had stopped. A large four-wheel drive pulled up behind them and people piled out. Russ backed away, whistling gently, and Champ followed, limping slightly. In seconds, he was gone, and Johnny Dip had faded away as well.

Becca stood there, dizzy and confused, as Dinah came running over to her, Curwen close behind. ‘Becca! What happened? Are you hurt?’

‘A bit.’ Her arm was throbbing where the woman had stamped on it. ‘Lewis needs help.’

Curwen was kneeling down next to him. ‘He’s cold.’ He was ripping off Lewis’s wet clothes as he spoke and wrapping him in the jacket Becca had put over him. He pulled off his own jacket and wrapped that round Lewis as well. ‘Fucking kids,’ Becca heard him mutter. ‘We need an ambulance.’

‘They’re sending a launch down with paramedics,’ Dinah said. ‘What happened to the people who brought you here?’

Becca looked across to where Toby was slumped against the fence. The water flowed past, fast and deep. She and Lewis could be under that, trapped in the boot of the car, dead by now.

It would all have been over.

Lights appeared on the water. ‘The launch is here,’ Curwen said, looking up from where he was checking Lewis’s pulse.

Dinah put her jacket round Becca’s shoulders. ‘You need to go with them. You need to see a doctor.’

‘No. I just want to go back to the house.’

‘You should go to hospital, Becca. Really.’

‘She’ll be fine.’ It was Curwen who had got to his feet as the paramedics came from the launch to take over.

Becca glared at him. ‘You didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘I told you and you didn’t—’

‘Yeah. I fucked up. It worked out in the end. Come on. I’ll take you back to the house.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘You coming?’ he said to Dinah.

‘I’ll stay here. Go up to the hospital with them.’

Curwen nodded and led the way to his car. As he held the door for her to get in, he said, ‘You did OK.’

She hadn’t. She’d messed up in every way. She’d left Lewis, hadn’t made sure he was on the bus and safe, and he’d almost ended up in the river. Lewis would have been trapped, drowned, if Russ, whoever he was, whatever he might have done, hadn’t gone into the water to get him.

It wasn’t just Curwen who’d fucked up.

Chapter 48

Kay gave Becca a hug and refused to listen to anything until Becca had had a shower and a change of clothes. After Becca had vanished upstairs, she fixed DS Mark Curwen with a laser glare. ‘Well?’ she said. Becca had been hurt and she was in no mood for prevarications.

He gave her a brief account of what had happened to Becca, and what had nearly happened. She felt herself go cold.

‘There were two of our guys here,’ Curwen said. ‘Working undercover. I didn’t know. I think one of them tried to keep Becca safe, keep her here, but this woman, Traynor, Alicia Traynor…’ He said Aleesha, and Kay realised suddenly who this woman was who had been in her house and attacked Becca. ‘She was the one who decided to take Becca to the estuary. And the kid, apparently.’

‘What about the child? How was he involved?’

‘He’s one of the kids who hangs around with the dealers – they use the kids to move the stuff around. It looks like they picked him up at Becca’s flat.’

‘You’re saying she was involved?’

‘There are some people getting their underpants in a twist about it. Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.’

His glib reply annoyed Kay. Becca was getting that lawyer, no matter what.

‘I don’t get what they were doing here,’ she said. ‘This house – they’ve been using it to store stuff, haven’t they?’

‘In that outhouse, that shed place you’ve got. The house is close to Stone Creek, where they were bringing the stuff in. There was a sick old woman living here, no one to stop them.’

The family who had cared for Hettie Laithwaite. Catherine Ford had spoken admiringly about the care the family had given her, but they weren’t family. Had they been kind to the old lady? Had they looked after her at all? No one would ever know. And after she’d died, they must have been confident the house would be left empty, at least for a while. They’d probably paid someone off to make sure.

And then an estate agent had been off sick, Kay had come along willing to take a short rental on