The Hunted Child Page 4

  ‘Watch yourself. What does she look like?’

  ‘White motor cruiser. I’d say she’s about a six-berth, reasonably big. Got painters along the side, black and white. I’d put her in at about twenty feet.’

  ‘Twenty feet, that’s reasonable, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely. The guy you’re looking for has brown hair, about five foot ten. Reasonably well built. A bit of a pudge in his tummy.’

  ‘Got a name?’

  ‘Yes. His name’s David Watson.’

  ‘Brilliant. On it. I’ll let you know how we go. You get anything else, text it through.’

  ‘No problem. You know I’d do anything for you.’ Kirsten put the phone down. It was time to go to work and she’d had enough of him, even though she’d been on the phone for only two minutes.

  Chapter 5

  The sun was bouncing off the rippling waters of Loch Ness as Kirsten drove along the road that hugged the loch, providing a view from almost every quarter. When she reached the Loch Ness Centre, a place where she’d taken her brother many times, Kirsten left the car and began to circulate amongst the public. With a photograph in her hand, she stopped people, asking if they’d seen Innocence or the boat she was reported to be on. Most people hadn’t a clue when it came to boats; many pointed out boats that Kirsten could see on the water which were clearly not as she had described.

  Undeterred, she pressed on and began canvassing around the village of Drumnadrochit. Kirsten made her way around the ruined castle grounds as well, showing her pictures. When she was approached by a security guard, she pulled out her credentials, and he was able to advise that no boats like that had been seen at the castle over the last three days. Kirsten felt a chill while walking around the ruins because it was there, during a case in the murder team, that a colleague had been placed up on a cross as a diversion for her detective inspector.

  Memories of what she saw on the team still ran with her even though she suspected she may begin to see much worse now she was working with the service. The images still haunted her.

  Kirsten continued south along the western side of Loch Ness until she found a small marina where she began to canvass some of the pilots of the various boats. She became excited when she realised that the boat had been seen only the previous day, motoring down the loch southbound. She quickly jumped in her car continuing along the road that took the tourists by the scenery of the Caledonian canal.

  On either side, the mountains lifted up, tree-lined and in the sunshine. Kirsten remembered days of taking her brother there, days when he still knew her and they’d been able to laugh with each other. But on these changed days, that only brought more pain to her.

  Inside, she was struggling having seen the family torn apart. Kirsten felt she understood what Marion Waters, the mother of Innocence must be going through. Like the way her brother had been ripped from her, so that he could never really have a meaningful conversation with Kirsten again, Marion had a child suddenly pulled from her. At least Kirsten had a warning, time to prepare well, for all the good that that did. Marion and George had none and they must have been in deep pain.

  Every now and then as she made her way south along the side of Loch Ness, Kirsten would stop, take out her binoculars, and stand, scanning the loch. There were many boats out at this time, the Loch almost as busy as summer. Maybe it was the last twinkling of summer heading to autumn that brought them out. A last weekend to enjoy the countryside before the daily grind of work continued again. School holidays were complete and life was going back into that struggle through winter.

  It was as these thoughts ran through Kirsten’s head that she spotted a white motor cruiser on the far side of the loch. As she peered through her binoculars, she tried to focus and gauge the size of the boat. It was certainly about right, twenty feet with a white hull. And it was a motor cruiser. Kirsten sat down and pretended to be simply watching the loch, but every minute or so the binoculars would swing around and focus in on the boat.

  A man was visible coming up on top of the deck. He seemed furtive to Kirsten, but he didn’t stay on top for long before disappearing back down. For half an hour Kirsten sat watching. The boat sat in the water with only a gentle rocking motion. The only person to be seen on board was that man but then Kirsten could not see through the small windows that ran along the side of the boat.

  Like most motor cruisers, the topmost part of the boat was reserved for piloting it. Kirsten had a clear view of the wheelhouse, but no one was up in that part of the deck. She imagined he would disappear down small steps and there would be a small kitchenette, a lounge, and bunks. Not a bad hideout and the location was good as well. The girl could have jumped on a bus or if her brother had got her, he could have certainly picked her up and driven down here.

  The boat was at the end of a marina set aside from three other boats. On the east, there was plenty of activity, people moving back and forward, families taking shopping onboard. Beyond the marina, Kirsten could see a recreational building. Further still lay a large field of people sunbathing, playing football, and other family activities. She trained her binoculars towards the recreational building, then round onto the field.

  She saw families and a young couple not worried about being too overt with their relationship. She saw a dad with a kid on his shoulders laughing before bending down on his knees and pretending to be a horse. There was an older woman sorting out a picnic before handing it out to young kids. An elderly couple walked along, smiling in the sunshine, a Panama hat atop the man’s head.

  Everyone seemed like they were on an idyllic holiday, but then Kirsten saw two men sitting side by side. They wore dark trousers, shirts without ties, with jackets sitting beside them. They didn’t seem to be engaging much in conversation. As Kirsten trained the binoculars on them, she realised that their focus was consistently on the marina. She watched as one man picked up a mobile phone and began to talk into it. She wasn’t sure what he was saying but she could see him nodding.

  Shortly after, another two men joined him, sitting down on the grass and watching the boat. Kirsten put her binoculars away, made for her car, and drove quickly around the bottom of the Loch before coming up to the turnoff for the parking area she’d seen. Once she was in the car park, she walked quickly and directly toward the marina before stopping on a bench that looked out onto the loch. Glancing over her shoulder, in the distance, she could see the four men still sitting, talking.

  Kirsten was in a bit of a quandary. She couldn’t say for definite that the girl was on board the vessel. In the distance, she had seen the man as he had come on deck, but it was too far away to confirm that it was either Ollie Waters or his friend, David Watson. Maybe the men were having the same trouble. The last thing Kirsten wanted to do was to head over to the vessel, drawing attention to it because if the men came, she’d have to try and outrun them in a boat that wasn’t going to go that fast. They’d be trapped in Loch Ness with a very public shootout. Kirsten held her ground continuing to pretend she was enjoying the sunshine, but she didn’t take her leather jacket off, making sure her weapon was out of sight under it, concealed between it and her top.

  Kirsten saw the men get to their feet and walk along like a pack of wolves seeking their prey. One fanned out to the top end of the Marina, while the others headed closer towards it. They were far apart, and Kirsten was outgunned four to one if this was the right place. As one man walked along the pontoons towards the boat, Kirsten stood up and started to walk calmly towards the Marina. She heard a scream from the boat just as she passed by one of the men at the edge of the Marina. She could see the bulge at the back of his jeans where a gun was sitting inside, and Kirsten quickly removed it out as the man reached behind for it.

  There was a momentary panic from him before Kirsten slammed the butt of the gun against the back of his head. The man dropped like a sack of potatoes. She saw the other two men at the far end of the marina pull out their weapons and she sprinted behind a nearby waste bin. Th
ere was a shot which disappeared somewhere above her head and Kirsten, pulling her own weapon, appeared quickly round before diving back in again. There was one man at the edge of the marina, and she tagged him with a shot to the leg. He was cursing loudly and there were screams from the general public at the noise the gun made. Kirsten was afraid that if the man at the front got inside the boat, he would put a bullet in Innocence.

  Without thinking about herself, she took off from behind the bin, firing as she went, towards the man at the end of the Marina. She tagged him on his shoulder, and he flipped to one side. She ran towards the boat which was an uproar and she saw a youth fighting with the man before being joined by a friend. The butt of the man’s gun struck the friend across the chin, and he fell backwards. Kirsten dived onto the boat, grabbed the man’s shoulders and dragged him down. Her shoulder thundered into the deck, causing her to wince but she got to her feet, pulling the man and trying to force him over the edge. Instead, he caught her with an elbow straight to the chin and she fell backwards.

  From a prone position she watched him pull out a gun and strike it again at the face of Ollie Waters. The man then disappeared inside the cabin. Kirsten followed him down, and then saw the man with a gun pointed at Innocence Waters’s head. She knew the girl instantly from the photographs she’d seen, but this was a face that was terrified. Kirsten was also confused. Surely the man would’ve just shot her and left. Why was he taking her?

  ‘Don’t come any closer. I will drop her. I don’t want to. She’s worth more to me to have her alive. You understand me? I don’t want to kill her, but don’t give me no option.’

  The area was tight and the man indicated that Kirsten should move as far back to one side as she could. Kirsten did so. Her gun held to one side ready to be used but also not pointing directly at the man.

  ‘Okay, why? Why do you want her? Collins wants her dead. Why are you taking her?’

  ‘He wants her dead. You want her alive? I want some money. We’ll be in touch, but it won’t be just for you. She’ll go to the highest bidder. You understand?’

  Kirsten nodded and realised the situation was about to get even more complicated. The man made his way backwards up the steps of the boat. When Kirsten followed, she saw him walking along the Marina joined by some of his colleagues. Two of them were in pain and she followed at a close distance. She saw them get into two separate cars in the car park.

  She had managed to put a bullet into two of them and these two men got into one car. Clearly, they were struggling. Kirsten tried to memorise the number plate of the car but Innocence was taken by the man who had got on board and the other man that Kirsten had momentarily knocked out. As they drove off, Kirsten picked up her phone, calling Inverness police station, giving them the description of the car and the number plates. Putting her phone away, she turned to Ollie Waters who was standing in disbelief beside her.

  ‘You wait for the police. People will come to take you somewhere to keep you safe. Your family’s in hiding, Ollie. They were shot at; it’s not safe you being out here.’

  ‘They’ve just taken her. You’ve let them take her. She said what she saw. He’ll kill her. You can’t just let them go.’

  That was the case, and Kirsten assured him she was getting right after them. Jumping into her car, she sped off but found it hard to pick up the track of the car she was looking for. When she suddenly passed a farmer’s field and saw a car inside of the same colour, she turned around and drove back to it. The number plate was correct. She approached with her gun and checked all around it, but there was no one.

  Racing back to her car, Kirsten jumped in and took a chance that they would be heading towards Inverness. She couldn’t risk the child disappearing; otherwise, a bidding war would start, and there was no way the service could outbid someone with the financial clout of Kyle Collins.

  Chapter 6

  As she drove the car towards Inverness on the east side of Loch Ness, Kirsten made a call to Anna Hunt. Her boss was at the Inverness police station and quickly informed her that the police were searching everywhere for the car she called in. Kirsten advised the car had been found but no one was inside and quickly gave a description of the man who had kidnapped Innocence Waters. Anna Hunt said she would pass that description to all police cars in the area, and see if they could get a quick ID because if they didn’t, they both knew they were in trouble.

  As Kirsten reached Inverness, Anna Hunt called saying that there had been a possible sighting of two of the men in a car, heading out on the Ullapool road. The new car they were in was red. Kirsten put a foot to the floor, racing over the Kessock bridge, then carried on the A9 until she joined the Ullapool road.

  The road was a single carriageway passing through the small village of Garve before heading over moorland to the west side of the country. Kirsten raced past the slower vehicles on the road but she couldn’t find a red car anywhere. As she continued to pursue, she took a phone call from Anna Hunt. They had identified two of the men from her description. Or at least, they’d had a pretty good guess at it, as Anna put it.

  It seemed that Collins had put out a call for anyone to find Innocence Waters and bring her to him. It was a clever move. He hadn’t told anyone to kill her because the call would undoubtedly bring out people not up to the task. The last thing Collins needed was a lot of murders attributed to his say so. Instead, he’d looked for the girl to be kidnapped and brought to him, meaning a lot of low lifes were searching for her. Anna Hunt reckoned that the two men were both Greek, the Tavares brothers. They’d also brought the other men as a backup for the effort. They were low-level and certainly did not have many connections, causing Kirsten to think they would go somewhere and hide low.

  Kirsten continued her drive along the Ullapool road, but no doubt, the red car was traveling fast as well. When she reached Ullapool, she had neither sight nor sound of it. She called back in to Anna Hunt, advising that she was going to trawl for the next day around the area to see if she could locate the car or the Tavares brothers.

  Kirsten bought herself some fish and chips and sat on the quay side at Ullapool. A part of her was watching people come and go, hoping to catch a glimpse of her targets shopping and buying supplies. Then again, that was unlikely. They would already have somewhere picked to hole up. In reality, she was feeding herself, unsure when she would get another chance.

  As she sat looking out to the loch that ran inland from Ullapool, Kirsten could see the ferry for the Isle of Lewis coming into dock. The white superstructure with the red funnels made it stand out on what was becoming a sunny day.

  Maybe they would catch the ferry, thought Kirsten. They could make their way across the Minch. This was the body of water between the mainland and the Outer Hebrides, and the Isle of Lewis.

  Standing beside a fence where the cars rolled onto the ferry, Kirsten nonchalantly watched as the ferry emptied before the next cars made their way on board. If the Tavares brothers were on board, Kirsten wasn’t worried because they’d suddenly become trapped. She was also aware that her search might be useless because they could have changed the car by now.

  It took about twenty minutes for the ferry to load but Kirsten saw no sign of the Tavares brothers. Satisfied that the ferry was going without them, she returned to her car and started to drive around the local area. There were a number of campsites to the north and to the south but Kirsten headed south first, visiting each in turn. As she headed back to the north, she made her way around Ullapool, driving through the streets over and over again, hoping for a sighting or a glimpse of the car.

  When she popped into the supermarket that night to pick up a drink, she saw a red car in the far corner of the car park. After closer inspection, she realised it was the correct make and model for that spotted by the squad car back in Inverness. Kirsten made her way to the far side of the car park, sitting and waiting with her own drink. When the supermarket closed, and the other cars began to empty, she realised they must have abandoned it.<
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  Making her way over to the car, she placed a tracker on the underside of it, just in case they returned on another day to pick it up. But this was a course of action that Kirsten doubted.

  They would have picked another option. Had they gone to ground in cottage somewhere? Were they on a campsite or had they picked up another car and suddenly gone elsewhere? What if this was a decoy, a detour to throw off anyone following them? She would be stuffed.

  Kirsten slept in her car that night, parked up on the edge of Ullapool. At 5:00 a.m., Kirsten started driving again, looking around. From her time on the Isle of Lewis as a police officer, she knew the ferry would be leaving Ullapool around about 10:30 a.m., but she’d be back to see people getting onboard.

  Kirsten made her way to the north of Ullapool, visiting campsites. In each, she went to the owner, waking them and apologising profusely but showing her credentials. They understood how important her questions were. No one had seen a couple of Greeks, and as she reached the last one on the way up towards Lochinver, she had a bad feeling and realised that she’d need to turn back to check the ferry again.

  The last campsite was basic in the extreme. When Kirsten drove up there, she contacted the farmhouse that ran the campsite. An older woman came to the door with a sharp face.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, offended that she had been disturbed.

  ‘My name is Kirsten Stewart and I work for the government,’ she said, holding up her credentials in front of her. The woman took them and studied.

  ‘Well done you, love,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m searching for miscreants in the area. A couple of Greek gentlemen.’ Kirsten took out her phone and showed the photographs of the Tavares brothers sent to her by Anna Hunt. The woman looked carefully.

  ‘Are these people dangerous?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kirsten. ‘Dangerous enough. They may have been traveling with a twelve-year-old girl as well.’