32

The Chateau itself was much smaller than it appeared from the outside. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom, which Tash had already searched. A galley kitchen, another bathroom and the main bedroom were located downstairs. The bed here was a four-poster, carved with elaborate geometric designs. A curtain covered a small in built wardrobe where Stevie found some men’s casual clothes and a pair of workboots. A small bookcase filled with yellowing paperbacks leaned against one of the walls.

In the bathroom Stevie found compressed cocaine hidden amongst echinacea tablets. She returned to the great hall and placed the bottle on the table before Stoppard.

He shrugged, ‘I get it from Mexico, for personal use. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to sell it.’

Stevie glanced at Tash. It seemed she had got no further with their suspect. If anything he appeared more relaxed. In some strange way his casual acknowledgement to the cocaine possession, the way he was trying to deflect from the major issue, was more disturbing to Stevie than his denial of seeing Emma.

‘I’m going outside to check out the tower,’ she told Tash.

The spiral stairs on the outside of the tower had no railing and she wound her way up carefully. On her way she examined three floors of circular rooms, all with dimly lit grottoes displaying a variety of exotic statues and carvings; creatures with strange hooked beaks and wings that were never meant to fly.

The topmost level was reached by a ladder from a trapdoor in the ceiling. Here she found a small office with shelves of files. She picked a CD from a neat pile. Unlike those in the boxes downstairs, this was clearly labelled: ‘Accounts 2005–2006.’

A sleeping PC sat on a small desk. She snapped on latex gloves from her pocket and touched a key, finding herself on the Katy Enigma site. She knew what this meant; either Stoppard had been lurking on the site, or Emma had posted her story from here.

Stevie racked through her shaky knowledge of computers and websites. As she thought she gazed through a porthole window at the inky water below. A floodlit fountain came to life in the middle of the lake. Must be controlled by a timer, she thought idly. The glowing orbs of protea blossoms caught her eye on the far side as the lake burst with prisms of colour.

But she wasn’t here to admire the view. Her eyes slipped back to the computer screen, noticing the various commands and codes in its margin. She realised then that she was in the administration panel, a page only accessible to the site owner.

Which meant Emma had posted her story from here. They had him.

Having not yet explored the entrance to the Chateau, Stevie opted to return through the front door. Evidence of a struggle greeted her as soon as she stepped into the entrance. Clearly, someone had attempted a clean up, but shards of broken pottery and lumps of soil and streaks of mud were still visible. Two sets of footprints, one large, one small, tracked down the passageway. Treading carefully, Stevie followed them, a grim smile upon her face. No way could that slimy bastard wriggle out of it now, no matter how much money he had.

Stoppard’s scream made her pull up short. She hugged the walls as she made her way down the passageway towards the light from the great hall. Gingerly, she peered around the doorframe.

She saw Stoppard bound to a chair with a curtain tie, struggling to break free. Tash stood over him brandishing one of the scalpels.

‘You can’t do this to me, you wouldn’t dare!’ Stoppard yelled.

‘I’ve done it before, mate and got away with it too,’ Tash said. ‘The last guy, one of your little crawling pals, got a bullet to the head. He was lucky, a helluva lot luckier than you’re gonna be.’

Christ, Tash. Stevie’s hand went to the gun under her denim jacket. She held it loosely by her side and stepped into the room.

‘Put that down Hayward,’ she said, surprised at her own cool. She glanced at Stoppard and saw immediately that his fly was undone and gaping, but he was apparently unhurt.

Tash tossed the scalpel on to the table. ‘Stevie we haven’t got time for this. He’s actually admitted that she’s here somewhere in the Chateau, but not where. If she’s not dead already, she might soon well be.’

Stevie grabbed Tash by the arm and pulled her out of Stoppard’s earshot into the master bedroom. Then she didn’t hold back. ‘Jesus Christ Tash! Didn’t anything sink through your thick skull the last time—much as you might feel like it, you can’t do that to suspects!’

‘He said she’s here,’ Tash repeated. ‘If you’d given me just a bit longer, I’d have found out where.’

‘And how would you have done that?’

‘Gone for his balls.’

‘You’re bluffing.’

Tash washed her hands over her face, paused for a moment then looked into Stevie’s eyes. ‘Am I?’

Stevie’s gut twisted. This was not what she wanted to hear.

Suddenly Tash leapt up from the bed. ‘Shhh, Stevie, did you hear that?’

They both froze. Through the sounds of the cicadas and frogs from the lake a vague muffled thump reached their ears.

Stevie spun on her heels, looking around the room. ‘Where’s that coming from?’

‘You searched in here?’

She nodded.

Tash dropped to her knees and slithered under the bed, her cowboy boots scuffing on the tiles. Stevie tapped at the plaster wall behind the curtained wardrobe.

In a muffled voice Tash called out, ‘The wall feels hollow around here.’

Stevie continued to scan the room until her eyes settled on the bookcase with the faded paperbacks. Then they heard it again, a faint cry, a thump. It sounded close, and it was coming from behind the bedroom wall. Stevie called out louder, ‘Emma, Emma?’ Then she remembered.

If by some bad luck, one of them was to get into the castle, she could escape by the secret passageway hidden behind the bookcase in her bedroom.

Tash slid back out from under the bed.

‘She’s behind there!’ Stevie pointed to a bookcase on the wall. There was a decorated knob at the top; she pulled on it and the bookcase swung open like a door. Behind the bookcase they found another door, similar in design to the coal chute she’d seen outside. She drew the bolt and heaved the door open.

Tash found a light switch and Stevie felt an immediate flood of relief. The L-shaped room was lined with bench seats and colourful cushions, the walls filled with delicate pieces of Mexican art. And in the smaller part of the L, Emma lay on a rough wooden bed, hands and feet tied, mouth gagged with duct tape. She blinked back at them in the harsh light, eyes filling when she saw Stevie. Within seconds Stevie had her untied, back in the bedroom, crying and shaking in her arms.

Over the child’s shoulder, Stevie told Tash to take Stoppard out to the car and cuff him inside it.

She didn’t know how long she sat on the bed with Emma, clasping her until the sobs finally eased. Scraping the hair off the little damp face, she murmured, ‘Did he hurt you, Emma?’

The girl shook her head and spoke through hiccupping breaths. ‘He said he was saving me for someone, he said he had to get rid of me ... I told him the police were coming. He gave me something to drink which made me sleepy and then he made some phone calls, but I can’t remember much about them because I was half asleep. I think someone was going to come and get me. Stevie,’ the girl’s voice became very high. ‘He said the man was going to put me in the movies and then he was going to kill me!’

Stevie pulled the child close, felt the tears pricking her eyes. ‘Hush now, it’s okay, you’re safe.’

As she held Emma tight, her eyes travelled around the small room. Above the bed, tacked to the rough plaster wall, she saw the same crucifix as in the hardcore photographs seized from Mason and Kusak’s computers. The thin line she’d seen at the bottom of the cross turned out to be a price tag.