No homemade card with a photo of her tied to a chair, eyes wide with terror.
He didn t have her. It wasn t the same as last time. Katie really had run away.
Oh thank Christ
I rested my head against the front door, blood thumped in my forehead. Deep breath.
He didn t have her. She d run off to stay with the prick she was sleeping with. My little girl. Twelve years old.
Ash? Ash, are you OK?
Now all I had to do was find the boyfriend, get Katie back, and then batter the living shite out of him.
I dumped the cards on the little table by the stairs and pushed outside into the hammering rain.
It took four of Katie s friends before we found someone who knew where the little bastard lived.
Millbank Park towered eighteen storeys above the surrounding council estate. A set of three square high-rise blocks, strung together with walkways, paths, and corridors. Some public-spirited arsehole in the Housing Department had decided that what three big hulking lumps of concrete needed was a bright paint job. Most of the colour had worn off over the years, leaving nothing but various dirty shades of brown and grey.
A chain-link fence surrounded the car park, buckled and full of holes. A couple of battered Transit vans were abandoned over by the exit, a Fiesta up on bricks, a pair of matching VW Polos with more rust than paint.
I parked next to the Transit vans, then chucked the keys across to Dr McDonald. Lock the doors. Anything happens, put your foot down: don t look back, don t get involved. Anyone asks, I made you come.
But that s not
I made you come. Wind tried to tear the door from my hand as I climbed out. Rain crackled against my back.
Jesus it was cold. I clumped across the car park, through the broken gate, across a glass-strewn concrete path, and under one of the walkways linking Millbank East and North.
The double doors to Millbank North were propped open, one pane of glass spiderwebbed through with cracks, criss-crossed with duct tape. I walked into the eye-stinging reek of bleach and disinfectant, the tiles wet beneath my feet. Graffiti tags covered the walls. A drift of soggy takeaway leaflets slumped in one corner, dumped by some delivery boy that couldn t be arsed delivering them. Probably no point trying the lift, but I did anyway.
Waited.
A groaning creak, a clunk, then the lift doors squealed open. A baking urinal stench slumped out into the hallway.
Screw that.
I took the stairs.
According to Katie s friends, Noah McCarthy was seventeen and lived on the fourteenth floor with his mum, a nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. That was lucky, because her little darling would need some medical intervention by the time I d finished with him.
Katie wasn t even thirteen till Monday, and the bastard was seventeen.
I took the stairs. They opened out onto a featureless concrete balcony on each floor, cold morning air diluting the stench of stale piss. I kept going. Climbing higher, lungs burning in my chest.
When I reached the fourteenth floor I stepped out onto the balcony. Wind whipped along the concrete walkway, turning the rain into shotgun pellets that raked the flats front doors.
I counted my way along the row: Fourteen-Ten, Fourteen-Eleven, Fourteen-Twelve, Fourteen-Thirteen, then around the corner. The wind died down, blocked by the building s bulk. Fourteen-Sixteen was almost dead centre, looking out over the concrete quadrangle between Millbank East, North, and West. Rain hammered the walkways below.
The sound of something cheery came from next door, a woman s voice singing along with the radio inside.
I took a couple of steps back, until I was up against the balcony railing, then kicked number sixteen s door off its hinges.
BOOM.
Deep breath. NOAH MCCARTHY: GET YOUR ARSE OUT HERE, IT S FUCKING JUDGEMENT DAY!
In. I hauled on my leather gloves. No one would bother running DNA for a wee shite like Noah McCarthy. As long as he was still breathing.
The hallway was just big enough for two doors on either side and one at the end. The nearest one burst open and a spotty young man staggered out, pulling up a pair of baggy jeans over his boxers.
Bow-legged, big red trainers that weren t laced up properly, tartan shirt with the sleeves torn off worn over a Korn
Issues T-shirt. Shiny black hair, ring through his eyebrow, another through his nose. He looked me up and down, teeth bared. The fuck you think you re doin, old man?
You Noah?
He buttoned his fly. Gonna unleash a world of fuckin hurt on you, Grandad, comin in here His mouth fell open. What did you do to our fucking door?
It was him the voice on the phone pretending to be Ashley s father. The prick who told me they d stayed up late eating pizza watching Freddy Krueger slash his way through central casting.
Where is she?
That s our door! Mum s gonna go mental when she finds out.
WHERE IS SHE, YOU LITTLE PRICK?
He backed up a step. She s at work?
Not your mum: Katie. Where s my daughter?
Oh fuck He turned and ran, back into the bathroom, slammed the door behind him. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck
