The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

outsider. He was irritated.
    The atmosphere was quiet but the tension was there, the sense that this time, maybe, perhaps, something would break, there would be a lead, it might be coming to the boil. At the far end of the room, the facesof the children, three of them now, looked out.
    “Sir?”
    A DC was beckoning him over. Simon took the phone he was holding out. “Serrailler.”
    “I’m heading back,” Jim Chapman said. “Pick you up on my way.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Main road towards Scarborough. Silver Mondeo speeding. Patrol car intercepted. Driver put his foot down. Registration tallies. Get down to the forecourt, I’ll not be stopping.”
    Simon dropped the phone and ran.
    In the car, which barely drew up to let him scramble in, Chapman explained.
    “They spotted him, then lost him. Picked him up again at a roundabout, flagged him down but he wouldn’t stop.”
    Chapman’s driver was picking up speed.
    “Description?”
    “Tallies—driver has dark hair, wearing a dark jacket, has noticeably pale skin apparently, which the icecream van chap remarked on … no passengers. We’ve got cars coming in to cover routes off.”
    They were on the dual carriageway now, and Chapman was in touch with the patrol immediately behind the Mondeo. Simon felt the old clench in the pit of his stomach, as the adrenalin rushed in. He had the sense that this might be it. Their car was doing over a hundred now, scenery flashing by. A face at a vehicle window, a driver alarmed at their speed, then another,gone. A lorry, pulling in to let them pass. A blur of red. A tanker. Blare of a horn. Gone. It was raining, the sky ahead was sulphurous.
    A hundred and five, steady.
    Then, just in front, the blue light of a patrol car.
    “Storm’s coming in from the sea,” Chapman said. “You ever been over this way?”
    “I’ve a photograph of myself on a donkey at Scarborough.” Serrailler glanced out of the rear window and spotted a second patrol car.
    Chapman was on the phone again. The Mondeo was still moving, still heading east.
    They hit a wall of rain and tore a way through it.

Eight
    Crap way to earn a living. Crap way to live. Filling vending machines with condoms and tampons, selling illegal fags. What was it about? There ought to be more.
    There was more.
    The car could move when it had to, eating up the shining wet road.
    What would he have said? Or she for that matter? We expected better of you. We wanted more for you . The whining pasty faces, his watery blue eyes. Pathetic.
    Weak. Never be.
    There was the dark space. Hole. No one knew. That was the end of it and didn’t signify. It was the beginning that signified. The moment of waking. The faintest shadow of a shadow.
    The needle of excited dread.
    The rain was streaming down the window and bouncing off the bonnet. How far from home? Too far. No happy evening with Kyra then. Kyra’s face shone out of the rainstorm, bright-eyed. Kyra. Different. Funny that. Kyra was safe as houses. No harm would ever come to Kyra. It was good to know, good to be confident. Kyra enjoyed coming round, getting away from her own home, the lack of interest or attention, the endless shouting and chivvying and swearing. Kyra deserved more, deserved someone listening, playing, having fun, thinking up things to do. Kyra.
    Why was Kyra different?
    It puzzled Ed.
    They were there. They had been left a long way back but now they were there again, white streaking up, blue flashing. Fuck it. The road was straight and fast but the rain didn’t help. It was good to know exactly what was ahead though, not be driving blindly anywhere, in the desperation to shake them off, get away.
    The last time Kyra had been round she had looked at the box of photographs and there were half a dozen of Scarborough. She’d loved it. The donkeys. The castle. Then Ed on a donkey. Ed with a bucket and spade. Then a postcard of the foreshore with the fairy lights on.
    “I wish I could go there. One day, will