by LJ Ross
Or perhaps, they wanted to trust.
It was remarkable, really, how many people overrode their natural, animal instinct at the sight of a half-pretty face, and the promise of a bit of cash in hand.
But then, they didn’t value their own lives. They didn’t know how fragile life could be, nor how easily it could be taken. They thought there would always be another day.
Not for Hayley.
She’d been a trusting one, all the way to the front door.
After that, she’d seen the shoes, and the fun had started.
Hot with anticipation, he reached down and took hold of a heavy iron handle, and pulled hard until the trap door opened and fell back against the floor with a loud thud of wood and metal. The opening was too high for them to reach it without a ladder, but he’d made one specifically for the space and he trotted back to the kitchen to get it.
When he returned, he fed the ladder through the entrance until he heard it hit the floor at the bottom, and then called down to the woman who awaited him.
“Hayley? Time to come out,” he said, in the everyday tone of somebody discussing the weather. “Chop, chop—I haven’t got all night.”
When there was no response, he sighed.
They did this, sometimes. Passed out, or stayed silent, hoping he’d go away and leave them to die.
That’s not how the game worked.
There was nothing that angered him more than the ones who found a way to off themselves, thereby depriving him of the privilege.
“Come on, Hayley—don’t you want to know how to play the game? I’m a good sportsman, I promise—I’ll play by the rules.”
They were, of course, his rules.
When there was still no reply, he swore viciously and snapped his night vision goggles over his eyes. The basement had never been wired, which was how he preferred it, but it did make things slightly harder when he was forced to go down there and drag them out.
He peered down into the hole and took a sweeping glance around but could see no thermal light; only darkness. He patted the hunting knife tucked into the side pocket of his suit, and quickly descended the ladder. As his feet touched the floor, he spotted her, cowering in the corner that had been outside his line of vision.
“There you are.”
It was an irritation to know she would be one of the weaker ones, whose fight had already gone before the game had even begun. Nonetheless, he must make do with what he had.
“Come on, princess. Time to go.”
He walked through the darkness towards her and, at first, she saw his outline illuminated by the light that shone through the trap door. But, as he moved steadily closer, into the darkest corner where she waited, he seemed to melt into the blackness.
She closed her eyes, and listened to the sounds in the room.
Footsteps.
He’d taken seven, so far. Five or six more, and he’d be upon her.
Five, four, three…
She smelled his scent, felt his hot breath in the air around her face moments before his hand reached out to take her by the neck, hard and suffocating.
But she had been ready for this.
Her hand came up, bloodied and torn from the effort of working free the loose nails around the boarded window; the window that she hadn’t been able to open in time. She gripped three of them between the fingers of her right hand and brought it up, aiming for his eyes.
They connected with something hard and solid.
Anger, fear, adrenaline burst through her body and she tried again, before he had time to react. Even as his free hand reached down for his knife, her left one came up to drag the goggles from his face, sending them clattering across the dark floor.
He let out a grunt of anger, and his hand tightened on her throat.
“That was very bad,” he snarled, and she felt the spittle on her face as he lunged towards her in the darkness.
With tears leaking from her eyes, she brought her right hand up in one final effort, knowing that, if she failed, it would be her last.
* * *
She dragged the nails across his face, scoring through his skin so he reared back. It was not a serious injury, not enough to debilitate, but it bought her time—seconds, at most.
“Bitch!”
He lunged forward again, but she dodged him, her feet remembering the shape of the room. Her lungs were screaming as she dragged air into her body, her throat burning from where his hand had clamped the delicate skin. She moved like lightning, running towards the ladder, and heard his harsh breath at her heels.
But then, his footsteps slowed, and she heard him laugh again.
“Let the game begin,” he said. “Go on, I’ll give you a ten-second head start.”
She didn’t stop, but launched herself at the ladder, dragging her tired body up the rungs with only one thought in her mind.
Survival.
CHAPTER 28
They gave the soldier new clothes and a place to sleep, with fluffy pillows and a warm blanket. They’d made good their promise and had taken the dog to see one of their number, who worked at a clinic in the city and let them in through the back door. There, the dog had been x-rayed and checked, and the pain medication lifted from a locked box nobody would miss.
Now, the dog lay sleeping beside him in the cheap hotel room and he knew their kindness would come with a quid pro quo when they returned for him tomorrow, as they’d said they would. They needed an experienced soldier, someone who knew military strategy, they’d said.
What did they want with him?
He shook his head and reached for the remote to turn on the small television resting on top of a rickety chest of drawers opposite the bed. He enjoyed the novelty of flicking through the various channels, but the images were blurred to him.
He paused when he reached the late-night news and lay his head back against the pillow to listen.
“A briefing was held earlier today at the headquarters of the Northumbria Police Constabulary, where the Chief Constable offered her condolences to those affected by the recent spate of racially and religiously-motivated terror attacks around the city,” the newsreader said.
The report cut to another woman’s voice, presumably the Chief Constable, who spoke in an authoritative tone about how they would be tackling the violence.
But there would always be violence, he thought.
“Detective Chief Inspector Ryan joined the Chief Constable in expressing his sympathies to those affected and has advised people to remain vigilant to any suspicious behaviour, particularly parcels or packages left near places of worship…”
The soldier was almost drifting off to sleep, when the report cut to Ryan. When he mentioned an Odinist group, whose symbol had been left at the location of each of the three attacks, he sat up again and shuffled closer to the television screen. Still unable to see clearly, he stood up and peered closely at the screen, while the dog whimpered in its sleep and snuggled back into the warm spot he’d just vacated.
There, on the screen, was a picture of a symbol.
And he’d seen it before, on the underside of his new friend’s wrist.
* * *
She dragged her body up the ladder and was almost blinded by the light in the room, her eyes having grown so accustomed to the darkness. Blinking, her heart hammering against the wall of her chest, she hurried into the room and looked frantically for a weapon. But then she heard the tread of his feet on the ladder below and she didn’t stop to think but ran headlong towards the door and heaved it open, bursting out into the cold night air.
She ran blindly into the night, turning away from the road to run across the moorland, her feet bare against the hard, rocky earth below.
She felt nothing, but continued to run into the never-ending darkness, long legs eating up the ground as she thrust out into the unknown.
He snapped the night vision goggles back on his face and watched her from the pele tower, the whites of his teeth showing bright and hard a
s he smiled through the murky night air.
Run, little rabbit. Run.
* * *
She heard the warning shot, and felt the bullet skim past her face, missing the mark by mere inches.
She let out a sob and fell to the floor, her breathing ragged as she scrambled across the tufted soil, seeking shelter but finding none in the wide-open plains of the moorland.
Her torn fingers gripped the earth and she found herself crawling commando-style across the grass, driven by a strength she hadn’t known she possessed.
She would not die here.
She would not die by his hand.
She heard another shot fire out into the night, not as close this time, and heard it connect five or six metres to her right. She wondered if he was toying with her, as he liked to, or whether he couldn’t make out her exact position so low to the ground.
She crawled faster, not knowing where she was headed, and not caring, so long as she kept going. He was covering the ground fast, and she knew she didn’t have long.
She was about to get up and run again, ready to take the risk, when her hand connected with something thick and very, very cold.
The heavy rain she’d heard yesterday had swelled one of the small burns that fed into the Coquet River, to the north of the Northumberland National Park, leaving the ground saturated with mud. The woman took a fistful of it in her hand and thought of the night goggles he wore, which picked up the heat.
He couldn’t find her, if she wasn’t emitting heat.
Frantically, she tumbled herself into the bog, immersing herself in the thick, cold sludge alongside the river. She crawled through it, heading east, following the line of the river which she knew would eventually lead to civilisation, if she survived that long.
She listened for the sound of his arrival but could hear nothing above the gentle babbling of the burn, one of a network that criss-crossed over the valley. Terrified, hardly able to breathe, she lowered herself as far as she could, tucking beneath the underside of the riverbank. The sound of mud squelching seemed deafening to her ears, and she began to shiver as the mud did its work.
She could see very little; only the silvery sheen of the starry night sky against the water, and her whole body froze in abject terror when she heard his voice, no more than a few feet away from where she hid in plain sight.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” he bellowed.
She closed her eyes and did something she hadn’t done in a very, very long time.
She prayed.
CHAPTER 29
Sunday 18th August 2019
The following day brought with it more severe weather warnings, and Ryan awoke shortly before seven to find the rains had already begun.
“They’re predicting severe storms over the next two days,” Anna told him, while she brushed her teeth and watched him shave. “Be careful, if you’re heading to Otterburn; you can get all kinds of flash floods and mudslides, in the Cheviots.”
Ryan tapped his razor against the sink and started on the other side.
“Same goes for you,” he said. “I have to go back into work today, but I’d feel better knowing you were with somebody. A woman was killed just a few miles from here, and the person who did it is still out there.”
Ryan was a public figure, of sorts. After a run of high-profile cases over the past few years, his name and face were well known, especially in that part of the world. A certain class of criminal knew, only too well, that the finest way to punish him for doing his job was to hurt those he loved best.
Anna understood it, and had been on the receiving end, so she didn’t bother to call him overprotective. If he was dishing out advice to the general public about staying safe, the least she could do would be to remain so, herself.
“I’ll see what Denise and Samantha are up to, today. I can’t imagine they’ll want to hang around in Wooler, if the weather stays like this, and I’d love to see them both.”
He wiped his face on a towel and turned to her with a grateful smile.
“Thank you,” he said, and cupped her face in his hands to kiss her mouth. “I hope you know it has nothing to do with how strong I think you are, or how capable. It’s just a question of safety in numbers, until I bring them in.”
She nodded, but her eyes remained troubled.
“This one seems different, somehow,” she said. “Are you worried in case you can’t track him down?”
He could never lie to her, even if he wanted to.
“This one’s like a cockroach,” he said. “Resilient, in his approach. Prepared, and resourceful, capable of slipping into the shadows for long periods of time. I think he’s mobile—either because he’s with the army, and they move from camp to camp, or because he’s a civilian, and has the kind of job that takes him away for some of the time. It’s allowed him to operate discreetly, and to get to know his target areas very well. I have no doubt the man we’re looking for is capable of stalking his prey for long periods of time, before making his first move.”
She paled slightly, but he wasn’t sorry. She needed to understand the gravity of the threat, so she’d be careful while he was gone. Anna was brave; she’d survived another madman’s knife-blow, but that didn’t mean she was invincible. She could bleed, just like the rest of them, and, if the unthinkable ever happened, it would kill him as well as her.
“What makes you so sure he’s killed more than one person?” she asked, and he gave a slight shake of his head.
“I can’t really be sure, until I have the evidence,” he said. “But I feel it, here.”
He tapped his chest, roughly in the region of his heart.
“The shot was too clean,” he said. “Too sure. He obliterated Layla Bruce’s face, when he could have gone for the torso instead—which is a much easier shot to make, over long distances—because he knew it would take us longer to identify her. He’s savvy, and obviously has an awareness of police and forensic procedures.”
“You’ve beaten ones like him before,” she said quietly. “You look at their mistakes, at their weaknesses, and you tug all the loose threads. You can do it again.”
Ryan hadn’t realised how much he needed to hear that, until she said it. To the world, he was a strong leader; an experienced man who always seemed to know the right thing to do, or to say.
But he still suffered self-doubt.
He was human, after all.
“Thank you,” he said, and then spoke so quietly, she strained to hear. “With others, I’ve been able to find pity. On some very deep level, in a very small way, I’ve found it in my heart to pity the miserable creatures who’ve taken lives—even the most brutal ones. It’s because they’re victims, too, in their own way,” he added, while she leaned against the basin and listened to him. “Either of their own mental health struggle, or of life. That isn’t to say I excuse their actions; you know that I can’t.”
She nodded. Ryan had lost his sister to a notorious killer, five years ago, and the pain was still raw.
“I can’t excuse them,” he repeated. “But I can try to understand why, which helps a little, on those nights when I can’t sleep.”
There were many of those, she thought. The faces of the dead haunted him at night and she often heard him cry out; less so than he used to, but more often than she’d like.
“You think this one’s different to the others?” she asked him. “Why?”
“It’s hard to explain, but I’ll put it like this,” he said, running an agitated hand through black hair that was still wet from the shower. “With men like Keir Edwards, The Hacker, there’d been irreversible damage to his mind, when he was still a child. There are studies about things like that; about the effects of trauma on children before a certain age. It can prevent them from creating attachments with other people, or from feeling sadness or other normal emotions.”
“Like brain damage,” she said.
“Exactly. If that’s the case, I feel an ounce of sadness for the child that they once were. I st
ill hold the adult responsible, but a child isn’t born bad. Killers aren’t born; they’re made, so they say.”
“Is that what you believe?”
He nodded.
“It’s what I’ve always believed, and it’s what experience has taught me. But, when I think of this man, and of his motivations, I find myself wondering whether that’s true for some, but not all.”
“You’re talking about evil,” she realised.
Ryan looked at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly.
“Yes, I think so.”
* * *
While Samantha continued to snore softly from her top bunk in the Mystery Machine, Phillips and MacKenzie seated themselves out of earshot, their voices muffled by the drumming of the rain against the roof of the campervan.
“I’ve just had a message from Anna,” she said, scrolling through her phone. “She’s asking if Samantha and I would like to head over and spend the day together.”
Phillips smiled. The two women were great friends, but he could smell Ryan’s hand in the sudden invitation, and that was no bad thing.
In fact, it saved him the job of having to think of an elaborate way to coax Denise into driving the campervan home—far, far away from the man who roamed the hills.
He cleared his throat.
“Well, seems like a nice idea,” he said, a shade too casually. “There won’t be much to do, if the weather carries on like this, and I don’t think the vans will be out today to serve up Sam’s daily dose of fish ‘n’ chips.”
MacKenzie smiled, happy to humour him.
“There’s always the swimming pool,” she said.
He recovered quickly.
“Aye, but it’ll be cold, getting out of there. No, you’re far better heading over to keep Anna company. Maybe she’s feeling a bit lonely and in need of company, what with Ryan being called away a lot this past couple of days.”
MacKenzie’s smile grew even wider.
“I suppose we could drive over,” she said, and watched his shoulders relax again.
She leaned over to plant a kiss on the end of his nose.