THE UNWILLING SON an absolutely gripping mystery thriller that will take your breath away

by Jane Adams

  ‘You don’t shoot at smoke,’ Nathan said wearily. ‘Or if you do, you miss, and I doubt James ever gave them time.’

  * * *

  George had known that something was wrong before he set foot inside the van but by that time it was far too late. James had Katie and a knife, already slick with blood, was held across her throat.

  ‘Drive,’ James said. ‘Just drive and don’t think I won’t kill her, now or later, it’s no different to me.’

  Katie’s eyes were wide in panic and George knew that nothing he could say or do would make this easier for her. He could smell the sweet, heavy scent of blood filling the delivery van. Shit and guts. He could well imagine the carnage behind them in the rear. He was just relieved that it was shut away and Katie could not see it.

  George got into the driver’s seat. James guided Katie into the seat alongside him, not taking the knife from her throat. He positioned himself behind her, wedging himself against the body. ‘Now, I told you to drive,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter where, just away from town.’

  George started the engine. Outside the crowds had gone, the rain had returned and there was little traffic on the road. The police on the roof would not be able to see who was driving, only that there were two people in the front as expected, and with the knife unflinchingly held at Katie’s throat he knew that there was nothing he could do.

  ‘They’ll be expecting a call, won’t they?’

  George nodded. ‘In about an hour’s time.’

  ‘Then make it, when I tell you, and keep it straight or you both die.’

  ‘I thought that was the option anyway,’ George said mildly, and immediately wished he hadn’t as he heard Katie whimper and begin to cry.

  ‘You’re making it worse for her,’ James said. He lifted his other hand and used it to stroke Katie’s face, his fingers tracing the curve of her cheek and the softness of her hair. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ he whispered. ‘A long, long time.’

  Lee’s spirit within him had never felt so strong.

  * * *

  No one had spoken much on the drive to the Markham house. Nathan, concussed and pained, lay back on the seat trying to get his thoughts together and Ray, driving far too fast on country roads, had little concentration to waste on Shaw beyond telling him to call Beckett and tell him where they were headed.

  A quarter of a mile from the house he caught sight of the van, partially concealed in a stand of trees. He braked hard and backed up, then ran from the car to investigate.

  Shaw was beside him when he opened the rear doors.

  ‘Oh, my God. Are they both . . . ? No, Ray, one of them’s alive.’

  He was right, Ray realized as he scrambled into the van. The floor was slippery with blood and when Ray touched the walls to steady himself his hand came away red.

  ‘There’s a torch in the back of the car. Get it, then call Beckett, tell him we need an ambulance. Tell him no sirens.’

  Shaw ran back to the car. He returned with the torch and the first aid kit. Ray took them both and crouched over the wounded man. He had been stabbed in the gut, three or four times as far as he could see. He pressed padded bandages against the wounds, applying as much pressure as he could. The man groaned in pain as he bound the wounds. Ray knew it was probably too little too late and marvelled that the man was still alive. His colleague was dead. His throat cut. In the torchlight it looked like a single cut, no hesitation, severing his neck almost as far as the spine.

  Shaw climbed in beside him and held the torch, giving Ray a better view of the surviving man’s wounds. It was well meant, but Ray almost wished he hadn’t bothered. The light made everything look ten times worse. The man’s eyes were rolling in his head and though Ray spoke to him he seemed unable to respond.

  ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘I don’t know, can you? Do your super-powers run to reviving the dead?’

  ‘I never tried. The ambulance is on its way. I’ve told Beckett no sirens. How close are we, do you think?’

  ‘Don’t you take offence at anything? Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Not much these days. And I know you didn’t. I’m not a healer, Ray. I never claimed to be. What do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. We can’t leave him. How long before Beckett’s people get here?’

  ‘He reckons no more than twenty minutes. He says you shouldn’t be playing the hero.’

  Ray calculated swiftly. ‘Stay here. Look after him and when Beckett arrives bring him to the Markham house. Katie might be dead by now.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Shaw asserted confidently. He smiled. ‘My super-powers can tell you that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  Ray slid back out of the van and crossed to the car, shaking Nathan awake. Nathan groaned.

  ‘Listen. It’s you and me right now, that’s all we’ve got, so get yourself together.’

  He waited impatiently while Nathan stumbled from the car. One fat ex-cop and one concussed sociopath, Ray thought, the flash of humour rising unbidden to his mind. Not much against some guy convinced that he was God.

  * * *

  George had never been to the Markham house but he guessed from the road that they were taking that this was their destination. It was the first glimmer of hope. Ray or Shaw or even Beckett might guess that’s where James would take them. Then he remembered that no one yet knew that they were missing, so no one would be trying to guess where they were.

  An hour to the minute after leaving the hotel James ordered him to pull off the road and make the call. George could see his watch in the faint light shed by the telephone screen. It was eleven-fifteen. George did as he was told, telling Emma Thorn, who answered the phone, simply that Katie was safe and they were at the house, hoping that she would notice something wrong or that at least she would deliver his message verbatim and they might think it curious. He thought of risking asking to speak to Ray, but one look at Katie’s face told him not to. The girl was white, colour drained even from her lips, and her breathing was shallow and uneven. Katie was dead already in her own mind. He knew then that he would have to play this for both of them. There was no hope of her collaborating with him or following his lead. No hope that her nerve would hold, especially if he seemed to be pushing James where he did not wish to go, or even of negotiating. Katie would interpret that as further threat, George was certain. He was in this alone.

  ‘Put the phone under the seat, then drive,’ James said, and George did as he was told.

  * * *

  They reached the Markham house somewhere towards midnight. George had lost track of time and it was too dark to see his watch. James had him pull the van off the road and then get out of the cab. The rain had stopped but it was pitch, heart-of-the-country black with no moon and hidden stars. Had he been alone or with someone like Ray, George would have risked acting, attacking James as he came around the side of the van, but he was with a sixteen-year-old child, he reminded himself. He doubted that she would run even if he managed to free her.

  It was about a quarter of a mile to the Markham house. George hoped for traffic, but there was none, the road leading nowhere except the village in one direction and the crossroads in the other, both a couple of miles distant.

  They reached the gates of the Markham house and went inside.

  ‘Back there.’ James nodded, after taking his bearings. ‘Back there towards the trees. Go now.’

  George led the way from darkness into even deeper black. The trees of the Markham site closing in around them and blocking out the sky.

  * * *

  Ray could hear their voices. George was speaking quietly and Katie was crying, her sobs soft and almost animal in their confused hopelessness.

  He could hear James, chanting it seemed, though Ray could not understand the words. His voice was too soft and the words said too swiftly. The relief that they were alive was overwhelming, he had anticipated coming to the house and finding them
both dead. In his journey he had found himself rehearsing the words that he would say to Katie’s parents when he told them that their child would not be coming back.

  Nathan was beside him, crouched by the gate, listening intently. ‘Man is like an angel falling,’ he whispered softly. ‘That’s what he keeps saying. Over and over again.’

  ‘Now we wait for Beckett,’ Ray said, but Nathan shook his head.

  ‘Lee,’ he whispered. ‘I can feel Harrison Lee all around this place, all around them. Lee’s controlling him, Ray. He’s going to kill her, there’s going to be no time.’

  Ray turned to look at him. ‘I don’t believe all that.’

  ‘Believe it, just for now, because that’s the way it works. Lee’s telling him to get this done. To do it now and then go on with the other boys. He’s furious with me Ray, and if we don’t move now . . .’

  Ray hesitated for a moment more and then he nodded. ‘That way,’ he gestured. After all, there was only one James. He tried not to think of the two men in the van.

  Ray circled the overgrown garden, keeping low and close to the hedge. He could hear George’s voice more clearly now, talking to James, his voice steady and calm, though Ray could hear the underlying fear.

  ‘It’s not too late to back down, you know. You’re not acting by your own will, James. You’re being controlled. We know that and we care about you. We want to make this right again. James, you don’t have to go through with it.’

  Ray could see them now. James was kneeling on the grass, one arm circled around Katie’s waist as she knelt in front of him, her body pressed close against his own. Her head was thrown back and resting against his shoulder, the position determined by the knife James was holding at her throat. Her little cries were growing weaker. Her hands rested on his arms as though she tried to control him, but his body was rigid and far too strong, and Nathan was right, Ray observed, James was taller and more heavily built than the slight young man Lee had chosen when James had fallen apart.

  George had moved, crouching, his body tense and ready to act should the opportunity arise. Across the clearing at the rear of the ruined house, Ray could just see Nathan, a deepening of the shadows, moving slowly, inching his way towards the frozen tableau with Katie at its centre. But he too was afraid to go further in case the knife should move just once across the girl’s exposed throat. One almost thoughtless progression would be all it would take. Ray thought about the man he had seen, his throat cut almost to the bone, and knew that James was more than capable. He had not killed the last boy because the timing wasn’t right, that was all, not out of any sense of mercy. And from the other boys Morgan had needed living blood if this ritual of his was to work. Apparently Katie did not meet the need in the same way.

  Then Nathan moved. A sudden rush of blackness detaching itself as it had on the night he had attacked Ray. He moved with such speed that Ray’s eyes could not follow him, and as he moved he cried out words that Ray could not understand, and as he moved past, Ray felt that sense of otherness that he had experienced on the night all those years ago when he had watched the old man die.

  But James felt it too. He shouted, an inchoate cry, and whirled to face Nathan’s sudden attack. Coming to his feet with Katie still clasped in his arms.

  George rose from his crouch, attacking from the side, his hands grasping at the knife that James still clasped in his fist. James turned on Nathan, shaking George aside as though he were nothing, and Katie fell sideways, knocked over by George’s rush and James’s sudden turn.

  Ray grabbed her. She was bleeding, he could feel the blood on his hands. ‘I’m all right. I’m all right,’ she gasped, and he pushed her into the cover of the hedge and turned back towards the fight. He had heard descriptions of prisoners on PCP taking out a dozen officers before they were finally brought down. He didn’t know what was possessing James, but whatever it was the effect was much the same. He and Nathan were wrapped in an embrace so close it might almost have been obscene. George was struggling to pull Nathan free, or maybe James away from him, Ray wasn’t really sure.

  Behind him he felt Katie move, and when she rose up beside him she had James’s knife clasped in her hands, was wiping the blood from the handle on her clothes and thrusting it into his grasp.

  ‘In my dream,’ she yelled. ‘You stopped him in my dream.’

  Ray took the knife, staring stupidly at her, and then he leapt forward. James’s arm was wrapped around Nathan’s throat and Ray plunged the knife deep into his bicep. He plunged it in and then pulled it down as James screamed and tried to escape. He sliced into muscle and felt the hardness as he hit the bone. And then he snatched it out again, looking for another place to strike.

  Nathan had fallen now. He lay on the ground, clutching at his head. George had his hands wrapped in James’s hair and was hauling backwards, trying to pull him down. Ray struck again, the knife this time sinking into James’s leg. He felt inspired, that was the only word he had for it. He didn’t need George’s help now. He could take this bastard down all on his fucking own. He wrenched the knife from the man’s leg and raised it up to strike again and then there was a flash of pain, the pain spreading from his hand and up his arm.

  Ray lay on the ground, the inspiration spilling from his body, suddenly aware of figures all around him, moving past, surrounding him. And Beckett kneeling at his side with a uniformed officer holding a night staff in his hand.

  ‘He hit you,’ Beckett explained. ‘I’ll get him to apologize some time.’

  ‘James Morgan?’

  ‘We’ve got him. It’s going to be all right.’

  Ray lay back, allowing the pain in his hand and arm to expand until it filled his consciousness. It felt good, the pain, real and solid, something he could understand in a world that he would swear had all but gone mad.

  It was some time until they realized that, in the confusion, Nathan had gone.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The blow had broken Ray’s wrist, but he didn’t care. A few weeks in plaster seemed a small price to pay. What stuck most clearly in his mind through the following days and weeks was the feeling that he had wanted so much to kill James Morgan that for a few precious minutes it had been his only reality.

  He had never experienced such cold, inspired rage before and it shook him that such a feeling was something he might be capable of.

  Katie was alive. Marcus Ellwood was alive — and back in school. James Morgan was in hospital, in a secure unit, and Ray doubted he would ever be judged fit enough to stand trial. Martyn Shaw had returned home and Mallingham to its sense of bleak normality . . . and Beckett had come up with a theory.

  ‘Morgan,’ he had declared. ‘Morgan didn’t die in the chapter-house explosion. Morgan had to be behind all of this. He controlled his son before and he’s controlling him now, maybe even killed the boys.’

  It had a sort of logic to it and the search for Daniel Morgan had begun, though Ray doubted they would ever find him, and even if they did that they would be able to prove his influence over his son’s actions.

  They were also searching for Nathan, but Ray was even more certain that Beckett would fail in that. It would be like catching smoke, to borrow Nathan’s description of James, and Ray was glad of it. He couldn’t bear to think of Nathan locked away.

  * * *

  It was two weeks after the shocking events at the Markham house that Ray saw Nathan. Ray was with Sarah in Mallingham, visiting Martha at St Leonard’s Church, when they all heard the distinctive note of the Dominator. They turned and looked across the wasteland to where the body of Roger Joyce had once been found and saw Nathan on his red and chrome machine. He looked at them for a moment and nodded at Ray and then took off into the night carried on a wave of noise.

  ‘Will you tell Beckett?’ Martha wanted to know.

  ‘Tell him what?’

  Martha smiled.

  That I saw a fallen angel, Ray thought to himself as he walked away.

  THE E
ND

  ALSO BY JANE ADAMS

  MERROW & CLARKE

  Book 1: SAFE

  DETECTIVE MIKE CROFT SERIES

  Book 1: THE GREENWAY

  Book 2: THE SECRETS

  Book 3: THEIR FINAL MOMENTS

  Book 4: THE LIAR

  DETECTIVE RAY FLOWERS SERIES

  Book 1: THE APOTHECARY’S DAUGHTER

  Book 2: THE UNWILLING SON

  Book 3: THE DROWNING MEN

  Book 4: THE SISTER’S TWIN

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