by Peter James
The fact that homo sapiens has survived for four hundred thousand years owes much to the majority of humans being equipped with consciences that are tuned to the same frequency. But a minority are plugged in to a different value system. Spider could do things that other people couldn't and they didn't affect him in the slightest.
Spider the tormented child used to find solace in tormenting insects and animals. No cockroach ever judged him because he had a hare-lip. No frog ever laughed at him, no dog sneered. Spider repaid these creatures by torturing them to death. Slow deaths for beetles and spiders, being roasted alive on top of the oven. Sudden, violent deaths for frogs: he strapped them to fireworks that either blew them to smithereens, spun them round and round while incinerating them, or else carried them several hundred feet up in the air, leaving them to plunge back to the ground attached to burnt-out rocket sticks. And invisible deaths for dogs; razor blades cut up inside chunks of chicken, he discovered, were effective.
If asked to explain why he did these things, he could not have provided an answer, but it would have been obvious to any psychiatrist that he was a classic psychopath. It was only in the movies, Silence of the Lambs in particular, that Spider had seen a psychiatrist.
Now, dressed in a lightweight tracksuit with a nylon rucksack strapped to his back, and thin cycling gloves, Spider pedalled along the quiet darkness of Ladbroke Avenue, a geeky guy in a smog mask and crash helmet who looked like he was returning home from a geeky Saturday night out.
The street was deserted. He was relieved that the Jeep Cherokee was still there, parked in the same place as it had been this afternoon, beneath a street-light. In the sodium glow he could see that the car had accumulated a patina of dust — it didn't look as if it had been anywhere since yesterday. Slowing, he looked up at Dr Cabot's windows. Dark. Good.
At the end of the street he made a left turn, then swung the bike into an opening between two buildings, past a row of lock-up garages and into an empty, falling-down bike shed where he was invisible to anyone above.
He dismounted and heaved the rucksack off his shoulders. The Heckler and Koch P9 was a heavy brute, and the silencer made it heavier still. He also carried a photocopy of the floor layout of Dr Oliver Cabot's flat, obtained from the Planning Office, a photograph of Cabot downloaded from the Internet, a torch, a set of lock picks, a bolt-cutter, a glass-cutter and a strong suction cup for taking out window segments, an SP 300C Big Kahuna stun gun with a belt clip and two nine-volt nickel cadmium batteries, a leather combat belt, a Swiss Army knife and an empty matchbox.
He used the knife to take souvenirs from his victims. He was slowly building his own private Black Museum in a drawer in his dressing-table. Matchboxes with coded labels, containing snippets of hair, a finger nail, a tiny strip of skin, a little piece of shirt fabric. Nothing elaborate. Nothing that would give the police a signature to enable them to link his killings to one person. Just stuff.
Ripping open the Velcro stays of the rucksack, he began his preparations. First he strapped on the belt, then he inserted the batteries into the Big Kahuna, which looked like a large handgrip and felt like lead, switched it on and fired a test charge. A bolt of blue electricity arced out and crackled into the corrugated iron wall. Fine. He secured the clip to the belt, switched off the stun gun and locked it on to the clip. Then, double-checking that the safety catch was on, he jammed the loaded Heckler and Koch into his right-hand trouser pocket, which he had deepened and strengthened, and the silencer into the left-hand pocket.
Next, he clipped on to the belt the torch, the Swiss Army penknife, then the bunch of lock picks. Finally, he pushed the matchbox into a pocket in his jacket, closed the rucksack, slipped it back over his shoulders and checked his watch. Five past midnight. All set.
He pedalled back into Ladbroke Avenue. Not a soul in sight and only a few lights on here and there. The beat of music came from somewhere down the street, a persistent rap. He rode past the Jeep, an Audi, a van, an elderly Porsche. Then he dismounted again, wheeled the bike up to the front door of number thirty-seven, and chained it carefully to the railings.
The most dangerous part was now, these few steps on foot. As he climbed up to the front door, he freed the lock picks from his belt. When he was twelve Uncle Ronnie had taught him how locks worked. Like anything in life, once you understood the principles, you were nine-tenths of the way there. The rest was technique.
It wasn't much of a lock on the front door, a crappy household five-pin job, a decade old; one hard shove and it would probably have yielded, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. He quickly sorted through the tungsten picks. Two half-diamonds, a half-round and a full-round, a full-diamond, a rake and a snake. He selected the snake, inserted the tip into the keyway and navigating the wards, pushed it firmly through the plug, feeling for the first pin. Almost immediately, he felt the snake brush against it.
Found you, you little bastard.
Gently applying pressure, he levered the pin clear of the sheer line. Then he located the second pin, and lifted that one easily. Anyone watching him would think he was just a tenant having a problem with his key, but nerves were making his hand shake and he missed the third, had to pull back for it before connecting. The fourth and fifth pins rose easily. Now he pushed the pick in the full length of the tang to the handle and gave it a twist, increasing the torque progressively. A solitary bead of sweat darted down the side of his forehead. He could still hear the fucking rap beat.
The lock clicked. The door swung forward with a rustle of paper as it dragged a bunch of flyers from a pizza-delivery house along beneath it. Red spangles glinted at him from the reflector of a bicycle propped against a wall just past a row of mail-boxes. A strip of light shone beneath a door to his left and he heard the faint sound of voices and music — someone watching a movie on television. The smell of curry filtered through his mask.
He closed the door behind him. A weak glow from the street-lighting pressed against the fanlight above the door, but not brightly enough to see by. Switching on the torch, he crossed the floor and climbed the staircase. On the first landing, a tread creaked. He slowed his pace, checking each tread carefully now, not wanting any neighbours later to be able to tell police at what time they had heard someone entering or leaving this place.
The door to Dr Cabot's flat was secured by a sturdy mortise deadlock. A pig to pick.
It took him four minutes of deep concentration before the cylinder turned and he could push the door ajar. Gently, an inch at a time, listening, feeling, sweating like a hog, hoping there wasn't a safety-chain as well. The darkness of the place poured out at him like liquid freed from a bottle.
Six inches. One foot.
No chain.
No pinpricks of red light, which would indicate an alarm system. Just a faint glow some distance away, and above it, big shadows moving on the wall. He froze, then relaxed. A fucking illuminated fish tank.
He took a step forward and a figure took a step out of the darkness straight at him. Choking down a cry of fear he jumped back, his hand diving to the stun gun. Then he stopped.
Dim-fucking-wit.
It was his reflection in a full-length mirror.
Bad omen. All his life he had hated mirrors, loathed seeing his reflection, hated being reminded that he was a freak and always would be.
He closed the door, and stood listening for any sounds. There was enough ambient light from the moon, the street-lamps and the fish tank for him to see the huge open-plan room, and work out the geography of the flat from the plans he had memorised.
He screwed the silencer on to the Heckler and Koch, then jammed the pistol down the front of his jacket. Then he unclipped the stun gun, put his finger on the trigger and, holding the torch switched off under his left arm, went to the door that showed on the plans as a corridor to the bedrooms.
It was. The first door, on the right, which by his reckoning should be the master bedroom, was ajar. The curtains were open and there was
enough light from outside to show that the bed, lazily made, was empty.
Fuck.
Suddenly, the light in the corridor brightened. It took Spider a second to work out why. Lights had been switched on in the living area. He heard the click of a door, the clink of keys. Footsteps across the oak floorboards, coming this way.
Police?
Had he tripped a silent alarm? His eyes sprang to the window, looking for an escape route. Christ, he was being sloppy tonight! He had broken his own golden rule when breaking into any place: first locate an exit route.
It was an old-fashioned sash window and he could see there were brass locks, preventing it lifting more than a few inches. Shit.
He stood behind the bedroom door. Footsteps coming towards him. Someone was whistling 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'.
A cop wouldn't be whistling. And he'd be carrying a radio, which would make sounds.
Spider put the flashlight on the floor, gripped the stun gun, and with his right hand pulled the Heckler and Koch out of its makeshift holster and clicked off the safety catch. Holding his fingers on the triggers of both weapons, he peered down the corridor into the living area. He had a clear but narrow field of view.
A man ambled through it in a bomber jacket, chinos, loafers, carrying a booklet. He was a good six feet tall, with a mane of curly grey hair.
Exactly as in the photograph.
Spider seized his opportunity. He came out quickly from the corridor, threw a quick glance around the room to make sure no one else had come in with him, walked up behind his victim and called, 'Dr Cabot?'
The man turned, startled, but before he had time to register anything, Spider jabbed the muzzle of the Big Kahuna against his arm and squeezed the trigger, dumping three hundred volts into the muscle.
Dr Cabot seemed instantly to shrink in stature and go slack, as if all his bones had been removed from inside his skin. The booklet, a theatre programme, dropped from his fingers. He took a step back, his eyes rolling around as if they had become disconnected, then a step sideways, caught a plinth on which a sculpted bronze head stood, then went down backwards on to the floor with a grunt, and stayed there.
Spider knelt beside him. A dribble of blood rolled from the corner of the doctor's mouth — probably bitten his tongue, Spider thought absently, as he studied that equine face, comparing it against the photograph he had memorised.
No question that this was his man.
The effect of a stun gun was short-lived. It wiped the stored blood sugar from all the body's muscles and short-circuited the neuromuscular system. Within a minute, if he gave him the chance, Dr Cabot would start to feel OK.
Spider dragged him across the floor, raised his shoulders and propped his head against the squab of a leather sofa — he didn't want to risk the bullet going through the floor into the flat below.
Lucidity was returning to his victim. Those grey eyes were focusing now. Dr Cabot spoke in a slurred voice. 'Heysh — whash—'
Spider pressed the muzzle of the Heckler and Koch against the man's forehead, two inches above his nose, savouring the faint realisation that he could see dawning in the man's grey eyes, and gave the trigger a firm squeeze all the way to the back of the guard.
The silencer was good: the gun made just a dull phut, kicking up sharply in his hands, and there was an even duller spattering sound as fragments of the back of the doctor's skull struck the sofa. The man jerked slightly and his eyes stopped moving. A neat round hole blackened by powder burns in the centre of his forehead oozed fluid.
Spider, breathing the acrid tang of cordite and the sweeter smell of singed flesh, checked to see if he could find the bullet, but there was too much mess. It might have disintegrated on entry inside the doctor's head, or plugged itself deep into the sofa. It wasn't essential.
Using the scissors on his penknife, he cut one lock of the man's hair and put it in the matchbox. Then he retrieved his torch from the bedroom and left the flat, closing the door quietly behind him. Adrenaline was pumping and he was on a high that no amount of coke could compare with. Another minute and he would be pedalling away. Ten minutes and he would be in his car. In an hour he would be collecting Sevroula.
And then…
On silent footfalls he made his way back down the stairs, remembering the creaky tread on the first floor. He floated over it. He had never been so silent in his life, and never felt so good about life.
A dull buzz.
Then another, sharper, closer.
Then another further away. Another. Another. Above him, then below him. Above him again. Either side of him. Doorbells.
Shit.
As he started to make his way across the hall, he heard a loud crash. Then another. Blam… blam… blam…
In front of him, on the front door, wood splintered.
The door of the ground-floor flat opened and a man came out, naked, with a towel around his waist. 'What the hell?' the man shouted. 'Hey!'
At that moment the lock and the door jamb gave way, and the front door crashed open. A bald, tattooed hulk in a T-shirt and jeans barged into the hall.
The light came on.
'You!'
The bald hulk was pointing at Spider. 'You bastard, you fucking murderer.'
The Big Kahuna was clipped back on his belt and switched off. Spider took a step back and tried to get the Heckler and Koch out of the front of his jacket, but it snagged on the fabric. The hulk was coming at him. A hand ripped away his mask, he smelt warm breath that reeked of fried onions, then something slammed into his stomach. He crashed against a wall and fell down hard on to the fucking bicycle.
Scrabbling back like a cornered rat, hand inside his jacket, tearing at the Heckler and Koch, he kicked out with his feet and heard a howl of pain as the bicycle crashed into the hulk's knees. The hulk fell on his face, entangled in the machine.
Spider had the gun out now, pointed at the hulk who was climbing up on to his feet, and jerked the trigger back. A neat round hole appeared on the hulk's cheek.
For an instant time stopped, as if he had pressed the pause button on a video. He saw the hulk looking at him with an almost chiding expression, as if he were scolding a naughty child. He saw the naked man with the towel around him, hand over his mouth, eyes staring in shock, half-way back into his doorway.
He pulled the trigger again and half the hulk's neck disappeared. His head lolled, all the facial muscles gone slack. For an instant, there was nothing but loose ends of frayed skin and sinews, then blood began to spurt, unevenly, as if coming from a hose with a partial blockage, and the hulk rolled over to one side like a sack that had been released down a chute.
There was a stench of excrement, mixed with cordite and curry. Spider scrambled to his feet.
The naked man screamed, 'Please don't! Please don't shoot me!' and retreated into his flat, slamming the door.
Spider realised his mask had gone.
The man had seen his face.
Spider stared out at the street. Jesus, what a fuck up. He heard the scraping of furniture. Threw himself against the door of the flat, then kicked the lock hard. From inside he heard a voice crying out, 'Please don't, I won't tell, I didn't see you!'
Spider fired twice at the lock, blowing a hole the size of a fist in the door. Then he charged the door with his shoulder. It budged a fraction and inside he heard a scream.
Then outside a siren.
His eyes sprang back to the open hall door.
Go.
He took one more look at the door then, reluctantly, he went. Raced down the steps to his bike. The key to the padlock was at the bottom of his fucking rucksack.
Siren getting closer.
He got the key out. A voice crackled on the speaker-phone. 'Hallo? Who is that? Hallo?'
Siren even closer now.
He dropped the fucking key.
Tried to pick it up but the gloves made it too hard. He needed the bike, goddammit, he needed that fucking bike.
One
more attempt to pick up the key. Now he could see a glint of blue light skidding across the metal and glass of parked cars at the end of the street. Abandon the fucking bike.
He ran, oblivious now of the route he had planned for his bike, the Big Kahuna swinging from his waist, the torch under his arm, the Heckler and Koch in his hand. He jammed it down inside his T-shirt, the silencer so hot it burnt his skin, but he didn't notice. He just ran, following his nose, heading towards the silence, the smell of greenery, the huge oasis of darkness that was a park.
And his only thought right now was, This is a fuck-up. This is a real fuck-up. Oh, Jesus, what a fuck-up.
67
The ring of the phone came into her dream like a hollow metal scoop, trying to tease her out from her snug warm shell of sleep. The second ring came at her louder, the third louder still, shrill and stark. She tried to cling to the dream, cling to her sleep, to this other world she was in, a much better place, but it was fast slipping away leaving her high and dry, stranded on a beach.
Wind howled. She opened her eyes, saw the curtains billowing, straining like torn sails against their rails, saw bitumen black clouds beyond, heard the hooks clattering on the rail. There was an even blacker cloud inside her. Cold, hostile air blew on her face. The phone rang a fourth time and now the bed was moving, Ross rolling, reaching for the receiver. Then his voice.
'Uh?'
She lay still, grateful that the ringing had stopped. Her head was pulsing and she was feeling too nauseous to move. For a brief moment she thought, Monday. Going to see Oliver.
Then she realised, despondently, no, not got through Sunday yet, got to get through Sunday first.
'Whozat? Who d'you say? Oh, right, sorry, you woke me, bit of a late night… Yes.'
The clock on the radio on her bedside table said eight ten. A volley of rain spattered down. Goosebumps pricked her flesh; something else, something dark, pricked her mind. A gap, a void, a big empty space, a sequence of events that seemed wrong.
Ross was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, cordless held tight to his stubbled cheek, hair sticking up like a scruffy kid. He sounded worried. 'When did this happen? I mean, when did it — they — start?'