‘Andy,’ she tried again.
This time he pushed the knife into her coat slightly, the coat offering some cushioning, but she would know he meant business if she didn’t follow through. She handed him her phone. He threw it to the floor. He didn’t care if they came here. He was about to admit it all anyway.
He pushed her again. ‘Make a sound and I’ll kill you.’
She walked in front of him, carrying his laptop. They loaded themselves into his car. He made her drive so he could hold the knife and he held it into her groin where there was a main artery. All he had to do was slide it across, he told her.
And that was it, within a couple of minutes of the phone call they were out of there and his new plan of action was about to be set up. Only now they weren’t about to vote on whether he died or was arrested. No, now they were going to vote on whether he died or she died.
59.
Andy forced me into the driver’s seat, making me climb in through the passenger side door and over the handbrake so he could follow me and stay close with the knife. It was somewhat like an assault course while carrying the laptop but once I had folded myself in and we were both settled he took the laptop from me and put it down in his footwell.
At all times I was conscious of the large bladed kitchen knife he was threatening me with and how much damage it could cause. I wasn’t blasé that it was a blade and not a firearm. I had seen first-hand just how much devastation a knife could cause as one of my own DCs had lost her life to a one and I had been injured in the process.
To say I was fearful was an understatement but I had to keep it together. It would be the only way out of this, if I kept my head about me.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked as I drove away from his house.
Andy was quiet. His shoulders hunched.
What was it Aaron had said on the phone? Pasha had identified Andy as someone else altogether. Andy wasn’t his real name. By that point in the conversation with Aaron I had seen the knife in Andy’s hand and had missed the alternate name Aaron had given me.
‘Keep driving and I’ll direct you in,’ Andy said, giving me no idea of what was to come.
Were we to go to a derelict location where he would attempt to dispose of me or was he aiming for a more high profile event as was his first kill?
My stomach twisted and I gripped the steering wheel tighter in an attempt to keep my nerves in check.
Aaron and the team knew where I had been and who I had been with. They would be on the ball. I was not alone no matter how it felt. This, as always was a team effort. I simply had my part to play.
And that part was to stay alive.
Andy twisted the knife in his hands and turned his head to look at me several times reminding me he was paying attention to what I was doing.
I turned right onto Calverton Road, a fairly quiet road surrounded by fields and bare trees and hedges. This didn’t give me a sense of where we were going yet as we were still heading out of Mapperley.
I looked down at the laptop and wondered the part this would play in unfolding events.
‘If you talk to me, I can help you,’ I said.
‘Just keep driving. You’re helping me anyway.’ He wasn’t engaging, it seemed he had one thing on his mind and that was to get to the destination.
Ten minutes later and I pulled up outside of a three-bedroom semi on Surgeys Lane in Arnold.
Whatever was going to happen, it was happening here.
My afternoon had taken a dark turn. I had come for a list of names and now I was in a strange house being threatened with a knife. Wasn’t getting stabbed once in this job enough? I had no intention of going through this again. I had to keep him calm.
I’d noticed while in the kitchen in his house, not the one we were now standing in, that there were two empty spaces in the knife block. He had one of the knives in his hand, but the other, could that be the knife that killed Sebastian? I would have to check when I got out of this.
If I got out of this.
I was unnerved by how calm he was. He looked organised, like he knew what he was doing.
He stuck an internet dongle in the laptop to provide internet service and tapped away at the keys. The knife only mere inches away from his hand. The door completely secure. He had the key in his pocket. The key for the front door and the back door. I had no idea whose house this was but he’d had a key to get in.
‘Aren’t you expecting anyone to come home?’ I asked. I really didn’t want someone to walk into this and get tangled in this mess and become injured, potentially killed.
‘No, they’re all out. They won’t be home until later.’
I looked around. There were photographs on the walls. Young children who grew up in the images and were teenagers in the most recent ones.
‘Are these your children?’
‘Just keep quiet will you,’ he snapped.
Then he stopped from what he was doing. ‘All done.’ He smiled. This made me nervous. ‘Would you like to see how this is going to end?’
I’m not sure I did, but it was better to be informed about your situation. ‘I’d like to know what I can do to help you,’ I answered.
‘You can’t help me,’ he said. ‘It’s in their hands now. They’ll decide if you’re going to be helped or not.’
I didn’t understand.
‘Come on. Have a look.’
I walked to where he was and looked at the screen. He had Twitter open and a tweet in the middle of the screen.
I am the killer. I killed Sebastian Wade and Lacey Lane because of what you did to me last year. Now it’s up to you what happens. #crimescenemurder
Poll Option 1: Kill myself. Option 2: Kill the police officer leading the investigation because I have her.
Shit. He had publicly outed himself and had decided one of us was going to die. It didn’t look as though tweet had been sent yet though. That was good. I had time to talk him out of this.
‘Andy, that seems a bit drastic. Let’s–’
Before I could finish he grabbed hold of my hair and yanked my head towards him. Pain shot through into my eyes. I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my balance. With a swift movement he let go of the knife, picked up his phone and took a selfie of us together.
This was my one chance, I stamped down hard on his foot with my heel. With a sudden reflex to the pain he jerked forward. His hand still in my hair. Stars flew behind my eyelids.
I had to keep my eyes open. I had to keep my eyes on the knife. I slammed my elbow up into his face. Felt it connect with skin and bone. A grunt escaped as blood flew from his nose across my cheek. His fingers dug in harder and it felt as though my scalp was going to be dragged straight off my head.
With a deep breath in I did a half twist to face him, pulled back my arm and with as much bodily momentum as I could manage I forced my fist upwards.
He saw it coming. I was too slow. The twist and the backward swing, gave him time to shift slightly to his left, the punch grazed his jaw, I heard the click as it swung past just catching. Then I was going down. He was going with me. He was doing the only thing he could do to gain control of the situation and that was to take me down. With his hand still wrapped tightly up in my hair he had full control. I screamed at the top of my lungs and swung with both arms. I had to stop this descent to the floor. If he got me down then it was lost and he would have the upper hand.
With my face bearing down I couldn’t see a thing and bile was rising in my throat. The hair he didn’t have hold of fell over my face now, blocking all view of him of the room, of where the knife was.
So much for not wanting another knife wound.
My fists connected but nothing that was causing him any injury. Our breath was coming thick and fast as we struggled to come out of this on top. I wasn’t causing him any pain now and I was doubled in half and he was still pushing and pulling my head to get me down. You can’t pull against your own hair. Your own scalp. It’s attached to your head and it�
��s excruciating.
Then he was on his knees and I was on the floor, on my hands and knees. Panting hard. Air pushing through my lungs in ragged breaths. My face pushed down to the floor. I tried to lock my elbows, refusing to give in completely and lay flat for him. The carpet brushed into my nose. I could taste dust.
His grip tightened even more, the pressure hardened and my face flattened against the ground. He was grunting as hard as I was. I felt the stretch of him as he reached forward and then it was there. The knife. The large kitchen knife. He pressed the blade against my cheek, slid it down to my throat.
‘You really want to go out like this?’ he asked, his voice ragged in his throat. ‘Why’d you have to do that?’
His knee pressed in my back. I was locked down tight. How would I get out of this? ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,’ I panted. ‘I saw what you wrote and reacted. I should have just talked to you. Let me up and we can talk about it. There are obviously things you want to talk about.’ I struggled to get the words out in my position and after battling with him, but I forced them. I needed to get through to him.
There had to be something he wanted to talk about otherwise he wouldn’t be telling the world he had killed those people. I had to get him talking. It was my only way out of this. This was me and him.
My life was down to me.
60.
He kept me pinned to the floor for a moment and I caught my breath. He was obviously thinking, there was no rush in his movements. I still had a chance here.
‘If I let you up you won’t try anything like that again?’ he asked, his mouth inches from my ear. The threat implied in his tone.
I tried to shake my head but it was difficult. ‘No. I just want to talk to you.’
He wasn’t used to physical activity. The exertion had taken his breath away and it was taking effort for him to talk.
His hand let go of my hair and I relaxed. This was forward movement.
‘I still have the knife, DI Robbins,’ he said before removing his other hand and standing up over me.
I sat up and rubbed my head. ‘I know. Thank you for letting me up.’
He gave a curt nod, his face closed and immobile.
We stayed in this standoff for a couple of minutes trying to get the lay of the other and then he moved. Seemingly satisfied that I would keep my word. He stood in front of the open laptop and indicated I should follow him over.
I climbed up from the floor. My arm from the old incident throbbed. I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore it. I had to focus on the here and now and not get dragged into the past.
The screen was still open on Twitter. The tweet he had written was there in the middle of the screen.
He turned to me. ‘I wanted you to see this.’ And with the press of one key the poll was out in the world for everyone to see.
‘Let’s talk, Andy, while we wait,’ I had to do something. I had no idea what impact that tweet would have on my situation.
He turned on her. ‘My name is Drew. Not Andy.’
‘Yes, sorry, my colleague did mention that when he phoned. Do you want to tell me about that?’
‘I changed it after they made my life unbearable. Everyone knew the name Drew Gardner. I couldn’t use that name for anything. So, when I joined Sebastian’s book club, I used a different name and hoped no one recognised me. I needed to get out of the house at least once a month, which is what the book club offered, and I like true-crime. Everything seemed to be okay, Twitter is more about the words and the hashtags than images. And no one realised. Drew is short for Andrew so I chose Andy. Both were still my name.’
Of course, I hadn’t realised Drew was short for anything. He was talking though and that was a good sign. I needed to keep him talking, create a bond with him. ‘Shall I make us a drink?’ I asked.
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.
Relief flashed through me. I was a jumble of tense muscles and this one response gave me further hope.
He leaned down and refreshed the page. He only had 142 followers. It was possible this would not go far.
When the screen reloaded I could see it had been shared six times, with shock and disgust voiced with the retweet. He checked the accounts of those who’d shared. None of them had large followings either.
I wasn’t sure how he would feel about this. I needed to distract him. ‘Come on. Let’s get that drink.’
The kettle boiled and I organised the cups. Drew sat with the knife in full view. In control.
‘So, do you want to tell me about it?’ I poured the boiling water into the mugs.
‘You read the message,’ he said.
‘I did,’ I agreed. ‘It didn’t say a lot, did it? Why Sebastian?’
He let out a sigh. ‘Top the drinks up with some cold water, I don’t want you throwing it over me.’
I inclined my head in acceptance and took the mugs over to the sink.
Drew continued, ‘He wrote a blog post about me. It wasn’t very polite.’
I turned from the counter. ‘About you?’
‘Yeah, the homeless man incident.’
I remembered that last year. There was a real uproar online apparently and it had made it into the Nottingham Today because it was a local story. Was Drew one of the men? I squinted at him as I handed him one of the mugs. ‘You’re the homeless man?’
‘No. I was the other guy.’
‘You pushed him?’ I was surprised. Yes he had killed people but for some reason he didn’t seem like the type of guy who would randomly go around pushing people in public.
‘No. Yes. But, not how it looked. There was a car coming behind him, I was protecting him. The photograph doesn’t pick that up though. I was vilified. My life was ruined.’ Drew dropped his gaze for a moment then suddenly jerked his head back up and shot me a look.
I hadn’t moved. I needed more than a momentary lapse after the way it had gone last time.
‘I lost everything,’ he said.
‘And Sebastian wrote about it.’ I paused and thought it through. ‘You were in a book club with him. Didn’t he recognise you?’
‘No. Well, not straight away.’ Drew continued, ‘I only joined about eight months ago, so after he’d written the post and he was on to other things then. That post was history. Then eventually it came to him where he had seen me before. He took me to the side and asked me about it. I told him what really happened and he promised to keep it to himself.’
‘He was your friend then?’
Drew nodded.
‘I don’t understand. Help me understand.’ I cradled my mug in my hands and stared at him.
‘My life was still over. I was pretending to be someone else. My kids wouldn’t see me. My wife was living without me and it was all because of the online drama.’
‘So, you want to take everything away from? Who? I don’t get it.’
‘They turned on me like my life was a computer game they were playing. They demanded I lose my job. I did. I lost my wife and my children stopped talking to me.’
‘I’m sorry. That must have been hard.’
‘I wanted to show them that…’ He scrubbed his hands across his face.
He was struggling to put this into words. I waited for him.
‘They behave as though everything they put online is meaningless, as though it doesn’t have consequences. I wanted to show them that it does. Look, I wanted to say.’ He waved one arm out, the knife circling in his hand. ‘Look at this crime scene, this is real, but it’s not real, this is your world now turned into something deadly. How does it feel when you get your kicks online and they turn out to be so very real? It’s not so good, is it? But,’ he pleaded. ‘It didn’t work. They lapped it up. They loved it. It was like the best thing they’d had to talk about for a long time.’
‘So why did you do it again with Lacey?’ I asked.
‘I wanted to shock them. Show them it wasn’t good. Maybe one example wasn’t enough. Just, look. Look at this.
She spends all day showing herself to you. Now look at her, showing herself in such a grotesque way. Is this what you really want? Think about what you want on here, in your internet world.’
I let a soft sigh. ‘It didn’t work, did it? You’ll never stop them or make them think about their actions, Drew. And killing people is not going to make the difference you want. If you go through with this, you’re just going to give them more fodder. You’re going to make their day more exciting. It will give them something to talk about. To share. You can stop this now and we can talk this through. Without them.’
He put his mug down. Not a sip had been taken. ‘They won’t listen to me, will they?’ he said.
‘They won’t. This isn’t the ending you want. Let’s talk about this. Me and you. I promise you’ll be safe.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll delete that message first. No point leaving that out there.’ His shoulders slumped. His arm hung heavy by his side, the knife nearly falling from his hand. He was tired.
We walked into the living room and the laptop and he clicked on the message, it reloaded. He stared at the screen. Stretched back out. He stood taller. His shoulders broadened. The grip on the knife tightened.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
He turned to me. ‘It’s been shared over twenty-two and half thousand times. We’re not going anywhere.’
61.
Aaron, Martin and Pasha walked back into the office after going to Drew’s address, the guy they had known as Andy, to back Hannah up.
‘There was no one there.’ Aaron was grey as he spoke to the rest of the team. ‘Her car was there, we forced entry, but they’ve gone. Uniform now have the scene and the shift inspector has promised to start a search to see if there is anything there that can point us in the right direction of where to go now. But we had to come back here to continue inquiries from our end. He’s assured me he’ll get in touch with anything they find and won’t close the scene until we’ve been back and had the once over.’ The room was quiet; staff were getting on with what they needed to do but were subdued, the DI was missing, this was not easy to process.
The Twisted Web (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series book 4) Page 21