Phobia

by Dean Crawford

  Fenchurch Street was barely five hundred metres south of the station, and Honor knew the area like the back of her hand. Rush hour traffic would slow even a patrol car with its blues lit up. She ducked left into Bevis Marks, then right into St Mary Axe, full–tilt past the towering, glistening lights of the Gherkin and Leadenhall, tore across Leadenhall Street and into Lime Street as she heard wailing police sirens soaring across the city like banshees, racing her to the scene.

  The dizzying heights of the financial district’s towers gave way to Fenchurch Street, the Shard’s glittering heights on the far side of the Thames lost in the tumbling clouds. Honor burst out onto Fenchurch Street at the same moment as police cars converged on her position, their hazard lights flickering like exploding stars, the debris bouncing off glossy windows all around.

  ‘Which one?’ Honor screamed as she staggered, breathless, to a halt in the middle of the junction with Lime Street and Philpot Place, and looked at the road beneath her as the police cars screeched to a halt broadsides across the road, blocking all traffic from entering the area.

  Officers swarmed in, and she felt her heart aching as she saw the drains and the manhole covers around her, water seeping from all of them to join the floods streaming along the gutters.

  ‘Pick the biggest one!’ Paul Sharp yelled as he got out of the HAT car and pointed to a triple set of covers right by a kerbside drain.

  The cascade of rainwater on Jayden’s head.

  ‘Open them!’ Honor yelled, her hair hanging limp and sodden from her head, her suit drenched, cold rain spilling down her face.

  Police constables rushed to her side, and she was pushed clear as they forced metal hooks supplied by Paul Sharp into the holes in the manhole cover, where streams of water were pulsing like black blood onto the road, as though the city itself were bleeding.

  As one, the officers hauled the manhole covers off and a great rush of water flooded out into the street. In the light of their torches, Honor saw Jayden Nixx’s face rush up out of the water, her mouth agape, her eyes wide open, her limbs flailing. Officers grabbed her body, and for a moment Honor held her breath as Jayden was dragged onto her back in the road, flickering hazard lights illuminating her body as paramedics rushed in. Honor tried to get closer as fire engines and ambulances arrived, screeching upon the scene, and over the shoulder of a paramedic she glimpsed Jayden’s eyes staring lifelessly up at the night sky.

  ‘Clear!’

  Jayden’s body jerked as a defibrillator punched current into her wounded heart, again, and again and again. Honor stood immobile in the rain, watching as the paramedics shocked her repeatedly, and then, finally, they glanced up at her and shook their heads.

  Honor stood in silence, staring down at Jayden’s inert corpse, her mind numb, devoid of thought. She could not feel the cold or the rain, could see nothing but Jayden’s death mask before her, twisted with the agony of her last breath, and something else, something even more horrible that wrenched Honor’s heart from her chest and sent it screaming into a darkness she could no longer quell. Dismay. Disappointment.

  They had failed Jayden. She had failed Jayden.

  Honor turned away and started walking. She had nowhere to go, the rain pelting down on her head as though beating her into submission. She made ten paces until she reached an ambulance parked at an awkward angle near the traffic lights, turned and slumped against it as every last ounce of her soul drained out of her and poured away on the rivers of rain sailing away toward the Thames. Her forehead thumped against the metal side of the vehicle, slick with rain, her hair plastered against her forehead.

  ‘Fucksake.’

  She heard footsteps approaching, and sensed rather than saw Samir move alongside her.

  ‘This isn’t on you.’

  His words were simple but honest. Still didn’t mean fuck all though, not really, not when they were standing a few feet from Jayden Nixx’s corpse. A daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt, a friend, a person, all ripped from life for nothing more than a murderer’s deranged passions. Honor didn’t say anything in reply, couldn’t bring herself to speak, to think, to do anything.

  ‘It isn’t on you,’ Samir repeated.

  Honor put one hand over her face and willed him to just piss off and leave her alone.

  ‘Tell me that you understand, it’s not on you.’

  ‘It’s not on me,’ she replied through her hand. ‘I know it’s not on me, Samir.’ Cold fury ripped through her from out of nowhere. She whirled to face him and stabbed one finger into his chest. ‘When you’ve faced a few dozen more of these, when you’ve got children of your own and when you’ve done more than follow me about like a lost puppy, you’ll understand that “it isn’t on you” means fuck all!’

  Honor barged past Samir and stormed away, shoved her hands in her pockets and ducked her head down against the miserable rain plummeting down all around them. Other detectives were on the scene now, Danny Green standing among them with his hands hanging loose by his sides, the rain glistening on his skin, his thick brown hair as wet as hers. Honor felt immediately compelled to tell him that this wasn’t on him, and her rage instantly broke up into shame and dismay. Christ.

  She turned back to the ambulance, but Samir was already gone. She stood for a moment, staring at where he had been. It’s not on him, either. Everything was collapsing around her, like some awful nightmare breaking through into reality and shattering what little life she had left.

  ‘He likes you.’

  She turned. Danny wasn’t looking at her, instead watching as Jayden Nixx’s body was rushed into an ambulance. Although dead–at–the–scene, they would still try to revive her again at the hospital, hopeful that the cold water might have slowed her organs down enough to prevent brain damage.

  ‘What?’

  Danny pulled out a cigarette, struggled against the rain to light it as he spoke. ‘Samir. He likes you.’

  Honor didn’t really know what the hell Danny’s point was, and wondered fearfully if this was just one too many for him and he’d lost himself. Like she was losing herself.

  ‘Samir’s fine,’ she uttered.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Danny replied, the cigarette stubbornly refusing to catch. ‘You just won’t let yourself see it. He’s right, it’s not on you, or him, or me or anybody else but the arsehole who put Jayden down there.’

  Danny got a light going and sucked in a huge lungful of smoke before letting it bleed from his nostrils in lethargic blue coils.

  ‘You’re in danger of losing your shit, Honor,’ he said finally, his eyes almost black in the night. ‘You’re pushing people away, one by one, because you think you’re alone. Trouble is, alone is precisely what you’ll end up.’

  Honor hastily erected what was left of her defences. The last stand.

  ‘You can play doctor another time,’ she snapped. ‘I want CCTV from this spot, and any other entrance to this sewer, from the past forty–eight hours. This guy had to get in and out of here and I want to see him do it.’

  Danny didn’t move. He simply watched her as he drew on his cigarette again, the tip glowing red, provocative, accusing.

  ‘We’re chasing our tails,’ he replied. ‘We need to get ahead of him.’ ‘How about an idea, genius?’

  Danny’s gaze narrowed but he said nothing for a moment as he drew again on the cigarette. He let out the smoke with a sigh, as though weary of trying to breathe.

  ‘We can’t put specialist search teams down there until the flooding subsides, and that’s not going to happen tonight. I’ll handle the scene here, and update CRIS. Go home, now. Get some rest,’ he said, and turned away from her.

  19

  The city lights flickered like glittering stars arrayed across a bleak and uncaring universe. The rain was still pouring down, the higher buildings’ lights glowing in misty halos to illuminate the tumbling clouds.

  Honor sat and stared out across the city from her apartment, seeing everything, seeing nothing. T
he wineglass in her hand was half empty, forgotten as she sat in comatose silence, thinking about everything, thinking about nothing. The room around her flickered like the city lights as the television silently played the BBC News channel, and endless cycle of reports from the incident in Fenchurch Street that was already global knowledge, and alongside it the press conference in which she had taken part.

  Honor had lost count of how many times her name had been mentioned, broadcast to a nation reeling in horror at the way in which the City of London Police had handled what had become one of the most sensational criminal cases in British history. A frenzy of headlines was being spewed across news networks, heightening the public’s awareness of the case as the media gorged on the carcass of Honor’s failure.

  The Ripper Returns.

  Shadowy killer once again stalks Whitechapel. Your worst fear is this killer’s greatest strength.

  City of London Detectives under fire for their handling of greatest criminal pursuit since the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

  She could see her own face on the screen out of the corner of her eye, the same piece of footage replaying over and over again. The media outlets had not focused on her appeal for assistance, nor her analysis of the criminal behind the killings. All that they were showing, repeatedly, was the same journalist’s question and her own faltering response.

  ‘Detective, I understand that you have only recently returned to work after six months off for a stress–related illness. Is it wise to have somebody suffering from such afflictions in charge of such a high–profile case?’

  Honor hadn’t known how to react. She couldn’t have known how to react, as it would never have crossed her mind in a million years that headline–hungry reporters would sink to such a low, just to generate public outrage at the force’s supposed failure to do the “right thing”. Of course, the broadcasts failed to show DCI Mitchell’s timely intervention, and the journalist’s resulting shame. They focused only on the attack, never on the defence.

  Don’t take this on if you’re going to dry up like that in front of a few million viewers. She had relived that briefing a hundred times, delivering withering put–downs, witty ripostes, leaping out of her chair in righteous outrage to slam the journalist for his callous line of questioning. Who do you think should be in this chair, the killer himself? How dare you call into question our efforts to try to catch this maniac? Who do you think you are? There are detectives here working eighteen–hour days trying to put a stop to this man! But none of it helped at all, for none of it had ever happened but within the tortured crucible of her own mind.

  You failed her.

  She should have fought back. She should have stood her ground. She should have done something. And yet she had sat there, unable to speak, unable to shoulder the burden of her own guilt, her own grief, her own utter contempt for herself and her life. The journalist was right. Hansen was right. Danny was right. She shouldn’t be handling this case. She wasn’t up to it anymore. The truth was hard to bear but she had to face it. She was broken, so much so that she barely felt the tear trickling down her cheek, her misery so commonplace that it felt like a companion, someone to hold on to.

  She made a resolution for the following morning. She would walk hand–in–hand with her misery into Bishopsgate, and tender her resignation to DCI Mitchell. A brief image of DS Hansen’s delighted sneer as she turned tail and ran from her career sparked a faint flicker of defiance, but the image of Jayden Nixx’s tortured face snuffed out what resistance she had left with a cold gust of self–loathing.

  It’s over. Stop fighting. You’re not coming back, not ever.

  Honor took a sip of her wine and instantly felt a little better. With the decision made, she felt unexpectedly relieved. She could get into this, just hide behind a bottle a day and watch the world go by. Take some job where she could work from home and never have to face the world outside. Hell, the Internet made anything possible, right? She’d never have to walk out of that bloody door, nor ever let anybody through it again.

  On cue, the door buzzer rang.

  Honor sighed, dazed by the universe’s bleak sense of humour, too weary to even be angry any more, but she didn’t move. Whoever it was, they weren’t bloody well coming in.

  ‘Honor,’ came a soft voice. ‘It’s Danny.’

  Balls. Honor sat for a long moment, staring at the blackened city outside, and then she found herself standing up and walking to the door, as though she were not in control of her own body. She unlatched and unlocked the door, opened it. A shaft of warm light beamed into the darkened apartment, Danny standing there with a bottle of wine and what smelled like a Chinese takeaway. Honor belatedly realised that she hadn’t eaten for more than twelve hours. Samir was standing next to him, hands in his pockets and a pensive expression on his face.

  ‘Sorry,’ Danny said as he glanced at the darkened apartment, ‘were you sleeping?’ ‘No,’ Honor blurted, her mind addled by the wine and an empty stomach. ‘I was just thinking, forgot to turn the lights on.’

  Danny nodded, watching her. ‘Thought as much. Brought you dinner. I reckoned you wouldn’t want to go out and that you’d forget to eat again, so I brought the rest of the world to you instead – China in one hand, Italy’s finest in the other.’

  Honor stared at the wine and the food and instinct once again took control. She ushered them both into the apartment and shut the door, popped the latch on before she switched on some lights, embarrassed by her own sloth.

  ‘Nice place.’

  It was said in such a way that she could have harboured a corpse on the sofa and Danny would have said the same thing. She saw his gaze linger briefly on the image of the ultrasound on one wall, and then he set the takeaway down on the coffee table as she fetched some cutlery, plates and extra glasses.

  ‘Got it a year ago,’ she replied as she handed them knives, forks and plates.

  Danny sat down on an armchair and Samir onto a bean bag as she re–took her place on the sofa and poured them some of the wine they’d brought. Chilled Prosecco. Standard, safe, bloody nice with Chinese. She handed it over, feeling as though she were going through a transient out–of–body experience. A moment ago, she had been dwelling on a life lost, chiefly hers, and now she was eating Chinese and trying to be merry. Everything was out of place, as though she were watching a dream play out before her, no scene connecting with another.

  ‘Tough day,’ Danny said as he tucked into a prawn cracker and gestured to the television.

  Honor grabbed the remote and shut the bloody thing off.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, stuffing down a spring roll and avoiding eye contact.

  Danny shrugged. ‘You should talk about it,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s wrong.’

  Honor felt anger rise up within her, quick, easy, but when she looked at him to retort she saw the pensive look on his face and remembered how she’d spoken to Samir beside the ambulance on Fenchurch Street. The rage subsided into shame once more, as though she didn’t suffer enough already.

  ‘Look, I – I’m sorry for what I said earlier,’ she said to Samir. ‘I didn’t mean any of it.’

  ‘I know,’ Samir replied. ‘It’s okay, I get it. I mean, I don’t get it, but I know it’s not you.’

  Honor wasn’t sure what to say. He likes you. She hid behind another spring roll and tried to change the subject.

  ‘Anything to report from the Incident Room?’

  Danny shook his head, stuffing a spring roll into his gob as he replied. ‘They’re on the hunt, Harper just doesn’t sleep. I’m going to head back in once I’ve had some kip, give them a hand. We’re certain that we’re gonna get good images of this guy entering the sewers at some point.’

  Honor nodded, realising that she had been sitting here moping about when there was still work that badly needed to be done. The publicity would probably get them more hands in the investigation, but that wouldn’t help much if somebody wasn’t at the helm.

>   ‘What are you going to do?’ Danny asked her. ‘What am I going to do about what?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Honor chewed her food as an excuse not to answer straight away. I’m going to quit. I’m going to sit here and spend the rest of my life drinking myself into a bloody stupor. How about you?

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘You’re thinking about quitting.’

  Honor shot him a sharp look, stunned that he could see through her so easily, or perhaps admiring that he’d throw a wild–card and hit the target.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You’re struggling,’ Danny said. ‘It’s getting in the way of what you’re doing, getting in the way of your work, and we all know it.’

  Honor glanced at Samir, wondering why he was here and not Danny alone, then wondering why that was an issue for her. Samir shrugged and nodded.

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Says the walk–in detective?’

  Honor had meant the comment to carry some jest, but she saw no humour on Samir’s expression.

  ‘Doesn’t take a detective to see that.’

  Honor tried to focus on eating, but she felt suddenly vulnerable in her own home. She shouldn’t have let them in, she realised. She wasn’t ready for this shit, wasn’t really ready for anything. Who the hell were they to come in here and start telling her what was wrong? Samir had only been on the job for a year, was probably stacking fucking shelves or something before that, and…

  ‘What happened to the baby?’ Danny asked.

  Honor’s train of thought slammed to a halt. Jesus Christ. The flames within gusted into life and flared dangerously. That Danny would ask her something so personal in front of another officer she’d known for just three days shoved a flaming stick up her arse that sparked an inferno in her belly.