Phobia

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Tell me it’s good news,’ Honor said.

  Danny looked at her, saw the determination in her expression, and grinned. ‘It’s good news.’

  Honor felt her heart lift a little more as she joined him at his desk and surveyed the paperwork he was amassing.

  ‘Okay, this is what we’ve managed to pull on Gary Wheeler’s extracurricular business enterprises,’ he announced. ‘There’s nothing on paper, per se, because the labourers were all hired for cash and the contracts were under the carpet.’

  ‘Cheap labour,’ Honor agreed, knowing how many people liked to employ immigrants, legal or illegal, for rock–bottom wages and no–questions–asked. ‘Most folks are happy to employ cash workers on their sites, keeps the paperwork down. Any links with our guy’s movements?’

  ‘No, nothing,’ Danny said, ‘but I’ve been able to make calls to the same numbers that Gary used, and those individuals were able to put faces to names on pretty much everybody that worked for Gary in the last couple of months on a cash–in–hand basis.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Honor said, genuinely impressed. ‘Anybody stand out?’ ‘They’re surprisingly clean, only a couple of minor arrests between ‘em. Looks like

  most are just labourers working the city. A few are contractors, moonlighting here and there for the extra cash, weekend work mostly. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.’

  Danny turned his screen to face her, and there she saw four images, each frozen still, all taken at night on grainy CCTV cameras, and all showing the same figure emerging from manhole covers in side streets. Large build, hooded top.

  ‘The same guy from the pubs,’ she said, no doubt in her mind. ‘Is it the same guy seen entering Jayden Nixx’s apartment?’

  ‘Looks that way. He’s even got the same hooded top on from one of the pub shots that Samir found,’ Danny grinned in delighted reply, his eyes sparkling. ‘Ain’t no doubt about it – this is the bastard we’ve been looking for.’

  Honor dragged a chair alongside Danny and sat down, peered at the image. He was a big guy, that much was obvious, and although the resolution was not sufficient to identify him, there was no doubt that he was Caucasian, at least six feet tall, maybe fourteen or fifteen stone. Age was impossible to tell, but there was no denying it – either he was about to become the unluckiest “drainer” of all time, or he was a serial killer with a penchant for phobia victims.

  ‘Everywhere,’ Honor said. ‘The media, on posters, everywhere. I want to take this to the last pub he was seen in and question the bar staff. If we can get a decent description and a photofit, we could identify him by dinner time.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Honor looked up across the Incident Room. ‘Where’s Samir? I thought he was coming back in with you last night?’

  ‘He didn’t show. He’s been working long hours on this one, probably got his head down for a bit.’

  Honor nodded vacantly. Samir didn’t seem the type to change his plans at the last moment without telling somebody. She pulled her mobile phone from her bag and rang Samir’s number. The phone rang for a few moments, and then went straight to answerphone. She left a message and then shut the phone off. Danny was watching her with interest.

  ‘No sign?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s not answering. Any more gems to share with me, Sherlock?’

  ‘I’m putting together his movements,’ he replied. ‘If I’m really lucky, this guy will walk home after one of the killings and I’ll be able to track him all the way to his door. We know it’s in Whitechapel or the surrounding areas, he’s only got so many routes he can take.’

  ‘I’ll ask DI Harper to put more bodies on this,’ Honor promised. ‘And tell Samir to start on it too, as soon as he shows up.’

  Honor made her way out of the Incident Room and down the corridor to the DI’s office. Harper was at her desk as always, trays filled with forms and other paperwork as she looked up. There was an odd expression on her face, a mixture of both delight at seeing Honor and something that she couldn’t place, the scars of a war going on behind the façade.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, waving Honor forward. ‘Tell me you’ve made an arrest and he’s confessed to everything on live television.’

  Honor smiled. ‘I wish. We have him on film using the sewers. It’s not enough for a positive ID but Danny and the team are tracking him. It’s only a matter of time.’

  Harper nodded as she sat down opposite. Katy looked tired, which was a shock to Honor, as Harper seemed to have the energy of ten robust women. She realised that she had never once seen Katy falter since she’d joined the force, all those years before.

  ‘How are you holding up after those bastards mauled you all night on TV?’

  Katy was concerned for Honor, yet Honor could see that there was something she too was covering for. She wondered why she had never seen it before, why she had never noticed?

  ‘I’m okay,’ Honor replied, feeling oddly buoyant. ‘You?’ Harper stared at her, as though caught out. She blinked.

  ‘All good. We need that footage out to the media right away. People can’t climb in and out of a sewer without being noticed, somebody would have seen something.’

  ‘He carries a fluorescent jacket about with him, and some tools,’ Honor informed him. ‘Most people probably barely notice what he’s up to, but we’ll have the networks informed within the hour. I want this arsehole in custody by tonight, or at least to know who the hell he is.’

  ‘I’ll inform the borough commander,’ Harper said. ‘I have a meeting at seven this morning, but I’m back by eight–thirty and can get a progress meeting organised for next steps. You think you can ID the suspect by then?’

  ‘You give me enough people I can,’ Honor replied. ‘I’ll head to one of the bars he was in, start trying for a photofit – that should speed things up a little.’

  ‘Good.’

  Harper sat for a moment in catatonic silence, staring not at her but past her as though she were momentarily no longer in the room. Honor hesitated. Sometimes it was better to walk away, to not provoke someone into sharing their feelings, but at other times that was just an excuse to not get involved.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Harper blinked again, stared at her for a long moment. She opened her mouth as though to say something, but then swallowed it back.

  ‘Rough night,’ she said finally.

  Her shoulders were sagging slightly, head bowed, as though the ramrod–straight back had suddenly withered and folded under the weight of some unseen burden.

  ‘If you want to talk…,’ Honor offered.

  Harper hesitated. She could see there were a million words fighting for space, yearning to escape, but somehow unable to. Harper forged a glimmer of humour back onto her face. She looked as though she was chewing a wasp.

  ‘I appreciate that, but you’re the one who’s just returned from leave due to stress, and now you have the press on your back.’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ Honor agreed. ‘I know how it feels.’

  Harper sat for a moment, catatonic, and suddenly her robust nature seemed fragile, the upstanding, stoic resilience a veneer for something else, a shield that she hid behind, as Honor did her columns of steel and ice. On impulse, Honor stood, realising that to confront Harper like this was making her feel uncomfortable, just as she had felt uncomfortable when Danny had so brazenly challenged her to look at herself.

  ‘Just ask,’ Honor said. ‘Don’t fight on alone, it’s not necessary and it just makes things worse.’

  Honor turned and headed for the door, thoughts immediately filling her mind of the killer she had to catch, would catch, and of her determination to never quit until she succeeded.

  ‘My husband left me.’

  The words reached her as though from far away, drifting on the wind. Honor stopped at the door, stared at it for a moment in the hopes that inspiration would strike her with perfect words. When nothing happened, she turned. DCI Harper wa
s staring at her desk, her hands flat on the surface. Honor said nothing, waited for more.

  ‘Just couldn’t take any more,’ she said. ‘The long hours, the crimes, the misery of it all. He said he felt as though he’d raised our family alone.’

  Harper’s voice cracked, raw with a volatile fusion of rage warring with grief, confusion clashing with frustration. She looked at Honor, devoid of understanding, pleading for enlightenment.

  ‘It’s me that has to suffer all the long hours, all the misery,’ she said. ‘Why am I to blame for it?’

  Honor felt her own heart fracture within her as she saw this towering personality, a rock, the most stable person she had ever encountered, begin to crumble like ice calving from the face of a giant glacier. She held onto the door handle as though it would anchor her to reality.

  ‘He doesn’t understand,’ Honor replied. ‘You have to help him to see what it is that you do, what we all do. If he knew, if he could see it, he’d never leave you.’

  Harper stared at her, as though she had not heard a word, frozen in time. Then she turned away, voice cracking with restraint.

  ‘Report back when you have something concrete on our suspect.’

  There was something in her tone that told Honor to get out of the office, to leave her be for a while. Honor, a master of wanting to be alone, recognised the condition when she saw it. She opened the office door, but then with unthinking reflex she looked over her shoulder at Harper.

  ‘I’ve looked up to you ever since I became a detective,’ she said. ‘You’re not alone, ever.’

  Harper did not respond, sitting in absolute silence. Honor pulled the door shut, wondering briefly whether the pragmatically minded DI would put her affairs in order before opening her office window and hurling herself out of it. That thought then provoked another, about whether she should report the DI’s mental health to the Health and Safety officer, before Katy did something she shouldn’t. Already, Honor’s OCD was running away with itself. Danny’s calm advice drifted into her thoughts, and she swatted the paranoia aside.

  Give it an hour, see what happens.

  Honor felt pressure mounting on her shoulders again, the blissful light–footed arrival at work already a distant memory as she headed back to the Incident Room and began thinking about updating the CRIS database. She was halfway there when she heard the cry go out, and dread blackened her heart once more.

  ‘We’ve got another one!’

  Emily felt the cold first.

  Slowly she felt herself coming awake, her senses reconnecting themselves in the darkness. Her skin was cold, goose bumps rippling on her arms, and she instinctively tried to pull them in to her body to warm up, but she could not move them.

  With a force of will she opened her eyes and stared up at her bedroom ceiling. For a few moments, confusion reigned, her brain unable or unwilling to engage itself with her surroundings. She was at once both safe at home and yet aware of danger lingering on the fringes of her awareness. She felt cold again, and tried once more to pull her arms in.

  They would not move.

  Wearily, she turned her head to look at her right wrist, and saw that it was hand– cuffed to the bedpost above her head. She wondered whether Alex was teasing her with some kind of bizarre sex game or…

  Alex. He had been here last night, but now he was nowhere to be seen, and there was a pungent scent on the air, as though somebody was cooking a fry–up from stale ingredients.

  ‘Alex?’

  Her voice was meek in her own ears, muffled. She wanted a drink of water but there was none by her bedside, which was odd because she always fetched a glass before bed and…

  She had been drunk, exhausted, and she’d climbed into bed alongside…

  Emily yelped in fear as she recalled the stranger waiting in her bed, the horror as he had smothered her. Adrenaline surged through her system and she tugged all of her limbs in an instinct to escape the room, but all were cuffed to the corners of the bed, the metal scraping painfully at her wrists and ankles. Emily sucked in huge breaths of air, past the gag that she realised was tied tightly around her head.

  ‘Alex?!’

  There was no response to her muffled cry, and as she pulled her head off the pillows to look at her body, so she smelled a strong odour of cooking oil. She coughed, staring at her skin and saw that it was plastered with a slick film of food waste. Emily’s stomach turned over, not at the smell but in horror, for she could not understand what was happening and the confusion was as terrifying as anything that she had ever witnessed in her entire life.

  Emily looked down the length of the bed to the bedroom door, to call again for her husband, and it was then that she saw it.

  Her body was naked and smothered with thick layers of biological waste, as though somebody had basted her with the contents of their food recycling bin. An odour of decay filled the room and the cold touch of the food on her skin chilled her, but that was not what focused her attention. Between her legs was a canvass sack, and the sack was writhing as something alive moved within.

  Emily’s heart began to thump in her chest, her senses zipping back to her as fear clenched her heart in a cold grip and began to squeeze. Somehow, she already knew what was inside that sack, and the creeping horror that enveloped her was like something alive. Her breath began to whistle inside her throat as her oesophagus contracted, her eyes wide with terror as she stared at the writhing sack and heard multiple enraged squeals coming from within it. The bag was touching the soft skin on the inside of her thighs, pulsing with life entrapped within.

  ‘Oh God, please, no.’

  The bulging mass of life writhed, creatures fighting with each other, fighting to escape, and as Emily watched so she saw sections of the canvass sack begin to fray as tiny teeth and claws fought tore at it, driven by the scent of food.

  ‘Alex!’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

  Honor saw the monitor in the IR streaming live footage of a bedroom, a naked woman shackled to a bed, her body smeared with a slick of grimy food and oils. The camera was set up in such a way that the victim’s head was out of shot. Between her legs was a writhing bag of who–the–hell–knew–what, obviously fighting to get out.

  ‘Is this live?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Same as before,’ came the reply from an IT tech’ behind them. ‘It’s bouncing around servers; we’re trying to track it down but it’s all over YouTube and the Internet. We’ll get it taken down as soon as we can.’

  Honor stared in disbelief as she took in the scene. A modern bedroom, double bed, digital clock in one corner of the room, big window out of shot to one side where light was coming in, but the camera wasn’t pointed at it to avoid revealing the location.

  The location.

  ‘Don’t take the feed down.’

  Honor said it without thinking, instinctively knowing that something was up, that something had changed.

  ‘What? We can’t leave it up there, the IPCC will have our heads!’ Hansen snapped. ‘This woman’s naked and live all over the Internet!’

  ‘She’s going to be dead all over the Internet if we don’t find out where she is,’ Honor fired back, ‘and the only people who might know are those who have seen that bedroom before. We need the public’s support on this one, and I’m pretty damned sure that whoever that poor woman is, she’d agree with us. Wouldn’t you?’

  There was no argument from Hansen as Honor turned again to look at the footage. There was nothing much to reveal where the woman was, the camera mounted on the ceiling over the end of the bed and pointing down at it. A little of the carpet was visible, a little of the walls, and half of a bed–side cabinet to the victim’s right–hand side, whereupon sat the digital clock. The time on it was just visible as being eight–fourteen in the morning, and a quick glance at her watch convinced Honor that this was both live and probably coming from the city.

  ‘How long do you think she’s got?’ Honor asked. ‘And what the hell is in that
bag?’ ‘I’m guessing rats,’ Danny replied.

  Honor shook her head, appalled beyond words. There was every chance that the rats in the bag were starving, hence the food waste strewn all over the victim’s body. The poor woman was going to be eaten alive, and Honor had no trouble in figuring out what her phobia was.

  ‘Get on the Face Fear forum,’ she ordered Danny. ‘Contact everybody who has ever been on them who suffered from musophobia, and have them call us. Cross reference them with anybody who lives in Whitechapel, or the square mile.’

  Danny hurried to his desk and picked up a phone with one hand while hen–pecking his keyboard with the other. Honor moved closer to the monitor, stunned at the creative malice of their suspect. This was something a step beyond even the other murders, the live–streaming of a woman being eaten alive. The killer was escalating, just as all serial killers did, but this guy was in a league of his own.

  ‘The media’s on to it,’ came a call from across the office. ‘The news stations are picking it up!’

  ‘Make sure they blur out everything they damned well should!’ Honor yelled back. ‘But let them run with it. Somebody might recognise something.’

  Honor turned and saw DI Harper enter the room, her back straight again and her eyes casting like a hawk’s over a field, seeking prey. Honor she was struck again by how Harper’s coping mechanism was much the same as her own, that even a woman like her was as vulnerable to anxiety as she was. Honor’s grief and her suffering were not unique, were not something to be endured alone, for it seemed that everybody was suffering in their own way.

  ‘Why has he changed his method and gone live straight away? There’s been no call in.’

  DCI Mitchell was staring at the screen now, watching the feed and the writhing bag lodged between the woman’s legs.

  Honor moved to stand alongside him. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. There’s been no word from the woman’s family, so they’re not receiving this personally first.’