by Emmy Ellis
“What, like me messing up? No, I don’t want to talk about that.” He stared out of the windscreen, jaw rigid, hands bunched into fists in his lap. “Are you going to stand there staring at me for much longer? I mean, it’s cold out, and the door being open…”
Langham climbed in then peeled away from the kerb.
“So, what next?” Oliver asked.
“We go back to the station and find out where the victim—”
“Louise.”
“The victim worked. Then we go from there.”
“Why don’t you ever call them by their names?” Oliver looked across at him.
“Because then it becomes personal. I don’t do personal.”
They spent the remainder of the journey in silence. As soon as the car drew to a stop, Oliver hauled arse, striding towards the station with purpose. He shoved the door open then made his way towards Langham’s office. There, he slumped into the chair and plonked his feet on the desk, crossing his legs at the ankles. His head itched, and he snatched off his beanie, tossing it across the room.
Langham walked in and eyed him from the doorway. “Why do you always insist on doing that?”
“Doing what?” he asked, picking at a hangnail.
“Sitting in my chair with your feet on my desk. Look, you’re scrunching my papers.”
Oliver planted his feet on the floor and scooted the chair across the room, picking up his hat so he had something to occupy his hands.
“You two make a good team.”
Oliver sat upright, startled that Louise had decided to contact him now. “Hey, Louise. You all right?”
Langham raised his eyebrows, and Oliver put a finger to his lips so he’d remain quiet.
“I’m okay.”
“So, we went to PrivoLabs and found out you didn’t work there. Do you want to tell me where you did work?” Oliver closed his eyes, bouncing his heels and hoping for a positive answer.
“He said—”
“I know, love, but it doesn’t matter what you tell me now. Your son is safe.”
“He is?”
“Yes. He’s living with your mother.”
“My mother? Oh no…not her…”
“What’s up with that? You two not get along? She’s all your son has now, he has nowhere else to go. We’ve moved them both to a secure location. He won’t find them.”
“Oh God. He’ll know she has him.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about that. He won’t find them. Can you tell me what you know?”
“I’d been filing, and a piece of paper fell out. I shouldn’t have looked, should have just put it back inside the folder, but I held about three and wasn’t sure which one it came from. So I read it and saw…”
Oliver waited a few beats. Louise didn’t continue, so he prompted, “Saw…?”
“They’re doing experiments.”
“Who are?”
“PrivoLabs.”
“Yep, that’s what they do.”
“Yes, but these ones… What I read were notes. They probably weren’t even meant to be in the file. Handwritten.”
“So what are they doing? What tests are they?”
“They’re drugging children.”
Oliver jumped up from the chair and paced. Langham grabbed a notebook and pen from his desk and held them out to him, but Oliver waved them away.
“With what?” His heart pattered fast, and he felt sick to his stomach.
“With this stuff. Like… God, you’re not going to believe me. She didn’t…”
“Try me.”
“With this stuff to make them do things.”
“Do things?”
“Yes. Bad things. They want to see whether the drugs make the children kill. I never thought… I never suspected…”
“What?” Oliver stilled, bile in his throat and a sour feeling in his gut. This kind of shit didn’t happen, did it?
“He’s taken the drugs, too. The man who…”
“Have you got a name?”
“I don’t know it.”
“What about the name of the person who wrote the notes.”
“No.”
“So how did anyone find out what you knew?”
“I gave the note to my boss.”
“And what happened then?”
“He started an investigation. Got PrivoLabs’ attention with it. He got sacked.”
“What’s his name?”
“Mr Reynolds. Mark Reynolds.”
“Right, thank you. Anything else you can remember?”
“He…ah, he came to my house.”
“Who, Reynolds?”
“No, the man. The man who killed me.”
“Right.” Confused as fuck was the order of the moment.
“He told me I had to go with him, leave my son asleep. And he said if I didn’t, he’d give my lad that stuff. The sugar strands.”
“Okay. Do you want to talk about what he did to you?”
“Not really.”
“But can you at least tell me something about him so we can catch him?”
“He was tall. Very tall. Big hands. He had a smell…”
“What of?”
“Musty clothing. Like he lived in a dirty place.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. He wore a mask and a wig.”
So it was that fucker who’d tried to run Oliver off the road. If he’d been given shit to make him kill, it explained why he’d been intent on crashing into Oliver’s car. Why he’d killed Louise…although he’d clearly had another reason for getting rid of her. Louise had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, discovering something she shouldn’t have—and look where it had got her. Oliver wondered about the virtues of being honest and doing the right thing. Sometimes it was best to just keep your mouth shut.
“I wish I had.”
“Sorry, Louise. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m tired. This is hard work.”
“I know. Can you try for one last bit of information for me? Something about him that stands out? Louise? Louise, are you there?” Oliver strained for a response, a whisper, anything.
Silence.
“Fuck it!”
“Has she gone?” Langham asked.
“Yes.” Oliver flopped back into the chair, rage bubbling inside him over thoughts of the hateful things people did to others. Killing. Hurting. What the hell was wrong with them? Why did they feel the need to do shit like that?
“So, when you’re ready…” Langham took a folding chair from against the wall and set it up behind his desk. He rested his elbows on his blotter, steepled his long fingers, and propped his chin on the tips.
“Give me a second.” Oliver jammed his fingers in his hair. “I need to remember everything she said. I don’t need another fuck-up on my résumé.”
Langham failed at stifling a sigh.
“Have you got a problem with that?” Oliver snapped.
“No, but it seems you do.”
“I don’t do wrong, okay? I don’t do fucking up.”
“I know, and you don’t usually, so cut yourself some slack, will you? Concentrate on what she told you, tell me, and then we can get the ball rolling.”
Chapter Four
Langham stared at Oliver, one eyebrow raised, and took his elbows off the desk. “So, we’re talking some strange shit here. If the victim’s meant to be believed, this bloke took something that made him kill?” He sighed then stood, gazing at some spot or other on the carpet, pinching his chin.
“Is there something more interesting than this case in the carpet pile?” Oliver asked, frustrated and angrier than he’d been in a long while.
Louise had given just enough information to make him want to catch this fucker quickly, catch the people doing those experiments. Using sugar strands was ingenious, lacing food with them, food kids liked to eat. Where were they distributin
g these doughnuts or whatever the fuck they put the strands on? A shop? Free on some stall? In PrivoLabs itself?
Langham’s apparent lack of concern, his almost languid perusal of worn-down carpet fibres, pissed Oliver right off.
“I mean,” Oliver said, “there’s only Louise to consider here. Only a dead woman who died because she knew something she shouldn’t. Only a kid left without a mother—a kid currently in hiding with his gran, who has to put aside her grieving to make sure she does everything right for the lad. Only a load of other kids and their parents suffering at the hands of some mental bastards.” He stood abruptly and paced again. “You’re getting on my fucking nerves staring at the floor like that.”
Langham gave Oliver a dark look—one of the darkest he’d ever been given. “I’ll ignore that outburst. Put it down to you being tired and overprotective of the victim. Distraught over the kids being plied with drugs. Staring into space helps me—”
“Overprotective? Over-fucking-protective? Are you deliberately trying to rile me?” Oliver moved to the door and curled his hand around the knob, his intent to storm out. Langham wouldn’t solve this case as fast without him, and Oliver had a mind to follow the leads himself. Anything to get something done now.
Langham sighed. “Listen, you’re flying high on adrenaline, with the need to get to the bottom of this, but you know it doesn’t work like that. You get like this every time, and every time I tell you the same thing. Slow down. Think things through. And we’ll get there. We always do.”
“You’re right,” Oliver said. “As usual.”
“So, someone’s feeding people drugs that make them kill, someone who wears a wig and mask. So what now?”
“How do I fucking know? I need Louise to come back, tell me more.”
“And that might be in the next few minutes, an hour, three days, or not at all. We can’t rely on her. Got to do something ourselves.”
“I know that. We’ve got other information to go on. PrivoLabs doing experiments on kids. They’re somehow getting children to eat food with sugar strands on them. Where are the drugs being kept?”
“That’s a bit delicate, going to Privo,” Langham said. “We can’t just storm in there and demand they show us their experiment records.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have proof they’re doing anything, so we can’t get a warrant. Use your head. All we have is some dead woman’s word.”
Langham had a point, but Oliver believed Louise, knew she was telling the truth.
“We do have proof. That bloke left those strands on Louise’s body.”
Langham snatched up the phone and barked orders to some unfortunate on the other end. He slammed the receiver down. “Forensics will be on it…when they’re on it. No sense of bloody haste, that lot.”
“So, while we wait, we interview Mark Reynolds. Who’s the fucking detective here, me or you?”
“Sod off. Come on, we have someone to ask a shitload of questions.”
Chapter Five
Out of the office and in Langham’s car, Oliver was more focused. Unease at interviewing a bloke who might not want to answer their questions had him shifting in his seat. What if Reynolds had been threatened to keep quiet? What if Langham had to haul his arse into the police station in order to get some answers? Even then the man might not play ball. Fright would keep his mouth shut.
Langham drove out of the city, their journey taking them to some out-of-the-way place called Lower Repton Oliver had only heard of but not visited. A tiny hamlet wasn’t his ideal destination, but he was pleasantly surprised by the quaintness of the area. Cottages flanked the roadside, and a small, Cotswold stone pub, Pickett’s Inn, sat hunched on the bend in the road, a decrepit old man, its roof bowed, walls bulging outwards.
Oliver shuddered. The place might be quaint, but something was off here. He sensed many spirits lurking nearby and imagined there would be a fair few, what with the hamlet being so old. People would have lived here all their lives, dying in their beds.
“Um, which cottage is his?” he asked, anxious to get this interview over and done with. “I don’t like it here.”
“Me neither. Maybe it’s the remoteness, but I wouldn’t live here if you paid me.” Langham leant forward over the steering wheel and peered at the cottages. “None of them are numbered, just named. Reynolds’ records said he lives at number two, but it’s anyone’s guess which end of the road that is.”
“You could get out and ask.” Oliver nodded at an elderly woman in her front garden, nosing at what they were doing, no doubt. She held a watering can, which she’d tipped as though she’d really come out to wet the plants—at this time of year?—except no water drizzled from the spout. “Bet she’ll know which one we’re after.”
Langham drew up to the roadside outside the woman’s aged, wooden fence and wound down his window. “Excuse me, which house is number two?”
She squinted and ground her unquestionably false teeth, wispy strands of white hair escaping her bun. Her lips looked elasticated, undulating like that. “What you want to know for? Who are you?”
“I’m DI Langham,” he said, whipping out his ID and showing her. “And I need to speak to the resident. Mark Reynolds?”
“Ain’t seen him. Not since the last copper came along to speak to him, and he was familiar. Like I’d seen him before somewhere.”
Oliver’s stomach clenched. “Something’s off. I feel it.”
“You and me both,” Langham said, then to the woman, “Another policeman was here?”
“Yes, I just said so, didn’t I?” She tsked and rolled her eyes. “No idea how you people solve crimes if you can’t even process a simple sentence. Yes, another policeman. ID just like yours. And Mark lives back there. Second one in on the other side of the road.” She marched down her path towards her cottage, turning to stare at them when she reached her front door.
“Thank the Lord for nosy old bitches, but fuck me,” Langham muttered.
“Let’s interview this bloke and get out of here. This place… There are too many ghosts here. They’re all trying to speak to me.”
Langham made a U-turn in the deserted road. “So let them in. Maybe we’ll learn something.”
Oliver widened his eyes. “Are you serious? You try having a few of them gossiping in your head all at once.”
Langham parked outside number two, the wooden plaque beside the front door announcing the cottage as Reynolds’ Gaff.
The feeling of wrongness was stronger here. This wasn’t unusual in itself. Many places Oliver visited when questioning people with Langham felt this way—just not as strong. Or as sinister.
“This is one nasty-arsed case,” he mumbled.
“And the others we’ve worked on weren’t?” Langham cut the engine and slipped off his seat belt.
“They were, but this one… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“Then don’t. Soak it all up, see what you get when we go in, and tell me once we’ve left. I’ll do the talking. You just concentrate on picking shit up.”
Langham got out of the car, and Oliver did the same, his stomach heavy with dread. He hated this part of investigations. Negative energy always found him, and he saw sights and heard sounds no one should. Terrible things, horrible noises. Voices.
After walking up the paved path bordered by a well-kept garden with a recently mown lawn and pruned hedges, they stood on a shiny, red-brick step.
Langham glanced at Oliver and knocked. “Got anything yet?”
“You know, the usual. Something being odd, knowing we’re going to find out some shit we hadn’t expected.”
“Right.” Langham knocked again. “Good.”
They waited a minute.
“Wonder if he’s out?” Langham walked across to the large window beside the door, presumably the living room. “If he is out, he needs to tidy up when he gets home. Looks like someone’s had an unfriendly visit.”
Oliver moved to stand beside
him and peered through the glass. “Are we going in?”
“Yep. Could be a man in distress inside, know what I mean?” He went back to the front door, aimed a few hard kicks, bursting it open. “I’ll go first. Stay behind me.”
Oliver followed Langham inside, immediately hit by the stench of blood. He heaved, breathed through his mouth in a small hallway littered with coats flung down from the hooks on the wall just inside the doorway. Someone had been here, and he didn’t need the growing unease in his gut to tell him that. He stepped over the coats, tailing Langham into the living room. The mess here was worse—sofa overturned, the wall cabinet pulled down and balancing precariously on an armchair, contents strewn over a carpet covered in fluff from inside the throw cushions. One mental fucker had been looking for something, all right.
Langham turned, cocking his head to let Oliver know they’d find nothing here but chaos. In the kitchen, there was more of the same wreckage there, then they went upstairs. Langham coughed, gagged, and stopped at the top, glancing across the landing at the two closed doors. Oliver stared at them through the baluster rails, a wave of hate flowing over him. The press of spirits wanting to speak to him sent him breathless. He swallowed, knowing there was nothing to fear here with regards to another human being. No one was at home.
No living person anyway.
“Someone’s dead in there, probably Reynolds,” he said.
Langham turned to look down at him. “Yeah, the smell’s unmistakeable, but I told myself maybe he had a dog that had died or something. Ever the optimist, me.”
“He’s in that room.” Oliver pointed to the door closest to Langham. A snapshot of what lay behind it flashed through his mind. “And it isn’t pretty. You might want to take a few deep breaths. He’s, um, he’s a fucking mess.” He swallowed bile, shaking his head to remove the image, though why he bothered when he’d see it for real any second now he didn’t know. Habit.
“Right. Bloody wonderful.” Langham walked towards the door, taking a tissue from his pocket to turn the handle. “Get ready to be hit in the face by the smell.”
Oliver covered his nose and mouth. Langham opened the door, and, expecting the stench to override anything else, Oliver was shocked to find it was the last thing he needed to think about. Blood soaked the walls, near-black now it had dried, arcs and splashes, rivulets and streams that spoke of a violent death. The bed was soaked with it, the quilt hardened with the stuff, and the carpet was ebony in small, circular patches where the victim had possibly staggered around the room, falling every so often as his life had ebbed away.