The Hanging Time

by Bilinda P Sheehan

  “I want to come with you,” she said.

  Drew shook his head and stared at her sadly. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. This is a murder investigation, Harriet, your close personal relationship with the victim demands I send you home.”

  “I’m not going,” she said. “If you don’t take me with you then I’ll find my own way there.”

  Drew groaned in frustration and shoved his hand back through his hair, causing it to stand on end.

  “You know I can’t let you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I know this is hard for you but you need to let me do my job.”

  Harriet shook her head. “I know I should, but I can’t. Just let me come with you. I won’t get in the way, I promise. But there’s Tilly to think of and—"

  “Who’s Tilly?”

  “Bianca’s daughter,” Harriet said, her voice rough. “She’s going to need someone on her side and I’d at least like to know that she’s all right.”

  Drew stared off into the distance for what felt like an age before he nodded abruptly. “Fine. But when we get there you stay out of the way, do you understand?”

  Harriet nodded and allowed herself to be directed back to the car.

  “Guv, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Maz said, his voice heavy with scepticism. Not that Harriet blamed him; he had to think of the investigation and as much as she hated to admit it, she had now become a liability to the entire operation. The simple fact that Drew was allowing her to go with them at all was a huge no-no as far as protocol dictated.

  “Neither am I,” Drew said. “But what am I supposed to do? Leave her here on the side of the road?”

  As she climbed into the back of the car, she felt Maz’s gaze boring into her back. Harriet could already imagine what he was thinking. What kind of hold did she have over his boss that allowed her to sway his decision-making process this way? But it wasn’t like that at all. Drew was a good man; the more time she spent with him, the more she had come to realise it. He deserved better and more than that, he deserved the truth from her.

  But now was not the time for it. She needed him to have his head in the game. Bianca was dead and the man responsible for it was still out there, probably looking for his next victim.

  Maz grumbled beneath his breath as he slid reluctantly back into the passenger seat. Drew got back in behind the wheel and started the engine. As he pulled back out onto the road and into the steady flow of traffic, he glanced surreptitiously at her in the rear-view mirror. Harriet studiously avoided his gaze, keeping her eyes on the scenery as it passed outside the glass.

  She wanted to cry, scream, yell, anything but the terrible aching empty void that had opened up inside her chest. Bianca had been the closest thing to family she’d had in a very long time and now she was gone.

  Clenching her hands into fists, Harriet closed her eyes as the red and blue lights from the other police cars lit up the sky.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Drew parked next to two other police cars. Before he got out, he turned to Harriet, who sat with her eyes closed in the back of the vehicle. She wasn’t asleep, that much he knew, but her skin was pale, almost translucent, in the strange red and blue glow that lit the evening sky.

  “You remember what I said?” He dug his fingers into the leather steering wheel. “About keeping out of the way?”

  Her gaze was even more piercing than usual, the unshed tears making the blue of her eyes stand out.

  “I remember,” she said coldly. “You don’t need to worry about me, Detective Inspector. I won’t embarrass you.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he growled, frustration gnawing at his insides. “But if anyone finds out about this, it’ll be more than my job’s worth.”

  Harriet ducked her head and stared down at her hands folded neatly on her lap. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

  Drew turned to Maz. “You see that she does,” he said. He forced the car door open and stepped out as Maz’s protests followed him.

  “Guv, come on, you can’t put me on babysitting duty and—"

  Drew turned on him, frustration and rage colliding inside him to create an emotion he hadn’t felt since Freya had driven them into the lake.

  “Just do as I ask, Maz. Please.”

  The other man huffed his displeasure but nodded. “Fine.”

  Sometimes it was like working with a petulant teenager and not another adult officer of the law.

  Drew approached the house cautiously, the red brick building squatted against the backdrop of other houses just like it. Uniform rows that all looked identical. What had made his killer look at this house in particular and decide the people within needed to be touched by his own personal brand of insanity? Because as Drew saw it, only a total nutter would do the things this guy was doing.

  He caught sight of Officer Crandell up by the front door, the same uniform officer he’d worked with on Sian’s case. He slipped beneath the cordon tape.

  “Keep these people back,” he said to the nearest officer who was stood next to the crime scene tape. The young man jumped as though Drew had appeared out of thin air and he knew the officer’s attention was divided.

  “What’s your name?” Drew said, his voice crisp.

  “Officer Williams, Sir,” the officer snapped to attention as though returning from a trance and met Drew’s gaze head on.

  “How about keeping your eyes on the people you’re supposed to be keeping out of the crime scene?”

  “Shit, sorry, sir,” he said as he turned away from the house and back out toward the sizeable crowd of onlookers who had gathered.

  “We need names, addresses and contact details for everyone here,” he said. As though summoned, Officer Crandell appeared at his elbow.

  “Sir, is there something I can do?”

  Drew moved toward the house, inextricably drawn forward. He paused in the doorway and swallowed around the lump in his throat as he peered in at the pitiful sight spread out in the hall.

  At least the bushes and shrubs would keep the gossip mongers at bay and prevent them from getting a bird’s eye view of the horror that had unfolded in this small unassuming house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  “Sir?”

  Drew nodded. “Start door to door enquiries, I want to know if anyone saw anything around here. I find it hard to believe that in a built-up area like this that our guy wasn’t spotted lurking around. If anyone saw a fly so much as take a shit near here, I want to know about it.”

  If she was surprised by the tone of his voice or the language he used, she didn’t show it. Instead she inclined her head. “I’ll get some of the uniforms together.”

  “He won’t have been seen,” Harriet’s voice was hoarse, and Drew turned to face her.

  She stood just a few feet away, her sight pinned on the scene that lay directly behind him. Her eyes, while still a little too wide from shock, held a steely resolve. She tore her gaze away and met his. “You said it yourself, Drew. He’s a ghost. They won’t have seen or heard anything. Bianca’s a fighter—" She swallowed hard. “Was a fighter. She was a fighter but that won’t have deterred him. He’ll have come with a plan to subdue her quickly, make her compliant just as he did with the others.”

  “What did I say to you,” he said, cutting her off. “DS Arya, make sure—" He cut off. “Where’s Maz?”

  “You need me on this,” she said, ignoring his question. “You can’t just shut me out. I can help you find him.”

  Drew shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. “He crossed the line and made sure you couldn’t help on this. You have to understand that.”

  “She was family. You can’t just expect me to sit idly by while he runs rings around you all.”

  Her words stung but Drew had to admit she was at least partially right. Without her help there wouldn’t be a case to speak of. This crime would have been easily dismissed as too different in comparison to a cluster of teenage suicides.

&nb
sp; “Harriet, if you don’t leave now. I’m going to have you removed.”

  She glared up at him. “You’re going to let him get away with this, for what?”

  “Because I have to follow the law. Without that, we’ve got nothing at all.”

  Maz reappeared. “Sir, that was the IT guys. They got a hit on the IP addresses from the chat logs.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s a dead end. Jumpsuit67 belonged to a boy from Tollby who died a year ago.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Aidan Wilson, sir.”

  “Shit...”

  “You see, you need my help,” Harriet interjected. “Please, let me be useful.”

  “Maz, have one of the uniformed officers take Dr. Quinn home.”

  Drew ignored the flash of annoyance that crossed over the DS’ face before he turned to Harriet.

  “Come on,” Maz said, his tone patronising as he laid a hand on her arm.

  Harriet shook him off, but she had eyes only for Drew.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she said. “I can be useful.”

  “And under normal circumstances, I would agree,” he said. “But come on, Harriet. If you were in my position, what would you say about someone who had just suffered the kind of shock you have?”

  Her gaze shifted away. “But this is different.”

  “Is it?”

  She covered her face with her hands. “Yes, this is different because I’m—"

  “You’re what? Because you’re a psychologist? I would have thought that would have made you understand the difficulty I’m presented with even more.”

  “No,” she said. “Because I can get inside this guy’s head.”

  Drew shook his head. “Nobody can do that,” he said. “And even if they could, after what you’ve seen here, why would you want to?”

  “It’s because of what’s happened here that I want to.”

  Her voice was becoming increasingly desperate as Drew refused to budge over her demands.

  “Harriet, go home. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.”

  “I just—"

  “GO HOME,” he said. Then he sighed, regretting the firmness of his tone, and said, “I’ll call you if I have anything.”

  She nodded and Drew felt a weight lift off his shoulders. “You promise you’ll call?”

  “I’ll call.”

  Only then did she allow Maz to take her arm and direct her away from the house. Drew watched them leave and as she was helped into the waiting squad car, he felt the tension he’d felt in the centre of his chest slowly loosen.

  Christ, what a mess.

  Drew scrubbed his hand back through his hair as he watched Harriet leave. He let go a sigh of relief. Just having her here was a conflict of interest and the Monk would have his ass thrown off the case faster than he could blink if he found out.

  “Guv, what do you want me—"

  “DI Haskell?” One of the forensics team appeared in the doorway. The woman pulled her mask down, revealing a sharp aquiline nose and full lips. “We found a phone underneath the bed.” She held a plastic bag out toward him. “We’ve dusted it for prints and other residues but it’s been ringing.”

  Drew slipped on a pair of gloves and took the bag from her hands before lifting it carefully free of the protective plastic. He pressed the home key and the phone lit up revealing a long list of missed calls.

  “Maz, I want you to get a trace on this number. Find out who this Ryder is,” he said. Drew clicked into the message box and was surprised to find the phone wasn’t locked. “Looks like Bianca was having quite a bit of back and forth conversation with the guy. I want to know who is and whether he’s in any way connected to all of this.”

  Maz nodded and jotted the number down before he started away leaving Drew behind on the doorstep.

  He glanced back into the hall and shuddered. Whoever had done this was beyond cruel and if it killed him, he would hunt them down and bring them to justice before they laid a finger on another person.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  He set the notebook down on the desk next to the computer and typed the name Dr Harriet Quinn into the laptop. The search engine took only a moment to return thousands of entries.

  He clicked on the top one and found himself staring at a serious-faced young woman. It was there in her eyes; the sorrow he'd seen in the others. He'd heard it in her voice on the answering machine. He clicked through the pages and found a newspaper article dated several years ago.

  He'd been right to think she was in pain. It was there in black and white. He read on and as he did, his heart rate picked up speed. She was next. And the end would come only too soon.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Harriet curled up deeper beneath the covers, tugging the heavy duvet over her head in an attempt to escape the daylight streaming in through the open curtains. The night had passed like all things eventually do, but sleep had been as elusive to her as peace of mind often was to the people she treated.

  The phone rang downstairs but she ignored it. There was a part of her that demanded she get out of the bed, that by staying here she was allowing the monster who’d stolen Bianca’s life from her to win. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  What would be the point anyway? Drew was right; she was tainted now by her association with one of the victims and no amount of knowledge of predators, or the crimes they committed, would allow her to help the investigation.

  She was utterly and completely useless.

  She recognised the self-defeating spiral for what it was; self-pity.

  The answer machine kicked in and Harriet tugged the pillow over her head to block out the noise.

  The hours dragged by and as the morning turned into the afternoon Harriet finally pulled herself from the bed. Drew might not want her help but that didn’t mean she couldn’t continue to work. It was all she had left; the only thing she was any good at.

  Dragging herself downstairs, she settled onto the couch with a black coffee and pulled open the files she’d brought from the office.

  Jumpsuit67: I’m goin 2 fail my exams. I know it already and my dad is goin 2 kill me.

  Pixiedust05: You don’t know for sure. I thought I was failing last year and it was fine. At least ur dad cares. Mine only wants 1 thing.

  LifeisHELL333: Pixie’s right. U’ll be fine.

  Jumpsuit67: You don’t know what it’s like. The pressure I’m under. My dad thinks I’ll be just like him. That I’m smart like he is.

  Pixiedust05: You’ll get through this.

  Harriet scanned the pages of transcripts. The chat logs all seemed to follow a similar pattern, day to day the teens seemed to share their woes. Skipping ahead, one particular line jumped out at her.

  Pixiedust05: He raped me last night.

  Harriet’s heart stalled in her chest and she read the line over and over.

  LifeisHELL333: I’ll kill him. I’m goin 2 fukin’ kill him!!!

  Pixiedust05: I don’t know what to do.

  LifeisHELL333: Go 2 police. I’ll come wit u. I love u.

  Pixiedust05: I can’t go police. My mom luvs him and it wuld kill her if she knew the truth.

  Harriet stared at the date on the transcript and her mouth went dry. The 19th of September. Two weeks before Aidan was murdered.

  Her gaze moved down the page and another entry caught her attention.

  Jumpsuit67: LifeisHELL333 knows there’s nothin goin on between us. I wuldn’t lie to him like that. I no u 2 are 2gether.

  As she sat there on the edge of the couch, something niggled in the back of her mind. But the events of the evening before were clouded by an unpleasant fog that refused to lift.

  It was her brain’s way of trying to protect her from the trauma of seeing her friend like that.

  “Think, Harriet, think!” She buried her face in her hands and pushed up from her place on the couch to pace around the room. They’d been right outside Bianca’s house when Maz had d
ropped the bombshell of the transcripts being nothing more than a dead end.

  Jumpsuit67, whoever he was, couldn’t have been sending those messages to Sian, not when he’d been dead for a year already. Harriet flipped back through the pages gripped in her hand. His name was all over the transcripts, entire conversations that had occurred long after he was allegedly deceased. It seemed unlikely that Maz, and by extension the IT department had made such a grievous error but if it wasn’t Jumpsuit, then who the hell were they talking to all this time?

  Harriet scrabbled over the books scattered across the floor and grabbed her phone from the coffee table. Dialling Drew’s number, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the kind of mind it would take to pull something like this off.

  The phone rang out without an answer and she groaned. There was only one choice left to her. As much as Drew wanted her to stay as far away from the case as possible, he needed to know what she’d discovered.

  She set the papers down and raced back up the stairs to shower and change.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Gregson stood at the window of his office and beckoned Drew over.

  Drew crossed the floor and pushed open the door. “Sir?”

  The DCI was behind the desk now, his gaze trained on a pile of papers in front of him.

  “I’ve got the preliminary report here from the coroner,” he said. “Looks like he decided to change things up a bit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He found fibres in the victim’s airways conducive to a cloth being placed over her nose and mouth. Dr. Jackson says here the burns around her nose and mouth are in keeping with the use of chloroform. Did you find any evidence of that at the other scenes?

  Drew shook his head and took the report Gregson offered him. “There’s bruising around the nose and mouth,” Drew mused as he studied the file. “It looks like he’s escalating.”