‘On our way,’ Kim said after Doctor A’s name flashed onto the screen.
‘Where exactly are you?’ she asked, breathlessly.
‘Walking into the hospital,’ Kim said.
‘Then I suggest you stop walking and run.’
Doctor A ended the call, and Kim quickened her step. Travis did not follow. She looked behind.
‘Listen, Stone, I need to say something.’
And much as Kim wanted to hear what Travis had to say, it would just have to wait.
Doctor A’s request was urgent.
SEVENTY-TWO
18 OCTOBER 1989
Jacob had heard nothing since Devorah had been taken from the room.
He was guessing it had been about an hour but time was doing strange things in his head. The darkness around him seemed to have infected his mind, burrowed in through his ears and left a dark mist of confusion.
He hadn’t had a drink since the drugged water, and he wasn’t even certain now when he’d last eaten. The only thing he knew for sure was that his body was rebelling against him. Exhaustion, hunger and fear had sapped every last ounce of energy from his muscles and yet he knew he had to be prepared for whatever opportunity might appear.
Eventually they would come for him, and he had to be ready.
He pushed himself to a standing position and shook his legs one at a time. He raised his bound wrists high above his head to stretch the tension from his back and shoulders.
He brought his right knee up towards his chin, trying to shake the fatigue from the muscles.
He pictured the Rocky films where Sylvester Stallone used every basic method at his disposal to train for a big fight. All he had was a floor and four walls. How could he prepare his body for a fight in a square box?
He could move, that’s how, he told himself. He could walk; he could bend; he could flex and stretch. Or he could do nothing.
He paced forward in the darkness.
His right foot met with something on the floor. He reached out and felt in front of him. There was nothing. He had not hit the wall.
His mind registered that the object was not hard or cold like the brickwork surrounding him. It was fabric.
He moved his foot around, as though stroking the object.
There was something solid beneath the cloth. He prodded it with his toe.
Nothing.
He dropped to his knees and began to feel around. His hands landed on something firm beneath the fabric. He squeezed.
‘Oh no,’ he whispered into the darkness.
He felt his way to the end of the material.
He reached a sewn in cuff at the bottom of a trouser leg, and then flesh.
His stomach travelled up to his throat as his mind seized on a horrific possibility.
‘Devorah?’ he whispered.
No response.
‘Devorah?’ he cried out.
Nothing.
He grabbed the ankle hard and began to shake it.
‘Wake up, please, wake up.’
There was no movement.
How had they brought her back when he’d been conscious since she’d been dragged away? Hadn’t he? He was no longer sure of anything.
His touch landed on something cool and hard. A shoe. He used both hands to feel around it. Leather upper, no heel and bigger than the average female.
The person lying in front of him was a man.
‘Mate, wake up,’ he said, shaking the leg.
He worked his way up the body, pushing and rocking as he went.
Was this another victim? Had this poor soul been snatched too?
Perhaps he’d been drugged by the water just like him.
Come on, he prayed silently as all kinds of scenarios flashed through his mind. With two of them, they had a chance.
‘Mate, you gotta wake up,’ he called out as his hands worked across a broad set of shoulders. The figure was half lying and half sitting against the wall.
He shook the man forcefully. He felt the weight of the head loll sideways.
An unwelcome thought began to form in his mind.
His fingers travelled up from the shoulder blades to the neck and stayed there, praying for a pulse.
He waited, while silently willing to feel something.
He moved his fingers around and waited again.
There was nothing.
The man before him was dead.
Jacob felt the threat of tears at the back of his throat. He hadn’t cried in years. Not since losing Freya to leukaemia but right now he was struggling to hold them back.
For just a few moments, hope had surged within Jacob. Hope that he could escape. Hope that he would be reunited with his daughter. The hope had been sudden and unexpected and now cruelly ripped away.
He had no strength, no weapon and no clue as to why he’d been snatched from his life.
But he now knew with certainty that he was never going to see Adaje again.
The sudden sound of the key in the lock startled him.
Whatever it was that he’d been chosen for, whatever use they had for him, had arrived. The only things in this room were himself and a dead man, and there was little more they could do with him.
‘Where’s the girl?’ Jacob asked, as three torchlights shone right at him. ‘Where’s Devorah?’
‘None of your fucking business, now get to your feet.’
Jacob stayed where he was.
‘Just tell me, what’s happened to her?’ he asked.
The men laughed in a way that chilled Jacob to the bone.
‘It’s all right fella, you’re about to find out.’
SEVENTY-THREE
‘What’s the urgency?’ Kim asked, stepping through the doors.
Kim immediately noted that Doctor A looked paler than she had all week. She looked to the gurneys.
Doctor A came to stand beside her.
‘That is all the bones we are having,’ she said quietly.
Kim looked along the row. She knew victim one to be Jacob James. Victim two was an unidentified male around the age of thirty.
‘Victim three?’ Kim asked.
Doctor A shrugged. ‘Without more bones we may never be able to sex…’
Her words trailed away as Kim nodded her understanding. On what they had, the third victim may never be identified.
‘But, I can confirm that victim number two was disabled.’
Kim felt the ground begin to move beneath her feet.
‘Wh… What?’ she asked.
Doctor A nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. Our second soul suffered from osteomalacia which caused me confusion as he was not an elderly—’
‘Back up, Doc,’ Kim said. ‘What’s osteomalacia?’
She thought for a moment. ‘In children you would know it as rickets. Osteomalacia presents in adults due to inadequate mineralisation of the bone. Maybe insufficient calcium absorption or lack of Vitamin D. More commonly in elderly adults who are housebound or in nursing homes. No exposure to the sun,’ she explained.
‘So, restricted mobility?’ Kim asked.
Doctor A nodded. ‘This man would have had joint and bone pain, especially in his spine, pelvis and legs and most definitely difficulty walking.’
‘So running away would have been a real fucking problem?’ Kim asked.
Doctor A nodded, displaying a tension to her jaw that Kim had never seen before. She realised she hadn’t heard the worst of it. That was not the news Doctor A had been waiting to share.
‘I found some other marks on victim two last night but I didn’t want to share until I knew what they were,’ she said, moving away from the victims.
Kim followed her to the computer in the corner of the room.
Doctor A clicked on the screen.
It exploded to reveal a full-screen picture of a metal contraption that resembled an open, gaping mouth, full of metal teeth. At its centre, like a tongue, was a pressure plate.
Kim felt the saliva drying in her mouth.
>
‘Animal traps?’ she whispered, hoarsely.
Doctor A nodded slowly.
Kim knew that the sickness was coming. Travis cursed under his breath.
She understood what they were being told.
Their victims had been hunted.
SEVENTY-FOUR
Kim just about made it outside before she threw up.
The retching continued long after her stomach had emptied.
‘Here,’ Travis said, handing her a tissue.
She wiped roughly at her mouth before kicking the wall, hard.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck…’
‘Shhh…’ Travis said, looking about. ‘There are sick people around—’
‘You’re fucking telling me,’ she raged. The facts she’d just learned refused to let go of her nerve endings.
‘How the hell? I mean, how could anyone treat a fellow human being this way? How could they even think of doing such a vile, sick?…’
Words failed her as she kicked the wall again.
She paced, trying to work the rage from her system.
‘I wanna hit something so bad,’ she cried.
Travis stood right in front of her, blocking her path.
‘Hit me,’ he said, seriously.
‘Piss off, Tom,’ she said, trying to get around him to take another swipe at the wall.
‘I mean it. Hit me. I owe you one and now seems good for it,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you bloody angry?’ she asked, frustrated by his calm control.
‘Of course I am but your need to express it is greater than mine right now.’
‘It’s not a shared emotion. We can both have it at the same time,’ she snapped.
‘Yes, and then we’d kick the absolute shit out of the hospital, which wouldn’t help anyone.’
‘But it’s fucking despicable…’
‘It is.’
‘That someone could be targeted because of their colour or race and, on top of that, someone who can’t bloody fight back.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And to hunt these people like damn animals…’
‘Is the sickest thing I’ve heard in many years. So, we can either stay here and kick shit out of the wall, shouting about how reprehensible it is, or we can go and try to find these bastards.’
Kim looked at him, then back at the wall.
She wanted the people responsible, and she wanted them badly.
She thrust her hands into her pockets, forced her response through her gritted teeth.
‘Okay, Travis. Lead the way.’
SEVENTY-FIVE
Stacey knew she should be concentrating on the task given to her by the guys, but the friend request from Floda had reignited the churning in her stomach.
Once she’d accepted the request, she’d received a message with a link to a website. Was this what Justin had received from Floda? And did it have any bearing on his decision to end his own life?
There was a delay with the link before exploding into a header page bearing the St George’s Cross flag and a swastika.
Stacey felt her fingers begin to tremble as she pressed to enter.
The title of the page was called ‘Keep England Pure’. Stacey swallowed the horror down as she tried to focus. The menu across the top read ‘Publications, Mission Statement, Chat, Scoreboard and Events’.
Stacey found herself biting the inside of her lip. She clicked on to publications and was assaulted by a range of extremist-titled books. Hundreds of books about Hitler were mixed with offensive joke books and links to further reading websites.
She instantly clicked out and moved the cursor across. She didn’t need to read the ‘Mission Statement’. There would be more words but the general theme of ‘spread as much hatred as possible’ was close enough.
She hit on the chat button. The top three threads were live. The second one down had received the most posts. She clicked onto the subject line ‘The Event’.
She scanned down and saw the majority of posts were simply displaying their regret at not being able to attend something that was going on. She suspected some kind of rally.
She exited the chat boards and entered the scoreboard section. Her blood began to chill as it ran through her veins.
A grid opened up to reveal a key to the left. In order it read ‘Black, Asian, Muslim, Jew, Queer, Foreigner, Cripple and Other’. Across the top was an emboldened heading of the month. Beneath that were more headings: ‘Vandalism, Assault, Attempted Murder and Murder’.
People typed in their username at the boxes that intersected the two criteria.
‘JJLucy’ had put their name against almost every box.
Beneath was a hall of fame, and ‘JJLucy’ topped the charts most days by the looks of it.
She took out her phone and began taking photos. Sites like this could be gone within hours. She backtracked through all of the pages, capturing as many names as she could.
Satisfied she’d got all she could see, she returned to the scoreboard. Three people had posted in the murder column. They all got a screenshot each so she could include the headings too.
She opened up the last tab, marked ‘Events’, as her phone dinged a message.
She quickly took a look at the ‘event’ screen. The date screamed out at her. There was something happening tonight.
Stacey suddenly knew that this was too much for her alone. This was not a can of worms but a drum of electric eels, and she could not contain them without help. She had to let someone know what she’d found. Yes, it would mean coming clean about her activities and the laptop but this needed to be investigated; right now.
She checked the message that had come through on her phone.
It said simply:
The laptop is outside
Stacey frowned. The sender was ‘unknown’.
What did it mean? Outside her home? Outside the station?
Her finger hovered over Bryant’s number, desperate to share what she’d found. But if there was a chance she could get the stolen laptop back she had to take it.
She stood and headed out the door. If the laptop had been returned, no one would ever know she’d lost it. She would ring Bryant the second she had it in her hand.
She tore past reception and out of the building.
She looked around the perimeter of the wall, nothing.
She took a few steps forward, her eyes scanning every inch of the car park, and kept moving, increasing her field of vision with every step.
Something to her far right caught Stacey’s eye.
There was a kerb that gave way to a small planted area. A silver shape protruded from the shrubs.
She began to head towards it, taking her around the side of the building.
Each step confirmed to her that it was indeed the stolen laptop.
She inched, crab-like, past a blue transit van parked too close to a Renault and retrieved it.
A relieved smile began to tug at her lips ‒ just as a sudden pain on the back of her neck caused Stacey to fold to the ground.
SEVENTY-SIX
Kim tapped impatiently as they waited to gain entry to the hospital ward. The nurse’s station was unmanned. Kim prepared to buzz again, as an auxiliary appeared at the door.
She pressed the button to release it.
‘If you just wait over by the counter, a nurse will be with you in a sec.’
Kim ignored her and carried on walking.
She’d had enough of waiting. It was time to make Billy Cowley speak. Unlike Bryant, Travis didn’t try and soften any of her pointy edges. He didn’t apologise on her behalf or explain or justify her behaviour.
She rounded the wall into the ward. The curtain was around Billy Cowley’s bed. She experienced a moment of panic but then she heard his voice and it sounded loud and clear, like a petulant child, as he cried: ‘Aarrgghh, that hurts.’
Kim looked to Travis, who smirked in response. Damaged vocal chords indeed.
She guessed the staff we
re changing the dressing on his neck.
He cried out again, and Kim had to stop herself from laughing out loud. She glanced at Travis, who was having the exact same problem.
Another shriek and Kim had to step away. She had known braver three year olds. Even the woman tending him sounded like she was losing patience.
Suddenly the curtain opened and a stressed-looking nurse appeared.
‘May we?’ Kim asked, holding up her ID and nodding towards the curtain.
‘Absolutely,’ she said, pushing back the second curtain.
Kim saw Billy Cowley’s eyes fill with panic. He looked around but there was no one to hold his hand this time.
Kim took the left side of the bed, while Travis took the right.
‘Good to hear your voice is back,’ Travis said, sarcastically.
Like Kim, he was obviously sick and tired of people thinking they were clever by trying to hide the truth.
‘Which is good because we really need you to answer some of our questions.’
Travis ignored the seat and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to the rest of the ward. Kim took a seat in the easy chair so she could see them both.
‘Before I start asking questions I’d just like to make sure we are understanding each other.’
The quietness of his voice did not detract from the steely note of authority he exuded. Billy’s eyes were fixed on Travis’s face, and Kim was ready to watch with interest.
‘Billy, I know you’re not stupid, even though you’re acting pretty dumb at the moment. You know that we’ve found bones on your land, and do you know what? I like you, so I’m going to give it to you straight. Three bodies we’ve found, Billy, did you know that?’
Billy continued to look ahead but his rate of nervous blinking had increased.
‘Now, we’ve just discovered there’s a good chance these victims were hunted like wild fucking animals. Do you understand what I mean?’
Billy nodded slowly. He reminded Kim of a child being told a bedtime story, except his jaw was not slackened with wonder but fear.
‘Now, what’s interesting is that we think at least one of the victims was killed with the same gun that shot you in the neck. Isn’t that just weird? But we’ll come back to that,’ Travis said in true Columbo style. ‘Now, clearly you didn’t shoot yourself in the neck, and your father has been arrested for—’
Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist Book 6 Page 24