A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Wendy Bruce.’

  ‘What’s Wendy like?’

  ‘Wendy’s a cliché-riddled drip, she’s blonde and mid twenties and that’s exactly the way The Ghoul likes his women.’

  The dream played out beneath the surface.

  It was in her hands, the thing she had rescued from the mud in which she had been dumped.

  ‘How will you know it’s The Ghoul?’

  ‘We’re looking at the language he used in his online communication with the Warrington victim, Sandra O’Day. When we pulled up Annie Boyd’s online conversations with him, it was a case of comparing and contrasting the two.’

  ‘That’s a great idea. But come back to bed soon, Eve. Try and get some sleep.’

  She felt Thomas fade away as he left the room and headed back upstairs.

  It hung from her hands like a length of slack rubber.

  She lifted it above her head and pulled it down over her scalp, face and neck.

  The hair was matted with oil and mud and hung from her head like a hex.

  Clay stepped closer and, focusing on the woman’s face, felt the breath fleeing from her body and her heart pounding against her ribs.

  ‘No…’ she whispered to the shadows.

  The woman stepped closer and her face was picked out by the lights from the promenade. Clay stared at the woman and saw exactly who she was.

  Clay saw herself standing in the mud, stone dead but turning like the living to walk away, barefoot and naked towards the hole in the mud where everything was sucked into the vortex.

  She felt her heart beating and the blood rushing through her head.

  Clay came out of the Pebbles On The Beach site and looked at her screensaver, Thomas and herself walking in the fallen autumn leaves, at the lakeside in Sefton Park, each holding one of Philip’s hands.

  Everyone deserves happiness, she thought, and everyone has the right to seek happiness. Nobody deserves to die because they’re lonely.

  28

  7.45 am

  Neil Wren climbed the stairs with the usual heavy heart for the task ahead. Since he was old enough to go to school, his son had been a nightmare to get out of bed, needing at least ten calls, containing a cocktail of threats and bribes depending upon the mood he was in.

  At the top of the stairs, Neil called, ‘Wren!’ with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. ‘Wren! Wren, time to get up, Wren! We’ve got to go to work, Wren! Please don’t make me late, Wren, or the boss will shout at me…’

  He knocked on the door and his shoulders sank at the silence behind it.

  Neil Wren cursed his sister, Louise, a woman who held sway over Wren, who’d suggested that work experience as an apprentice would be excellent for his one and only son. She had managed to embed the idea into Wren’s head that he would meet people and see a different side of life, confiding in him that all the day centre was doing for him was increasing his anxiety levels and making him more autistic.

  ‘Wren, come on, mate…’

  Neil recalled the time when they’d visited with Wren’s Auntie Louise and his son announced that he would like to work with animals, just like my dad.

  ‘Wren, I’m coming in!’

  His eyes focused on the bed but instead of being a mound under which Wren slept the sleep of the dead, it was made up neatly.

  Wren stood in the middle of the room, dressed, smelling of a little too much aftershave and smiling.

  ‘I’ve brushed my teeth, I’ve washed myself, I’ve put clean underwear on, and I’m ready to go to work. Ready when you are, Dad.’

  ‘Well, I never—’

  ‘Surprised, Dad?’

  ‘Very, very surprised. Well done, Wren. Good lad…’

  He noticed the smell of fresh paint and his heart rose.

  ‘You’re full of surprises, mate.’

  Wren eye-pointed to the wall above his head, his Captain Cyclone mural, with new changes to the imagery.

  Neil stepped deeper into the room and read the words, ‘An honest witness does not deceive but a false witness pours out lies. Proverbs 14:5. Wow, Wren!’

  A dark thought clouded the suddenly bright new horizon.

  ‘You haven’t caught religion, have you, Wren? Jesus and the disciples and all that…?’ Shite. Wren shook his head and flatly said, ‘No! Captain Cyclone is my God.’

  Wren looked up at the mural and his father looked with him, didn’t see the change at first, but when he did see it, he understood immediately the out of character early bird routine.

  He had painted over Captain Cyclone’s facial features and replaced it with the physiognomy of Edgar McKee.

  He double-checked. ‘Edgar McKee, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Wren smiled in a manner he hadn’t smiled since he’d been a small boy before he lost his mother to cancer, and his father felt the welling up of tears.

  ‘You like Edgar?’

  ‘He’s my mate. He’s cool.’

  ‘Come on, lad. Your lunch box is at the door, the usual, the same as ever, the things you like.’

  I will definitely have to buy you a pint or two, Edgar, he thought.

  As he walked downstairs, Neil Wren thought about his sister, Louise Fisher, and had to hand it to her. For one thing, she had been bang on the money about work experience. And for another, as Wren had informed her, she was like a second mother to him.

  29

  9.09 am

  Eighteen minutes after a call to the central switchboard from Mrs Alice Hobson, Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks rang on the doorbell of 235 Allerton Road – one of nine houses from which there had been no reply during the previous day’s door to door enquiry – and stepped back next to Detective Sergeant Gina Riley.

  Riley turned her back on the house, facing Allerton Manor Golf Course and Allerton Towers and the opening to the public footpath between the two green spaces.

  ‘It looks like Mrs Hobson had a ringside seat.’

  ‘Who is it?’ A frail, elderly voice came from behind the front door.

  ‘It’s the police,’ replied Riley, with as much pleasantness as she could muster on a freezing morning. ‘My name’s Detective Sergeant Gina Riley and my colleague is Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks.’

  Behind the door, chains rattled as Mrs Hobson loosened them from their catches.

  In the narrow space of the partially opened door, a small, bird-like lady in her eighties clutched at the collar of her pink housecoat. On her head was a brown wig. It looked like a cat had curled up and died in its sleep on her skull.

  ‘Trust us, Mrs Hobson,’ said Hendricks, working out the angle of the camera pointing down in the direction of the front door and beyond that to Heath Road. ‘How did we know to call here other than you called our switchboard and said you had something to tell us?’

  ‘Come in.’ She lifted the last chain. ‘Brush your feet on the mat and follow me into the front room.’

  The walls were white and the front room smelled freshly painted. There was a red leather three-piece suite, with one of the armchairs directly facing a state-of-the-art television set.

  Mrs Hobson lifted the net curtain and showed Hendricks and Riley the clear view of the entrance and exit to the public footpath.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Mrs Hobson.

  ‘You have an excellent view of a place we’re very interested in,’ replied Riley.

  ‘Have a seat.’

  Hendricks and Riley sat on the settee, facing Mrs Hobson.

  ‘Were you here all day yesterday?’ asked Riley, glancing at the TV Times beside the old lady.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You didn’t answer the bell when the constables came knocking door to door.’

  ‘I heard the bell. It rang three times. It was the only call I had yesterday. But I heard on the grapevine the Jehovah’s Witnesses are in the area, so I ignored it and kept on watching telly.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘I saw on the Granada Reports round-up after t
he ten o’clock news that a woman’s body had been found on the footpath.’

  ‘Your CCTV, it’s working, right?’ asked Riley.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you viewed it, Mrs Hobson?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What does it cover?’

  ‘It covers the front door.’

  ‘How far does it extend?’ asked Riley.

  ‘The top of Heath Road. Do you want to know what I saw just with my eyes?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Riley.

  ‘I saw a white van come out of the footpath. It was being driven really slowly. It turned left to get into the lane leading down to Heath Road. And then it took a right down Heath Road in the direction of Mather Avenue. If it didn’t stop in Heath Road then it had to turn either right or left on the dual carriageway. What was a white van doing on the public footpath? It’s not a road. It’s not fit to drive a vehicle down. I tell you…’ She looked at Riley and Hendricks in turn. ‘I smelled a massive rat.’

  ‘What time did you see the van, Mrs Hobson?’ asked Riley.

  ‘Half past three in the afternoon. Just before it started going dark.’

  ‘Did you see who was in the van?’

  ‘No. There wasn’t much light. I couldn’t see anyone.’

  ‘Licence plate?’

  ‘No. I’ve told you everything I know.’ She reached into the pocket of her housecoat and took out a white envelope. ‘This is the CCTV footage. I saved it on to a pen drive. I did an IT For Beginners course at night school.’

  Riley stood up and took the envelope from Mrs Hobson.

  ‘Half past three. That’s definitely the time you saw the white van?’ Hendricks double-checked.

  ‘Definitely the time. BBC 24-hour news was on. I checked the time on the telly,’ said Mrs Hobson, pressing her hands down on the arms of her chair to help herself to her feet. ‘Would you like to see my IT certificate?’

  30

  9.33 am

  Francesca Christie had the clearest sensation that someone behind her was stripping her naked with his eyes.

  She kept her back turned but felt the heat in the office rise and remembered the time when a lipstick went missing from her desk drawer. The only people other than herself who had a key to the drawer were Daniel Ball and Norma Maguire, and that was why she no longer kept personal items in it.

  ‘Francesca?’

  At her desk near the window of Maguire Holdings, she heard Daniel Ball’s voice coming towards her. She recognised the toadying tone, knew he was about to dump something difficult on her lap as he washed over her with his beady eyes, and she pretended not to hear.

  ‘Fran!’

  Caught off guard by his impersonation of Norma Maguire, she looked around and saw that the boss wasn’t there to catch Daniel’s mockery.

  His hands were firmly in his trouser pockets, and his eyes dipped from her face to her breasts and back in the micro-second that she guessed was the fruit of a lifetime’s practice.

  ‘Yes, Daniel?’

  ‘You look rather lovely this morning, Francesca.’

  As she absorbed the compliment, she recalled the morning of her third day at work in the office and how she’d been filled in and warned at break time. Daniel apparently went to bars in the city centre most nights where he picked up women and sometimes men to take to budget hotels for sex with him. Behind the smart suit, shirt and tie, he was a sex addict. And the conclusion of her colleague’s advice had stuck fast. ‘Don’t be on your own with him.’

  ‘Dean’s phoned in sick.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I looked in the diary and I see you’re free at eleven this morning.’

  ‘Coventry Road?’ Francesca anticipated.

  ‘Exactly. The shithole’s shithole.’

  ‘With the vendor who doesn’t understand that it needs forty grand’s worth of work to make it habitable but who won’t budge down one bean from the asking price? Postpone the viewing!’

  ‘No. No. Dean’s not hacking it. You will. If anyone can build bridges between the vendor and the buyer, it’s you.’

  Francesca heard the dismal ping of the lift arriving from Norma’s office to the ground floor.

  ‘Mama’s coming for you, baby.’

  ‘Give me the keys, Daniel. The keys to 431 Coventry Road.’

  He placed them on her desk. The lift doors parted. Francesca snatched up the keys and grabbed her wet raincoat from the back of her swivel chair.

  ‘You’re rather keen to get out all of a sudden, Fran!’

  ‘I need to go and assess the property before I do the viewing. I need to find a way in, a way to convince both parties of a way forward.’

  Norma Maguire wheeled herself backwards from the lift into the main area of the office.

  ‘You had three missed calls yesterday, Francesca,’ said Daniel, as she stepped towards the front door. ‘Three missed calls from Mr Doherty’s office. What’s going on, Francesca?’

  ‘Nothing’s going on. I can’t help it if people phone me up. Did you ask for those emails you receive on a daily basis telling you there are dozens of Russian women just dying to meet you?’

  Norma turned herself round and smiled into the office, focusing on Francesca and wheeling herself towards her.

  ‘Change the subject, Daniel!’

  ‘Good luck, kid,’ he said, walking away.

  Francesca half-raised a hand to Norma, threw in a cheery, ‘Morning, Norma.’

  ‘In a hurry, Fran?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Fran?’

  Francesca froze, counted to three and smiled at Norma.

  ‘Yes, Norma?’

  ‘A little bird tells me you’ve been receiving some unwanted attention from a certain someone just down the block.’

  Francesca looked around the room for that little bird and saw Daniel disappear into the staff-only kitchen area.

  ‘Just be careful, Fran. The grass may look greener on the other side of the fence but all that glitters, hmm, Fran…’

  As Norma spoke, Francesca’s eyes were drawn to her mouth, which looked vivid and red.

  ‘What can I do to make you stay? Fran?’

  ‘Leave me… Alone…’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I mean, leave it with me. Your little bird’s singing the wrong tune. Listening to gossip? It’s not a good idea. Coventry Road. I have to go.’

  ‘Fran?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m trying to protect you. Don’t take it as anything other than that. I’ve got your back, Fran. But you know that. Don’t you?’

  Norma turned herself back in the direction of the lift, the veins in her hands protruding, thick and blue, the muscles around them twitching as she made the manoeuvre.

  Francesca headed for the front door with a dozen eyes piercing the nape of her neck and soothed herself with the thought that yesterday James Griffiths had sent her the twenty-four red roses that sat in a vase by her bedside.

  31

  10.01 am

  In the incident room on the top floor of Trinity Road police station, Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks asked, ‘Ready?’

  On the screen of Hendricks’ laptop was a frozen image of the exit from the footpath between Allerton Manor Golf Course and Allerton Towers on to Allerton Road. The time 3:29:31 pm, the date 01/12/21.

  Sitting at his side, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley replied, ‘Let’s just hope Mrs Hobson’s right.’

  On screen, the front door of Mrs Hobson’s house was covered, and the image extended beyond the corner of the front elevation of the old lady’s house and on to the top end of Heath Road.

  Hendricks took off the pause and raised his hands to show his colleagues two pairs of crossed fingers.

  A blue Orion travelled from the one-way lane leading from Allerton Road into Heath Road.

  A fat drop of rain smashed on to the lens of Mrs Hobson’s CCTV camera, turning the world it observed into a blur. A gust of wind flattened the moisture.
The blurred view of the corner of Heath Road changed in an instant as the slowed-down seconds crawled by.

  Hendricks looked at the clock on the screen’s corner as it reached 3:30:00 pm and back to the screen, where a piece of discarded newspaper was being bullied by the wind, rolling from Heath Road across Mrs Hobson’s path.

  ‘It’s coming!’ Riley spoke sharply and Hendricks paused. She pointed at the top of the screen. ‘It’s the front left-hand corner of the van. 3:30:11 pm. Go on, Bill…’

  The left-hand side of the white van came into view.

  ‘Look!’ said Cole. ‘Look in the window on the passenger door.’

  Hendricks paused.

  ‘There’s someone in the passenger seat,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘Keep it rolling, Bill. Let’s see what happens as it passes the old lady’s house and off into Heath Road.’

  The three watched as the van disappeared out of view.

  ‘We’ve got a partial number plate. That’s all we need,’ said Cole. ‘I’ll track its progress using Automatic Number Plate Recognition. If it’s turned left or right on to Mather Avenue it’ll be easy to follow. Even if it carries on across the junction to the rest of Heath Road, we should be OK. I’ll get on to it as soon as we’re done here.’

  Hendricks rewound the footage back to 3:30:11 pm.

  ‘Let’s watch out for the passenger, Bill,’ said Riley.

  They watched the van come into its fullest view. Hendricks paused.

  ‘This is the best we’re going to do for the licence plate.’

  ‘Last three digits,’ said Cole, repeating them silently over and over in his head. ‘ZDS,’ he said out loud.

  Slowly, the passenger turned his face towards Mrs Hobson’s house, as if his attention was subliminally sucked in by the CCTV camera. In the micro-second before the passenger turned away again, Hendricks paused.

  ‘It’s a man,’ said Hendricks. ‘Fair hair. We need to get this cleaned up by CCTV4U.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a man?’ asked Cole, the mantra of three digits echoing inside his head.

  ‘Could be a man, could be a woman,’ said Riley. ‘But no view of the driver.’

  ‘The thing we now know is whoever’s been abducting, killing and skinning women isn’t doing this on his own. I’ll take this to CCTV4U, get them to drop everything and clean up what we have,’ said Hendricks.