by M K Farrar
The atmosphere in the office was tense. No one had got much sleep, and he knew his team was as frustrated about not having found Sweeny yet as he was. Everyone was tetchy and short with each other. He kept a special eye on Mallory. Her swollen eye had gone down, and she was able to cover the worst of the bruising with makeup now, but she still looked exhausted.
The search on Sweeny’s flat had only given them more potential properties rather than helping them narrow things down. They’d removed five hundred and forty-six DVDs of different homes that Sweeny had videoed over the past ten years, including the DVD of the Wyndham house. The DVDs hadn’t been in any order that they’d been able to work out, including the year they’d been shot, alphabetic order of addresses or names, or the distance apart the homes themselves were in real life. Ryan had hoped that perhaps Sweeny had organised them according to which house he was most interested in, but the Wyndham house DVD had been located in the middle of all the others, and they appeared to be random, giving Ryan nothing to go on.
A large part of his team was being used to go through each of the DVDs in turn in the hope one might tell them where Sweeny was now.
Craig approached his desk. “Boss, we’ve put a list together of all the properties we can find that Sweeny has worked on over the past six months. It’s not good news. As you’d predicted, there are over a hundred, and that’s across twelve different estate agents.”
“Shit.”
Ryan took a moment to think.
What were they going to do? Go to every house on the list and have each property searched? The scale of the job was huge, and, in the meantime, he was going to terrify every inhabitant of the city who’d recently put their house on the market. It would be a massive operation, and DCI Hirst wasn’t going to like it either. It would take some serious manpower.
What other choices did they have? Maybe Sweeny hadn’t known that Hugh wasn’t Sheldon’s real father when he’d started stalking them? Was that enough to push him off the edge?
“Let’s try to narrow things down before we start searching every property on the list. Look at the houses with families similar to the Wyndhams—the classic two-point-four family, with two kids, a boy and a girl, and two parents.”
Craig nodded. “Sounds sensible.”
Ryan thought of something else. “And use the photographs taken at Sweeny’s flat to check the order of the DVDs and compare them to the properties he’s worked on recently. See if you can find a pattern. It might help us narrow them down. Bring whoever you need on board to get it done.”
They needed all the help they could get.
Something else troubled Ryan. What if he was on completely the wrong track? Sweeny might not even be anywhere near one of the other houses. He could have left the country, for all they knew, or was hiding out at a friend’s place—not that they’d been able to find out if Sweeny had any friends.
He had to trust his gut on this.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Helen stood on the landing beneath the loft hatch and craned her neck to look up at it. The torch felt heavy in her hand. Maybe she should wait until the weekend when Andy was home and send him up there to do this? They’d lived in this house for eight years, but she could count the number of times she’d been up into the loft on one hand, and she didn’t think she’d ever been up there without Andy going up first. Even the thought of opening the hatch and pulling down the ladder filled her with anticipation. What if a whole heap of giant black spiders fell on top of her? She’d scream so loudly the neighbours would hear.
Cold sweat prickled across her hairline.
She gave herself a shake. She was being ridiculous. She was a strong, independent woman and she didn’t need a man in the house to be able to go into her own loft. She needed the boxes that were still up there from the last time they’d moved. They were broken down and flat, but she was sure she remembered them still being there. If she was going to break the back on this packing malarky, she had to get them.
What about the noises?
Helen pushed the thought from her head. The sounds she’d heard the previous night didn’t mean anything. There were always strange noises coming from an old house, and she’d been moving stuff around recently, so she was bound to have put things on creaky floorboards and unsettled the status quo.
Maybe Reese was right about them being haunted.
A smile tweaked her lips. “Come on, you can do this.”
She reached for the metal hook that was kept propped in the corner of the landing and lifted it into the air. It took a couple of attempts, but she managed to hook the end into the circle that operated the catch and knocked it to one side.
The hatch flapped open, and she spied the twin ends of the ladder. Still using the hook, she latched on to the first rung of the ladder and pulled it across and then down. It fell faster and heavier than she’d expected, and she dropped the hook to grab the metal rungs. With the feet firmly on the floor, she gave it a tug, making sure it was stable.
She blew out a breath.
It was so dark up there, full of cobwebs and spiders. She hated spiders, especially ones that would get caught in her hair and crawl down the back of her shirt. She shuddered at the thought.
Helen took hold of the side of the ladder with one hand. Her other hand was filled with the torch, but there was no way she was going to relinquish that. The thought of going up there in total darkness was an absolute no-no. Climbing a ladder one-handed wasn’t ideal, but she didn’t have much choice.
Taking it rung by rung, she climbed. It was awkward getting up with the torch in one hand, and she clung tight with her other one. She’d never been good with heights, even if it was just up a few rungs of a ladder. Her head entered the dark square of the hatch, and then her shoulders. She had to duck a beam as she half climbed, half crawled up into the loft.
Helen clambered up and then straightened as much as she dared. She swung the torch beam overhead, and, just as she had feared, the light illuminated swathes of thick white cobwebs hanging from the beams. Beyond the beams were the backs of the roof tiles, and beyond those was the endless sky.
Dragging her thoughts away from spiders, she moved the torch beam down and used it to light the floor—or what there was of it. Some boards had been nailed down, creating a walkway between the beams and the insulation. It seemed stable enough, but she still feared the thought of putting too much weight on it and ending up going through the ceiling.
This is why I don’t like lofts.
She scanned around for the boxes. Considering how many years they’d been in the house, they’d managed not to accumulate too much stuff in the loft. There were a couple of old suitcases and a box or two of Christmas decorations, but that was it. The rest of the house had plenty of storage, so they’d used that rather than going through the faff of having to climb up here.
Where were those bloody boxes? Had they got rid of them at some point and she’d forgotten? Maybe they’d got damp and Andy had thrown out them without telling her.
A chimney breast ran up through the middle of the loft, and she finally saw the boxes, flattened down, as she’d expected, and propped up against the brickwork. They were bigger than she’d remembered, and she was going to need to throw each one down the hatch and hope they’d be in one piece when they hit the landing. There was no way she’d be able to climb back down the ladder carrying the boxes and the torch.
She ducked another beam and tried not to squeal as cobwebs danced against the back of her neck. God, she hated this place.
From behind the chimney breast came the sound of someone trying to stifle a cough.
Helen froze, her heart jackhammering against the inside of her ribs. Had she really heard that? She couldn’t have. That was crazy. It must have come from outside and there were just some weird acoustics in here.
Yes, that was it. Weird acoustics. The loft was freaking her out. She needed to grab the boxes and get back down into the house.
She picke
d up the first of the boxes. The movement sent years of dust cascading into the air, motes filling the yellow light of the torch.
The same stifled cough came again.
She hadn’t misheard that, had she?
Oh God. The movements she’d heard during the night, the things she’d blamed on Tyler. The person Reese had seen. Was there someone up here?
There was no way she was going to call out to see if she got an answer. She needed to get out of there and phone the police. Why had she left her phone downstairs? She should have brought it with her!
The light from the loft hatch looked like freedom, and she ran towards it, as fast as she dared across the uneven, unstable floor, while having to duck beams.
Pain seared through her scalp, and suddenly she was flying backwards, her feet in the air. Someone had hold of her ponytail and had used it to yank her back. She managed a scream, but only a second or so escaped her lips before a hand clamped over her mouth. In her shock, she dropped the torch, and it hit the floor. The light went out, plunging her into darkness, and somewhere in that dark the torch rolled out of reach.
Helen kicked out, her shoes striking the floorboards. She clutched at the hand across her mouth, trying to drag it back off, but whoever had her was too strong. She slapped and clawed, her thoughts a blind rush of panic.
The fingers of the hand moved up and pinched her nostrils, and a new kind of terror engulfed her. She couldn’t breathe!
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God.
No matter how much she tried to whip her head from side to side, trying to dislodge him, nothing worked. Her lungs burned, somehow feeling as though they were both swelling and shrinking at the same time.
Breathe! She needed to breathe! Just a tiny gasp of air. She’d do anything for it. But he wasn’t going to let her.
The strength went from her muscles, and her arms fell loosely to her sides. Her vision had already gone fuzzy, but she couldn’t tell if that was from the lack of light in the loft or lack of oxygen to her brain.
Finally, now she’d stopped struggling, he released her and lowered her fully to the floor. She needed to signal to her lungs that she could breathe again now, but her body seemed beyond her control.
Feet and legs stepped past her, navigating the inside of the loft towards the hatch.
Helen was vaguely aware of the loft ladder being pulled back up. Then the hatch closed, shutting off the last of the light.
Chapter Thirty
Disappointed. That was his overriding emotion. How could people make out like things were so perfect when that was far from the truth? Lies. It was all lies. Posting photographs on social media with hashtags of so blessed when behind closed doors they barely spoke to one another.
The secrets. That was the worst of it. The creeping around and lies that spilled so easily off the tongue. Did they think people wouldn’t notice? These things always caught up to you eventually.
For a while, he thought he’d found one, but then it had all changed. The more time he spent with them, the more quickly their perfect lives became unravelled. Then the anger started. They’d fooled him, had wasted his time. How was anyone supposed to live like this? So, he made the decision that they didn’t get to live.
Now she had ruined things. Why did they always have to ruin things? She could have just stayed down there, where she belonged, and allowed him to be a part of their lives, but instead she had to come up to his domain and start poking around.
He’d so hoped this one was going to be different. While he knew he couldn’t stay with them forever, it had felt good to be a part of things, to listen to normal family life happening around him. He didn’t know how that felt—to be part of a normal family. The two-point-four children, and the loving mother and father. True, he’d been a bit disappointed when Andy had said he needed to work away from home a few days during the week, to stay in a hotel instead of being with his family, but he understood. It was what a good man did to take care of his wife and children—he made sacrifices. He was sure Andy would have preferred to be in bed next to his wife rather than in a cold, sterile hotel room.
He thought the last family were perfect, but he’d been so very wrong. It had been partly his fault. He hadn’t realised that Hugh wasn’t the boy’s biological father—that had been his first mistake. Families that started with the baggage of marriages that had already been broken, of children who had already suffered at the hands of their parents, were already doomed. He should have known that. But then he’d overheard the arguments about the girl down the street, and he’d known then that this family had no chance. They weren’t going to make it.
He’d saved them. They might not have seen it that way, but he had. He’d saved them years of heartache and resentment and anger.
He’d thought this one was going to be different. Maybe they would have been if only Helen had stayed put. Now he had to deal with her, and that would mean having to deal with the children as well.
It wasn’t what he’d planned, but they’d left him with no choice.
Chapter Thirty-One
DC Shonda Dawson approached Ryan’s desk. He could tell by the excited grin on her face, and the way she was practically bouncing on her toes, that she had something big to tell him.
“Boss, we’ve found the Ford Transit,” she said. “It’s partly hidden on a piece of scrubland in Lawrence Hill.”
He didn’t want to celebrate too soon. “It’s definitely the right one?”
“It has the correct licence plate.”
“Any sign of anyone in there?”
“No, and from the number of fallen leaves on the windscreen and roof, it doesn’t look like it’s been moved for a while.”
“Good work. We’re going to need a warrant to search it. Can I leave that with you?” He checked his watch. It was still mid-afternoon, so they had a couple of hours to get to the magistrates’ court.
She nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll go down right away. Hopefully SOCO will be able to lift something we can use from the vehicle.”
“We already have forensics putting him at the Wyndham house, but a good defence lawyer could argue that the presence of fingerprints on a fork in the loft was down to him taking his lunch up there for some reason when he’d gone there to video the house. If we can find blood in the van, that will certainly help get a conviction. What we could really do with is finding a damn address book to give us an idea of where he’s gone.”
“If it’s the right vehicle, can we assume that Sweeny might be somewhere nearby?”
“That’s an excellent point. It’s in Lawrence Hill, did you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Thanks, that gives us something to work with.”
Shonda left for the magistrates’ court, and Ryan called Mallory over. “We’ve found the van in the Lawrence Hill area. Let’s run through all the properties Sweeny has worked on recently. How many of them are nearby?”
Mallory frowned. “What are we calling recently?”
He thought for a moment and then said, “Let’s start within the last month and take it from there.”
Together, they went through the list. There were only two houses listed in the Lawrence Hill area from the past month, but when they expanded to the following month, that became five houses, and then three months in there were eight.
Ryan sucked air in over his teeth. “We need to send officers out to each of these properties and check if everything’s all right. Can you coordinate with uniform and cross-match what comes in to the addresses we’ve narrowed down. I want to hear about anything unusual that gets reported by anyone living in one of those addresses.”
“Of course, but if Sweeny is hiding, will the residents of the houses even realise he’s there?”
“We’ll have to ask the people who live there if they’re happy for us to search the premises.”
She winced. “Not everyone is going to like that, and it’s going to leave some of them feeling pretty shaken up at the idea that
a murderer might be living in their home.”
“I’d rather people were shaken up than dead,” he said. “Honestly, Mallory, I hope I’m wrong about this. I hope he’s fled the country on a fake passport and there isn’t another family in danger right now, but I don’t think that’s what’s happened.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Mum, I’m home!”
Reese dropped her bag on the kitchen table and shrugged off her coat and draped it over the back of the chair. The house was strangely quiet. Her mum was normally home by now, making a big show of still being busy, despite having finished work. She’d be noisily emptying the dishwasher, doing it deliberately loudly as to make a point that no one else had done it.
What was that called? Passive-aggressive. But maybe her or her brother should at least attempt to empty it now Dad wasn’t home in the week and their mum was actually having to do everything.
Where was her brother? Oh yeah, it was Friday, and he’d be at the afterschool football club. Maybe their mum had left early to go and pick him up, though she always complained that he was old enough to walk by himself now, which he probably was.
Reese fished out her phone from her bag and scrolled through to find her mother’s number. She swiped ‘call’ and pressed it to her ear.
From somewhere in the house, her mum’s phone rang.
Reese frowned and lowered her own phone. “Mum?” she called out again.
Maybe her mum was home then. She was as bad as the rest of them with their phone addictions and never left home without it. Yet Reese could hear it ringing. Maybe her mum wasn’t feeling well and had gone to have a lie down.
Reese followed the ringing, but it didn’t take her upstairs. Instead, she walked through into the living room to discover the phone left on the coffee table. Reese ended the call on her own phone and then stooped to pick up her mother’s. She must have just forgotten it.