Hikers - The Collection (Complete Box Set of 5 Books)

by Lauren Algeo

  Tears of shame began to roll down his cheeks and Brewer glanced away, feeling uncomfortable. There was no way he could help Rankin – he was guilty. The police would say he was crazy, with his voices-in-the-head talk, and he would be put away for life, in prison or in a mental institution. The best he could do was try and find the hiker who had done this.

  ‘Go on,’ Brewer urged, aware that his time was nearly up.

  ‘I woke up this morning and there was a gun on the sofa beside me. I have absolutely no recollection of how it got there. It was as if I’d been sleepwalking and got it during the night. I knew today was the day. I’d read a small bit in the papers about the TV show being filmed in Waterloo so I knew there would be a lot of people around. And I felt an intense anger towards celebrities who have everything.’

  Brewer leaned forward in anticipation, he needed to know if there was a target.

  ‘I walked up to where they were filming and I shot that actor at point blank range.’ Rankin’s voice shook with emotion. ‘Then I just started shooting at anyone I saw… and the voice… it was laughing the whole time. Insane laughing that was so loud in my mind.’

  ‘I need you to think really carefully,’ Brewer said. ‘Was there any point during the shooting where things felt different? Where something changed?’

  Rankin was quiet for a moment as he thought. ‘There was something, yes. I only half remember, but the only time the voice stopped laughing was when I pointed the gun at a man in a suit who was walking past. I thought I heard… the voice seemed to whisper “Bang”? My other shots had been quite wild but this one seemed more controlled somehow, as though I was being helped. Then I guess the urgency I’d felt didn’t have as much pressure after that…’

  Bingo, there was a target.

  ‘When did you last hear the voice?’ Brewer asked a little sharply.

  ‘It left as soon as the gun clicked empty. That’s when I felt like I was waking up from a nightmare,’ Rankin said forlornly. ‘There were people running everywhere… so much blood. Those poor people.’ He glanced down at his hands briefly again. ‘But the voice was there. It was.’

  He looked straight into Brewer’s eyes. ‘What happened to me?’

  Brewer opened his mouth to reply but a loud knock at the door interrupted him. Marcus, his time was up. He stood up fast, scraping the chair backwards.

  ‘Thank you for talking to me, I’ll try and find the hiker who did this to you,’ he told Rankin as he backed towards the door.

  ‘Wait! What’s a hiker? Where are you going?’ Rankin shouted desperately after him. ‘I need your help!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Brewer repeated as Marcus pushed open the door.

  ‘Please!’ Rankin cried.

  Brewer tore his eyes away from Rankin’s tear-stained face and closed the door behind him. He was shaking badly as adrenaline surged through his body.

  Marcus gazed at him expectantly. ‘You got him talking then? What the hell was he yelling about?’

  Brewer tried to calm himself down. ‘He just used the voice in his head theory again, and tried to get me to help him. He might talk to your guys now.’

  Marcus nodded but he was eyeing Brewer with suspicion. ‘Maybe we’ll get the confession we need. Let’s get you out of here before someone recognises you.’

  Marcus started to walk down the corridor, heading towards the back exit, only Brewer turned and walked the other way.

  ‘Scott, stop! Where are you going?’

  Brewer heard footsteps rushing to catch up with him.

  ‘Upstairs. I need the notes from the case and the list of victims.’

  ‘What? You can’t go up there, don’t be crazy!’

  ‘I need them,’ Brewer said calmly, still walking.

  ‘Ok, ok. Wait.’ Marcus stood in front of him and held his palms up. ‘If you go and wait outside, I will bring you out some photocopies of the case file. But you have to make yourself scarce right now.’

  Brewer nodded in agreement and turned on his heels. ‘I’ll be outside,’ he called over his shoulder to his panicked friend.

  He stood in the crisp night air and tried to gather his thoughts. It had only been fourteen hours or so since the shootings so the hiker would still be in the general area. The target complicated matters though; it meant this wasn’t finished yet.

  Marcus came out of the station ten minutes later and handed Brewer a manila folder stuffed with hastily copied papers.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘Thank you, I really appreciate it. You don’t understand why but it means a lot.’

  ‘As long as I don’t lose my job… and you never make me do anything like that again.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he promised.

  ‘If you discover anything we might have overlooked, let me know.’ Marcus shuffled his feet and shivered. He had come out of the station without his jacket and wanted to get back inside.

  ‘Where are you heading now?’ he asked Brewer.

  ‘Back to the flat, I’ll be around for a few days.’ Brewer hesitated, almost shyly. ‘I’d like to come and see you, Trudy and Ella while I’m in town, if that’s ok?’

  ‘That would be good mate,’ Marcus replied softly. ‘Ella won’t really remember you but Trudy would love to see you.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch.’ Brewer walked off into the night, heading back to base camp.

  Chapter 4

  Brewer unlocked the front door of the base camp flat and dropped his rucksack on the hallway floor. It was cold inside, after a couple of weeks with no heating. He walked through the rooms and flicked on several lights. Everything was exactly as he’d left it.

  The flat was a one-bedroom place in West Dulwich, sat above a dry cleaning shop, and close to the train station for easy travel. It was small and basic, but it was all he needed and he didn’t spend much time there. It had a tiny hallway, with a combined living room, dining room and kitchen to the right, and a small bedroom and bathroom to the left.

  The main room was decorated in navy and cream, with a navy sofa and armchair in the middle. The kitchen was separated by a breakfast bar, and had a large window so he could see the road below. At the other end of the room, there was a dining table under the back window. He liked the fact that he could keep an eye on the front and back of the building from the room.

  Instead of a feature TV opposite the sofa, there was a huge, detailed map of the UK pinned to the wall. He’d wanted to find out how many hikers there were out there, and document their locations. He had put a large bookcase next to the sofa and filled it with research books and papers. As a finishing touch, he’d placed a framed photo of he and Karen on their wedding day on a coffee table in front of the sofa.

  Brewer went back to the hallway and picked up his rucksack, and a few letters that were on the doormat. He walked into the lounge flicking through them. Two were probably bills and the third envelope was a card with Trudy’s handwriting on the front. It had been his birthday two weeks ago, although he hadn’t bothered celebrating it.

  Brewer dropped them onto the dining room table and wandered over to the map. It was covered in dozens of pins. He picked up a red one from the dish he kept on the table and pinned it on Liverpool City Centre. He had developed a simple system: the red pins were female hikers, the blue ones were male, and the green ones were children. There was an even spread of blue and red pins across the country, several quite close together in large cities. There was only one green pin so far – it was resting near Cornwall, in the far southwest.

  Brewer sat down in the armchair and pulled the case file Marcus had given him out of his rucksack. It wasn’t very thick yet and he leafed through the pages quickly.

  There were a dozen or so hastily photocopied witness statements, and some pages of details on the victims. There was a brief section about Jeremy Rankin and his life, but that would be growing over the next couple of days, as the police found out every little detail about him. No post mortems had b
een completed yet, however they would all say the same thing – death by bullet wounds, no other suspicious injuries.

  Lastly, there was a stack of photograph stills from the station CCTV footage, and a detailed timeline of events accompanying them. Brewer flipped through the images eagerly. The first one showed Rankin on the escalator, descending in to the main station. The time in the bottom left corner stamped it as 12:23 on the 15/09/2011.

  Brewer studied the grainy image. Rankin’s face was set in grim determination and he was staring rigidly ahead. The second picture was still on the escalator, only Rankin’s right hand was now in his coat pocket; the pocket holding the gun which had mysteriously appeared that morning. His head was cocked to the left slightly and his eyes were looking to the side. It appeared as though he was listening intently; listening to the hiker whispering to him.

  There were two photos showing Rankin walking towards the makeshift TV set, then the next was of him actually bringing the gun up to shoot the actor. Brewer stared closely at the sequence of photos, which showed Rankin shooting at several passers by. He studied his face in detail in every shot. He had a blank expression in most; no emotion showed in his features. There was one that was different.

  In a photo about three quarters of the way through the stack, Rankin’s face changed. In this picture, Rankin was pointing the gun towards a man in a pinstripe suit. The man was frozen in the image, with a sandwich dangling in one hand and a briefcase in the other. Rankin’s lips were pulled up at the sides, baring his teeth in a leering, sadistic grin, but it was his eyes Brewer recognised. Although the image was grainy, he could see that Rankin’s eyes were black.

  Rankin had told him the only time things had changed was when he’d shot a man in a suit. When it had felt as if his gun was being guided towards that man, and he’d thought he heard the voice whisper ‘Bang’. The hiker must have physically come forward in Rankin’s body to make that perfect shot. The man in the suit must have been the target.

  Brewer glanced towards the clock on the DVD player that sat underneath the small TV, by the breakfast bar. It was flashing 04:07. Brewer yawned on cue as his mind processed the late hour. It had been a long night, however he still had lots to do; sleep would have to wait.

  He got wearily to his feet and went to the kitchen area. He made a strong mug of coffee, and some toast, then went back to the armchair with his early breakfast.

  He looked through the pile of CCTV photos once more. He scanned the crowds of people for any sign of the hiker. Rankin said the voice had been male so he looked at every man in the pictures. Brewer knew it was a fruitless task – the hiker didn’t have to be right near Rankin to control him. He could’ve been inside one of the shops in the station, looking gleefully through the windows. Or outside, enjoying the thrill as people fled from the exits.

  With a sigh, he put all the pictures back in the folder, except for the one showing Rankin and the man in the suit. He needed to know everything he could about the target. He flicked through the case pages and pulled out the notes on the victims.

  Of the five dead, three were men and two were women. He discounted the women, and the actor, and looked at the other two names. Benjamin Reynolds and Elliot Harman. He knew from the TV report that Ben Reynolds was a politician. Had they mentioned something about him being involved in a controversial bill?

  The notes on both men were fairly vague. Reynolds was forty-seven years old, quite young in the world of politics. He was married and had two pre-teen daughters. He had been pronounced dead at the scene and next of kin had been informed… everyone had been informed with it appearing on every news channel all day.

  Elliot Harman was thirty-two years old. He had a fiancée but no children. He’d been taken to hospital and been pronounced dead on arrival. Apparently he worked as an IT administrator.

  Of the two men, Reynolds seemed the more likely target. That shot directly to the heart should have killed instantly, and a controversial politician would have a lot more enemies.

  Brewer opened his rucksack and took out the small Mac book he carried everywhere. The poor laptop had seen a lot of wear and tear over the last couple of years. He hacked in to a neighbour’s Wi-Fi and opened his internet browser. He didn’t know how he would have tracked hikers without the internet. He spent hours pouring over news websites, looking for any sign of them.

  Brewer typed the name ‘Benjamin Reynolds’ into Google and clicked through to the images. The face of the man in the pinstripe suit stared back at him. Reynolds looked younger than his years, however lines around his eyes gave his age away if you looked closely. He had light brown hair, which flopped over his forehead, and grey eyes. In the rows of images on the screen he seemed to have a self assured and confident posture. Brewer had found the target. Who had wanted Reynolds dead? And why?

  He clicked back to Google’s search results and opened the first link, which was a short biography of Reynolds’ life. It briefly outlined his political career. Reynolds was a member of the Liberal Democrats and now part of the coalition government with the Conservative party. There were a couple of mentions of his university education, his rise through the Lib Dem party, and his charity work in his personal life. There was no mention of what he was currently involved in.

  Brewer went back to Google and scanned down the remaining results. Several were from newspaper websites and mentioned a bill he was spearheading. He opened a link from The Times and skimmed over the article. According to this, Reynolds was pushing to increase the 40% tax rate on higher earning workers to 48%. Currently the tax bracket for 40% was £40,000 a year but under Reynolds’ proposal this would rise to £45,000 ­– good news for some people – but the tax rate above that would increase to 48%, terrible news for anyone who earned more than that a year.

  That would be the controversial campaign they had mentioned on the news report earlier. It was enough to annoy some powerful people… ones who were rich enough to hire a hiker.

  A headache pulsed at Brewer’s temples and he rubbed them with his fingers. He didn’t want to remember his own traumatic experience but the nightmares were threatening to wash over him. All he could see were black eyes: Rankin’s in the photo, a young girl on a roof, and the man he’d encountered two years ago. With a heavy heart, he closed his eyes and allowed the memories to drown him.

  Chapter 5 – 14th April 2009

  Brewer walked along the road, his shoulders hunched against the cool drizzle. He yawned as he walked; it was his second rest day from work in a row, but he hadn’t been sleeping very well.

  It had only been two months since Karen had died and when he slept, he dreamed of her frequently. Most mornings he awoke with tears drying on his cheeks. Yesterday, he had dreamed she was still alive. He’d opened his eyes, expecting to see her lying beside him, only the bed was empty. The grief had hit him all over again.

  The Met wanted him to take longer compassionate leave – they still didn’t think he was ready to be back on duty. He’d needed the distraction though, the house held too many memories.

  He turned left at the end of the road, heading towards the local shops. He hadn’t been food shopping in a while and needed something for dinner. Marcus and Trudy had offered to go for him, or bring him round some of their meals, but he’d declined. He’d subconsciously been avoiding them for the last couple of weeks.

  They were his closest friends, however he needed to deal with his pain alone. He didn’t want to admit it, but seeing them together hurt like hell. He couldn’t help the internal voice that wondered why they still had each other when he had lost his Karen. He made the choice to spend most of his time outside of work alone, until he was ready to be around people again without bitter thoughts.

  He was thirty-nine years old, still fairly young, but he felt hollow – as though there was nothing left for him. The last couple of weeks at work had been difficult. He could see how uncomfortable people were around him – how they averted their eyes as they weighed up whether to ask him
how he was doing. No one knew how to act or what to say around him, and he just wanted things to be normal. To not feel awkward every time he walked in to a room and the usual banter and laughter stopped dead.

  There was an anger inside him the last few weeks that hadn’t been there before. A fire that caused him to lose his temper more easily. He needed to learn how to control it so people wouldn’t worry about him.

  Brewer reached the shops and picked up some basic items like bread, milk and canned soup. He didn’t have the energy for cooking. He walked slowly back in the direction of home – the house he and Karen had been so excited to buy a few years ago. It was a three-bedroom, semi-detached house in a nice part of Clapham, where they’d hoped to raise a family. That dream had now been cruelly crushed.

  The pavements were empty with the afternoon rain, and he was in no hurry; it wasn’t like anyone was waiting for him. As he trudged along, he suddenly felt strange and his steps faltered. There was a weird sensation in the back of his head. It was an uncomfortable feeling, as if someone was rustling around back there. The moment passed instantly but he felt on edge. He peered around cautiously, sure that someone must be watching him, only the road was still deserted.

  Brewer shrugged and walked on again – he was losing his mind now. He made it home without further incident and slumped on to the sofa. The living room was a mess but he didn’t have the strength to clean up. He stared blankly at the TV and let the hours drift past. He forced himself to eat some soup and bread for dinner, yet everything tasted bland. He had a shift at work the next day so at least he would have something to occupy his mind other than thoughts of Karen.

  He lay in their bed, which now felt too big with just him, and willed himself to sleep. At 1am, as he stared at the ceiling, a faint voice whispered from the back of his mind.

  There was nothing else in the still darkness so he listened. It murmured about the injustice of his life, and Brewer nodded in agreement. The voice made sense – his life was unfair. Why had his Karen been taken from him at only thirty-five years old? There were people far less deserving of life in the world. He listened until he drifted into a fitful sleep.