by Lucy Cameron
Caffeine Nights Publishing
Night Is Watching
Lucy Cameron
Fiction aimed at the heart and the head…
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2017
Copyright © Lucy Cameron 2017
Lucy Cameron has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published in Great Britain by
Caffeine Nights Publishing
4 Eton Close
Walderslade
Chatham
Kent
ME5 9AT
www.caffeinenights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-910720-44-8
Also available as an eBook
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams
Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
Acknowledgements
For Mum and Dad.
Thank you for teaching me to believe anything is possible.
Night Is Watching
1.
The woman is still alive as her blood drains, her face contorts in a twisted, silent scream. He has hung her upside down for ease and pleasure and her soft, naked flesh still goosebumps to his touch. Her hands hang inches from the carpet, suspended in a macabre pirouette. He never did ask her if she liked to dance. Her long brown hair twists like a rope to the floor, appearing to anchor her in place. Her lips part then press soundlessly back together, her eyelids flicker.
He steps slowly from the corner. He tilts his head to inspect her, but finds nothing, so blows her a tender kiss, turns off the light and leaves her alone in the dark.
Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan arrives at the scene at one-fifteen a.m. on a bleak Monday in late October. He’s not the first to arrive and won’t be the last. He watches from inside a standard-issue car. The air hangs heavy with the promise of rain. The street is lit up with flashing blue lights and overspill from nosy neighbours’ front doors, their dressing gowns pulled tight, necks straining to get a glimpse of what is happening at number fourteen. Blue and white police tape is strung wide, gripping onto slippery lamp-posts, sagging where it has been lifted to allow those unlucky enough through.
A tall man appears at the front door. His skin, normally rich and dark, seems pale. He runs his hands over his shaved head and inhales deeply. The street audience hold their breath. He murmurs to the young female Constable who stands guard. Her fingers tremor slightly against the dark clipboard. Rhys knows this man. They worked together in what feels like another life, used to be friends. Used to be close.
Detective Constable Dan Davies.
Davies squints, shields his eyes from the glare of the lights then heads slowly over. He speaks as he climbs into the car,
‘Alright?’ Rhys stares straight ahead. ‘Long time, no see.’ Davies taps his fingers on the dashboard, rubs the stubble on his chin. ‘Look, Rhys–’
‘Tell me about them.’ Rhys nods towards the house, eyes blinking in time with the flash of blue lights. Davies taps his fingers on the dashboard again.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Then he stops, his shoulders drop and he starts talking, staring the whole time through the slowly misting windshield.
The call came in to the front desk from a concerned neighbour at around midnight. She was walking her dog and thought she saw movement in the otherwise still house. She knew the residents and was under the impression they had gone up north to visit their only son, Tony.
Rhys turns and looks at Detective Constable Dan Davies, his profile dark against an even blacker night.
The neighbour said they made the trip north often, but usually asked her to look after their cat. She didn’t find it odd that this time they had not. The neighbour was vague, unsure. She hadn’t seen them for a day, possibly two, perhaps three. The line of Davies’s jaw tightens. Two Constables had been dispatched…
Davies’s words trail off, his head bows. Rhys turns his face away, looks back towards the house.
Shadows grow and shrink in the front hall of number fourteen. In the silence another man is spat out. He is short with pale, doughy skin, at home here, but this is not his house. He marches over; the icy blast of night air as he wrenches open the door is a physical assault.
‘About bloody time.’ His accent is not local. He nods to the car. ‘If you two have finished your little chat in here…’ A fat finger pokes into Rhys’s space. ‘…there’s some actual work to be done in there.’ He strides away, the car door bouncing against its hinges.
Rhys joins him on the front step.
‘I assume you are…’ The short man holds Rhys’s eye as he removes his notebook. ‘Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan?’ He doesn’t offer his hand. ‘Detective Inspector Pat Quinn.’ Quinn tilts the notebook just enough for Rhys to see the page is blank. ‘Hope we didn’t wake you?’ Quinn smiles, a movement at odds with the rest of his face. He snaps shut the notebook. ‘You best follow me.’ Quinn nods to the side of the house, replaces the notebook and pulls out a packet of nicotine-replacement gum. ‘There’s access to the kitchen through the back porch.’ His lips smack open and shut. There’s a glint of something in his eye. ‘Hope you’ve fully digested your dinner.’
They squeeze their way around the edge of the house into the back garden. Tacked onto the back of the property is a small
porch crammed with coats, wellington boots, umbrellas, plant pots and numerous other items with no place else to go. Another Constable stands guard. He’s young and clings to his clipboard like a life raft. He takes Rhys’s details, doesn’t quite manage to hide the tremor in his pen. Rhys and Quinn climb into their white paper boiler suits, struggle to balance, tie everything tight. Crime Scene Investigators are in place, their lights positioned, bathing the home in stark yellow light. Doubtful this is how the inhabitants would have imagined it would end.
The heat from the house hits Rhys as soon as he steps into the porch. The carpet tiles are worn and dirty and covered in a light shower of broken glass. Quinn stops and turns, silhouetted against the light from the kitchen like a giant cartoon.
‘Through there, in the kitchen, we have one white female who appears to be in her late fifties.’ Quinn’s voice is loud in the confined glass box. ‘Looks like she lives here with her hubby. Neighbours have said the son lives up north. Why the hell anyone would want to do that? Your guess is as good as mine.’ Over Quinn’s shoulder Rhys sees an array of smiling faces in picture frames on the yellow kitchen wall. On a cruise, on a beach, at a wedding. Moments of happiness captured behind glass. The one nearest the door is crooked. Quinn’s clammy face smiles. ‘After you.’ He steps back allowing Rhys to inch past.
Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan worked missing persons, not murder, missing persons. Everyone knew that. He didn’t work for promotion or glory, or luckily as it turned out, money, he needed to find all the missing and lost and make sure they got home. He needed them to know someone cared for them when they no longer cared for themselves.
‘Rhys,’ Divisional Superintendent Wallace had said a few days earlier, his tone as flat and smooth as a lake. ‘They need a hand over at King’s Mill and I know you’re the man for the job.’
‘King’s Mill, but that’s murder, sir?’
‘Oh come on, Rhys. It’s not that bad.’ Wallace smiled at his own joke. ‘I prefer to look at it more like a temporary move, broaden your horizons, “mix it up a bit” as they say. They need some support.’ He held Rhys’s gaze ‘You, are that support.’ Wallace ran bony fingers down his lapel.
‘But, sir, what about–’
‘Your current caseload will be covered.’
‘That’s not what I was…. Murder… You know why I’d rather not, sir, I mean come on–’ The Divisional Superintendent held up a silencing hand.
‘Life is littered with things we don’t want to do, Detective Sergeant.’ Rhys’s superior’s tone dropped a degree colder. ‘I have given them your contact details. You’re to check in with Detective Inspector Pat Quinn first thing Monday morning.’ He pushed a brown A4 envelope across the desk. ‘Here’s a brief outline of the current case.’
And here he was, simple as that.
Rhys’s mouth dries as he steps into the room, something sticks at the back of his throat. The kitchen is small and claustrophobic. The woman’s body hangs right in front of him, dominating the space, an elaborate sculpture in a poorly hung exhibition. Quinn’s hand is on his shoulder. He points to the floor. Rhys takes his steps with care.
‘We’re pretty certain it’s Cathy Reynolds,’ says a voice that could be Quinn’s. Everything tilts, slightly off-balance. The rest of the room seems suddenly far way, like Rhys and Cathy are the only two people in the world.
A butcher’s hook is screwed into the ceiling, slightly off-centre. The rope that hangs her by the ankles is rough, bloodied where she twisted and struggled. Her naked body sags in all the right places, but in the wrong direction.
Her skin would be soft to his touch.
Rhys tilts his head, his mouth too dry to swallow. The sound of his heart throbs in his ears.
The cut to her throat is deep and black, the skin puckered right to left. Not quite a smile, but not sad. It had been done as she hung there full of life. Her face is streaked from a black red, to a pale pink where the blood has turned from a gush to a trickle, blocking her nose and filming her eyes. The wrinkles and creases like scabs, drying in the overheated kitchen.
It’s her facial expression that stops Rhys’s heart.
A twisted, unrecognisable scream. Frozen mid-movement in a way Rhys can’t quite understand. A pure terror has stretched and pulled at her flesh. Is it this fear that has bulged her eyeballs?
Rhys kneels down and holds his face close to Cathy Reynolds, half expecting her to move, to feel her icy fingers grab his arm, hear a scream from her contorted mouth. There’s no way to tell if the cold rush against his face is from her, or his imagination. A sudden movement at the edge of his vision causes Rhys to turn. There’s nothing there, just a breeze creeping through the house, or possibly the cat making a break for freedom now the doors are open.
Rhys rises. Eyes held by Cathy Reynolds’ blood-red stare. The twist to her face tugs at the base of his stomach.
The kitchen floor is covered with more cheap carpet tiles, the same garish yellow as the walls. Tiles that should be soaked deep crimson, not splashed and sprayed. Not drips and pools. Not an expanding spectrum of red to orange. There is blood, plenty of blood, a twisting spray across the kick boards, up the dated laminate doors, but… A nod to the floor.
‘There’s not enough blood.’ Rhys’s words are loud, straining to be heard over the deafening silence of death.
Quinn does a slow clap. ‘They must’ve sent you for your brains.’
‘You done in here?’ A weary voice sounds from the hallway.
Quinn twists towards the huge bearded man who fills the doorway.
‘For now.’ The huge man steps into the kitchen, his body deflating with a loud sigh. Offering no introduction, Quinn pushes past into the hallway.
‘Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan.’ A massive hand shakes his. Rhys’s glove twists, slick with sweat.
The huge man doesn’t notice.
‘Winters,’ is all he says. They stare at Cathy Reynolds in silence. ‘Welcome to King’s Mill eh? A nice warm welcome from the “Couples Killer”.’ The smile Winters gives him is small and sad.
The front pages of local papers, national papers, television news stations and radio sound bites hammer through Rhys’s mind. Couples slaughtered in their own homes. The women drained of blood, the men beaten. Hysterical people outside King’s Mill station as he drives past morning after morning. Weary colleagues fading into nothing, viewed across a crowded bar. Rhys sits alone, the people he is looking for absent. His colleagues sit in blood and filth, high five and crack inappropriate jokes to keep themselves sane.
‘Morgan,’ Quinn’s voice bellows from the hallway, ‘I don’t remember inviting you here to socialise.’ The two men squash around the corpse in the ever-decreasing kitchen space. Rhys nods a goodbye as he steps slowly into the hallway.
A bead of sweat runs down the side of Quinn’s face.
Together they stare at the cupboard under the stairs. There are several yellow tent markers used by the Crime Scene Investigators on the carpet next to pools of blood.
‘Constables Johnstone and Bayne were first on the scene. That’s her there, Bayne, at the door,’ says Quinn pointing at the pale female Constable who still stands ramrod straight. ‘Johnstone goes round the back to see if he can gain access. When he sees our first victim through the window, he breaks the glass in the porch door to get in.’ Quinn pauses, smiles. ‘I’m sure Winters will have a moan about that.
Bayne calls it in while Johnstone checks the rest of the house bringing him to this spot.’ He gestures to a spray of blood across the light floral wallpaper. ‘Johnstone knows what he might find when he opens this door,’ Quinn points at the cupboard, ‘and he’s right. When he opens the door, Eddie Reynolds’s, the husband’s, body falls out.’
Rhys imagines a man lying there, the top half of his body slumped onto the carpet, his legs being sucked into the cupboard’s dark mouth. ‘What the poor bugger doesn’t anticipate is for Eddie Reynolds to open his eyes and scream. Johnstone nearly d
ied by all accounts, proper shat himself.’ Quinn makes a sound that could be a laugh. ‘Bet he’ll never watch a horror movie in the same way again. Lucky we had an ambulance on the way and Johnstone’s a skinny bastard so they could both fit in.’
‘He was still alive?’
‘Johnstone? As near as Constables get these days. No offence.’ At the front door Bayne doesn’t move a muscle. ‘Yes. Eddie Reynolds was still alive. Since when did a corpse ever open its eyes and scream?’ Quinn shakes his head. ‘We assume he’s been in there the same amount of time as…’ A nod towards the kitchen. ‘He’ll probably wish he was dead, even if he does make it.’
‘Eddie Reynolds was conscious. Did he say anything?’
Quinn shakes his head. Rhys detects pity. ‘The initial attack seems to have happened here,’ a point to the blood spray, ‘but we won’t be sure until he’s finished.’ ‘As for Mr Rey–’
A crash of thunder sounds so close the house shakes. ‘Bloody hell.’ A car alarm goes off. Dogs bark. A baby cries. Rain starts to pour from the sky.
Illuminated by a streak of lightning, Bayne turns fast, her face an even paler shade of white.
‘Sir.’ She hurries towards them.
‘Bayne.’ Quinn swivels to stare at her. ‘What part of “Do not leave your post under any circumstance” are you failing to understand?’ She drops her eyes.
‘It’s just, outside.’ Her thumb jerks weakly towards the door. ‘It’s Detective Inspector Andrews, sir. I thought you should know, sir.’
‘Andrews?’ Quinn’s venom hits her as if it’s her fault. She doesn’t flinch as he barges past; she tweaks a smile at Rhys so small it may have not been there at all. ‘Just what I don’t fucking need.’ Quinn’s voice echoes in Rhys’s head. He racks through the mental files. Andrews. The name is there somewhere, a breath away.
The commotion on the street is framed by the front entrance, a private television screen showing reruns of a black and white freak show. Each step Rhys takes towards the wooden frame enlarges the image before him.
The man outside is screaming. The man is Andrews, but his appearance sheds no light. His skin’s so pale it glows, stretched over the pointed contours of his face. The downpour plasters his long, dark hair into his eyes and around his neck. From the already gathered crowd, press bulbs flash, mobile phone videos whirl to life. Quinn and two uniformed Constables start a strange dance, splashing and sliding in the gutter, fingers gripping then slipping on Andrews’s coat as they first try to persuade, then force, him into the standard-issue car. Rhys steps towards them, the rain instantly soaks through his heavy wool coat. Cries from the crowd are unclear background noise, a soundtrack that doesn’t quite fit. Constables rush to hold them at bay.