Next to Die

by Neil White

  Ruby’s breath quickened and tears ran onto her cheeks. ‘Please don’t do it,’ she said, her voice breaking, her attempts to get Ronnie on her side coming to nothing.

  He pushed Ruby to the floor. She was on her side, her hands bound behind her back. Ronnie pulled the blindfold back down.

  She tried to work out where he was, where the next threat was coming from, but all she could hear was the steady rhythm of his breaths.

  He was watching her, and she wondered if the blackness ahead would be her last view of life.

  Seventy-One

  Sam turned to the watch the train speed into the distance and then looked back to the street below. He had seen a light, he knew it.

  There were footsteps behind him. The two traffic cops.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ the taller one screamed at him.

  Sam didn’t answer. He knew what he had thought of doing and it scared him. The closeness of the train, but just the hint of a distant light had made him pull back.

  His phone rang. Withheld number. Sam turned away to answer. It was her.

  ‘You didn’t jump,’ she said, her voice hostile. ‘You’re running out of time.’

  He stepped further away from the transport cops. ‘Yes, it wasn’t the right time. You haven’t given me enough assurances about Ruby.’

  ‘Ruby will die. Take that as an assurance. You haven’t got time to be so demanding. You had thirty minutes. That’s always the time limit. All the others died.’

  Sam took a deep breath, panic welling in his chest. ‘But why would you do that? It’s me you want.’

  ‘So fucking jump!’

  ‘It’s a tough thing to do,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘I’ve got children. Responsibilities.’

  ‘What about the life you can give to your baby sister?’

  ‘You bitch. You evil fucking bitch!’ Passengers on the platform looked over at him and then turned away when he caught their gaze. The smaller transport cop put his hand on Sam’s arm but Sam yanked it away. He cupped his mouth around the mouthpiece. ‘If you hurt her, I will come after you.’

  ‘No you won’t, because all you will feel is guilt. Cowardly Samuel Parker. He does everything right. Nice wife. Two lovely little blonde girls.’

  Sam felt the colour drain from his face. It felt like he was standing in water. ‘You leave my girls out of this.’

  ‘Why should I? We’re not negotiating. And maybe I won’t stop at Ruby. I might just keep on going until all that’s left is you. Cowardly Sam. Wrapped up in remorse and guilt. You’ll have no life. You might as well go now.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  There was a pause, and then there was more snap to her voice when she said, ‘Because when you take something so special from someone, you get it back. It’s the great rebalance.’

  Sam scoured the street below as she talked, looking for the same light, unsure if it had been just a reflection from streetlights. But it might have been her phone. He kept his head down but used his eyes to scan the area below the platform. Then he saw it, just a faint glow. He was right. A phone in the darkness lighting up someone’s face.

  ‘Who are those two in green with you?’ she said.

  ‘Transport cops,’ he said, as he looked back along the platform. Sam was walking away from them, and he could hear them on their radios.

  ‘I told you to be on your own.’

  ‘When I look like I’m about to jump from the platform, don’t you think they’d be interested?’

  ‘The next train is four minutes away. You need to be under it. If you’re not, Ruby will be dead in five minutes, and then I work my way through your family.’

  ‘You said thirty minutes. There’s ten left.’

  ‘You didn’t jump. That incurs a penalty. And Ruby’s cold. She wants to go home. You can do that.’

  ‘Wait, don’t go!’ Sam shouted. ‘Who are you? At least let me die knowing the answers.’

  A laugh. ‘You know who I am.’

  He closed his eyes. He did.

  ‘Carrie.’ He stepped towards the edge of the platform. As he looked, he could see the glow of her phone lighting up the shadows.

  ‘Well done, Detective,’ she said. ‘You would have showed promise.’

  ‘Why are you back with Ronnie? I don’t understand. He must be violent towards you.’

  She laughed. ‘He’s not violent. He’s never hit me.’

  ‘But the blood?’

  ‘I know you’re playing for time, but you won’t stop the train.’

  When Sam didn’t respond, she said, ‘The problem with people like you is that you don’t see the creativity. The blood was a plant. Draw some out with a syringe, squirt it on a wall and then smear it. It was his idea, to make you think he had killed me, so that you would believe him when he said he had done it, bursting into the station. We knew you’d get all excited and only see one thing.’ There was a sigh, and then, ‘It was his silly idea. The one thing I did for him. He thought that if he made it look like he’d killed me, I would run away and stop serving my beautiful Ben.’

  ‘So these murders, these young women, they were your idea, to please Ben Grant?’

  ‘You’ve locked him in a prison but I can keep him free.’

  ‘But you were going to stop, because you were going to disappear.’

  ‘No I wasn’t. I was just going to leave Ronnie. He made it perfect, because then everyone would think I was dead. Who’s going to look for a dead woman?’

  ‘But your darling Ben wasn’t happy about it,’ Sam said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you know? He tried to give you up this week.’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. Sam was trying to distract her, to prolong it, just to somehow hope that it would put off whatever they had planned for Ruby.

  ‘Ben wouldn’t do that,’ she said, and Sam detected a rise in her voice, some of the gloating replaced by anger.

  ‘He did exactly that, because you betrayed him, and he did it the cowardly way, by giving me clues that would lead me to Ronnie, but once we got to Ronnie, we got to you. You brought his games to an end, you see, by letting Ronnie do what he did, handing himself in to let you get away, because if you go, he thinks you’re leaving everyone behind. This new start didn’t involve Ben, he knew that, because you made sure his accomplice was locked up, until my brother freed him. Is that why you’ve carried on, because Ronnie is free?’

  She started to laugh, loud and shrill, and he could hear it echoing from where she was. ‘You think Ronnie was Ben’s accomplice?’ Another laugh. ‘I was in the bushes back then, Sam, not Ronnie.’

  Sam’s mouth dropped open. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, me. I watched how you took him, my darling Ben. We were doing special things and you took it all away from me. Cast your mind back, Sam, because I can remember it as clear as yesterday, because I play it in my mind all the time. The night you took Ben from me, I was watching you, Sam, and you were a coward then, your little torch trembling, scared that Ben was going to jump up and hit you.’

  Sam didn’t respond. Instead, he thought back eight years. The rustle of the leaves. The light footsteps.

  ‘Ben did that for me,’ she continued. ‘He gave himself up so that I could go. That is why Ben would never give me up.’

  ‘He thought you’d betrayed him.’

  ‘No, he would have realised soon, when I wrote to him. Then I could serve him again. Ben did it for me. Ronnie tried to do it for me, until your brother did his work and set him free. You need to do that for Ruby. If you love her as your sister, you would do it. But you won’t, because deep love is something you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Understand?’ Sam said, incredulous, angry. ‘Don’t try to make it a romantic thing, Bonnie and Clyde. Ben Grant has all the power. You have none. And if he loved you, as deeply as you think he does, he would let you go. That is love, that is sacrifice.’

  ‘I saw him sacrific
e himself, back when you arrested him.’

  ‘And how far did that get him? Locked up in a cell as you sleep with someone else, have his child, and then prepare to run away? And you wonder whether he was angry with you?’

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, and then she barked the words, ‘Just jump, to save Ruby,’ and hung up, leaving Sam looking at his handset, his hands trembling. He looked to where he had seen the glow but it had gone.

  He jumped, startled, when his phone rang again. It was Joe.

  ‘Joe! Have you found anything out?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you. How long have we got?’

  Sam looked at the departures board. ‘Two minutes.’

  ‘Try Mayfield station,’ Joe said. ‘They might be there. We’re on our way.’

  Sam turned round to the transport cops. ‘Where’s Mayfield station?’

  One of them pointed to the dark space where Sam had seen the glow. ‘Right there,’ he said. ‘The line to Eccles used to run through it. No trains for sixty years now. We have to go in there sometimes to clear out the tramps.’

  Sam looked. It was dark, foreboding, as if a blanket had smothered the streetlights and brightness of the surrounding buildings. But there was something else too that hadn’t been there before. Flickers of light, flashing beams in a black space, a void that the city lights didn’t quite reach.

  A tannoy announcement broke his thoughts. The next train was due. Sam focused on the building. Now he knew what it was, he could see the shape of the roof. Long ridges, broken in places, and the streetlights picked out where the windows used to be. The more he looked, the more he could see it for what it was. Mayfield station. Dormant for longer than he had been alive, just a shadow behind the bright lights, empty, a void where nothing passed through anymore. No trains. No people.

  Then he saw lights. Beams crossing through gaps in the roof. Two people with torches. There was someone there now.

  Sam put the phone back to his ear. ‘You’re right. That’s where they are. I saw her. She can see me too, but I don’t think she knows I’ve spotted her.’

  ‘We’re not far away.’

  ‘You’ve haven’t got time.’

  Silence for a few seconds, and then, ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

  Sam didn’t answer.

  There was a commotion behind him. Sam looked. It was DI Evans running along the platform, her identification out, two other detectives behind her, more out of shape, panting.

  ‘She’s at Mayfield station!’ Sam shouted, moving towards them. Evans looked. She must have seen the torch beams because she raised her hand and pointed back along the platform.

  Sam went to follow her, but she barked, ‘No, you’re too involved. Stay here.’

  He stalled, then turned on the spot, exasperated. He looked back to the view of the old station, a light breeze ruffling his hair, and then his gaze fell back to the tracks, in the direction of the oncoming trains. He didn’t have long to work out what to do.

  Seventy-Two

  ‘Is it near here?’ Joe said, craning forward towards the windscreen, driving past the bright taxi ranks of Piccadilly, a queue of black cabs to one side, the long stretch of streetlights along a glistening empty road ahead.

  ‘Just ahead, there on the right,’ Gina said.

  Joe saw where she was pointing, a large block of brick and dereliction. He skidded to the side of the road, his trims scraping along the kerb, opening his door and switching off the engine at the same time.

  ‘Come on! We haven’t got much time.’

  They ran towards Mayfield station, their steps loud in the wide, empty street, audible even over the steady rumble of idling taxi engines and the ping of the railway announcer from the station above the arches. The orange of the streetlights gave the glaze of the redbrick a deep glow.

  As they got to the corner, Joe saw why it had been used as it had by those who sought peace and quiet. It was the size of a football field but two storeys of Victorian brickwork high, with the main part of the station like a grand old house and the platforms hidden behind walls and stretching into the distance. The front was covered in displays for fleapit music concerts, fly-posted and repeated along the side, foliage making its way through some of the cracks. It would make people cross the road rather than walk past.

  ‘How do you get in?’ Gina said, looking frantically around.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joe replied. It was hard to see any access. The roof was crumbling, with the rafters visible in places, but the exterior looked solid, with bricked up window spaces and thick walls. As he looked, his eyes went to the high arches opposite, his attention attracted by the rumble of a train. There was a train platform, high and exposed, people watching them. Then he saw Sam, who was pointing straight ahead.

  ‘Sam’s there,’ he said, pulling on Gina’s arm.

  When she looked round, she said, ‘Thank God. He hasn’t jumped. Now let’s find Ruby.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘We can’t get in through the front, so we need to find another way,’ she said, and then she set off running again.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Down here, where Sam’s pointing,’ she called, racing down a street that ran alongside but disappeared into darkness, the streetlights broken.

  Joe sprinted to catch her, to get ahead. It wasn’t chivalry. Gina had been a cop and didn’t need his protection, but Ruby was his sister and he owed it to her to be first through the door.

  The thump of their footsteps became louder as they got further away from the lights, echoing between the high walls of the station and the student accommodation that rose tall next to it. Joe was trailing his hand along the bricks as he ran, worried that he would miss something in the gloom: some loose bricks or a well-hidden doorway. The brooding shadow of the building gave way to the night sky, and so they were running past the wasteland around it, still protected by a high wall.

  Then he stopped.

  ‘Hang on,’ Joe said, urgency in his voice. ‘The wall runs out here.’ He took some deep breaths as he felt along with both hands until they clanged onto a heavy metal plate. As he looked up, he could see the blades of razor wire against the sky. But then he saw something else: a flash of light, moving. Torch beams. ‘We need to get in there,’ he said, pushing against the metal plates.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ Gina said.

  ‘I’m not waiting for them.’

  As Gina spoke on the phone, Joe ran his hands along, looking for a weakness. His hands clanged against the metal, solid, unmoving. Then it changed. He looked round at Gina, her face barely visible in the darkness. His hand had struck corrugated metal. The sound had been different, a higher pitch, thinner metal, but more importantly, there had been movement. It hadn’t been much, just a swing inwards, but it had been enough.

  Joe pushed against it harder, and then there was the loud scrape of metal across stone and the corrugated sheet moved.

  ‘There’s a way in,’ he said.

  Joe didn’t wait for Gina to reason with him. He pushed harder at the metal. He ignored the noise and eased his body into the gap. He strained and grimaced until he was through, and held it so that Gina could join him.

  They stood there in the dark, trying to get some sense of where to find the way inside. The sounds from the street had gone and the view ahead disappeared into bushes and trees, nature reclaiming the space. There was a low wall at one side and the steady bubble of a stream. There was only one way and that was into the blackness ahead.

  Joe saw the flashes again, through the holes in the roof. ‘We need to keep moving,’ he whispered.

  ‘We could use our phones to light the way.’

  ‘No, they might see us. We need to surprise them, so that they don’t do anything rash. I don’t care where they go. I just want Ruby back.’

  They moved forward slowly, feeling with their feet as they went. The ground was uneven, with small mounds of rubble and tang
les of undergrowth. Leaves stroked his face, and he waited all the time for a hand to reach out for him.

  The darkness got deeper as they got closer to the building, which rose in front of them, blocking out the glow from the streetlights and station on the other side. Gina grabbed the back of his jacket so that they wouldn’t get separated. His footsteps were light and careful, but still he felt like he was shouting his arrival, from the race of his pulse to the short gasps of his breaths.

  He didn’t see the piece of metal sticking out, a long-discarded strip left to rust on a pile of stones. It caught his shin, cutting at the skin, making him shout out in pain.

  There was a pause as they stood there, Joe grimacing, unsure if they had been seen. Then a torch flashed from one of the windows upstairs, lighting them up, making them squint into the glare.

  They’d been spotted.

  ‘They’re here,’ Ronnie shouted, panicking, running back to Carrie.

  ‘Who’s here? Where?’ Carrie said.

  ‘Joe Parker, and a woman from his office.’

  ‘Shit.’ A pause, and then, ‘This is it, Ronnie. It’s over.’

  Ruby started to cry, but they were tears of hope. Joe had come for her. Then she pushed back against the pillar. There was someone in front of her. She could hear the breaths, close, watching.

  ‘What is it?’ Ruby said.

  Ruby yelped as the blindfold was pulled off. She blinked her vision clear and then looked around. Carrie was in front of her, on her haunches, breathing heavily, looking scared.

  ‘Your rescuer is here,’ Carrie said. ‘They’re going to be too late though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ruby’s lips quivered as she spoke. ‘No, please, I’m scared. Just let me go. You can run. Get away. I’ll tell them you spared me.’

  ‘No,’ Carrie said. ‘Sam hasn’t suffered enough.’

  Carrie reached into her pocket and produced a sheet of clear plastic. It looked strong, thicker than a shopping bag. ‘If your brother wants to find you, he can.’

  Ruby screamed, shrill in the large space, but it was cut short as Carrie forced the plastic sheet over her face and pulled it tight. Everything was blurred, out of focus, except that she could see the snarl of Carrie’s mouth as she pressed. She tried another scream, but it caught in her throat and she was unable to take a breath.