Scare Me

by Richard Parker

  Will made his way along the orange frontage of Serangoon’s ultra-modern sports stadium. He weaved around the brand new cars parked at its perimeter and the multi-coloured support struts of its triangular roof. A cooling breeze glanced him as he followed its curve.

  He knew his best recourse was to turn back and wait it out at the hotel. What purpose would shortening the gap between them have? Putting himself nearer to her would only present him with a harder choice than he had already. Could he watch while she prepared to kill again? When he considered what had happened at the Chicago apartment he suspected shadowing her gave him little advantage. Even without the GPS she had been allowing him to get steadily closer anyway. When she summoned Will this time would he be forced to witness death instead of just eavesdropping on it from behind a locked door?

  He kept marching; working his way clockwise to the east side of the stadium where he suspected someone’s life was running out. Would they have any more relevance to him than the others had? His mobile rang.

  “Will, what are you doing?” Carla had obviously been monitoring his progress.

  “I need to walk. You should have called me when she moved.”

  “Wait for her to release the location or she’ll suspect something.”

  He knew she was right. He had to hang back, no matter what that meant for the person targeted. He guessed that was why she’d let him sleep.

  “Will?”

  “How can we let it happen again?” His pace hadn’t slowed.

  “It’s them or Libby,” she said intractably.

  Will kept following the curve of the wall, his view ahead unchanging as if he were on a treadmill.

  “Go back to the room and wait.”

  He didn’t want to stop. Couldn’t be motionless. Will wanted to circle the stadium, circuit after circuit, keep kicking the pain and the thought of what he was allowing to happen a couple of feet in front of him.

  He didn’t have to kick it much further.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  22 Yio Chu Kang Terrace,

  Serangoon,

  Singapore,

  (545412)

  “Jesus wept.” Pope picked up the iPad and double-checked the address on the GPS with the one that had just appeared on the site. They corresponded.

  “Let me see.” Weaver took the iPad out of his hands.

  “She’s been straight with us.” It was official; they were spying on a serial killer. What they had would not only allow them to pre-empt her crimes, but locate her immediately after she’d committed them. It was unprecedented.

  Weaver’s nodding accelerated, his eyebrows making a break for his hairline. “So if that’s her…” He blinked rapidly and removed his gum. “Where’s Frost?”

  Will memorised the short route he had ahead of him and closed the laptop. “I’ll hang up now.” But he kept the phone pressed to his ear as he hastily began to skirt the remainder of the stadium wall.

  “You’re already so close.” Carla gulped breath as well. “She can’t hurt you. There’s still one more address before ours.” She was trying to convince herself as much as him.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I can.” He chopped his promise short, sliding his phone into the top pocket of his shirt. Somebody’s life was about to be taken and he had to believe there was a slim chance it could be saved.

  Will raced towards something he knew would overshadow his discovery of Jacob Franks. He could still hear the empty sound when he’d pulled the polythene package out of his skull.

  He thought of Molly Monro safe in the hands of the police and Libby still bound and gagged, alive even though they’d been given no evidence to prove it. It was all he could believe if his feet were to keep propelling him towards the woman who held her.

  He heard another set of footsteps, just out of time with his. Momentarily he thought it was the reverberation changing as he rounded the stadium, but suddenly a figure overtook him. It turned and stopped to block his path.

  “Give me the laptop.”

  Will almost ran into them and dragged his arms behind him to slow his impetus. His chest stopped an inch from the box cutter in the boy’s hand. His thumb knuckle glowed white as it clicked the blade out a few more notches for effect.

  He was white, skin pasty and face covered in downy teen stubble. When Will looked into his blue eyes he could see they were lacquered blank by his last fix. This he had expected in Ellicott City or Chicago, not here.

  The boy nodded at Will’s bounty as if he might have forgotten what had been demanded. “Laptop, motherfucker.”

  Even though he suspected the junkie was capable of cutting him for the money he could get for the laptop, Will didn’t feel an ounce of fear. Not after what he’d been put through in the last three days. He saw this registering in the boy’s hardening features and knew what would come next.

  “Your timing sucks,” Will said and simultaneously swiped the boy’s face with the front of the laptop. Will heard his nose burst against the hard plastic. His sinewy body arced into the gutter.

  He started running again, not even looking back at his mugger. The encounter was already dispensed with and his senses braced themselves for the real confrontation ahead. He left the boundary of the stadium and cut across a vast car park towards a busy main road. He darted between the stationary cars there and then the honking, moving vehicles as he crossed to the neighbourhood on the other side.

  He left the main road, heading up Yio Chu Kang Place. The terrace was the first turning off it on his left. It was a short street that appeared to be a mixture of residential blocks and one-storey industrial workshops. He could hear the hum of a vacuum somewhere, but the only visible occupants of the area were two red boiler-suited electricians kneeling by an open manhole. Neither of them looked up from the trunk of coloured wires they were examining. He sprinted to the right side of the street.

  He’d spotted a row of four grey doors across the front of the tan, cinder block building he recognised from the website. Squeezing past the cars on the small gravelled forecourt he checked the apartment numbers beside each one. Twenty-two was behind the second door on the sixth floor. Will yanked on the gloves before he jabbed the buzzer.

  No response or sound of the lock being released. He quickly opened his laptop and checked the GPS. She hadn’t moved. She was definitely inside. He tried again. This time he strained his ears and heard a muffled warble from within the building. It was definitely working so she knew he was there. Maybe she hadn’t reckoned on him arriving so quickly.

  He stepped away from the door and looked back at the electricians. They were still hunched over their work. Nobody to register his presence, she’d probably walked by them as well. Everyday activity belying what was happening only a few flights of stairs away.

  When there was no answer to his third buzz, Will guessed she’d probably left him another way in. He steered himself around the cars and headed for an alleyway at the side of the building.

  Doctor Ren’s lips chomped at the black tape over them. The action yanked his features down. He couldn’t see her. Didn’t know she was still in the surgery. The last Taser shock was just wearing off

  Poppy finished applying her cherry ChapStick and looked at the gold face of her watch. She dropped from her perch on the side of Ren’s desk. Mr Frost had better hurry. He wouldn’t hold on very long. Seconds rather than minutes.

  She picked up the sushi knife where she’d left it on top of his in-tray.

  Will had followed a creosoted fence down the side of the building and arrived at a small, enclosed courtyard at the back. To his right was some green, plastic garden furniture surrounded by flattened cigarette butts. He’d left the street sounds behind. The only noise he could hear now was water gurgling down the drainpipe beside the metal rear entrance.

  He pushed on the dented door and felt the bolt grate across the floor as it gave inwards. He had no doubt it had been left open for him. Before he could step inside, however, he heard a sharp squeal
from above.

  He looked up and saw a blurred, white object plummeting towards him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Will realised he couldn’t get out of the way in time and waited for the impact of whatever had fallen from above. After a few seconds, however, he opened his eyes and relaxed his shoulders. He examined the flagstones for signs of what he’d seen. There was nothing.

  He glanced up again. The object was suspended about twenty feet above his head. He was looking at the benign, alabaster features of a medical bust with Chinese characters on different subdivisions of the cranium. A white cord was tied around its neck. It spun slowly, the face circling him before it suddenly dropped a few inches more. Will quickly sidestepped it, but the bust remained in position. Beyond it was the open window to the room it was dangling from. Will assumed it was 22.

  He watched the hovering bust for a few seconds more before a guttural sound escaped the window. He hit the stairs, taking them two at a time. The motion rammed a hot bayonet of pain through his side. He paused only to suck in breath before he took the next flight up the windowless stairwell.

  Just before he reached the landing of the fourth floor, he heard an ominous smash. The bust had dropped. He didn’t know why, but he was positive its descent signified an end to whatever had been happening in the room. He gripped the handrail and hauled himself up.

  When he pushed the door to the sixth floor, he was in an aseptic, white corridor facing a wall of green, frosted glass. An elevator was further down. Underneath large Chinese characters on the translucent wall it also read:

  Zisuzi Treatment Centre

  Doctor Zhi Ping Ren CMD

  He tried the handles, but the doors didn’t give. It was still early in the morning. No patients yet. Then the lock whirred and opened.

  He pulled them wide and found himself looking at a small waiting room through a short corridor of floor-to-ceiling fish tanks. Will crossed the dark carpet, illuminated by their blue bulbs. He was standing in the centre of a small space edged by leather-seated chairs. The only sound was bubbles and the low murmur of pumps.

  A few prints of botanical species were the only decoration. The reception hatch was closed. He put his laptop on the counter. The patients’ entrance to the surgery was shut in front of him.

  A man’s jagged voice, speaking some kind of Chinese. The curses were stifled, only half their volume escaping. Will opened the door into the room beyond.

  The woman was leaning beside the open window, arms folded. She was wearing another high-collared, two-piece suit buttoned tightly to her slim frame, this one coral. Her hair was tied up in a bun. The door opened wider and he took in the rest of the surgery.

  A high-backed swivel chair with its occupant facing away from Will was positioned between them. She was looking blankly at whoever was seated in it. The chair trembled and Will could see the ankles of its prisoner bound with metal links. Chain was also looped around him to hold his shoulders in place.

  She tilted her gaze up to Will. “You might still be in time,” she said, her rapid words overlapping.

  She bounced her back from the wall and picked up the canary yellow clutch purse from the desk. “Although I think he’s going into shock.” Her concern for the man in the chair made it sound as if she hadn’t actually been responsible for his condition.

  Will stepped into the surgery and moved around the chair. The squat figure seated in it had long, straggly white hair that hung down from a broad, tanned bald patch. Agony was wringing out his Chinese features. In his hand was a bloodied knife. He moved his head in circles, his shuttered eyelids stretching and his tongue pushing against the black tape over his mouth.

  “I’d summon assistance right away,” she respectfully advised and moved past Will to the door. “Call a real doctor though.”

  “Wait!”

  She turned, analysing him from behind still features. “You should hurry. There’s no first aid kit here, but you could try the other office.” She nodded towards a second door then turned on her heel.

  “Who’s paying you? I’ll pay you!”

  “Everyone does,” she barely whispered as she left.

  “What are we supposed to have done? I’m not going on with this!” He wanted to mean every word. Will contemplated Dr Ren writhing against the chains. She knew he couldn’t follow her.

  He knelt in front of the bound man. His eyes hadn’t been cut from his head, but Will realised they’d been glued. One lid was sealed; the other was stuck to his eyeball. The skin of the lids stretched taut as they attempted to open. Why not do the same as she’d done to the others? Why take his sight, but allow him to live?

  “Try to calm down.” He touched Ren’s shoulder, but the doctor twisted his head sharply to the side. “I’m here to help you.”

  He continued to squirm, incoherent words inflating the tape at his lips and erratic breath sucking it in again. His body started to buck.

  Will ripped away the tape and Ren screamed. Will darted to the desk. “I’m calling you an ambulance.”

  Ren coughed violently and dark fluid jetted from the back of his windpipe. Will snatched up the handset and held it to his ear. Where was the blood on the knife and his fingers from? The blade dropped to the floor as his body spasmed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The operator patched Will through to emergency services. While he relayed the location, he watched in horror as Ren’s neck muscles locked. His head pressed into the back of the chair. As soon as a female voice assured him an ambulance had been dispatched, Will dropped the handset and attempted to release him.

  The metal was biting tight into the doctor’s chest and was secured there by a small padlock. His hands weren’t bound, but trembled in his lap where the pressure of the chain held them. His bloodied right fist clenched, the fingers of his left gripped tightly onto the tattered viscera protruding from the slit in his stomach.

  “They’re on their way.” Will picked up the sushi knife from where it had fallen. His gloved fingers slipped on the bloodied handle as he tried to insert the blade between the links and Ren’s shuddering rib cage. If he could just prise a gap to give him some room to breathe…

  The chain had been wound too tightly to his frame. Ren’s bound feet stomped against the carpet and a low growl chased out another geyser of blood.

  Will ditched the knife, wrenched open two wall-mounted cabinets, but found only rows of glass vials. He yanked the drawers in the desk and pens rattled against golf balls and tees. Then he recalled what she’d said about the first aid kit.

  Crossing the room he entered the reception office, frantically scanning it for an implement he could use to sever the chain.

  Will found a familiar face staring at him from the back wall. Not one expression within a black frame, but a whole gallery of them screwed there. There were photographs of him with Carla and Libby, images of him at Ingram events with the company’s name and logo emblazoned on pulpits and plaques, and then there were the more recent shots. He’d been captured walking up the driveway of the house in Ellicott City, snapped sitting in the cab he’d commandeered outside the residence in Bel Air and fleeing the apartment in Chicago. She’d waited for him and taken the pictures. This time nothing was to be hidden within the crime scene.

  Below the gallery, positioned for his convenience, was a can of petrol with a Zippo lighter lying on top of its metallic screw cap.

  Ren gagged in the surgery. Will tore his gaze from the wall and focussed on what he needed to do. He dragged more drawers, tipping out their contents and finding only stationery. He threw the doors wide to a metallic locker. Below the coats was a blue toolbox. He slid it clear and opened it, hinging out the cantilever drawers and discarding the boxes of fuses and tacks in the top section. Underneath he found some flimsy pliers and a larger pair of wire cutters.

  When he got back to the surgery the doctor was still alive, but his lips were tugged back from his gums and there was no sound coming from his mouth.


  “Hold on…”

  He knelt beside Ren again, jamming his fingers under the chain so he could draw breath. Ren briefly turned his distorted expression towards him. His sealed eyelids strained against the tension and the interior of his mouth glowed bright red.

  The padlock was too substantial to tackle so Will clamped the wire cutters round a link of the chain. His wrists and the heels of his hands ached as he increased pressure on the metal. He could feel the handles bending as his body shook. He ground his teeth, the plastic grip biting into the muscles of his hand. The cutters weren’t even scratching its surface.

  He kept trying, swapping hands and his body going rigid about the titanium shackles even when he knew Ren’s movements were only because of his.

  Will dropped from him, stumbling back into the desk. His wrists throbbed angrily. The doctor’s chin was fixed to his chest, his strands of hair overhanging his dead features.

  Only Will’s chest struggled for breath now. He was alone in the room.

  The entry telephone chirped in reception and the noise seemed absurd. Will moved unsteadily to the far window and looked down at the red and white ambulance. He hadn’t even heard a siren.

  He had to go. They’d be coming round the back soon. Doctor Ren, whatever significance he had, was the one he’d nearly saved. How could he leave him when the last air was still escaping his body? He thought of Monro’s wife and her breath on his face.

  The ambulance men tried the entry phone again. Libby couldn’t afford for him to wait.

  His eyes scoured Ren’s slumped corpse. There was a signet ring on his finger. It was inset with an identical amethyst stone to the pendant.

  The entry phone went silent.

  Will seized Doctor Ren’s lifeless and bloodied right fist and pulled the index finger from the ball it was curled into. But the ring only slid halfway up it before it got jammed behind the skin of his knuckle.