by Mosby, Steve
The lifts …
I ran harder, but got there as the doors slid shut—just too late to jam my fingers between them. I punched the ‘call’ button over and over, but it was no use. The lift was starting on its way up. I hammered on the closed doors anyway, and shouted—
‘Tony!’
—then remembered the stairs, two doors further down the corridor, and set off again, reaching them a few seconds later. I slammed through into the echoing stairwell and headed up, skipping steps, using the banisters to swing myself round at each small landing. Counting off the floors, trying to imagine myself keeping pace with the lift, even though I couldn’t possibly be.
Still not sure what was happening here.
At the fourth floor, I half collided with an orderly trotting down, footfalls echoing.
‘Hey!’
I was already past him, plunging upwards.
‘Police.’
I hit the fifth floor and pulled open the door, realising as I did that I’d slipped my phone in my pocket without disconnecting the call. As I moved in the direction of the lift, I picked it out.
‘Laura, I’m still here. Are you—’
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
‘Don’t know yet. Get backup to the hospital. Wilkinson’s here, and something’s not right. He saw me and started running.’
I reached the lift: the doors were open. Empty. Wilkinson hadn’t passed me, so he’d probably gone further on. Down towards the maternity wards.
‘What? You mean Tony Wilkinson?’
‘Yes.’ I started off. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. But Professor Joyce said Marie Wilkinson was an anomaly. She was the only person killed inside. Not sure why Wilkinson’s run, but there’s something going on with him. And he’s in here somewhere.’
I didn’t wait for a reply—just pushed the phone back into my pocket and concentrated on where I was going. The maternity ward: that was where Rachel was. The door was magnetically sealed. You needed to push a button and give your details over the intercom to get in. Wilkinson had no business going in there. He wouldn’t even be allowed in.
But I had to check she was okay.
That they were.
I buzzed the intercom for the maternity ward. A second later, the door opened without check. Christ. There was no way Wilkinson could know about my wife and son, but perhaps he had panicked, tried to hide. I had to make sure.
I held up my badge at the first nurse I saw.
‘Police. Nobody in or out now except me, understand?’
‘What?’
I gestured behind me, angry. ‘Lock that door. Keep it locked. Anybody entered in the last few minutes?’
‘No …’
She wasn’t sure.
‘Keep it that way.’
I headed around the corner. There were various internal wards here, all open, and I’d left Rachel in the nearest one last night. There were six spaces, three to each side, all divided off from each other by green curtains. She was on the middle on the left, and the curtains were closed across the front. I found the join, moved it to one side and peered in.
Rachel was lying on her back, sleeping. Her head was tilted to one side, mouth slightly open, covers gently rising and falling. In the cot beside the bed, our son was sleeping too, almost mirroring her position. So small and vulnerable. But both of them were okay.
Relief—illogical but real—flooded through me.
‘Stay safe,’ I whispered.
Then I closed the curtains and ran back to the entrance, where the nurse I’d spoken to was standing guard.
‘Nobody in,’ I repeated. ‘Nobody out.’
‘I know.’
‘The police are on their way.’
Back out in the corridor, I headed down to the special care baby unit—realising that of course Wilkinson wouldn’t have gone after Rachel. That was the whole fucking point. He didn’t know my wife had been pregnant, and that was why he’d reacted the way he had outside. I’d known he had a reason to be here, but he could only think of one possible explanation for my presence. He’d thought I must be here for him.
I still didn’t understand why. Regardless, he’d run from me. He’d come back for …
The special care baby unit.
Obviously, this door was also sealed. I buzzed the intercom and waited. A moment later, the intercom crackled and—once again—the door simply opened. I pushed in quickly. As I entered, I reached under my jacket and unclipped the button on my gun holster. Not retrieving the weapon. Just being ready if I needed it.
You won’t need it.
But I might.
The reception desk was a little way down, past a number of closed doors. Two nurses were stationed behind it, and I pulled out my badge as I reached them.
‘Wilkinson,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
The nurse nearest to me folded up her newspaper slowly, perhaps shocked by my sudden entrance.
‘What …?’
‘Tony Wilkinson.’ But she still looked blank. I struggled to remember what he’d said when we interviewed him. ‘The baby’s called Jake. Is he here? The father, I mean.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has anyone come in over the last couple of minutes?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ Flustered, she checked a sheet she’d found, then gestured back the way I’d come. ‘Jake Wilkinson is in five-two-oh-two. It’s just back that way.’
‘Keep the main door sealed. Nobody out.’
I moved to the room she’d indicated, stood to one side of the frame, then turned the handle and pushed the door open in one quick gesture.
‘Wilkinson?’
He wasn’t here.
I stepped inside. It wasn’t a big room—little larger than the curtained-off bed space I’d left Rachel in down the corridor. Jake Wilkinson was lying in a Perspex crib at the far end, on his back, limbs splayed, sleeping peacefully. Around him, various pieces of machinery monitored the tubes and wires attached to his body. I was shocked by how tiny and weak he looked. My son, although born later, was technically the same age and yet twice the size.
Do you know what Marie used to tell me about Jake?
I remembered Wilkinson’s tear-stained face when we’d talked to him in the suite.
She used to say that she couldn’t wait to meet him.
What I’d thought at the time, but not said, was that at least he had his son. That as horrible as it was, it could have been worse.
And yet he hadn’t come here.
I headed back out, closing the door gently behind me. A doctor was coming down the corridor from reception, a worried expression on his face.
‘Let me out,’ I told him, holding up my badge again. The police are on their way. Don’t let anybody else in until they get here. Nobody.’
He buzzed the main door open for me, and I stepped out into the corridor, wondering what the fuck to do now. Wilkinson had to be here somewhere. We’d have to lock down and search the whole building. God only knew what he’d—
That was when I heard the screams.
They were coming from the direction of the lift. I reached it seconds later. Several people were bunched here: nurses and doctors, surrounding a figure lying on the floor, working urgently. Another woman was standing to one side, dressed in overalls, holding her mouth in shock.
‘Police,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
The doctors working at the figure on the floor ignored me. The woman—a janitor, I realised—lowered her hands.
‘The storeroom,’ she said. ‘He just … burst out.’
I looked towards where she was gesturing: a storeroom, full of mops and buckets and blankets, its door hanging open. Right opposite the lift.
The doors were closed. He was gone.
Fifty-Five
‘HICKS?’ LAURA SAID. ‘WHAT’S going on?’
‘Wilkinson’s assaulted somebody at the hospital. An orderly. Not sure how badly.’
‘Officers arriving there
now. Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I think he’s gone.’
‘Where are you?’
Where was I? I was holding the mobile phone in one hand, the steering wheel with the other, powering the car quickly but carefully between the remaining strands of morning traffic. It was an unmarked vehicle, but I’d stuck the transit light on top and set it going. It wasn’t doing me much good,
‘I’m on my way to his house.’
‘His house? Surely he wouldn’t go there?’
‘He might. I haven’t got any better ideas.’
I’d picked a main road, busier but wider, with better scope to manoeuvre. The shops were flashing past. I blared my horn at a van in front that wasn’t shifting out of my way, watched it lean slowly off into the pavement, then accelerated past.
I said, ‘If he’s planning to run, there might be stuff he needs to get first.’
Not his son, though.
That much was obvious. He was sharp: he’d figured there was no way past me out front of the hospital, so he’d led me back inside, made me think I knew where he was going. But it seemed that he’d never wanted Jake …
Jesus, was that the whole point?
‘Did we check Wilkinson’s alibi?’ I said. ‘Not for all the murders. Just for Marie Wilkinson. For that morning.’
‘Hang on.’
I tried to remember the chronology—we’d made him go over it enough fucking times. Left for work at eight thirty, or thereabouts. Phone call logged from Marie Wilkinson’s neighbour fifteen minutes later. Police on the scene by nine …
‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘But we couldn’t confirm it for sure. He said he got there at nine, but nobody saw him. He had an alibi for some of the others. He—oh, Christ, Hicks.’
‘What?’
‘He works at the army base.’
I nodded to myself. ‘The General.’
‘He’s a janitor,’ Laura said. ‘But why would he get Miller to—’
‘Static.’
‘What?’
‘Static.’
I blared the horn again. Get out of the fucking way.
‘You remember what Joyce said—that the pattern might be hidden amongst the clusters? Well, it was. Except it wasn’t a pattern at all. It was just one murder. Everything else was the static to hide it from us.’
It was unimaginable, but it was the only explanation I could think of. Wilkinson had paid Miller to provide us with so many killings that it became impossible to keep track of every detail, every alibi. The people who have died mean nothing to me. And of course they hadn’t. Only one person had, but by the time he’d killed her—him, not James Miller—that victim appeared to us to be just another part of the series. His uncrackable code.
‘That’s why he got Miller to videotape the killings,’ I said. ‘Nothing to do with wanting to sell them. He just wanted to see them. Study them. So he could make the one he carried out look identical. Or as close as possible.’
The only indoor murder.
I wanted to punch the steering wheel in frustration at having missed it.
The truth is, I still don’t know quite when it will begin myself. That is why it’s going to work.
That is why you’ll never catch me.
‘But Hicks, this is …’
‘I know. Incomprehensible.’
Evil.
And although I didn’t believe in that, I didn’t know another word to describe what Wilkinson had done. It didn’t fit anywhere in my architecture of crime. It wasn’t from any kind of room at all, no matter how dark. It was something from the outside.
‘I know,’ I said again. ‘I need backup, just in case.’
‘They’re on their way. I’m heading out too.’
‘Good.’
I knew I would get there first.
But I sped up anyway.
Five minutes later, I arrived at the semi-detached house where, until last week, Tony and Marie Wilkinson had lived. That whole time, she must have believed they were in a happy, loving relationship, expecting their first child together, when the opposite was true. The whole time he’d been planning, ever so carefully, to get rid of her. To get rid of his son.
And it had all been for nothing. His plan hadn’t worked, because he’d been disturbed before he could finish the only murder he’d intended to start. Jake had survived.
His car was outside the house—or at least, a car was: a silver hatchback parked across the driveway. It looked abandoned. I pulled close in alongside it, blocking it in as best I could, then got out and crouched down, surveying the house. I was vaguely familiar with its internal layout from my last visit, but the exterior was a different matter. How many exits did I need to take into account?
There was a driveway to the left, ending in a garage, with a wooden door beside it that appeared to lead off behind the house, presumably into the back garden. The house itself was two storeys. The front door was shut. There was a living room to the right of it, I remembered, and a small kitchen to the left, where we’d found Marie Wilkinson, and where the desperate paramedics had been forced to deliver Jake Wilkinson. I hadn’t been upstairs. Looking up to the first floor now, there were two windows of equal size. Both sets of curtains were closed.
He won’t be here.
Because, as Laura had said, why would he be?
And yet, the thought that he might be escaping out of the back of the house even now was too much for me. He couldn’t be allowed to get away, not after what he’d done.
I wasn’t going to let him. And so, for the second time in my career—and the second time in a week—I took my gun out of its holster and started forward.
Making my way around the car, I kept my gaze focused on the front door but took in the areas around it too, trying to catch any movement in the windows or the driveway, and then headed up the path as quickly as possible, crouching low, gun held double-handed, pointed at forty-five degrees, ready to raise it.
My heart was thumping, and I tried to breathe slowly to keep myself calm. But when the front door opened without a sound, my heartbeat went up again.
Someone’s here.
Unless he’d just left it unlocked.
Peering inside, the house felt silent and empty. There was nobody in the hallway. Nobody visible at the top of the stairs.
I stepped in, immediately covering the open kitchen on the left. The last time I’d been here, bloodstains had been swirled and crusting on the floor. In the intervening time, someone had cleaned the blood away, but the air still smelled faintly of it. A couple of flies had settled on the tiles and were turning slowly, as though pinned in place.
No sign of Wilkinson.
I cleared the rest of the ground floor quickly, sweeping the living room and then the kitchen at the rear of the house. The window there gave a smudged view of the back garden, enough to tell it was fenced off on all sides. Nobody in sight. I tried the back door anyway, but it was locked.
I moved back to the staircase and scanned the first-floor landing again. Nobody to see. I listened carefully, and heard nothing.
He wasn’t here.
Sometimes you just know. The silence has a different quality when a place is empty. He had probably been back here, because the front door was open, but I’d missed him.
In the distance, I could hear sirens.
I raised my gun anyway and started up the stairs, which creaked softly under my feet. I slowly lowered it to horizontal as I reached the landing, turning to face the small hallway. There were three doors up here: two open, one closed. The open ones revealed a bathroom and the main bedroom, both empty. I approached the closed one more cautiously, keeping to one side of it as best I could. Just in case. Took one hand off the gun to turn the handle and push—
Wilkinson was here.
He was standing with his back to me, head bowed so far that I could only see his neck and the bottom of his crew cut, gelled black by sweat.
He was dressed in full military regalia—a starche
d-straight dark-green suit with red tassels circling the shoulders. The General. He looked impossibly broad. His arms were at his sides, slightly away from his hips. In his right hand, he was holding a gun.
I stepped away to one side of the door frame and pointed my own gun at the centre of his back.
‘Tony.’
I said it softly, not wanting to startle him, but he showed no signs of hearing me. Didn’t move the single muscle it would probably have taken for me to open fire on him right there and then.
I looked around the room.
It was a nursery—or the makings of one, anyway. The walls were painted a childish sky-blue, but needed a second coat, and there was a half-constructed crib resting in one corner. Opposite, against the wall, there was a desk with a computer monitor on it. At the far end, beyond Wilkinson himself, the cream curtains were closed, catching the morning sun and filling the room with soft light. To him, if he had his eyes open, it probably felt like facing heaven.
‘Tony. Put the gun down.’
Again, no response. I edged even further to the side of the door frame, as far as I could get while still maintaining my aim. Despite his stillness, or maybe because of it, there was a tension to the air. The feeling that something might explode at any moment.
I forced myself to ignore the sensation. It was the kind that can hypnotise you if you let it. It can get you killed.
‘What are you doing, Tony?’
No reply—but the answer was obvious enough. He knew we’d discovered the truth, and that sooner or later we’d catch him, so, rather than running, he’d returned here to get changed into this uniform and wait. He could have ambushed me if he’d wanted—or tried to, at least—but he hadn’t. Which meant that, despite the gun, he wasn’t planning to take anyone else down with him. But he hadn’t surrendered either.
Suicide by cop.
‘Tony …’
‘He would have been proud of me, you know.’
He sounded almost wistful.
‘Who would?’
‘My father.’
‘I doubt that somehow.’
‘Oh, but you didn’t know him.’
Outside, the sirens were louder now. Almost here, perhaps. Not that it would solve anything.