Day of the Dead: A gripping serial killer thriller (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Mind if I make a phone call?’ he asked.

  She shrugged.

  He dialled Carol White’s mobile number and two seconds later the ring tone sounded in his ear. He withdrew the phone from his ear and listened hard.

  Buzz. His eyes flew to a closed door opposite the bathroom – a spare bedroom, he assumed. Half a buzz.

  Cole disconnected and Carol White slipped in through the half-open front door.

  ‘Carol, what are you doing here?’ asked Alice with an undisguised note of alarm.

  ‘Clearing my name, Alice. Clearing your name, too, I hope. There’s no ringing phone here,’ said Carol. ‘But I’m sure I heard a buzzing from behind that door.’

  ‘Open that door, please, Alice,’ said Cole.

  ‘This is really most irregular...’ said Alice.

  ‘The door, open it.’

  ‘You have a search warrant?’

  ‘No,’ said Cole.

  Alice stood in front of Cole, engaged his whole attention with her eyes.

  ‘Then go and get a search warrant, come back and you can go through everything.’

  ‘I’m not going for a search warrant,’ said Cole. ‘I heard the action of a mobile phone behind the door when I dialled a suspect number.’

  ‘And I’m not going anywhere until you open that door,’ said Carol, standing directly in front of it.

  ‘Come away from there, please, Carol. This is my home and you have no right to come barging in here and opening anything.’

  Eyes closed, Carol pressed her forehead against the door, took a deep draught of air through her nostrils.

  ‘I can smell Fendi Uomo,’ she whispered, and her voice was soft and sad. She turned the handle and pushed the door open. Her husband Kevin was sitting on the bed.

  He sprang up. ‘It’s not what you think it is.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I came round here to see Alice because I was worried about you. She spends so much time every day with you and knows you like the back of her hand. I wanted to find a way back in, a way we could get together again, so I was asking Alice for her advice, pure and simple.’

  ‘Where are your shoes and socks?’

  ‘I got drenched in the storm...’

  ‘Shut up, Kevin!’ Carol snapped. ‘Give me your mobile.’

  ‘Which mobile?’

  ‘The one poking out of the breast pocket of your T-shirt.’

  ‘Why do you want my mobile phone?’

  ‘Because I do.’

  ‘Can you all just go!’ Alice cut across the group.

  ‘No I won’t give you my mobile.’ Anger flooded his face. ‘You’ve been a bloody fucking nightmare to live with for months on end.’

  ‘I know. And I’ve apologised. Over and over. And I told Alice in confidence because I thought she was my friend.’ She looked at Alice. ‘And it’s so kind of you to give my poor husband respite from the screaming harpy he has to endure at home. I really can’t thank you enough.’

  She span round to face her husband. ‘The phone, now.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m going!’

  Cole muscled his way into the door frame. ‘You’re going nowhere with that phone,’ he commanded. ‘You give it to me or I call Professional Standards, who are sitting right outside, right now.’

  The blood drained from Kevin White’s face. ‘You’re shitting me?’

  Cole looked at Carol. ‘Go and get them, Carol, while I wait here...’

  She left the flat, glancing back over her shoulder in stark accusation at her husband and her friend.

  Cole held his hand out. Kevin White took the phone from his T-shirt pocket and handed it to Cole.

  ‘Are you both involved in this or were you acting alone, Kevin?’

  ‘Barney, I swear to God, this has got nothing to do with me,’ said Alice.

  ‘Get your hands off my arm, Alice!’ said Cole.

  Kevin White laughed. ‘Nothing to do with you?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Kevin, it’s got nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You were the one who cloned Carol’s SIM card so you could leak information while hiding behind her identity! You said getting her kicked off the force for corruption was the best way to get her out of our way!’

  ‘That’s a malicious allegation, Kevin, and it’s down to you to prove it!’

  Outside, the wind howled at the windows of Ryman’s Court but underneath the tempest, there were two distinct flat noises.

  The sound of two car doors slamming shut, one after the other.

  103

  00.36 am

  As Clay hurtled from Lance Lane across the junction with Childwall Road and past the Picton Tower, the answer machine on her home landline kicked in for the fourth time since she’d fled from Trinity Road for Edge Lane at speeds in excess of eighty miles per hour.

  ‘There’s me, Mum and Dad. But we’re not here. When the phone beeps, leave a message. Thank you.’

  Philip’s voice stopped and Eve Clay was filled with unbearable sadness.

  Her windscreen wipers swiped back and forth throwing sheet after sheet of cold rain from the glass.

  She glanced at her iPhone on the dashboard and felt a hand was squeezing her heart tighter and tighter with every word. On three occasions, before the beep sounded, she had closed down the call and dialled Thomas’s mobile to hear his voice telling her he wasn’t available to take her call.

  ‘Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?’

  In the background, on Church Road she estimated, she heard the siren of another police car following her.

  This time when the tone sounded, she said, ‘Thomas and Philip...’

  The receiver in her house was lifted.

  ‘Hello!’ It was Thomas, a little out of breath.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  In the background, the police car with its siren blaring, was making ground on her.

  ‘Philip couldn’t sleep so I thought the old tricks are the best. He’s been in the back seat while we went for a spin. He’s fast asleep now.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Flopped over my shoulder. I’m just about to put him to bed. What’s going on there?’ Anxiety crept into his voice. ‘It sounds like you’re in a high-speed chase.’

  ‘Give me a moment, Thomas, please.’

  She could see the advancing lights of the car behind her in the wing mirror. The siren was coming closer to her and they were both getting nearer to Edge Lane. Clay slowed down a little, wound her window down. She stuck out her right arm, warrant card in hand, and urged the pursuing vehicle to come to her.

  As it pulled alongside her, she pointed with her warrant card at the siren. ‘Off! Off! Off!’ she shouted.

  She looked at the clock on her dashboard. Nine minutes had passed since Truman had started the countdown.

  The constable killed the siren as they both crawled through the red light at the junction with Edge Lane, Clay heading in the direction of the Littlewoods Building and the constables towards the assembly point for the M62 end of Edge Lane.

  ‘Where are you going, Eve?’ She heard the deepest anxiety in her husband’s voice.

  ‘Reported crime scene. We’re going in mob-handed as you can no doubt tell.’

  ‘You’re calling me when you’re on your way to a crime scene. That’s something you’ve never done before.’

  ‘I don’t think the crime scene’s going to be that big a deal. I’m calling because I was worried because I couldn’t get hold of you.’

  ‘You’re in danger, Eve. That’s why you’re calling.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I just wanted to know you were both safe and I know that now so I’m getting off the line and back to work.’

  He was silent for a moment, and she knew he didn’t believe her.

  ‘He’s starting to stir,’ Thomas said.

  Clay crossed the junction with Rathbone Road and on to the descending path of Edge Lane. The outer edges of the rectangular to
wer of the Littlewoods Building loomed in the partial distance and she wondered how on earth she was going to get inside.

  ‘Be careful, Eve.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be careful about. My back’s well covered.’

  She saw Hendricks’s car ahead of her, slowing as he approached the Littlewoods Building, and in her head she heard the ticking of a clock.

  ‘I love you and I love Philip and that was a great idea to take him out in the car to get him to sleep.’

  ‘And we love you. And we need you back safely. Promise me you won’t take any unnecessary risks.’

  ‘I promise you I won’t take any unnecessary risks. I never take unnecessary risks.’

  She heard Philip stirring, a fragment of sleep babble escaping his lips.

  ‘Kiss him for me, tuck him up extra tight.’ She pulled up behind Hendricks’s car.

  ‘Phone me as soon as you can,’ said Thomas. ‘I love you and I always will.’

  His words caused something to come loose deep inside her memory.

  She ended the call and pocketed her iPhone. From the glove compartment she took out a large torch and hurried on to the pavement.

  As Clay and Hendricks ran towards the Littlewoods Building, she asked, ‘How have the troops been organised?’

  ‘Maggie Bruce is at the M62 end of Edge Lane and Clive Winters has got the city-centre side. They’re fanning out officers north and south across the length of the main road with a view to looking for Justin Truman as he looks in picture from Mexico. How are we going to get in?’

  ‘You’re not, Bill. I am. If you go in, he’s told me he’ll blow the whole building. Listen.’

  Beneath the wind and rain, she heard piano music from inside the building.

  ‘That’s how I’m going to get in. Follow the music. Wait here.’

  At the side of the building, beneath the row of tall rectangular windows, she saw a closed door. The closer she came to the door the louder the music came at her.

  Justin Truman has used music to show me the way in, she thought as she opened the door and Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ flooded out of the Littlewoods Building.

  104

  00.40 am

  As Stone arrived at the Littlewoods Building, he saw Hendricks inspecting the ground with his torch. Pulling up outside Clay’s car, Stone opened his door and stepped out. ‘Bill, what’s happening?’

  ‘Eve’s gone in there. We’re to wait out here,’ replied Hendricks.

  Stone’s phone rang and, as he connected the call, he sensed through the tense silence that he was on the line to Samantha Wilson.

  ‘Is that you, Sammy?’

  ‘Can you come to my mother’s house on Dundonald Road?’

  ‘I’m really busy right now. I’m going to have to hang up.’

  ‘No! Wait! As soon as you can, come to my mum’s. Please?’

  ‘It could be hours.’

  ‘I’ve got an important piece of information for your investigation into my father’s murder.’

  ‘I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere and nor is my mother until you do.’

  Stone closed the call down and listened as ‘Für Elise’ drifted from the Littlewoods Building. ‘I’m going round the other side of the building,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t go in, whatever you do. Truman claims he’s got a bomb in there. He’ll detonate it if you go in.’

  As Stone ran to the far side of the building, his anxiety levels spiked. He imagined ‘Für Elise’ being drowned by the sound of a massive explosion and his gut turned over and he felt Samantha Wilson’s presence under his scalp, crawling into his brain.

  How quickly things had changed. As much and as intensely as he’d once liked her, he now loathed her with a mounting passion.

  105

  00.41 am

  Deep in the darkness of the derelict building, there was light.

  Clay turned on her torch and inspected the space in front of her. She saw something running at great speed towards her. The mouse stopped, looked up at her and did an about-turn, scampering away and into the darkness to her left.

  She checked her watch. Seven minutes.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted but knew her voice was lost in the vastness of the building and the swelling piano music.

  She inspected the ground, the wooden floor, saw it was full of holes and depressions and felt sweat roll down her spine.

  Drawn by her torchlight, a large black moth flapped towards her face and she swiped it away as she jogged towards the large light in the distance, checking the floor so that she avoided trip hazards.

  She heard what sounded like a human voice beneath the music and near the light.

  Clay stopped for a moment, feeling a presence behind her, pressing in on her from the dark. She heard the clicking of a human tongue, making a steady tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock... The sound died as quickly as it had come to life and, as it vanished, the clear sense she’d had that someone was following her evaporated.

  ‘Für Elise’ stopped and, in the ensuing silence, she heard a man’s voice cry, ‘Help!’

  She turned completely cold, as if she was walking out of an icy lake and the clothes beneath her coat were sticking to her body. Inside her own skin, she shrank from her full height to the size she had been as an eight-year-old girl.

  The darkness seemed to deepen, the source of light shrinking into the distance, and the building mushroomed around her. She smelt a wisp of smoke and sulphur and felt as though she was buried alive in some massive coffin.

  Turn around! She heard her own voice inside her, quietly urging her to go back and out of the abyss. She checked her watch. 00.42. Six minutes.

  She heard the man crying, recognised the unique sound of his distress as her memory of a hot day in autumn 1986 came alive.

  The sound of Christopher Hawkins’s tears followed her as she climbed back over the wall of St Michael’s Catholic Care Home for Children. Behind her, Jimmy Peace battered him in the garden, in the moments after he had rescued her from him in the shed.

  Horrors ignited inside her; deeply buried childhood memories flared into life but she forced them beneath the surface of her mind.

  Back in the moment, and without deciding to do so, she found herself jogging towards the light. As she did so, her sense of her own body swelled up to adult proportions once more.

  The opening notes of ‘Für Elise’ rang out from the silence again and she almost leaped from the floor.

  She kept combing the floor with the light of her torch and saw a stray piece of thin blue rope, of the same kind used to tie Frances Jamieson to a chair.

  She kept moving, seeing her own breath materialise on the air like milk, as she made out the nature of the main source of light. It was a spotlight, high on a stand and pointing down at a diagonal angle.

  She paused, saw a hole in the ground, the size of a large paddling pool.

  Clay turned her torch back towards the way she had come and all she could see was the dark, with no visible hint of the door through which she had entered the building or how far she had travelled.

  Her feet and legs started to fill with a fast-setting glue as she used the torchlight to negotiate her way around the edge of the hole. Beneath Beethoven’s music, a chorus of squealing rose up from the disconnected heating pipes in the basement as a pack of rats reacted to the influx of light and streamed in a dozen directions back into the darkness.

  A drop of cold water hit her dead centre on her forehead and sent ripples through the fabric of her brain.

  Keep moving! Keep moving! Keep moving! she urged herself, knowing that this was the only option, as the music of time blended with Beethoven’s melody.

  Tock-a-tock-a-tock-a-tock-a-tock-tock tock tock tock tock...

  She made out two stationary figures seated beneath the spotlight and, as the music grew louder, she heard the blood pounding inside her ears.

  Moths circled the spotlight, dots of li
fe flirting with certain death, and she felt like one of them as she tuned in to the sound of a man crying.

  Through the tall rectangular windows, a storm-blown cloud revealed the moon and, as a beam of light fell into her path, she could see the distance she had to cross. She looked at her watch as she advanced.

  A little over two minutes.

  Jesus, she thought, thinking about the distance she had crossed to get where she was. Jesus, I’m going to die in here with them.

  She sprinted, using the ethereal light of the moon to guide her, and hoping with all her being that the sky threw no more clouds across its silver surface.

  She stumbled, her ankle bending but not quite twisting as the sole of her left ankle was caught in a crack in the ground.

  ‘Police!’

  She walked quickly towards the figures. The fat man on the left was howling but the thin man on the right was completely silent. ‘Stay calm!’ she commanded as she walked between their naked backs.

  She shone torchlight up and down the fat man’s back, saw the elegant knots on the blue rope that tied his legs and feet to the chair, the blood on his shoulder where Justin Truman had carved Vindici and the black box ticking on his leg, red digits counting down minutes and seconds. 01:54.

  For a heartbeat, Clay looked deeply into his watery blue eyes and delivered a simple verdict.

  ‘Christopher Hawkins!’

  He looked away.

  Clay trained the light on the thin man but there were no knots, no slender blue ropes binding him to the chair or sign of a bomb strapped to his body. She took in the whole of his unmoving form and heard herself say, ‘Mannequin’.

  She knelt down and carefully undid the three straps that held the ticking bomb on Hawkins’ legs. Standing up, she gripped the black box and placed it down carefully on the ground as 01:41 blinked into 01:40.

  Clay looked back at the distance she had covered on entering the building and knew, with sickness in her core, that there was no way back in time.

  She stooped and started undoing the knots on his ankles and wrists. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘Over there.’