by Paul Finch
Heck wasn’t completely convinced by that, but what did he know? He had long-term ambitions to join CID, but at present he was a mere uniform, so his opinions weren’t required. Most likely they were right anyway. They’d had all sorts of shrinks and crime analysts working on the case. Heck had read the progress bulletins with interest, and though their authors acknowledged there could be no certainty about this, they all affirmed that predators of this sort rarely stopped of their own volition. The Spider might be lying low, taking a voluntary break from his nocturnal hobby, but most likely something had happened to him.
‘Anyway, don’t let Crawford get you down,’ Shawna said with another yawn. ‘Everyone knows what a self-important prick he is, sitting up there in his central-heated palace, acting like he’s running the whole show. The most excitement he gets in the day is bollocking bobbies.’
‘I’ll get another bollocking later, when Murph nabs me,’ Heck said.
Murph, or Bill Murphy, was the section sergeant on their relief. A big, brutish-looking, raw-boned bloke, Murph belied his appearance with an inclination towards affability, but as a former sergeant in the Guards he could be a holy terror when he wanted to, and he too would have heard the public humiliation of one of his constables, and therefore, in his opinion, the public humiliation of his entire team.
‘Better get working then,’ Shawna said, primly fitting her hat back in place, tucking her ponytail out of sight. ‘Lock some scrotes up before morning and he’ll probably cut you a load of slack.’
She opened the passenger door, the stale air of the wasteland wafting in. Heck gazed downhill to the silent edifices of the flats. Their last few lights had been extinguished. The only movement out there was provided by dead leaves and scraps of fluttering litter driven by the breeze. It was difficult to see where the next arrest was going to come from tonight.
‘1415 from Five?’ came the crackly radio voice of PC Linzi Gornall.
‘Go ahead, Linz,’ he replied.
‘Heck … can you look at a domestic on Kersal Rise, over?’
He glanced at his watch. It was ten past three in the morning. A domestic at this hour was likely to be a doozy. ‘Affirmative. What’s the address, over?’
‘Number eighteen.’
‘Roger, received …’ And then Heck paused, radio in hand.
‘What’s the matter?’ Shawna asked, half way out but now stopping.
‘I know 18, Kersal Rise,’ he said. ‘A lady called Alice Henshaw lives there. But she’s seventy years old and a widow.’ He put his radio back to his lips. ‘1415 to Five … any details, over?’
‘Neighbour reported screaming and shouting about two minutes ago, over.’
Heck glanced at Shawna. ‘That’s no domestic, that’s a break … quick, close the door!’
She jumped back in alongside him, and he threw the van into gear, swinging it around in a gravel-spurting three-point-turn.
‘Kersal Rise is off my beat,’ Shawna said. ‘I show up there, I’ll get a bollocking too.’
‘Tell them I picked you up en route. This isn’t a domestic, Shawna … and I need a wingman!’
‘You don’t think …?’
‘The Spider?’ he said, as he spun around the next corner, pushing his speedo past forty. ‘Dunno … but Alice Henshaw lives alone, and every address he’s attacked so far had a single female occupant. Plus it’s after 3 a.m. … the Spider always attacks between three and four.’
‘3395 to Five!’ Shawna shouted into her radio.
‘Go ahead, Shawna.’
‘I’m en route to 18, Kersal Rise with 1415 … we’re currently on Kingsway Lane, heading towards Station Avenue. Listen, Linzi … Heck knows the occupant of that address. It’s a woman living alone. We don’t think this is a domestic … it may be a burglary in progress, over!’
‘Roger, received …’ A split-second passed, before Linzi and the other Comms operators began calling up support units.
Kersal Rise would normally be five minutes away, in daytime traffic maybe ten, but this was now four a.m. and Heck had his foot to the floor. They made it in less than two. The house in question stood on the outskirts of another drear council estate, but was of old-fashioned terraced stock. The Rise itself sloped steeply up to the main road, and backed onto a deep cutting through which ran the Manchester-to-Southport railway.
‘How’d you know this lady?’ Shawna asked.
‘She’s a part-time cashier at the arcade on the precinct,’ he replied as he drove. ‘Last year she’s putting some takings in her car … and some fucking idiot’s lying in wait. He pulls a knife on her, snatches the money bag. Pure good fortune I was patrolling nearby. Soon as he sees me, he shoves her in the car, gets in himself, tries to drive … but I cut him off at the end of the access road. He jumps out again, legs it on foot, still carrying the takings … caught up with him at the other side of the car park.’
‘I remember. Good pinch. So that was her?’
‘Yeah. The scrote was Terry Robinson. He got three years. Alice was unhurt and got the money back … she’s been making me brews ever since.’
They skidded to a halt at the foot of Kersal Rise, bursting out of their respective doors. All the houses stood in darkness except for number eighteen. It was tall and narrow, its red-brick frontage showing distortions and fissures due to colliery subsidence. A single dull light glinted through its downstairs window.
‘Round the back, Shawna!’ Heck said.
‘It’s a terraced row … even in the van it’ll take me a couple of mins!’
Heck didn’t even want to wait that long. As he ran up the front path, he heard a wailing and weeping inside – and recognised the voice as Alice Henshaw’s.
‘Alright … but get on the blower, tell ’em we need help now!’
Shawna hovered by the van, grabbing her radio and shouting instructions into it.
Heck didn’t bother knocking or ringing the bell, just hit the hardwood door with his shoulder, exploding it inward, chains and hinges flirting loose. ‘Police!’ he shouted.
The light emanated from a room at the rear of the house, which he knew to be the lounge. It was dim but sufficient to illuminate the neat, lavender-scented hall and the single fluffy slipper lying near the foot of the stairs. Heck could picture the whole thing. Alice waking as the intruder entered her bedroom through its window, and fleeing downstairs, but her poor arthritic joints gaining her no advantage. The bastard catching her somewhere around here, dragging her through into the lounge.
‘Alice!’ Heck bellowed, barging down the hall with baton in hand.
The weeping upgraded into a shrill, desperate sobbing.
When he entered the room, two immediate things struck him. Firstly, the householder herself, lying curled in a ball on the couch to his left; her nightie had been pulled up and her underwear was around her knees, but it was her face that was bloodied, at least as far as he could see, because she was cupping it with both hands. Secondly, the narrow French window looking out into the small back yard stood partly open, swinging on the November breeze.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Shawna said, crowding into the room behind him.
‘Look after her,’ Heck said, dashing out into the rear yard.
It was small, ten feet by fifteen. There was an old disused coalbunker facing him, set against the yard’s back wall. From beyond this, Heck heard a metallic clatter. He scrambled up onto the bunker, and jumped. It was more of a drop on the other side of the wall – he plummeted seven feet before landing on rain-wet cobbles, but if he strained or twisted anything, adrenaline kept pain at bay. He was now in the network of rubble-cluttered alleys running between the houses and the railway cutting. One such led directly away from him, threading between rows of dilapidated sheds. At its far end there was a cluster of dustbins; a couple had fallen over – one was still rolling.
Heck hit the switch on his torch, the brilliant glare filling the passage. By the looks of it, the bastard had used the bins to vault up an
d over the ten-foot net-wire fence separating the end of the alley from the top of the cutting. But some sixth sense prevented Heck from simply charging down there.
Two years in the job and already he had instincts. ‘You’re a natural,’ Murph had told him when he’d completed his probation.
But just now it was a case of proceeding down the alley with caution, side-on as per the textbook, baton extended and hefted to his shoulder. Time might be wasting here – the Spider could be getting further and further away, but that old instinct thing told Heck that actually his quarry wasn’t so far off. He was now halfway down the passage, dark, ruined structures on either side. Total blackness beyond the mesh fence. The shorn hairs at the nape of his neck began to bristle, his scalp to itch.
Then it came, the attack.
Flitting movement in the corner of Heck’s eye warned him when it was almost too late. He half-spun as a dustbin lid came whistling down like a discus from a shed roof on his left. Had he not raised his left arm, it would have smacked him square in the teeth. As it was, it struck the forearm sharply, sending a jolt of intense pain through his elbow. Heck was forced to back away a couple of steps, numbed from shoulder to hand, for a second unable even to flex his fingers.
Just ahead, a slim form leapt down, landing lithely on the balls of its feet.
It was the Spider for sure. The partial descriptions they’d had were a perfect match: he was slim but athletic, wearing black plimsolls, black gloves, some kind of opaque black body-stocking, with a black leotard over the top, and a full-head mask formed from black nylon.
Even though he’d been expecting it, Heck was briefly stunned by the get-up.
No doubt it was all for ease of movement; so the bastard could run, jump and climb, as well as blend into the night. But there was something sordid and sleazy about it too. As well as dehumanising him, it enhanced his twisted sexuality, turned him from man to fetishistic monster. It was also scarily practical; Heck caught a glint of press-studs at the Spider’s crotch, doubtless so he could open quickly and easily to perform his hideous business.
There was only about twenty yards between them, but now the masked figure eased down into a catlike crouch, the fingers of both hands spread on the gritty floor. For a moment, Heck thought the bastard was going to burst into a sprint and come straight at him. In response, he straightened up, resuming the combat stance.
‘You’re getting locked up, pal,’ Heck said, edging forward. ‘You can have it easy, or you can have it hard … it’s your call.’
The Spider held his position, invisible eyes clearly locked on his opponent. And then, with a whirl of speed, launching himself sideways across the alley, springing onto the top of another rickety shed and projecting himself upward again, clean over the top of the railway fence, dropping down the other side and vanishing from Heck’s torchlight.
‘Shit!’ Heck rushed forward. ‘1415 to Five,’ he gabbled into his radio. ‘I’m in one of the alleys at the rear of 18, Kersal Rise. Pursuing a suspect in the Spider attacks down onto the railway, over …’
Without waiting for orders from Murph that he must hang fire until support arrived, or from Don Crawford that he needed to provide a far more exact and precise assessment of the situation, he lurched to the fence and clambered up it. Half way to the top, his torch was caught on a wire, yanked from his belt and fell behind him. There was no time to go back for it. He swung his leg over the top, and commenced a frantic scramble down into the blackness beyond. The radio was now a frenzy of cross-cutting messages. At least one of them was addressed to Heck, but there was no chance to reply. He dropped the last few feet into a shoulder-deep jungle of rank, dying weeds, and stumbled as he sought a steady footing. The railway embankment was steep and comprised mainly of loose shingle, but he fought his way downhill, following the trail ploughed by his opponent.
Before he reached the bottom, his radio fizzled out; there was no reception in as deep a cutting as this. Its dimensions were only vaguely discernible, lit – if such a term could be used – by the dull yellow glow diffusing into the sky from the lights of the surrounding streets. The two sets of railway tracks were just about visible, tapering away in either direction. Ordinarily, Heck might have held back. Without the means to provide light or communicate with the outside world, the benefits of a close, fast pursuit were outweighed by the potential dangers, but even as he emerged from the matted scrub, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a lean shape, about forty yards away, loping northward along the railway line. A diminishing crunch of footfalls was just about audible.
Heck set off running too. But several times in the near-complete darkness, he tripped, eventually falling full length. When he jumped back to his feet, his target was no longer visible. The only sound now was a faint hum from the network of power-cables overhead.
‘Crap!’ he said under his breath.
At least his eyes were adjusting, which enabled him to distinguish that just ahead, the cutting became a canyon, the railway lines hemmed in by towering walls of black brick. In addition to that, structures were vaguely visible to either side of them – the relics of Meadowbank Station. This had still been in operation when Heck had first arrived here as a young probationer, though unmanned and desolate, and precious few commuters had used it. It had only been a matter of time before it finished up like this: disused, boarded off from Meadowbank Road, and thoroughly vandalised.
He slowed to a walk as the ruins drew closer. Soon he could see the station’s footbridge, a roofed timber structure lying across the cutting at a height of about fifty feet, well above the railway’s power lines. No lights showed from this of course. There hadn’t even been any when the station was operational. In winter, anyone coming home from work and disembarking at Meadowbank would have to cross that bridge in inky blackness. There’d been at least two muggings and one indecent assault up there that Heck knew of even during his relatively short service.
Meanwhile, the flat canopy roof above Platform One, the station’s only stone platform, was outlined against the sky on the cutting’s east side. Platform Two, also roofed by a flat, lightweight canopy – but built from timber, and thus hollow underneath and flimsy with age and rot – stood on the right, but was actually an island, because beyond that lay an abandoned track-bed deep in weeds and leading into a long-abandoned tunnel. Beyond the track-bed, a row of old maintenance sheds backed against the brickwork of the west canyon wall, and though many of these had been burned out by arsonists, they were sufficiently intact to provide concealment.
Heck halted, his breath twisting pale and wraith-like. It was tempting to expect the Spider, with his obvious agility and fitness, to keep on going, following the railway at speed, seeking nothing more than to put distance between himself and his pursuer, but the reality was that he wouldn’t expect to get very far wearing only a black body-stocking and plimsolls, even at this late hour. It was a big risk that some night owl might spot him and think it strange. So did he really plan to go all the way home on foot in such a costume? No … it was more likely he had a vehicle nearby. In which case, he wouldn’t want to leave this place, but would prefer to hide in the vicinity, and work his way back to it when the chance arose.
Heck was still pondering this, when he heard a shrilling of metal to his rear. He spun around.
The train, probably the first service of the day, had almost caught him unawares. It was about a hundred yards behind him, but advancing swiftly. Heck wasn’t on the track itself, but was perilously close. He darted sideways. Because he hadn’t had time to don his hi-vis jacket, the driver only spotted him when it was too late, sounding his siren as he hurtled through the station.
Heck ran up the ramp onto the platform. The train’s windows and the one or two pale faces therein shunted past in a blur. In fact, he had a better visual of Platform Two on the other side of them, as it danced with stroboscopic light. In fact, the whole canyon was briefly filled with thundering noise and flashing illumination. Heck even saw the empty aper
tures of the sheds beyond the derelict track-bed, and a split-second before the train had passed, he saw something else, something much closer: a black-clad figure emerging like some goblin from the crawlspace beneath Platform Two, and vaulting up on top of it. Then the train had gone, and the station was plunged into darkness again.
Heck jumped down onto the rails and scrambled over there. He tried his radio on the way, but still there was no response. When he swung himself up onto Platform Two, his target had vanished. He scanned every part of the platform he could actually see, which wasn’t much; a waist-high slatted fence ran down the centre of it, behind which it was possible a man could crouch. Heck slowed as he approached this, again with baton hefted.
The fence, which was about five yards in front of him, was an obvious point of concealment, but gloom lay on all sides – the attack could come from any direction. Heck’s eyes flirted left to right as he edged forward. It occurred to him that he might have made a classic error of judgement by willingly entering this ambush zone alone. But no, he told himself. For all that he was spry and athletic, the Spider was a typical sex-attacker, preying on the weak and vulnerable, and Heck was neither of those things … as the bastard would soon discover.
There was a scraping sound to his left, like a foot on woodwork.
Heck spun half way around, flinching back from an expected assault.
But nothing struck at him. Nothing came to view except the dank blackness under the rotted canopy. The fence was now a yard in front. That was where he’d be waiting, the Spider under his trapdoor – it was the only possible place.