by Jacqui Rose
From overhead, there was a slow, purposeful movement of feet.
Alex gazed pale-faced at the ceiling, her matted hair prickling again. Another light came on up there; Alex saw it through the annex rear window, reflected on the lawn. She looked outside properly – and almost collapsed with shock.
Despite everything else that had happened that night, despite the murder she’d witnessed and the bullet she’d felt drone past her face, what she was now looking at seemed the most surreal thing of all.
The door beside the window was locked, but a key was inserted; all she needed to do was turn it and then she was outside – in the cool night air. Slowly, as though drunk, she crossed the lawn to the far side of the station-house, where an open garage sat at the end of the drive. As she’d seen from inside the annex, a police Range Rover was parked there, but when the light had come on upstairs it had illuminated a second vehicle parked behind this. It was half in and half out of the garage, so Alex may never have spotted that it was a familiar metallic green colour. Neither would she have noticed that it wasn’t actually parked, in fact that its fender was still linked to the tow-bar of the Range Rover.
Before she sidled her way around the police vehicle, the bonnet of which was warm, she knew the Corsa hatchback in the garage was hers. There were telltale gashes along its front nearside; the passenger window was broken; tufts of leafage protruded from its radiator grille.
She glanced back towards the house, frightened but furious as well.
It scarcely seemed feasible that she could walk into the lion’s den twice in one night. But she’d now learned that simply bemoaning her fate was no solution. Nor screaming, nor crying, nor running. So she did none of these things. She held her ground, watching the house carefully. It all made sense now, albeit in a crazy, unlikely fashion: the super-powerful torch with which ‘he’ had chased her; the ease with which ‘he’ had been knocked back by the barn door.
A female shadow moved behind one of the upstairs curtains, putting clothes on.
‘Okay,’ Alex said. ‘That buys us a little time at least.’
She slid past the busted bodywork of her vehicle into the dimness of the garage, where she was able to open the rear nearside door sufficiently to slot herself through and grope in the footwells again. Her mobile phone was here somewhere, but even with the interior light on, it proved elusive; it was all shadow down there. While fumbling beneath the driver’s seat, she found her Smartpen. Fresh sweat stippled her brow as she examined the high-tech gadget. She tucked it into her waistband and continued searching, even going through the two or three boxes on the backseat – until it suddenly occurred to her that maybe, when the phone had jerked out of her hand, it had bounced over the backseat into the actual boot.
She clambered out of the car. This was an unpleasant possibility. While some of her junk from the conference occupied the backseat, most of it was stowed in the boot. So the phone could have slipped into any one of a number of niches. Finding it here was made even more difficult by the immediate proximity of a vehicle that had already been parked in the garage when the Corsa was reversed in. She gazed at the Audi from the lay-by. It was no surprise to see it; in fact in some ways this was a good thing. If she could get in touch with someone now, everything she needed to prove her story was right here.
She lifted the hatchback lid. A clutter of boxes, bags and scattered spare clothing greeted her. She rummaged through it, discarding one item after another. One container in particular should not even be open, she realised, chiding herself. It was filled with sales samples: prescribed meds, treatment room utensils. It had been sealed for the journey down, but she hadn’t got around to resealing it for the return trip. Not that she could worry about that now.
And then another thought occurred to her – an exciting thought, but dangerous.
She pondered the array of restricted products, wondering if she dared take such action. She had to be mad even to contemplate it, but of course she wasn’t the only mad one out and about tonight. Slowly, patiently, she began opening cartons, ripping sterile packets, flipping lids. It was a delicate process and she had to be careful, but though she’d been ten years out of nursing, she’d spent the ten before that on the wards – and she knew what she was doing.
‘I can easily believe Rod Henderson tried to coerce you into sex,’ said a voice.
Alex jerked upright, almost dropping everything she was holding.
PC Holloway was standing in the garage entrance, on the same side of the cars as Alex. She was silhouetted against the lights of the house, so her expression was indistinguishable, but her tone was cold, businesslike. She was wearing familiar black clothes, now identifiable as police waterproofs with the insignia removed. They gleamed wetly; she’d been in the process of washing them when Alex had first arrived.
‘Do you know why I believe?’ Holloway said. ‘Because he was that kind of guy.’ She held something up – it was the zipper-mouthed rapist mask. ‘This was his, not mine. He had a whole box of fancy dress like this. Not to mention a few toys as well. Cheeky bastard kept them here … for whenever he happened to call. Which was increasingly rarely these last few months. He sees us as toys too. Women, I mean. You and me, Alexa … in some ways we’re quite alike.’
‘Listen,’ Alex said, trying to slide across the back of the Corsa to its offside, though there was insufficient space between the Corsa and the Audi to allow this.
‘Stay where you are!’ Holloway’s voice wasn’t exactly a whip-crack, but there was great authority there. It also helped that she’d produced a pistol; a chunky, snub-nosed revolver, which she pointed across the Corsa’s roof. ‘And lower the boot lid, so I can see you properly.’
Alex did as instructed, though it was difficult with both hands full. ‘Look … you don’t have to do this,’ she said slowly.
‘Unfortunately I do.’ Holloway’s voice remained steady; it was almost unnatural, a monotone. In the dimness, the eyes in her milk-pale face were blots of tar. ‘You see, it’s bad enough being loved and left, if you could call it ‘loving’, by a five-timing toe-rag like Rod Henderson. Especially when I was just feeling good about myself … but then you come along as well. At just the right time, typically. With your blonde hair, and your baby blues, and your better body than mine even though you must be fifty at least.’
Cheeky bitch …
Holloway shook her head. ‘But I’ve worked too hard at my career to see it all taken away by a pair of clichés like you and Rod …’
‘You said we were all victims together,’ Alex pleaded. ‘You said we were ‘toys’.’
‘Some of us lend ourselves more easily to that metaphor than others. But at the end of the day, Alexa, this is about necessity, not jealousy …’
‘PC Holloway, this won’t save you! Think about it. You’ve been shooting that gun all over the countryside. You’ve left evidence everywhere.’
‘And you’re an expert on that stuff, are you?’
‘I’m no expert, but your colleagues will be.’
Holloway half-smiled. ‘I know them better than you and, sadly, I beg to differ.’
Alex swallowed saliva. She knew the conversation was coming to an end. Her shoulders tensed as she thumbed the Smartpen’s buttons. ‘You … you just won’t get away with this.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says him!’ Alex shouted, pointing, and at the same time dropping the Smartpen and kicking it under the car into the far corner of the garage.
‘I meet so many ladies in need of company,’ came Rod Henderson’s slimy voice. Holloway spun around, eyes goggling, weapon trained on empty shadow. ‘My heart bleeds for them. I just can’t help it …’
She never saw Alex rush past the car towards her, five uncapped syringes clutched above her head. At the last second she whirled back, but it was too late. Alex drove the needles down, ramming them full length into the gun-arm, hitting all five plungers at the same time, expelling two hundred and fifty millilitres of insuli
n into the policewoman’s bloodstream.
‘I always want to give them a second chance,’ Henderson’s voice intoned. ‘Of course, some of them are too dumb even to take that.’
Holloway clutched at Alex’s blouse as she sank to her knees, eyes bulging, froth bubbling between clamped lips.
‘But it’s your choice,’ he added. ‘The alternative is you go it your own way … and pay the price.’
Alex stood there, eyes closed, fighting down nausea for what seemed like minutes, as the policewoman’s grip slowly weakened, the twitching hand sliding down her body by increments. At last, still unwilling to look, Alex stepped over the shuddering, prostrate form and walked forward, veering off the drive and into the middle of the lawn, where she dropped to her knees and was violently sick. When she’d emptied her stomach, she dry-heaved a couple of times just for good measure, before finally, exhaustedly, falling on her face.
Behind her, she could hear her own voice cutting Rod Henderson down to size. That ‘Scouse gob’ running wild again. Only this time it had saved her; if she’d been in the car with him, in the backseat …? It didn’t bear thinking about.
She rolled over onto her back, though she had so little energy left that it took a monumental effort, and regarded the infinite pattern of stars. It was so light up there compared to the darkness down here. She could sense its celestial power, could feel it imbuing her body. She wasn’t cold anymore, she wasn’t stiff; she wasn’t even hurting. She’d just killed someone, but for the moment at least she didn’t care. All she wanted to do now was rest, sleep maybe. She’d earned it, hadn’t she?
Don’t get too comfy, girl. You’ll have a lot of explaining to do.
It was true. Two coppers were dead. And she was the only witness. Maybe they’d accuse her, arrest her, interrogate the crap out of her. But o what?
She was alive.
And here’s an exclusive look at Paul’s new novel,
Sacrifice.
Chapter 1
The whole of Holbeck should be bombed.
That was Alan Ernshaw’s view. Okay, he was a relatively new police officer – just ten months in the job – so if anyone overheard him make such a politically incorrect statement and complained, he’d have an excuse. But the gaffers still wouldn’t be impressed. Holbeck, the old warehouse district located just south of Leeds city centre, might well consist mainly of buildings that were now empty shells, its Victorian terraced housing might now mostly be derelict, the few parts of it that were inhabited reduced to grotty concrete cul-de-sacs strewn with litter and covered in graffiti, but policemen didn’t take these sorts of things personally anymore. Or at least, they weren’t supposed to.
Ernshaw yawned and scratched the dried razor-cut on his otherwise smoothly shaven jaw. Radio static crackled. ‘1762 from Three?’
Ernshaw yawned again. ‘Go ahead.’
‘What are you and Keith doing, over?’
‘Well we’re not sitting down for a turkey dinner, put it that way.’
‘Join the club. Listen, if you’ve nothing else on, can you get over to Kemp’s Mill on Franklyn Road?’
Ernshaw, who was from Harrogate, some fifteen miles to the north, and still didn’t completely know his way around West Yorkshire’s sprawling capital city, glanced to his right, where PC Keith Rodwell slouched behind the steering wheel.
Rodwell, a heavy-jowled veteran of twenty years, nodded. ‘ETA … three.’
‘Yeah, three minutes, over,’ Ernshaw said into his radio.
‘Thanks for that.’
‘What’s the job?’
‘It’s a bit of an odd one actually. Anonymous phone call says we’ll find something interesting there.’
Rodwell didn’t comment, just swung the van into a three-point turn. ‘Nothing more?’ Ernshaw asked, puzzled.
‘Like I say, it’s an odd one. Came from a call-box in the city centre. No names, no further details.’
‘Sounds like a ball-acher, but hey, we’ve nothing else to do this Christmas morning.’
‘Much appreciated, over.’
It wasn’t just Christmas morning; it was a snowy Christmas morning. Even Holbeck looked picture-postcard perfect as they cruised along its narrow, silent streets. The rotted facades and rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles lay half-buried under deep, creamy pillows. Spears of ice hung glinting over gaping windows and bashed-in doors. The fresh layer muffling the roads and pavements was pristine, only occasionally marked by the grooves of tyres. There was almost no traffic and even fewer pedestrians, but it wasn’t eight o’clock yet, and at that time on December 25 only fools like Ernshaw and Rodwell were likely to be up and about.
Or so they’d assumed.
‘Something interesting …’ Ernshaw mused. ‘What do you think?’
Rodwell shrugged. He spoke in monosyllables at the best of times, and as he was now deep in thought there wasn’t much chance even of that.
‘Bunch of druggies or something?’ Ernshaw added. ‘Squatting? If that’s it they’ll all be dead by now. Must’ve been minus-ten last night, easily.’
Again, Rodwell shrugged.
Kemp’s was a former flax-spinning mill, but it had been closed now for nearly two decades and was a forlorn reminder of prosperous times past. Its tall octagonal chimney was still intact, the square windows arrayed in uniform rows across its dingy frontage were largely unbroken, and most of its ground-floor entrances were supposedly chained shut, but, like so many of the derelict buildings around here, it wouldn’t be difficult for determined intruders to force entry.
Snow crunched under their tyres as they slid to a halt on the mill’s southward-facing lot. The gaunt structure loomed over them against the white winter sky. The red bricks with which it had been constructed were hidden beneath soot so thick it had become scabrous. Those pipes and gutterings that hadn’t already collapsed sagged beneath alpine overhangs of snow. At first glance there was no sign of life, but the place was enormous; not just a central block, which itself might have housed a thousand workers, but also all kinds of annexes and outbuildings. As the van eased forward at a snail’s pace, it dawned on Ernshaw how long it might take them to locate ‘something interesting’ here.
He put his radio to his mouth. ‘1762 to Three?’
‘Go ahead, Alan.’
‘We’re at Franklyn Road now. Everything looks okay so far. Any further on the complainant, over?’
‘That’s negative, Alan. Could be some prat with nothing better to do, but probably best to check it out, over.’
‘Received,’ he said, adding under his breath: ‘Might take a while, mind.’
They drove in a wide circle around the aged edifice, their tyres sliding as they hit patches of sheet-ice. Ernshaw wound his window down. It was bitterly cold outside – the snow was still dry and crisp as powder – but even if they didn’t see anything untoward, it was possible they might hear it.
That they didn’t was vaguely disconcerting.
Christmas morning ought to be deeply quiet, restful, hushed by the freshly fallen snow, yet the silence around Kemp’s Mill was somehow uncanny; it had a brittle edge, as if it could shatter at any moment.
They rounded corner after corner, gazing up sheer faces of windows and bricks, networks of ancient piping, and hanging, rusted fire-escapes. The van’s wheels constantly skidded, dirty slush flying out behind. They trundled through an access-passage connecting with a row of empty garages, the corrugated plastic roof of which had fallen through after years of decay. On the other side of this they spotted an entrance.
Rodwell applied the brakes gently, but the van still skated several yards before coming to rest.
What looked like a service doorway was set into a recess at the top of three wide steps. There was no sign of the door itself – possibly it lay under the snow, but from the state of the doorjamb, which had perished to soggy splinters, this entry had been forced a long time ago. A pitch-black interior lay beyond it.
‘2376 to Three?’ Ro
dwell told his radio.
‘Go ahead, Keith.’
‘Yeah, we’re still at Kemp’s Mill. Evidence of a break, over.’
‘Do you want some help?’
‘That’s negative at present. Looks like an old one.’
They climbed out, gloving up and zipping their padded anoraks. Ernshaw adjusted his hat while Rodwell locked the vehicle. They ventured up the steps, the blackness inside retreating under the intense beams of their torches. At the top, Ernshaw thought he heard something – laughter maybe, but it was very distant and very brief. He glanced at Rodwell, whose dour, pitted face registered that he’d heard nothing. Ernshaw was so unsure himself that he declined to mention it. He glanced behind them. This particular section of the property was enclosed by a high wall. The van was parked close alongside it, the entrance to the garage-passage just at its rear. Aside from the tracks the vehicle itself had made on entering the yard, the snowfall lay unbroken. Of course, flakes had been falling heavily until about two hours ago, so this didn’t necessarily mean that no one had been here during the night.
They entered side-by-side, torchlight spearing ahead, and were immediately faced by three options: directly in front, a switchback stair ascended into opaque blackness; on the right, a passage led off down a long gallery zebra-striped by smudges of light intruding through the ground level windows; on the left lay a wide open area, presumably one of the old workshops. They ventured this way first, their torch-beams crisscrossing, revealing bare brick walls and a high plaster ceiling, much of which had rotted, exposing bone-like girders. Shredded cables hung like jungle creeper. The asphalt floor was scattered with planks and fragments of tiles. Here and there, the corroded stubs of machine fittings jutted dangerously upward. Despite the intense cold, there was a sour taint to the air, like mildew. The scuffling of their feet echoed through the vast building’s distant reaches.