Snow reckoned that his other stuff must be housed in his van, for surely he would have acquired another vehicle. This was a necessity for his mission. He would most likely park it nearby but not where it could be seen from of the house so that Mrs Hodge wouldn’t catch sight of it.
Snow gave the room one final perusal. He would get the SOCO team in there, but he was fairly sure that they would not come up with anything apart from some patches of mould and the odd bed bug or two. Certainly nothing that would further the investigation.
‘The room is off limits for now, Mrs Hodge, until the technical chaps have gone over it looking for clues,’ he said as pleasantly as he could, fully aware that Mrs Hodge did not care for him at all.
‘They’re welcome to it. But am I safe here? What if he comes back and tries to kill me?’
Snow shook his head. ‘There’s no danger of that, but I’ll get one of the officers to stay with you overnight to make sure you’re safe.’
She shuddered. ‘I should have never let the bugger in. I should have relied on my instincts. They told me he was a wrong ’un.’
As they moved on to the landing, she turned the switch, plunging the room into stygian darkness.
SIXTEEN
‘Did you always want to be a policewoman?’ Elizabeth Saunders played with her hair absent-mindedly as she sat on her bed opposite WPC Angela Dawes.
‘I think so,’ the officer replied gently. ‘It’s good to help people.’
Elizabeth thought for a moment. ‘I think I’d like to be one, too. Is it difficult?’
Angela smiled. ‘If I can do it, I’m sure you can. You have to be dedicated and put a lot of effort into training, but if you are determined, you will make it.’
Elizabeth pulled a wisp of hair towards her mouth. ‘I bet it’s exciting. Do you get to catch a lot of criminals?’
‘I think that’s enough questions for tonight,’ observed Elizabeth’s mother, who had been sitting in the shadows at the far side of the bedroom.
‘Oh, Mum, not yet.’
‘Oh, yes, it’s late and you have school in the morning.’
PC Dawes nodded. ‘Your mum’s right. If you want to be a policewoman, you’ve got to get a good education and you need to be bright and bushy-tailed for school.’
Elizabeth sighed and pouted her lips. ‘OK.’
‘Good girl,’ said PC Dawes, touching the little girl gently on the shoulder.
‘Thanks very much,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll take it from here.’
Angela nodded. ‘She’ll be safe for the night now. I’ll wait downstairs for a while before getting off.’
Mrs Saunders gave a strained smile, stress clearly etched on her pale features. As a single mother, the burden of the last few days had worn her down. The police had been reasonably circumspect as to the extent of the danger that her daughter was in but, as a sensitive, intelligent woman, she had realised it must be pretty serious for them to give her daughter twenty-four-hour protection. ‘Thank you. Thank you for all your help. It’s a comfort to know you’re around.’
‘No problem,’ said Angela, leaving the room to allow mother and daughter some moments of privacy and intimacy before the little girl settled down to sleep. All she had to do now was wait downstairs in the kitchen until ten o’clock when she would be relieved by another officer.
Upstairs, Mrs Saunders was sitting on the bed, stroking her daughter’s forehead as the little girl snuggled down under the covers.
‘It’s nice having a policewoman in the house, isn’t it, Mum?’ the girl said sleepily.
‘You get a good night’s sleep, darling,’ replied her mother, avoiding the issue. ‘No bad dreams, eh?’
‘No.’ Her little mouth opened in a gentle yawn and the eyelids fluttered momentarily before closing.
Mrs Saunders waited a few moments, watching her daughter with love and apprehension as she drifted off to sleep. How could anyone try to hurt such an innocent little thing? At this thought, tears pricked at her eyes and she felt her chest heave. No, no, she told herself. She must not cry. She must not give into emotion. She had to be strong. Stoical should be her watchword. Nothing – nothing – was going to happen to her lovely daughter.
Nothing.
Leaving the pink nightlight on, Mrs Saunders went downstairs.
Across the road, standing in the shadows under a tree, was a dark figure who was staring at the house, his eyes caught particularly by the soft glow from one of the upstairs bedrooms. That must be the little girl’s room, he reckoned. That was his challenge. He knew there was a police officer inside the house as well as the girl’s mother. Those were the two obstacles he had to overcome. Stepping out of the shadows, he crossed the road, his eyes focused on the house as he tried to work out how he could gain access to the property and then ensure his escape. Was it impossible? Maybe. But he couldn’t fail in his mission at this late stage. He didn’t really want anyone else to get hurt – just the child. Just the survivor. He shook his head. As he approached the house, he saw how impossible a task it was. He could easily gain entry, but how was he to snatch the child and escape with her? Get her to his van. Well, he couldn’t, could he? He would have to re-think. It had to be at the school. He would have to snatch her at the school. Somehow. Some way. He had to do it there.
He pulled the van on to the waste ground, several streets away from his lodgings. He groaned with misery at his lack of progress, his body slumping over the wheel. Things were getting really difficult now and he knew the police were closing in on him. He could feel their presence like a rough noose slowly tightening around his neck. It had been so easy at the start but now there were so many obstacles. It had been a fairly straight road down which he’d travelled, but now this pathway had turned into a maze of cruel complexity.
He didn’t mind being caught when it was all over – in fact he welcomed being caught then, for there would be nothing else left for him. He would be happy to spend the rest of his days staring at the grey walls of a cell, knowing he had righted a great wrong, that he had carried out acts of justice in honour of his little girl. But to be apprehended before he had finished what he had set out to do would be a tragedy. The thought of this turned his stomach and tears began to stream down his face. More and more now, unbidden and unfettered emotion would overtake him without warning, shaking his body and causing a harsh tightness across the chest. He did not fight it. He allowed this strange passionate reaction to have its way with his body. He now considered it almost a cleansing process, as though the tears and the pain were exorcising his fears and doubts. After a few minutes, the tremors and tears subsided, leaving his body limp and his mind exhausted. He lay for quite a while resting across the wheel of the van, neither fully awake nor asleep, a kind of ease restoring itself.
At length he pulled himself up, dragged the sleeve of his coat across his face to catch some of the dampness there and then got out of the vehicle. Tomorrow is another day, he told himself, the cliché rebuilding his strength of purpose. He would act tomorrow, whatever. That girl would die tomorrow. With this thought firmly in mind, buoying up his spirits, he set off towards Eva Hodge’s guest house and a good night’s rest.
However, when he turned the corner of the street, a shock was in store for him. Parked outside Mrs Hodge’s house was a police car, garish and shiny, illuminated by the fierce amber glow of the street light. He froze for a moment taking in the scene and then instinctively he stepped backwards into the shadows, his horrified eyes never leaving the offensive vehicle for a second.
‘What the fuck,’ he mouthed as a faint whisper. They were on to him. But how? Well, the how didn’t really matter. What really mattered was that there was a police car outside the place where he had been kipping and no doubt there was a burly copper inside the house at this very moment, turning over his room looking for clues. That phrase caused him to give a twisted grin. It wasn’t ‘his room’ for Christ’s sake, it was just the place where he had hoped to hole up for a few days.
Thank God, he had kept the stuff he’d taken in there to a minimum. But, nevertheless … they were that close to him.
Amid these thoughts, the question came again: how? How had the police found out where he was staying? What had he done wrong? How had he slipped up? God, he had to get the hell away from here. And fast.
In an instant he was running, running as fast as he could back to the van. Within minutes he was revving up the engine and the wheels where churning up the mud on the waste ground as the vehicle rocked and lurched forward. With a swaying motion, it bumped on to the road and it turned left away from Mortar Street and Mrs Eva Hodge’s place. Frank Hirst wasn’t conscious of the red Cavalier speeding past him in the opposite direction, the driver, his lean pallid face drawn in concentration. Equally, Detective Inspector Paul Snow had no notion that he had just driven past the man he was seeking, the murderer of three young girls.
SEVENTEEN
It was half past midnight when Paul Snow eventually made his way home. As he drove away from Mortar Street he tried to assess objectively whether tonight’s surprise event had actually benefited the investigation or not. It was a close call. In one sense the net was closing in on Frank Hirst, but while they had sealed off one of his hidey holes, they had done it in such a fashion as to alert him to how close they were on his tail and, like a cunning, frightened mole, he would burrow a great deal deeper now and take more precautions. It was almost a guerrilla war scenario. They knew where he was likely to strike – or try to strike – but how he would do it and when were still questions for which they had no answers. Snow believed that Hirst was so dedicated in his mission to kill all those who had survived his own daughter, and only those, that he would not harm anyone else in his attempt to bring this to a successful conclusion. To kill or even injure someone whom Hirst would see as an innocent bystander would contaminate the purity of his cause. It had to be those who had cheated death. And only those. That was how Snow viewed it. He couldn’t be sure he was right or that Bob Fellows and his other colleagues would see it in the same light.
One thing was for sure. He had to organise tighter security for the two girls tomorrow. They were in greater danger than ever now. Bloody hell, he thought as he put his key into the lock, it already is tomorrow. He checked his wrist watch. It was 12.45. So much for my early night.
He turned the key but the door wouldn’t open. Wait a minute, he thought, I moved the key to the right. That would have locked the door. To test this theory, he twisted the key in the opposite direction and the door opened. Don’t tell me that I left in such a hurry that I forgot to lock the door. Snow cast his mind back to his departure earlier that night. He had a vision of himself locking the door. He was very particular about his own security. But was that a true vision or wishful thinking? He groaned quietly. He really was too tired to work it out but still a feeling of unease settled on him as he entered his sitting room.
As he did so, the table lamp in the corner clicked on, filling the room with a pale yellow light, by which Snow observed a figure sitting in the armchair by the fire.
‘What time do you call this?’ the figure said, leaning forward so that Snow could see his face. He had already recognised the voice before he caught sight of the features in the lamp’s glow.
It was Colin Bird.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked, his voice bristling with anger.
‘I’ve come to see you.’
‘How … how the hell did you get in?’
‘Oh, come now. I’m a policeman. I have my methods.’
Snow’s instinct was to grab the bastard by the throat and thump him hard, but despite being weary and angry he was sharp enough to realise that he may well come off the worse in such an encounter. Bird was taller and of a larger build than him. A different tactic was needed. With a swift movement, Snow returned to the door and switched the main light on, blinking as the shadows vanished in the harsh illumination.
‘Would you like to tell me what this is all about?’ He had tried to adopt a reasonable tone but he failed to keep the anger out of his voice.
Bird flashed him a smile. ‘It’s about you. It’s about you, Paul Snow. I wanted to see you.’
Snow shook his head. ‘You’re not making sense. You’re saying you broke into my house, the home of a fellow police officer, because you wanted to see me. That just doesn’t make fucking sense!’
‘It does to me, Paul. You must know that I have feelings for you.’
‘Feelings.’ A ghost walked over Paul Snow’s grave.
Bird rose from the chair. He was no longer smiling. His face now wore a pale mask of anguish. ‘Feelings. Yes, I love you.’
‘What!’ Snow shook his head in disbelief. Was this tragi-comedy really being played out in his living room?
‘I know you share the same feelings as me,’ Bird was saying, ‘it’s just that you won’t admit them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t feel anything for you.’
‘Are you denying you’re gay?’
Oh, my God, thought Paul, not this again. He shook his head. ‘Yes, I am denying it.’
‘You bloody liar. No straight man goes to Sherwood’s. I know that. You’ve been there more than once. I made enquiries. And don’t come up with some cock and bull story about being on a case or carrying out some surveillance because I’ve checked up on you, DI Paul Snow.’
Snow paused. This was getting deep now and serious. Was he really in danger of his secret being exposed? How indiscreet had Bird been in his enquiries? The stupid bastard. Snow thought again: was Colin Bird just an infatuated fool or, indeed, was this a honey trap?
‘You are deluded, Colin, and you are acting in a dangerous and irresponsible fashion. Breaking and entering is a serious offence.’
‘But you won’t report me, will you, Paul? To do that would mean questions, awkward questions would be asked and maybe the truth would come out.’
‘The truth?’
‘About you. About you being a closet queer.’
Now Paul really wanted to smash Bird in the face. In essence he was threatening to expose him and to ruin his career. And what for? Some misguided, irrational crush he seemed to have on him. It was clear that Bird had no concerns about his sexuality being revealed and equally had no qualms about dragging Snow into the limelight along with him.
‘You are mistaken, Colin, and rather disturbed,’ Snow said evenly. ‘You have misread so much. You have to pack up these thoughts and discard them. Go home and get some rest. Take a few days’ leave. I won’t say a thing about this episode, but you have to forget about it. And forget about me. I don’t want to see you again or have you making any attempt to contact me.’
Bird gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Are you so much of a coward? You cannot admit to me in the privacy of your own home where your feelings lie?’
‘They certainly do not lie with you.’
‘They might, if you gave them a chance. I’m a very caring person, Paul. We could be good together.’
Paul shook his head. ‘This is madness.’
‘The only madness is your denial. You need to stagger out into the daylight and release your inner passion. It’s not wrong, you know. It’s only other people who say it is. People who have no idea.’
‘I have no inner passion like yours.’ The words came thickly. Paul hated himself for uttering them. They were a lie and in making such a claim he was committing an act of self-betrayal. But he had no alternative. Long ago he had sworn never to leave that very restrictive closet into which he’d been born. Homosexuals were either pilloried or parodied and shunted to the periphery of society. They were viewed as the unclean by the general public at large. The press and media presented them as mincing clowns or evil sex fiends. Anyone who was of that persuasion in a position of authority from bank managers to politicians to magistrates was fair game for blackmail, exposure and trashing in the press. Great delight was expressed when outing and destroying the career of the closet gay. Snow sh
ould know. He had been the victim of blackmail and he vowed it would never happen again.
‘How can you say that?’ Bird said, rising from the chair. ‘It is a lie. You know it is a lie. We can share the secret together. I am not here to harm you. I am here to love you.’
Paul took a step back. His mind was a whirl. His usually self-contained nature, precise and practical, was thrown into confusion. He had no ideas, plans or procedures for such a situation. Not only was it unique but it had very dark and far-reaching connotations. He found himself saying, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Oh, Paul, it is you who is being ridiculous. If you would just let your guard down, think what wonderful things you could experience: real companionship, love and sex.’
‘Get it into your head, I have no feelings for you. No feelings!’ Snow was shouting now and the words echoed round the room.
Bird took a step forward. ‘Give it a chance. I know deep down that you want to.’
Paul gave out an exasperated groan. ‘Just go, will you.’
‘Not until you admit to me …’
‘I will admit nothing. This is crazy talk.’
Bird grabbed hold of Snow’s arms and thrust his face so close, he could feel the warm breath on his cheek.
‘I don’t want to hurt you or upset you. Can’t you see that I care about you?’ He leaned forward and to Snow’s horror he realised that the man was going to kiss him. There was something now in Bird’s features, particularly his eyes, that Snow noticed for the first time. Perhaps it was only being exhibited for the first time. It was madness. Snow had seen it in the eyes of criminals. That slightly wild glassiness in the pupils that indicated that the person had lost touch with reality and was inhabiting his own twisted world. Whatever they were doing, no matter how wrong it was, they believed it was right. Bird had that same look. The man had lost it.
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