Between a mouthful of prawn toast, Ray asked, ‘What about you? Productive day fighting the good fight?’
Jessop shook her head, chewed on some rice, knowing to swallow it would be a challenge.
‘You okay, honey? You look miles away.’
She was. She was still in little Keisha’s bedroom surrounded by Tanya’s blood. Still under that bridge staring at George Armitage’s exposed throat. Still in that rancid squat, recoiling from Spartan’s mutilated remains.
And still behind that sofa praying the girl’s screaming would stop.
‘You mind if I skip dinner?’
Ray placed his fork down. Fixed her with sincere eyes. ‘You eaten anything today?’
‘Grabbed a sandwich,’ she lied.
‘Something troubling you besides work?’
Yes, but she couldn’t tell him. ‘No. Just want this week over.’
Ray considered this, his eyes still searching hers.
Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, she said, ‘I think I might take a bath. Maybe have some toast after.’ She made a move to get up.
‘Catherine?’
She stopped, caught once again in Ray’s prying stare.
‘Any doubts about Saturday, and we talk them through sooner rather than later, okay?’
A lump rose in her throat. The only thing in her life she didn’t have doubts about was marrying Ray on Saturday. ‘Trust me,’ she said, mustering the warmest smile she could, ‘I have no doubts.’
Ray relaxed.
‘You want me to save you the water?’ she asked.
The twinkle returned to the muddy grey eyes she loved so much as he picked up the fork and grinned at the feast before him. ‘Nah. You take your time, honey. I got China to conquer.’
She took Ray’s advice, wallowing in the hot, soapy bubbles until the water cooled and her fingertips shrivelled. Lying on her bed, dressed only in a towelling robe, she wished she could click her prune-like fingertips and skip forward to next Sunday. Then she wouldn’t have to lie to her then husband about what was on her mind. Because by then it would be over, and she’d be as far from this city and Vincent Dodd as she could be.
Of course, that was if she made it past Tuesday, All Hallows’ Eve, when she would have to confront a real demon.
Chapter Sixteen
Monday, October 30th
‘Mum! Door!’
The girl with the auburn hair did not find her big sister hidden behind the sofa.
What did happen was that their mother answered the door and let out a sharp scream before the girl heard a terrible thud. What did happen was that her father raced out of his office shouting for his wife and that the man who had knocked on the door shouted at her father before a lot of banging and several more thuds. What did happen was that the girl’s sister came running into the room screaming for mum and then stopped screaming all too suddenly. What did happen was that the girl had held her breath and had bit down on her gums so hard they bled whilst the man did something that sounded strenuous like exercise and made him grunt and make mum cry. What did happen was dad was told to shut the fuck up or the little girl would get her pretty little ginger head blown off. What did happen was that the man made the girl’s sister cry next whilst making those terrible grunting noises and warning dad his wife will get her head blown off if he tried anything. What did happen was her father shouting something about not wanting his wife to live another day seeing what she had seen done to their precious little girl. What did happen were three deafening bangs that made the girl behind the sofa pee in her panties. What did happen was the sound of heavy footsteps running through the house banging doors, and a gruff voice calling out for the little bitch to show herself. What did happen was a lot of bad language followed by the front door slamming and then silence.
What happened next was silence and a curious metallic smell that overpowered the smell of her mum’s chicken dish and made the girl vomit.
Jessop gasped for breath, gagged against the familiar metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Kicking the duvet off her slick skin, she sat up on the side of the bed and ran her fingers over her lips.
In the crack of moonlight through the curtains, she saw the dark smudges on her fingertips. Blood, from where she’d bit down on her gums to stop from screaming. Just as she’d done thirty-six years ago huddled behind the sofa.
‘Christ.’
‘You okay, honey?’ Ray turned over beneath the duvet, stroked a lazy hand against the small of her back.
‘Fine. Just a bad dream.’
‘K.’
She raked a hand through her hair, as damp as her flesh. Slid back under the duvet. Never before had the dream been so lucid, her little sister Penny’s screams so loud.
She knew why. Wondered if tomorrow night, the eve of Dodd’s release, the screams would sound louder.
Her flesh chilled at the thought as she watched the luminous numbers on the alarm clock click past midnight. She blinked away a tear as beside the clock her mobile vibrated and hummed softly. She closed her eyes against the swell of tears. Willed the phone to stop humming and for sleep to deafen her against Penny’s terrified screams.
Chapter Seventeen
An hour later Jessop was stood in the gravelled car park in Crossfields Park. The west side of the fifty acre park was a flat expanse of grass from which a sharp wind rustled the branches of the trees above and chilled her bones.
He’s killed again, she thought, pulling her coat tight across her chest. Twice within twelve hours. Including Spartan the dog, that was three times in two days.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Carefully noting where she was stepping on the gravel, she walked round the back of Darren Spencer’s 90 plate Peugeot 406 to the side where the killer had struck. She crouched down and pointed the torch at the gravel on which, not an hour ago, stood the man who had disturbed Darren and his girlfriend, Rebecca Forrester, with a knock on the window during their back seat fumble.
According to Rebecca the stranger had appeared from nowhere. On noticing the figure at the window she’d grabbed her vest-top and pulled it back on while her kickboxing boyfriend yelled to the pervert to fuck off. But the figure didn’t. He just stood there, not even looking into the car, which, to Rebecca, negated the idea he was a dogger or a pervert.
She shone the torch at the car’s silver door. Noted a small dent.
Had the killer made this during the struggle?
Against Rebecca’s panicked pleas not to, her riled boyfriend had then wound the window down to issue his final warning to the weirdo interrupting their fun. Darren didn’t have time to fully open the window before the gloved hand shot in the car and grabbed the twenty-one year olds’ messy brown hair.
‘Darren starts shouting and punching at the arm, but whoever’s got him’s fucking strong because by then Darren’s half way out the window. I tried to grab him and pull him back in, but he was kicking wildly and he caught me in the face. But I tried again anyway and managed to wrap my arms around his legs and hold on. I swear, I was so fucking scared because Darren was screaming so loudly and I didn’t know what to do. So I kept pulling and pulling until eventually I thought I’d managed to free him, because suddenly I was falling backward and Darren was falling on top of me. That’s when I felt it, the stickiness all over me. Darren was still kicking and screaming, but not as hard or loud. I managed to push him off me and saw he was holding a black patch on his stomach.’
Jessop stood, angled the light to the top of Darren’s head slumped at an awkward angle against the door. She peered closer, inspecting the mop of hair and seeing spots of congealing blood from where the killer had yanked hard enough to pull hairs from the boy’s scalp. She directed the beam along the window’s broken edge, spying more blood, drawn, she suspected, from Darren’s naked back as he fought for his life. She considered the petrified twenty-one year-old brunette’s breathless interpretation of what happened next.
‘And that’s whe
n he spoke. He told me if I left the car I would be next. Then he said something like only when I’m no longer afraid can I begin to live. He sounded so fucking normal…calm. I mean, how can that be? How can he sound so fucking normal after what he did? So I just sat there, didn’t I? I sat there and threw-up all over myself while Darren’s guts spilled out all over my lap. I sat there because I didn’t want to die and I didn’t know what else to do. Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus-fucking-Christ!’
She drew in a breath as she pointed the beam of light at the dark mess of intestines that hung from the ragged vertical cut along Darren’s flat belly. The boy was slim and in good shape, with defined muscle on his chest, arms and shoulders. Rebecca was right in thinking whoever had managed to yank her boyfriend halfway out of the window by his hair and control the fit, young kickboxer long enough to inflict such a deep knife wound had to be fucking strong.
Jessop could not help but picture little Keisha Adams being restrained by such strength as she was made to watch her mother bleed to death. Rebecca Forrester was three times Keisha’s age, but when giving her statement, had looked not a day older than the seven-year-old with whom she now shared the most horrific nightmare.
Aware of her footsteps in the gravel, she followed her steps back to the tarmac drive that led from the road up to the small car park in the heart of the park. Darren and Rebecca had arrived here at around 11.50pm after catching a 9.00pm movie and grabbing a Burger King after. Rebecca was adamant there were no other cars here when they’d arrived. This was to be the young lovers first time having sex outside the safe confines of their bedrooms. Rebecca was reluctant when Darren had whispered the idea in her ear earlier today during lunch. She’d eventually agreed, but was not sold on the park’s location. It just seemed too public. She’d later relented after the movie on the condition they’d be absolutely alone in the car park.
Five minutes after arriving at the park, and completely satisfied there were no other cars or people in the area, Rebecca and Darren swapped front seats for the back seat and started to fool around. They only got as far as taking their tops off between kissing and fumbling when the first knock came upon the window.
And even then, Rebecca swore there were no other cars in the vicinity.
Jessop surveyed the surroundings. North of the small car park was a four acre copse; east, a children’s adventure playground; south the drive up here from the main road, and west, the exposed expanse of open grass. Yet this was not what Rebecca and Darren would have seen when they’d arrived here an hour ago. Because now the immediate area was lit up from the response vehicles that were attending the scene.
Stepping into the centre of the circus, she called out, ‘Can I have everybody’s attention!’
A moment later, when all eyes were upon her, she instructed everyone to kill all the vehicle lights inside and out. A few confused frowns later, and the only light on the area was from the moon’s weak light filtering through charcoal clouds.
She waited a couple of minutes, allowing her eyes to adjust to the new landscape of black silhouettes and dense shadows.
But from which of these shadows had the killer emerged?
She turned toward the kids’ playground, now but a dark smudge some hundred yards away. Beyond that the park stretched another kilometer before reaching the road. She then turned to the foreboding mass of dense shadows atop the shallow north incline that was the copse. Beyond the four acre woods, the hill it populated took a steep, half kilometer decline before reaching the road. Finally, turning west, she looked out over the vast expanse of black grass that ended on the inky horizon. Such were the distances to the road in each direction the killer could not have parked up and made it to Darren’s car on foot in the ten minutes Rebecca said had passed between them arriving here and the killer knocking. And even if she were wrong about the time and the killer had sprinted here, such was the expanse of the park, how did he know they had taken the turn in here?
Jessop turned south to the only direction she hadn’t explored yet: the direction the killer must have come from. She squinted, gazing down the tarmac drive as far as her vision allowed, a decent fifty yards or so. How far away would the killer have had to have parked for Rebecca and Darren not to have seen or heard his car?
She called to a young PC, told him to drive his car with the lights off down the tarmac until she radioed him to stop. A moment later she was staring at the back of the squad car gradually melting into the shadows of the sycamore trees lining the drive.
‘Okay, stop,’ she said into the radio.
Wearing a black overcoat, charcoal v-neck sweater, and jeans, Mason joined her in time to see the car’s brake lights blink red in the distance. ‘They wouldn’t have heard the car that far away from inside their car,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’ She looked up to the sky above where she’d seen the brake lights flash. Into the radio, she said, ‘Can you see us from there?’
Sat in his car, somewhere in the darkness beneath the silver smudge of moonlight ahead of them, the PC replied, ‘Yeah, just about.’
She noted the time on her watch, beckoned Mason to walk with her down the drive. They met the PC two minutes and ten seconds later. Rebecca said the killer appeared roughly ten minutes after they’d arrived. Jessop turned to face the way they’d come, and sure enough, thanks to the weak moonlight behind them, she could see Darren’s car.
Had the killer taken in the same view, waiting in the dark for his moment to strike after following the lovers from the mall?
Mason asked, ‘What do you think?’
She peered down at the tarmac, spotted a squashed cigarette butt. ‘I think I wanna hear what Tom has to say.’
Chapter Eighteen
Seated at the table in the centre of the war room, DC Tom Davies slumped back in his chair and sipped from his third can of Red Bull. Shook his head. ‘I’ve reviewed footage from every CCTV camera, traffic camera, and bus lane camera within a two mile radius of the city centre and Crossfields Park… Sorry, folks, but Darren and Rebecca were not followed tonight.’
‘Impossible,’ Mason sniped from behind his cup of coffee.
‘It is what it is,’ Davies said apologetically. Dressed in a sloppy maroon hoody, white t-shirt, khaki combat trousers and skater trainers, the twenty-seven-year-old detective raked a hand through his spiky, blonde hair and stifled a yawn.
Jessop had borrowed Davies from PCeU (Police Central e-crime Unit) two years ago when she and the team were struggling to catch a killer who hunted victims through internet dating sites. Davies’ input had been invaluable and she had been as impressed as hell with his technological know-how and tenacity. Somehow, after they had caught the killer, Davies had forgotten to return to PCeU and had remained a welcome and permanent addition to her team.
‘I picked up Darren’s car leaving the mall car park at 11.26pm. Picked him up again down The Bath Road at 11.34, then again at Hurst Lane at 11.46. Eventually got him turning into Crossfields Park at 11.51pm. Sorry folks, there was no tail. No other car entered or left the park until we rocked up at 12.28pm.’
Jessop thought about the cigarette butt she’d found, the hope it would prove significant fading fast. ‘What about footage of the park’s perimeter?’
‘Covered it best I can, but it’s a big area with a shit load of blind spots to sneak through, especially the north side behind the woods.’
‘The perfect escape route,’ Mason offered.
‘If you were on foot, yeah,’ Jessop agreed. ‘Still doesn’t explain how he knew Darren and Rebecca were going to be there in the first place.’
‘Maybe he just happened to be there at the time?’ Davies muttered with a hint of sarcasm. ‘Wrong place wrong time syndrome.’
Jessop shook her head. ‘No way. This bastard’s too meticulous for a random hit.’
Mason picked up a biro, twisted it between his knuckles. ‘Okay, so the only other logical explanation is that either Darren or Rebecca had bragged to a friend of their plans
to go to the park. Either the friend is the killer or the conversation was overheard by the killer, who then hid in the park and waited for them to arrive.’Jessop agreed. ‘Rebecca said she only agreed to the park’s location in the Burger King after the movie. Which would mean the killer would have had to have overheard the conversation and followed them to the park, or put his foot down and beat them there. Yet, according to Tom’s findings, neither had happened.’ She closed her eyes, massaged her temples where the conundrum coupled with the lack of sleep was beginning to spawn a gnawing headache.
After a minute of silence in the room, Mason said, ‘There is one other possibility. Maybe Darren was so confident Rebecca would agree to his plan, he’d gone ahead and bragged about it to a mate before she’d consented.’
Jessop opened her eyes and regarded her DI, as awake and alert as she’d ever seen him. That was the only other possibility. She rubbed her hot eyes, stifled a yawn behind her hand. ‘First thing in the morning we grill Darren’s friends and workmates about it. In the meantime go home and get some sleep.’ She glanced at her watch: 2.31am. In five hours time she’d have to be back here. Calculating the thirty minute each way drive to her house and back, that gave her a realistic three hours of sleep.
Hardly worth it.
Her eyes moved to the glass partition separating the war room and her office. Locked on the brown two-seater sofa she’d spent many an uncomfortable night on.
‘Shit.’
Hurt (The Hurt Series) Page 6