Hurt (The Hurt Series)

by Reeves, D. B.

  Being as though Darren Spencer and his girlfriend both worked in town, they were captured a number of times on CCTV, usually eating lunch together on one of the high street benches. Wayne Thacker and Spartan were also no strangers to the city centre, and appeared loitering along the busy high street most days.

  Loitering on the cold street now, wearing a knitted hat, black coat, jeans, flats, and holding a Next bag, Jessop peered through the department store window. To anyone watching her, she appeared to be sizing up the Sony 42” Plasma TV with the incredible hundred pound saving. She wasn’t.

  She was watching what was playing on the TV, the image of Yew Tree Close behind the news reporter telling of the latest murder to shock the city and its residents. The latest murder that had the police baffled and chasing after the wrong man. The latest murder that had spawned a sudden increase in home security systems sales.

  The latest murder that had subdued the city’s residents with paranoia.

  Jessop turned her attention away from the TV and to the reflections in the glass of the steady stream of residents trying to go about their normal lives as best they could. The press had made sure each and every one of them knew of the danger that lurked among them, but life did not stop because of one man’s twisted belief he could enhance life through taking life. Be extra cautious about people following you was the message to everyone, and it was one she subscribed to. Because she and her team, along with the eleven all-seeing CCTV cameras, had spent all morning looking for the danger among them along the city’s most congested street, and so far had found only one possible.

  The man was in his twenties, wore a baseball cap, and was spotted three times by CCTV in the same shops as a young mother and son. He had then proceeded to follow them to the car park, where he also happened to be parked. He checked out, but had kicked up a fuss. Mason had given him the number of the police complaints commission, along with his sincere condolences if the killer’s next victim happened to be one of his relations.

  She lit a cigarette and ambled to the next window, seemingly perusing the collection of multicoloured iPods. In her earpiece, Mason, who was covering the east end of the high street, asked if she’d seen anything of interest.

  ‘A new iPod for Vicky,’ she replied into the tiny, concealed microphone beneath her jacket collar.

  ‘How’s she holding up?’

  ‘As well as can be expected.’ She’d met Vicky in the small hours of the morning. In search of a glass of water, Vicky had found her lying on the sofa chasing sleep. When asked why she wasn’t in bed beside her dad, she’d been forced to tell her first lie to the girl: ‘I came in here to unwind after finishing some work. Next thing I know, zonk, asleep.’

  Buying the plausible lie, Vicky had then commented that her dad had lost some weight and was not looking too good.

  This was the opportunity she’d wanted. All she had to do was tell Vicky the truth, that her dad was dying but was too afraid to do anything about it for fear of hurting her. Yes, she would be upset, but not as upset as she would be if he forwent the treatment and died because of his martyrdom. And that was when she’d seen what Ray had been seeing in Vicky’s eyes since he’d sat down beside his traumatised daughter and held her hand: a little girl lost, void of all hope and robbed of all reason, her sanity shattered into a million razor sharp shards of recollect, each reflecting her mother’s bloody death.

  Before she knew what she was saying, the second lie had left her lips. ‘Pre-wedding nerves, honey. Men are such wimps.’ The relief on Vicky’s face should have made her feel better. It didn’t. She felt dirty and violated, as if Ray had secretly snuck into her head and poisoned her ethics when she wasn’t looking.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Vicky had said with a weak smile. She had then kissed her good night and padded upstairs to bed, leaving Jessop wrestling with her conscience until her insomnia had her leaving for work before sunrise.

  She asked Mason, ‘You see anything?’

  ‘Nope. But then we’ve had no calls of a victim today. Could be he’s at it now.’

  It was a possibility, of course, but a possibility she couldn’t afford to think about right now. ‘Lunchtime rush’s is about to start. Keep alert.’ She signed off and drew hard on her smoke. Turned from the store window and stepped through the foot traffic into the centre of the pedestrianised street. There she found a bench and took a seat next to an attractive, young woman dressed in a crisp white blouse and black skirt picking at a sausage roll and texting lethargically on her mobile.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Jessop asked.

  Without looking up from her phone, the girl mumbled, ‘You know… same shit, different day.’

  ‘I heard that.’ Jessop turned her attention to the world happening around her: workers from the retail sector wearing uniforms with badges, lighting up cigarettes outside their places of work; pairs of office workers and bank staff ducking into Burger King and Greggs and Starbucks; people dressed casually like herself, queuing up at the hot dog vendor; the old boy who sold the Evening Post from his tiny stand outside Boots; the cheery pockmarked-faced Big Issue vendor on the corner of Lewis street; the father and son team who carted a trolley up and down the street selling ethnic, hand carved jewellery; the blind busker who sat with his Labrador and whistled tunes from the sixties; the young mothers pushing pushchairs laden with Primark bags and supermarket bags. Hundreds of people, strangers, with nothing in common other than they shared the same city. A city home to a killer who did not care who they were, only that they learned to appreciate the lives they had been blessed with, no matter how miserable they may be. She thought of Ray and his stoic positively, and hated herself for thinking it, but maybe the killer had a point; although she could not subscribe to the method in which he chose to teach the lesson.

  She fished out her mobile and pretended to text, imitating her companion. What she was actually doing was scrolling through the gallery of E-FITS of the killer. Each picture differed, with varying hairstyles, shapes of beards, head attire, and sunglasses. Every member of the task force and the CCTV crew had these pictures, and it was on her strict instruction they memorised every single variant. She had. However, what with eyeing every single slim, five-foot-ten to six-foot male between twenty and forty, they soon all began to look like her suspect.

  Look too hard and you risk missing what you are seeking.

  She left the bench, where the disgruntled girl was staring daggers at her mobile phone, waiting for a response from the text she had sent.

  Stepping back into the tide of shoppers, she allowed it to take her a hundred yards west until she was nearly knocked over by a teenage couple stumbling from a bar and laughing the hysterical laugh born from too much alcohol. She stepped aside and walked away just as they fell into one another’s arms and kissed like only teenagers kissed.

  ‘Boss?’ came Davies’ voice in her earpiece. ‘I think we got a bite. Your eleven o’clock, fifty yards, dude in the grey hoody. Took an interest in the young lovers as soon as they bowled out the bar.’

  Jessop kept on walking in the same direction, stopping casually to glance in the bookshop window Paul Bromley had looked in sixteen days before he had died. Above her she was aware of one of the nine CCTV cameras upon which Davies was monitoring her and Mason and the rest of the street.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she whispered into the microphone.

  ‘They’re coming up on you now,’ Davies answered. ‘Grey hoody is thirty yards behind.’

  She recognised the drunken laughter behind her, then spied the young couple stumbling passed with arms wrapped around each other’s waists. The lad sported a lot of unruly dark hair and was dressed in an army jacket and baggy, torn jeans. The girl had short, spiky blonde hair and wore a long knitted cardigan over a flowery dress and heavy black boots. They looked like art students, and Jessop couldn’t help but think of Chloe.

  ‘Grey hoody’s on you, boss,’ Davies warned.

  She tensed as in the book
shop window she caught the flash of grey passing her back. He appeared in no hurry. ‘Scott…’ she whispered into her collar.

  ‘On my way.’

  She slipped back into the foot traffic. Twenty yards ahead, she could see the grey hood amongst the throng of bobbing heads. The height was right, neither tall or short, and she had clocked his slim build when he had passed her. ‘Talk to me, Tom.’

  ‘Suspect’s keeping his distance. Thirty yards. Hang back, boss, you’re getting too close. ’She slowed her pace, much to the annoyance of the person behind her. ‘Okay, heads up, people,’ Davies announced. ‘The couple are turning right down Chain Street.’ The radio silenced as all waited to hear if grey hoody made the same turn. Jessop stretched her neck up to see over the crowd. The grey hood had vanished. ‘He made the turn,’ came Davies’ urgent voice. ‘I repeat, suspect is heading down Chain Street.’

  ‘I’ve got the north exit,’ Mason said.

  ‘Stay out of sight,’ warned Jessop. ‘We don’t want to scare him off.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Jessop made the turn into Chain Street. The footfall was lighter here and she picked up grey hoody easily. He was fifty yards ahead of her, and still appearing to be in no hurry to catch the couple. But then he wouldn’t be. He wanted to follow them home and secretly invade their lives for the next fortnight. Only then would he introduce himself.

  ‘Whoa, hold up, people,’ Davies instructed. ‘Couple are heading into Sainsburys.’

  Jessop craned her neck up again and saw the supermarket sixty yards down the street on her right. ‘Where’s our suspect?’

  ‘He’s hanging back outside Burton.’

  She clocked the menswear shop between herself and Sainsburys. Ducked into the doorway of a newsagents. ‘Scott?’

  ‘Outside Primark.’

  She mentally mapped out Mason’s position at the far end of the street.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘Suspect’s loitering.’

  ‘Any shot of his face?’

  ‘Uh-huh. The bastard aint looked up all this time. Fucking hoodies.’

  Jessop echoed the sentiment.

  Davies said, ‘Okay, people, here we go. Couple are leaving Sainsburys. Looks like they nipped in for smokes. The guy’s lighting up.’

  Jessop left the doorway, her heart thumping.

  ‘They’re crossing the street, heading your way, Scott. Suspect’s following.’

  ‘Got ’em.’

  She was so focused, when she stepped into the road she didn’t see or hear the bus heading toward her, and narrowly missed being hit just as Davies advised her the couple were running toward the bus stop.

  Fifty yards down the road she watched the bus pull to a stop, and caught sight of their hooded suspect crossing the road in a hurry.

  ‘The couple are getting on,’ Davies said.

  Grey hoody disappeared behind the bus. Jessop hung back against all her instincts telling her not to. ‘Tom, talk to me!’

  ‘Suspect’s getting on the bus. I repeat, the suspect is getting on the number twenty-five bus.’

  ‘Get hold of Reading Transport. Tell them to contact the driver of that bus and tell him to note what stop they get off.’

  ‘On it.’

  ‘Scott, get us a car.’

  ‘Already made the call.’

  The bus pulled away. Jessop fell back into the newsagent’s doorway and thought she saw their suspect taking a seat on the bottom deck. A moment later Mason was sprinting toward her. ‘Car’s on its way, two minutes.’

  ‘Tom,’ she called, ‘talk to me!’

  ‘Done. They’re making the call to the driver now.’

  ‘Good. Find out the CCTV coverage along that bus route.’

  ‘Doing it.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Mason panted. ‘You think he’s our boy?’

  Jessop watched the bus disappear round the corner. ‘Let’s not start patting each other’s backs just yet.’ The car arrived, a silver Ford Focus with Curtis at the wheel. Mason jumped in the back, Jessop in front. ‘Number twenty-five bus. Keep a distance.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Hold up,’ came Davies’ voice in Jessop’s earpiece. ‘We got a problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Suspect’s off the bus. I repeat, suspect is off the bus.’

  Her head spun. ‘Where?’

  ‘West Street.’

  ‘What about the couple?’

  ‘Negative. They’re still on board.’

  ‘What the fuck’s he playing at?’ Mason snapped from the back seat.

  ‘Tom, stay on him.’ She ordered Curtis to get them round to West Street ASAP. The car lurched forward, and a minute later they pulled up beside the bus stop at which their suspect had alighted. ‘Talk to me Tom.’ But all she received was radio silence.

  ‘Tom!’ Mason yelled. ‘What’s going on?’

  More silence, then: ‘Oh shit on a stick. You aintgonna believe this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Say again!’

  ‘We’ve fucking lost him.’

  ‘You have got to be joking.’

  ‘Afraid not. But that aint the worst part.’

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Jessop and Mason sat either side of Davies in the CCTV control centre. On the wall before them were dozens of TV screens showing all angles of the city. Their attention, however, was focused on the screen replaying the moment their suspect in the grey hoody and blue jeans had alighted the bus on West Street and ambled toward St Bart’s church.

  Davies said, ‘Alright, watch this.’

  Jessop leant into the screen just as their suspect approached the mouth of Bartholomew Street, a narrow walkthrough that cut behind the church. It was there their suspect stopped and turned to face the way he’d come. She squinted at the screen at the exact moment a gloved hand emerged from the hooded top’s pocket. What happened next stopped her heart.

  ‘Shit,’ Mason sighed.

  ‘Play it again,’ she demanded.

  The footage skipped back to the point where the hand left the pocket. ‘Slow,’ she said. The footage resumed at half the speed. ‘Alright, pause.’

  Davies froze the film.

  She stared at the image before her, of the suspect holding his gloved hand aloft.

  There was no doubt in her mind who he was waving at.

  ‘He’s fucking with us again,’ Mason snarled. ‘He knew we were watching him.’

  Jessop ignored her colleague. On the split screen before her played the footage shot around St Bart’s church taken after their suspect had stepped down Bartholomew Street. She had been regrettably informed by the CCTV operator that Bartholomew Street presented a blind spot where there were no cameras positioned.

  ‘Great,’ she’d growled, then demanded footage from every camera within a half mile radius of the church. There were three exits from Bartholomew Street: the south one he had entered; the north exit which led back onto the high street; and an east exit gained through a building up for lease, which was currently rented by an Asian businessman who sold end of line clothing at discounted prices. It was here where Brooke had been informed by the proprietor, Mr Singh, that they had no CCTV in the shop, and that neither him nor his two sons recalled seeing a guy in a grey hoody race through the shop around lunch time. It had been a very busy morning, apparently. And that was when Brooke had found the latest twist in their hunt.

  Amongst the sea of rails of hung clothing, she had found a bunch of grey hoodies identical to the one their suspect wore.

  ‘Any of them look worn?’ Jessop had asked.

  ‘They all have price labels attached,’ Brooke had replied.

  ‘Doesn’t mean our boy didn’t buy or steal one prior to today with the purpose of returning it without the staff’s knowledge.’

  ‘Crafty bastard.’

  ‘Confiscate them all, and get them to forensics.’

  Jessop rewound the footage of the shop’s ea
st exit. Played it back at half the speed between the times of 13.03 and 13.10. During that time it was used by more than twenty people, most young men wearing jeans and trainers. Such was the camera’s angle, she couldn’t see any of their faces, only the tops of their heads. None adorned a grey hood.

  ‘Okay,’ Davies said. ‘I’ve pinpointed our boy’s earlier movements before he zeroed in on the young lovers.’

  ‘You mean zeroed in on us?’ Mason corrected his colleagues.

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’ Davies played the footage, and both Jessop and Mason watched as their suspect appeared from Lewis Street, which ran alongside the department store Jessop had been staking out. Along the street, just out of shot, Jessop clocked the pub from where the young lovers had stumbled out knocking into her. She noted the time on the screen. They were due out in two minutes.

  ‘Any sign of him prior to this?’ she asked Davies.

  Davies shook his head. ‘I’ve checked footage from all sides of the building. He just appeared from nowhere.’

  ‘Sounds familiar,’ she sighed. ‘Keep on it. Especially check for guys with bags.’

  Davies rubbed his eyes and went back to work.

  ‘When do you think he was onto us?’ Mason asked wearily.

  Jessop paused the footage, sat back and stretched her back. ‘Probably from the minute we stepped onto the high street this morning.’

  Mason scratched his chin, troubled.

  ‘I know you had your doubts about this operation,’ she said. ‘But you can’t catch a snake without beating the grass in which it hides.’

  Chapter Sixty-three

  ‘Feel that? ’Olly used to say after they’d finished a job. ‘Fucking adrenaline, baby! That shit keeps us sharp. Keeps us the fuck alive. Makes us immortal. I could down a fucking gallon of that stuff, I swear.’