Giving a shrug that Sarah felt through her own body, Jack knew that now wasn’t the time to be pondering such things and raised his leg again. But this time it wasn’t to knee her once more to get their conversation back on track. Instead he brought his heel down in a forceful blow that was met with a sickening crunch as Josh’s head fractured. Jack was about to repeat the action to finish the man off, but it was clear Josh was slipping into unconsciousness and his hand fell from his throat.
Jack left him with his still beating heart continuing to pump out blood from his exposed wound in rhythmic, pulsing waves. He would have enjoyed remaining there watching the combined effects of him bleeding out and his heart stopping.
But he still had work to do. What he had witnessed so far was just a side show to support the main event. Although turned away from view, Sarah must have realised what had happened to her husband and started screaming. With the knife still pressed against her, he could have ended her outburst immediately but didn’t want to be rushed. He may have come here with a specific task in mind but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself along the way.
He half shoved, half dragged her into the sitting room and was glad that the property was detached, and that the weather meant no windows were likely to be open. He threw her down onto the sofa. It served to jolt the screams from her, but she immediately tried to get up again.
‘Josh!’ she called, fighting unsuccessfully against her stronger assailant. After the fourth failed attempt, she slumped back down and remained there.
‘What do you want?’ she demanded, rage emerging to overtake the fear.
Jack pulled the footstool across, so he could sit directly facing her. ‘I want you to calm down,’ he replied simply, as though this was the most reasonable request in the world. He could sense her about to lunge forward again, and he held out the knife in the hope she would realise that to do so would see her impaled.
‘Good,’ he said finally, satisfied that he had quelled her resistance for the moment. ‘I need you like this, so we can have a proper chat.’
‘But Josh?’ Sarah exclaimed, glancing towards the doorway.
‘Forget about him,’ Jack replied firmly. ‘You should be more concerned about yourself.’
She snapped her head back to him, the look of fear returning once more and joined by tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘I want you to show me.’
‘Show you what?’ Sarah’s voice was now little more than a whisper and punctuated by sobbing.
‘Where he stabbed you,’ he responded, waving his knife in the direction of her stomach.
‘You mean… you mean Brandt?’
‘Atta girl! And who said blondes were dumb, eh?’
Sarah looked at him incredulously but the fire in his eyes was enough to tell her he was deadly serious. Without removing her gaze from him, she twisted her body to the left and lifted up the bottom of her shirt.
Jack stared awestruck at the somewhat innocuous looking two-inch scar. He knew that surgeons were good at repairing damaged tissue, but he equally understood why Brandt’s blow had not been sufficient to kill her. But it wasn’t that which entranced him. Seeing it, even more so than being in the presence of Sarah Donovan, provided him with a far greater connection with his hero than being at any of his murder scenes. At that moment, he wanted nothing more in the world than to touch it; feel the very spot where Brandt had plunged in his blade.
He saw Sarah wince as he leaned forward, his free hand outstretched. Yet as he touched her skin, her body only gave the merest of involuntary jolts.
The sensation on his fingertips was glorious. The scar tissue itself was deliciously cool in contrast to the skin around it, and almost impossibly smooth. Jack considered whether he was finding the experience erotic but surmised that this was more akin to an entomologist discovering a new species of insect. Not that his visit hadn’t awoken the same desire as before to get back to Mandy and spend the remainder of the day exploring her own body sexually.
‘Well, that was lovely, Sarah. Thank you for your time but I have somewhere I need to be.’
He could see the look of confusion that his words provoked soon replaced by one of hope. Allowing a cruel smile to form on his lips he simply waited until she realised that their business wasn’t fully concluded.
‘I would ask you what it was like to actually see the great man, but I imagine he was gone before you even realised what had happened to you. I wonder whether I will ever get to meet him one day… Of course, he would be taking a huge risk in wanting to thank his greatest fan but perhaps this might compel him to do so.’
Jack didn’t wait for Sarah to question what he meant by that. With her back still exposed, he dived forward with the full intention of burying the knife in the exact place he had been caressing moments before. But two words stopped him in his tracks.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Jack sat back and coldly regarded her. This must be some form of a trick. He remembered seeing something on television where people who were abducted kept talking about their families in the hope that it would humanise them in the eyes of their captors and make it harder for them to inflict harm.
‘But you’re not fat.’
‘I’m only twelve weeks but, look, I’m starting to show already.’ Sarah twisted back around, and Jack could see that her stomach wasn’t flat.
‘Could be that you’ve just let yourself go a bit since you got married.’
‘We had our first scan on Thursday. I have got the photo in my handbag if you’d like me to get it.’
Perhaps it was the reasonableness in Sarah’s tone or the hope that was evident in her eyes that caused Jack to feel aggravated. How dare she try and throw a spanner in the works? How dare she think that just because she’d managed to get herself knocked up it would changed anything?
Jack shrugged. ‘That’s unfortunate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, worry edging back into her features once more.
‘This wasn’t meant to happen.’
‘It’s not too late to stop this,’ she said, delicately placing a hand on his knee.
Jack laughed; it was loud and full and, most of all, cruel. ‘No, you stupid woman, none of this was meant to happen. You getting pregnant, getting married, this house,’ he said, looking round the living room. ‘None of this! You were meant to die outside the station.’
He didn’t wait for a reply and lunged again; this time he wouldn’t be stopped. As he drove the knife into her again and again, he considered how the earlier sensation of touching the wound inflicted by Brandt paled by comparison.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The need to keep Kath away from the news may have stopped but the sex hadn’t. The days following their trip to Llandudno had been the best Brandt could remember. Better even than when he had met Susan because they didn’t have the small matter of work to get in the way of their rapidly developing relationship. Their physical union had shown a hunger, absent from both their lives for so many years, but it was their connection on an emotional level that was the stronger indication of their potential compatibility.
Brandt had been worried this would prove difficult, considering he had needed to avoid discussing his past, fabricated or otherwise. However, and in much the same way that Kath had not sought to pry in their earlier conversations, she seemed satisfied to focus on the present, and was reluctant to expand on any unwitting reference to her deceased husband. This very much suited Brandt even if he was curious whether her reticence was borne out of respect for him, for no one liked to be compared to their lover’s previous partners, or if she was seeking to keep buried some form of secret there.
Having finally ventured out of the house the previous night to share a dinner at the surprisingly good Chinese restaurant in Betws-y-Coed, it would be their first day in public since they had gone to Llandudno. They were both keen to avoid the kind of formal introductions that would inevitably lead to awkward questions, but they knew there was a fair cha
nce they might bump into people Kath knew. As things currently stood, and without the knowing looks and raised eyebrows from judgemental others, what they had together remained personal and pure; something they wished to hold onto a little longer. They had also admitted to each other that they wouldn’t know what to say if pressed about the exact nature of their relationship. Although they both knew that neither of them was getting any younger, experience had taught them that sometimes it was just best to enjoy the moment and accept things for what they were, rather than getting bogged down in how things might be.
So, as they washed and dressed, full from a hearty breakfast that had followed a lie-in not involving much in the way of sleeping, they discussed where they might go. Brandt’s limited funds and reliance on public transport had seen him explore little of the region since his arrival in North Wales and, with the rest of the day promised to be fine, Kath suggested they take a nice Sunday drive out towards Snowdonia, stop off for some lunch and, if they felt they had time, come back via Conwy Castle.
This sounded perfect to Brandt and, as they set out on a twisty but flowing mountain road on which Kath drove with the confidence of someone who had spent their life on similar stretches of tarmac, he reflected on how wonderfully different his life was. Even if it wasn’t for the fact he had found true companionship, the setting which he could now call home was so far removed from what he had experienced before as to allow him to pass off his previous existence as an, admittedly long, bad dream.
But this illusion lasted for less than half an hour.
Brandt hadn’t yet got around to sharing with Kath his contempt for the majority of radio, and was actually finding the recognisable but insipid sounds of Radio 2 far from bothersome as they wound their way up and around to the Llanberis Pass. Kath hadn’t been out for her morning paper since the day Brandt had become more than just a house guest, but he hadn’t felt the slightest apprehension as the cheerful disc jockey switched over to the more sombre news presenter at the top of the hour.
It may have only been a quick update ahead of the main programme at lunchtime, but Brandt heard enough to know something was seriously wrong. Hearing a name so familiar, and yet one that had appeared so different, shook him back to reality with such force that he had to ask Kath to pull over, so he could get some fresh air, for fear he may otherwise vomit.
Fortunately, and despite his deliberately polite protestations, Kath had assumed Brandt’s sudden change of disposition was the result of her driving being too enthusiastic. And yet this had only removed the most immediate of issues. How was he going to get through the rest of the day without the shocking revelations sufficiently altering his humour to arouse suspicion? What he really needed was time and space to think but he could not, would not, allow whichever sick fuck was committing atrocities in his name to endanger what he had managed to build up with Kath. And yet what had happened would need addressing. His ambivalence towards the copycat murders, a state of mind that had largely remained despite them leading to the exposure of his faked suicide, was now gone. The description of Sarah Donovan’s killing was so brief as to almost be non-existent, but that didn’t matter to Brandt. It contained one crucial detail: she had been expecting a baby. Brandt wasn’t sure whether, at the time of stabbing Sarah, he had intended for her to live, but he remembered being happy when he had heard she was recovering in hospital. Not only had the person who was acting in his name sought to alter the course of history that Brandt had set, but he had taken an innocent life. He knew that people had described his own victims as innocent, but they weren’t. They were adults: complicit participants in the society that had allowed itself to become fractured. But a baby, an unborn child, something Brandt had yearned for himself to no avail for so many years, had done nothing to contribute to the ills that blighted modern Britain.
The rest of the day had been excruciating for Brandt but had gone as well as he could have hoped. His initial thought that he would try and end it early, claiming his sudden feeling of sickness was symptomatic of him coming down with some bug or other, had to be dismissed for what he needed to do once they were back at the house. He had known Kath would understand, be concerned even, but to then have to ask if he could use her laptop rather than be tucked safely into bed would seem odd. It wasn’t as though he expected her to suspect the real reason for his apparent malaise, but there was every chance she would take the change as him having second thoughts about what had developed between them over the past few days.
Therefore, for things to appear normal, Brandt had been required to continue with their day as planned which, in this context, had meant being exceedingly cheerful and enthralled by where they went and what they saw. He knew from his experience with Franklin, especially when he had been courting their friendship in order to gain the information about DCI Johnson he had required, that, even away from working in the police, he could put on an act. Nevertheless, today had been much harder because he had been constantly dogged by the darkness with which he viewed the recent events in Nottingham threatening to destroy his humour; feigned or otherwise.
So, it had been with tremendous relief that he had finally arrived home and Kath had accepted his suggestion that she run herself a bath to help warm up after the surprisingly cold castle battlements they had scaled. She had demurely enquired whether he wished to scrub her back but seemed equally thrilled that Brandt had been so enamoured with the day that he requested her laptop password, so he could plan their next, similar, trip out.
Safely logged in and with a series of tabs open about Wales’ various tourist attractions he could easily switch to if she finished her bath early, Brandt set about accessing the dark web in search of the same software he had used in Spain to hide his IP address.
Having spent the day fighting the urge to just send the text from his phone, now that Brandt had the chance to message Johnson safely, he found himself both nervous and unsure what to write. He had known that the fire at her house might not hide his escape forever but had been certain he would never be communicating with Johnson again. In many respects he felt obliged to enquire how she was, no matter how crass and disingenuous she might receive it, but he resolved that it would be wiser to keep things as simple as possible and stick to the true reason for his contact.
– It wasn’t me.
Brandt had sat with the mouse pointer hovering over the send icon for minutes. He didn’t doubt that the message was the best representation of how he felt, but he kept going over the implications of the need to send it. If nothing else, it provided a connection with the past he had worked so hard to sever. It wasn’t as though he was expecting anything other than bitter hatred and scorn to be flung back at him, but he couldn’t allow the atrocity in Nottingham to go unanswered.
With the sound of the plug being pulled from the bath, he finally plucked up the courage to make that final, vital click that would see those simple words fly almost instantaneously across to Johnson. He would have liked nothing more than to have spent the evening waiting to see if a response came through, but he would have to leave checking his emails until the morning. He would insist that he make Kath breakfast in bed as a thank you for the trip out and, whilst hastily knocking up something for them to eat, he could have the laptop next to him in the kitchen.
‘Hold on a second my dear, I’ll come through with some fresh towels!’ Brandt called in the direction of the bathroom, getting up from his seat with a last wistful look back at the computer.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Whilst Brandt had been obliviously enjoying his lie-in with Kath on that Sunday morning, Johnson had been making her way to the police station. She had considered going in the previous evening as soon as she had heard the news, but figured it was better to let them get to grips with the full scale of what they were facing. She also felt that to achieve what she required, Potter would have to be softened up by a sleepless night and the urgent phone calls from the top brass the next morning.
Johnson may not hav
e been invited this time, but she was sure she wasn’t going to face the ignominy of waiting for someone to let her into CID. She phoned DC Hardy as soon as she arrived in the car park and he had required far less convincing to come out and meet her than she had been expecting.
‘Thanks for this,’ she said, getting out of her car as soon as he emerged. There was no point rewarding his help with berating him for his role in the failings of his superiors. Not that Johnson felt completely absolved of all responsibility herself for what had happened to Sarah Donovan. Yet she had come closest to seeing that the railway station wasn’t the killer’s next destination and, whether fortunate or not, she wasn’t the person in charge of the investigation.
At least not at this point.
‘No problem, ma’am. Are you here to see the DSI?’
‘Yes. How is he?’
‘To be honest, I’ve hardly seen him. He’s been holed up in his office most of the night and whenever I’ve passed by, he’s been on the phone.’
‘And Fisher?’
‘Well…’ Hardy paused, unsure exactly how to respond to this. ‘I guess you’ll see for yourself in a minute.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Johnson thoughtfully. ‘I guess I will. I assume he doesn’t know I’m here yet.’
‘No, ma’am, I just slipped straight out as soon as I got your call. On that note, when we go in do you mind if I…?’
Johnson laughed. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been able to resist mocking Hardy, or anyone for that matter, for their cowardice but today she might need all the allies she could get. ‘No problem. I’m sure I interrupted you when you were in the middle of something important that you need to get back to straight away.’
‘Thanks, ma’am.’
Nothing further was said between them as they first went into the duty area and then up the stairs towards plain clothes. Once there, Hardy got his wish and managed to let them both in and slip away before Fisher noticed who had arrived to throw a cat amongst the pigeons. The man who had been heading up the team in Johnson’s absence, with his back to the door, was deep in conversation with another detective. It only took Fisher a moment to read the surprise on the face of the person who, just a moment before, had been listening carefully to what he was being told, for him to swing around and see Johnson.
Smoke and Mirrors Page 13