Scream, You Die

by Fowler, Michael

  Scarlett interrupted, “When was this, Claudette?”

  Her forehead screwed into a frown. She thought about the question for a couple of seconds and then answered, “Probably about a month before he attacked me. I remember it was Thursday evening. Quiz night. He didn’t do the quiz, that’s why we were chatting. It wasn’t that long, to be honest. I got serving again and that was the end of it. Until the following week, that is. He came in again, didn’t do the quiz and we chatted on and off while it was on.” She paused. “I say chatted. He really did the talking – said he'd had a busy day and then started waffling on about this multi-million deal he was involved in. To be honest, I switched off, just pretended I was interested. He was a bit of a bore and not my cup of tea. Anyway, he paid on a drink for me, I thanked him and then I got busy again. This second time, before he left, he made a point of coming up to the bar and saying cheerio to me and said he’d see me again. I just said cheerio and nodded and that was it. He turned up the following week, but this time my room-mate and some friends were in. I told them to stay close, that I thought he fancied me, so they hung around. He bought his usual lager and stayed at the end of the bar. In between serving, whenever I glanced up, I could see him watching me. It made me feel uncomfortable, and when I served him again and he asked me if I wanted a drink I turned him down, thanked him and told him some friends had paid on a couple for me. After that I spent as much time as I could with my friends and pretended to flirt with one of the guys. Just jokey stuff to put him off. When I looked up again he’d gone.” Claudette’s face changed. Her lips tightened and her chin quavered. “The Thursday after, that’s when he raped me. I finished in the bar just after twelve, walked back to the university and he was waiting for me near some trees.” She took a deep breath. “He grabbed me from behind and put a knife to my throat! Said he was going to kill me if I screamed or struggled!” Claudette’s eyes started to glisten.

  Scarlett reached across and touched Claudette’s hand, “Try and relax Claudette. Talking to us like this has got the hard part over with.” She patted the back of her hand. “And let me tell you, none of this is your fault. James Green is a rapist. Full stop. You know from the papers that you’re not the only one he’s done this to and if we hadn’t had caught him there would have been a lot more girls like you who he would have attacked. Telling us this now will help us put him behind bars for a long time. A very long time.” Scarlett gently squeezed her hand. “Before we finish talking, Claudette, can I just take you back a bit. I just want to get something clarified. Are you absolutely sure that the man who raped you was the same man who chatted with you at the bar? I’m not trying to dissuade you, but the university grounds are not that well lit and you did say he was waiting behind some trees.”

  Claudette nodded. “I know it was him. He had a scarf covering his mouth and nose, trying to hide his face, but we weren’t that far from one of the paths, which are quite well lit, so I got quite a decent look at him. And I recognised his voice.” She held Scarlett’s gaze. “Anyway, you’ll be able to tell if it’s him, won’t you?”

  Scarlett threw her a puzzled look. “How will we? I don’t understand.”

  Claudette squeezed back Scarlett’s hand, “I put the clothes I was wearing, when he attacked me, in a plastic bag and I’ve kept them under my bed. I’ve watched CSI and I’m right in thinking you’ll be able to get his DNA from them, aren’t I?”

  Scarlett’s eyes lit up, she shot a sideways glance at Tarn. He was displaying a wide grin. She could have punched the air.

  The rest of that day had been spent video-interviewing Claudette at a victim and witness suite and then she had been examined by a female force medical examiner. After that they had driven Claudette back to her room at the university and recovered her bagged clothing from beneath her bed, leaving her in the company of her room-mate for support, before returning to the office late that afternoon, where they had delivered the good news to the squad. The week’s hard work had paid off and consolidated their enquiry. Now all she wanted to do, especially tonight, was chill in front of the television, get a good night’s sleep and then rejuvenate herself tomorrow morning in the gym. She took another mouthful of wine and sank back against the cushions. Dermot O’Leary was introducing contestant Sam Bailey, a prison officer. She’d heard her sing twice already on previous episodes she had recorded and thought she stood a very good chance of winning the competition this year. She glanced at her watch – she should just have enough time to listen to her before the pasta bake was ready.

  Abruptly her BlackBerry rang. She diverted her gaze to the coffee table, where she eyed the brightly lit screen of her work mobile. This usually meant only one thing: a call out. Her shoulders sank. “No!” she groaned. Reaching across she set down her glass and snatched up the phone. She glanced at the screen before she answered but there was no name, only a mobile number, and although she couldn’t put a name to it she was familiar with the line of digits.

  Narrowing her eyes, racking her brains as to who it was, she answered, “DS Macey.”

  “It’s me,” said the male voice.

  She recognised the voice. Her face lit up. “Hello, It’s Me.”

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you since Thursday. I’ve left umpteen messages on your phone. I didn’t know if you’d changed your mobile or not so I contacted your work. They weren’t going to give me your number so I had to tell them I was your cousin and I needed to get hold of you urgently.”

  She pushed herself back on the sofa. “Oh sorry, Alex. My mobile’s been nicked. I was mugged last Friday night. I’ve lost all my contacts.”

  “Good job I’m resourceful.”

  “Resourceful! Someone’s got a bollocking coming Monday morning. They shouldn’t release this number without my permission first.”

  “Now, now, Detective Sergeant Macey, I don’t want you throwing your weight around. I’m a very persuasive man and you know that.”

  She let out a laugh. “Well this better be good, Alex King, I’ve got a glass of wine that’s ready for topping up, a pasta bake for one in the oven and X-Factor on the telly. What more can a girl want on a Saturday evening?”

  “Well I think I might just be able to better that.”

  “Oh yes, and what might that be then?”

  “I think I’ve found your sister.”

  Her head went into a swirl. Her hand tightened around the phone. “Rose! Where?”

  For the next few minutes she hung on to Alex’s every word. When he ended the call she found herself shaking.

  Eleven

  Following the phone call Scarlett had not been able to eat her pasta bake. She’d managed a few mouthfuls, but mostly she’d pushed it around the plate, her mind in a daze. She had managed to finish the bottle of wine, though, and although she knew she shouldn’t, she opened another, refilling her glass, dwelling on what she had just been told.

  Alex had possibly found her younger sister after all these years!

  It was something she had managed to avoid thinking about for these last couple of months, thanks to work, but in the space of a few minutes the news had resurrected all her pent-up anxieties again. As she sipped on her replenished drink her thoughts went into a tailspin and flashes of ghostly images from her past leapt around in the deepest recesses of her mind. Especially imagery from that fateful night, almost eleven years ago, when she had learnt that her parents had been killed – murdered, more specifically – and her younger sister had fled the scene. She had been wanted in connection with their deaths ever since.

  Swallowing another mouthful of wine, a feeling of guilt overcame her. Scarlett pulled away the glass and stared at the contents. She had been drunk that night – the fifteenth of February 2002. She still wore the date like an ugly wound cauterised into her grey cells. It was her second year at university, studying law, and she and a group of friends had hit the bars in Covent Garden celebrating Valentine’s night. She had been dating a guy in his final year and they had s
taggered back to the flat he shared with four other students. There they had polished off the remains of a bottle of vodka and collapsed into bed just before two a.m. She had been awoken three hours later by the incessant ringing of her mobile. It was the police, who said they needed to know where she was. She knew it had to be serious, but not for one moment did she think just how bad the news was going to be. Ten minutes later two cops were banging at the door giving her the news of her parent’s death. She had viewed the remainder of that day through a woozy fog, nursing the worst hangover she had ever had.

  Detectives did interview her, initially in an off-hand manner, but once they had confirmed she had been with at least a dozen other people at the time that her parents had met their deaths, they told her what they knew of the circumstances.

  She learned that earlier that night, her mother, Carran, and her father, John, had also been celebrating Valentine’s with a meal in a restaurant when they had been interrupted by a phone call from the police. Rose, who had then been sixteen, had been detained by officers called to a fight near Covent Garden station involving two women. When the police had got there they had found Rose grappling with an older woman. She was drunk and refused to calm down and so they had detained her. The older woman didn’t want to complain but because Rose was so inebriated they had taken her to hospital. Her dad, who was a detective sergeant in Lewisham CID, knew the officers who had escorted Rose, and had persuaded them to leave it with him. He and her mum had driven straight to the hospital and collected her, still in her drunken state, from the A&E department. Half an hour later a young couple driving home from a nearby pub had come across their crashed car, embedded in a tree, on an unlit country lane. Their phone call had brought out all the emergency services and it was determined that this was no ordinary accident. Her father had been found lying in undergrowth only yards from his car, covered in blood and in a critical condition. Paramedics discovered within a minute of examining him that he had been stabbed in the stomach and the chest. Firemen and traffic police attending to the car found her mother dead in the front passenger seat. She had taken the full impact of the collision when their car had hit the tree. Her dad had been rushed to hospital and taken directly to theatre. Sadly, he had died while undergoing surgery.

  At first the police at the scene hadn’t realised about her younger sister Rose, until Scarlett had mentioned her being missing. Then they had carried out a search. It wasn’t long before they found bloodstains and tracks leading away from the scene into the copse of trees beside the lane, prompting an even wider exploration. But despite the search parameters being extended and tracker dogs being used they did not find Rose. She had disappeared and a murder hunt was launched.

  Initially, the detectives interviewing Scarlett never actually said that Rose was a suspect, but the implication was there, such was their line of questioning, and Scarlett still felt guilty about how she had responded during those early days of the investigation. After all, it was she who had revealed Rose’s problems.

  Her younger sibling had always been difficult. Scarlett could remember that as a young child Rose would say and do the most hurtful things and would regularly throw a tantrum before sinking into days of depression where she wouldn’t communicate with anyone. She could recall, after one bad outburst, her father locking Rose in the bedroom, shouting at her that she was just an attention-seeking, spoilt little brat. As a teenager the temper tantrums worsened. During one of her manic bouts she assaulted two teachers at her school and was excluded. That was when her parents took Rose to the doctors. She was referred to a psychologist but no definite diagnosis could be made. From then on her behaviour deteriorated. At the age of fourteen Rose began drinking and hanging out with older teenagers. She could remember her father having to go out many a night to bring Rose home. More often than not she would be in a drunken stupor.

  And through those early days of the enquiry, albeit Scarlett fought her sister’s corner vehemently, telling the detectives that despite Rose’s bad behaviour she couldn’t believe for one minute that she would kill their mum and dad, having no other independent witnesses, and no other information to hand, she had been circulated as a suspect.

  After that her life changed irreversibly; the event had shaped her life and her career. In the year following, Scarlett gave evidence at her parent’s inquest, in which the verdict of “murder by persons known or unknown” had been recorded against her father and an open verdict against her mother. She had overseen their burial and completed her law exams, where in spite of the distraction she gained a 2:1. She had celebrated attaining her degree by getting drunk alone and falling early into bed, sobbing her heart out.

  For a while she had wondered how she was going to carry on with her life. Everything she had dreamed of lay in ruins. Then it had come to her one night in a half-drunken state. Her father had been a detective, and she’d grown up on a TV diet of Prime Suspect, Cracker and A Touch of Frost. Joining the police seemed the most natural thing in the world. And she knew it would give her a way in to do her own digging. She had kept in touch with one of the detectives involved in her parent’s case. He had provided her with regular updates, from which she had made notes, and she had compared those alongside the many and different newspaper reports, studying and dissecting the information. But no matter how hard she tried to pick between the lines everything still led back to her sister.

  And those were the reasons why, instead of being a lawyer, like her father had wanted her to be, she had joined the Metropolitan Police. Since then she had worked tirelessly behind the scenes to uncover the truth and track down her sister Rose. She had been waiting a long time for this news.

  Twelve

  Grazyna didn’t know how long she’d been out for. When she came to, the first thing she noticed was that the curtains had been drawn back, bathing the room in a warm ambient light.

  And she was alone.

  A feeling of relief washed over her.

  On the bedside cabinet she saw that someone had left her a sandwich and a bottle of water. Despite the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach the sight of it made her realise just how hungry she was. The last time she’d eaten had been on the plane and that was well over a day ago. She reached over to grab the sandwich and in doing so caught the top of her shoulder. A sharp pain shot down her arm. The jolt reminded her of what the two men had done to her and glancing down she saw the burn marks the soldering iron had made. Heaving herself up, Grazyna took another look. Lingering along its outlines she delicately traced a finger over the tenderness. The shape of the ugly red mark reminded her of a crescent moon and star. She would be left with a permanent scar.

  Why are they doing this to me?

  For what seemed like the hundredth time she re-ran everything that had happened to her inside her head and once more her chest began to tighten. She took a long deep breath and held it. She needed to stay focussed if she wanted to come through this. Nevertheless, even as she tried to control the release of the captured breath she felt it reverberate up through her throat as the anxiety remained. She took another slow breath, and as she did so she caught the sound of the stairs creaking.

  Ten seconds later the key clicked in the lock and the door opened. Skender stood in the doorway.

  Grazyna froze with fear.

  He stepped into the room alternating his gaze between her and the bedside cabinet.

  “You need to eat and drink. You need your strength.”

  He walked towards her and she cowered away, pulling the duvet up towards her chin. She watched Skender’s mouth take on that jackal-like smirk of his. It filled her with fear.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, picked up one half of the sandwich and pushed it towards her. “Here, you eat.”

  Grazyna eyed him nervously. She didn’t know if she could stomach it. She felt sick again.

  He held the sandwich at arms length, jabbing it towards her face, glaring. Nervously she lowered the duvet and reluctantly took it from his grasp.
As she bit into the bread and cheese he pulled away his gaze and levelled it upon the branding on her shoulder.

  Chinning towards her he said, “I do that to protect you.” He pulled back his eyes and met hers. “People know you now work for me. They not touch you.” He pushed himself up. “Now you eat up, and then you bathe and get dressed. We go in a few hours.” As Skender strolled back towards the door he picked up her suitcase. “You not need this anymore. I give you clothes.” He flicked his head towards the wardrobe. “You wear something in there after you bathe. I come up in one hour. You be ready or trouble.”

  With that, he left the room with her case, this time not closing the door.

  ****

  Grazyna did manage to force down the cheese sandwich and gulp down the water while staring out through the barred window. It was the first time she’d done so. The road below had a steady flow of traffic passing along it and she got the impression that although they weren’t on a main street, because all she saw was an endless row of houses with tiny low-walled gardens, she still thought they must be on a busy thoroughfare. From up here she got a partial glimpse of the inside of the vehicles that passed, and as she watched one lady making a call on her mobile, she wished that could be her. As the car passed she spotted a young woman pushing a buggy, crossing the road, directly beneath. For a brief moment she did contemplate smashing the window and shouting for help. But as she toyed with the idea her heart missed a beat, as a disturbing vision of the consequences flashed inside her brain – not just for her but for the young woman and her child and she wavered against it. She also remembered the threats Skender had made against her younger sister. With a feeling of despair she stepped back and determined it would be best if she took the bath Skender had ordered her to take.

  With a heavy heart she undressed slowly, wrapped a towel around her and apprehensively made her way along the landing to the bathroom. Standing before the mirror she stared at herself. She looked as awful as she felt. Her shoulder-length straw-coloured hair was a tangled mess and had lost its usual shine. Behind dark-ringed eyelids her pale blue eyes were lifeless and bloodshot. And then there was the angry-looking burn marks to her right shoulder.