Fearful Symmetry

by J. E. Mayhew

  Laura leapt to her feet, but Green threw his arms around her legs as she passed him and they both fell onto the floor in a tangled heap. Gambles saw his chance and hurled himself forward, straddling her and bringing his face close.

  “What was it so damaged you, Laura? I’d love to know,” Gambles hissed. “I know there’s something there. Was it an abusive boyfriend? It was my old dad who did it for me. Beat the living daylights out of me. And my mum left me behind with him.”

  “Bitch!” Green snapped, making Laura struggle but Gambles had pinned her with the weight of his body.

  “Yes, Albert,” Gambles said. “You’re right.” He turned his attention back to Laura. “You see, Laura, I can tell you’ve got a secret. Something dark.”

  Laura bucked and kicked, trying to unseat him. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

  “Touchy,” Gambles said.

  “Touché!” Albert shouted, lying on his back and waving his hands in the air.

  “Both!” Gambles said, slapping his thighs. “You’ve got a skeleton in the closet, haven’t you?”

  “No,” Laura snapped. Gambles hands snaked around her throat as she kicked and flailed her arms, desperate to land a damaging blow.

  The front door exploded inwards and Blake came staggering up the hall, his eyes wide in horror. Using the distraction, Laura heaved Gambles away from her, sending him rolling backwards. She staggered to her feet as Gambles leapt towards the kitchen and the back door.

  “It’s Gambles!” Laura yelled. “Get him!”

  Blake made to move forward but suddenly, Green stood between them and the door to the hall. He was snarling and whirling a poker around in the air. “Leave him alone. He’s suffered enough!”

  “Mr Green, he’s killed at least three people…” Laura pleaded.

  “Don’t waste your time, Laura,” Blake said, raising his hands. “Okay, Mr Green, we’re leaving.” They backed out of the room to the front door, Green snarling at them like a wild animal all the way. Blake pulled the front door shut and dragged Laura up the drive just in time to see the Chimeree van speed off.

  “Come on!” Blake said, running towards the Manta.

  The engine was rumbling and the car rolling forward as Laura threw herself into the passenger seat. Then Blake floored the accelerator and she almost slid down into the footwell as they took off. The tyres screeched on the tarmac and it took Laura a few moments to get herself straight in the seat. She tugged at the seatbelt, cursing as it snagged repeatedly.

  “He’s just up ahead,” Blake said. “Careful with the belt, this is a classic car you know.”

  “Green was harbouring him,” Laura said.

  “It explains how Gambles knew so much about Hilbre Grove.” The streetlights flashed by and then suddenly, blue lights appeared behind them. “Damn,” Blake said. “Looks like our friends on guard duty finally caught up with what’s going on.”

  “Are we going to pull over?”

  “No.” Blake said and put his foot down, overtaking the taxi in front of him and getting behind Gambles in the Chimeree van. The police car had its siren on now and was repeatedly flashing Blake to stop.

  Gambles suddenly turned right onto the main road, narrowly missing an oncoming minibus which slammed its brakes on, Blake used the chance to follow but the police car had to stop as the minibus started moving again. It stalled and the police car accelerated out of the side road.

  “What are we going to do?” Laura yelled above the throaty roar of the Opel Manta’s engine.

  “I don’t know,” Blake said. “Keep on his tail and hope the boys behind us realise that they’re chasing a copper’s car and look at who I’m chasing!”

  Laura’s heart pounded and she gripped the door handle, her knuckles white as the Chimeree van swerved around two cars and Blake followed, narrowly missing an oncoming bus. Horns blared and lights flashed, dazzling Laura and Blake but he kept to the van’s tail. They careered through red lights, cars swerving to right and left. It was a miracle nothing hit them. Blake realised they were on Upton Road. “He’s heading for Moreton,” he said. “The roundabout in the town centre might slow him down.”

  The Chimeree van almost went up onto two wheels as it hurtled around the roundabout. Blake tried navigating it in the wrong direction and for a moment, he was alongside the van. Gamble looked pale but he gave Blake a manic grin as he swerved into the Manta. Laura shrieked, leaning into Blake as the impact shuddered through the car. Blake winced as he heard the metal buckle. Finding himself on the wrong side of the road with a motorcycle screaming towards him, he fell back in line behind the van. “Damn, that’ll cost me to fix,” he muttered.

  Two police cars followed them now and Laura thought she could hear the thrum of a helicopter above their heads. A supermarket flashed by and more red lights. They had turned into a narrower road. A row of shops flew by on one side, a school on the other and then they were replaced with rows of semi-detached houses and trees.

  “What time is it?” Blake asked Laura.

  “What?”

  “The time. What is it?” Blake barked.

  Laura glanced at her Fitbit watch. “Nearly twenty-five to,” she said. “Why?”

  “We’re in luck.”

  Laura looked up ahead to see the raised arms of a level crossing barrier. “Leasowe Station,” Blake said to her. “And there’s a train due.” The arms wobbled and slowly came down.

  “He isn’t going to stop!” Laura screamed.

  The Chimeree van accelerated towards the sinking gates that slowly guillotined the road. The bottom of the gates rattled noisily against the roof, a few pieces snapping off against the roof rack and then the van had squeezed under and the gates were shut. Blake slammed the brakes on and for a moment, Laura thought they were going to crash into the side of the train that now thundered along the rails in front of them. She slumped forward, slapping the dashboard with the flat of her hands. They sat staring at the rumbling wall of Merseyrail blue in front of them.

  “I thought your work wasn’t all car chases…”

  “Shit,” Blake hissed as the two police cars, lights still flashing, pulled up behind the Manta and two officers jumped out.

  Holding his warrant card aloft, Blake climbed out of his car. “DCI Blake,” he called. “I was pursuing a suspect…” His phone rang and Laura watched as he listened intently. Then he said something to the officers and hurried back to the car.

  “That was Matty Cavanagh giving me an earful,” he spat, banging his palms on the steering wheel. “Apparently they’ve found Ellen Kevney’s bloodstained clothes hanging on a gate down by Birkenhead Docks.

  Monday 17th February

  Chapter 36

  When DCI Matty Cavanagh had asked DS Vikki Chinn and DC Andrew Kinnear to interview one of the many van drivers who had been unlucky enough to deliver a package to Hilbre Grove, they jumped at the chance.

  “We can pop into Wellington Road on the way back,” Vikki had said.

  Kinnear had frowned. “What’s in Wellington Road?”

  “A friend of Josh Gambles,” Vikki said, with a grin. “Just keep it from Cavanagh until we have to tell him we’ve been there.

  The houses along Wellington Road had obviously once been grand townhouses, owned by wealthy managers and bankers who worked in Liverpool. They’d have had servants and dinner parties and taken the air on Sundays in the nearby Vale Park. Many of the houses had been dismembered; split into bedsits and flats. Georgie Grant lived in the ground floor bedsit at number twelve.

  DS Chinn and DC Kinnear paused at the door and scanned the doorbells at the side. Years of being painted over, pressed, rained on and frozen had left them looking dead and useless. “D’you think they work?” Kinnear said.

  DS Chinn shrugged and pressed the bell. To their surprise, a buzz sounded inside the house. After waiting for a minute, Chinn pressed again. Eventually, the door swung open and a pale, spindly man, dressed in a blue dressing gown stared at them wit
h half-closed eyes. Blond stubble covered his pointed chin and he raked his long fingers through a tangle of straw-gold hair. “What d’you want?” he yawned.

  “Mr Grant? I’m DS Chinn and this is DC Kinnear. We’d like to talk to you about Josh Gambles if we can.”

  Grant’s face crumpled into a look of discomfort. “I’d rather not talk about him, if it’s all the same to you.” He went to close the door, but Kinnear’s foot was already wedged in it.

  “It could be a matter of life and death, Mr Grant,” he said.

  With a sigh of resignation, Grant opened the door and gestured to the first floor flat. “Do come in. You’ll forgive the mess only I couldn’t be arsed to tidy up even if I’d known you were coming.”

  Grant’s flat was a pigsty. Chinn had grown up in a small flat above a restaurant and the place got cluttered, but she’d never seen a mess like this. A bed sat in one corner of the room and next to it stood a coffee table laden with a teetering pile of magazines and CDs. There was a TV on the other side of the room but to get to it, you’d have had to step over fourteen similar piles of magazines. Rows and rows of vinyl records leaned against the other walls. There was a small space where Grant stood to access the tiny sink, draining board and kettle. Otherwise, not an inch of floor could be seen. Various clothes and takeaway foil dishes lay scattered on top or between these piles.

  “Take a seat,” Georgie said, waving a hand at some chairs that were buried in records, CDs, and DVDs.

  “You’re a collector of music, then, Georgie?” Kinnear said, picking up a vinyl from the top of a nearby pile.

  “I buy and sell on eBay. Get them from charity shops, mostly. Keeps me in pocket money. So, what do you want? Has Joshy been up to mischief again?”

  Chinn folded her arms. “You know him well?”

  “Well enough to insist you use the past tense, for a start. KNEW him. I KNEW him. I wouldn’t go near that psycho again if you paid me.”

  “You had a bad experience with him then?” Chinn asked

  Grant pulled his dressing gown aside to reveal a white semi-circular scar on his shoulder. “See that? Joshy Gambles, that is. Bit a chunk right out of me like I was KFC.”

  Kinnear winced, sympathetically. “You must’ve upset him…”

  “I turned the telly over from his favourite programme. That Searchlight thing. He was well into that in a big way. He just went berserk. It took two of the screws to pull him away from me.”

  “Screws? You were in prison?”

  “Secure unit, mate,” Georgie said. “Thing was, I kept getting lumped with Joshy boy. We’d get dumped in the same foster places, same homes. Social workers said it helped us socialise. Just left me with bad dreams.”

  “You shared foster homes?” Kinnear said. “Any interesting tales to tell?”

  “Too many,” He said and chuckled. He seemed a little too friendly to Kinnear; it was a brittle, shallow friendliness that could suddenly turn to anger and vitriol. Whether that was years of drug abuse, mental illness, or a combination, who knew? But Kinnear could see that Grant was fragile. The young man sat down on the bed, his dressing gown flapping open to reveal a little too much thigh and boxer short. “There was one place. Yeah, I was thinking about it just the other day ‘cos’ it was in the papers.”

  “Really?” Chinn said.

  “Yeah, really. I’m not making this up, you know,” Grant snapped. “I invited you in. You could be fuckin’ vampires for all I know…”

  “We’re not vampires, Georgie,” Kinnear said. “DS Chinn said that because she’s interested in what you have to say.”

  “She is?”

  “Yeah. Go on. The foster placement in Hilbre Grove…”

  “The woman was lovely. Like an old grandma, all smiley and plump, like, you know. But the fella. He was a perv.”

  “In what way was he a perv, Georgie?”

  Grant was looking at his fingers now as he knotted and tangled them into each other. “He had a dungeon. With metal walls. He’d give you a hot chocolate and then you’d pass out and wake up in the dungeon, chained up. Then he’d torture you or do stuff. Touch you and get you to touch him.”

  Chinn’s face softened. “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Course I did but they said I was making it all up. That it was impossible…”

  “This dungeon,” Kinnear said. “Any idea where it was?”

  Grant shook his head. “Nah. Like I said I was zonked out me head. But it was like one of them container things. You know like they put on the back of lorries?”

  “A shipping container?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said, didn’t I? All metal and cold.” Grant shivered and pulled his dressing gown tight around his shoulders.

  “What about Josh Gambles?” Vikki said. “Did the fella from Hilbre Grove hurt him too?”

  Georgie Grant looked up. “That’s the thing,” he said through gritted teeth. “He didn’t touch Josh. Josh helped him. He watched and laughed and joined in sometimes too. He bloody helped him!”

  *****

  Blake stood in front of Superintendent Martin’s desk while Matty Cavanagh slumped on a chair at the side of the office. Martin’s voice was icy cold and barely above a whisper which chilled Blake more than if he’d been bellowing in his face.

  “Chasing another car at breakneck speed in your own vehicle. One that barely passes its MOT every year let alone stands up to the standards expected of official police vehicles. What were you thinking of Blake?”

  “sir, I was pursuing the Chimeree van that belonged to Charlie Hulme, the victim at number three…”

  “And how the hell do you know that, Blake?” Cavanagh muttered, folding his arms.

  Blake shrugged. “I’ve kept in touch. Our killer is a man called Josh Gambles, a local lad, went through loads of foster homes here and over in Manchester. He was fostered by Albert Green.”

  “Oh, come on, Blake. We already interviewed Albert Green. He didn’t mention any Josh Gambles,” Cavanagh said, stretching out his legs and looking at the tip of his pointed brogues.

  “Gambles was thrown out of the Granada Studio as a boy back in 2006, he assaulted a security guard. Nearly bit his ear off just trying to get in to see the Searchlight team. I spoke to his social worker who told me he was obsessed with the programme. There’s a website he runs. Everything.”

  “And you didn’t think to share this with the team?” Martin said, quietly.

  “I’m not sure DCI Cavanagh would’ve been particularly receptive to my information.”

  “If he hadn’t withheld that information, sir,” Cavanagh said. “I’d have collared this Gambles joker days ago.”

  Blake closed his eyes. “I did suggest that you follow up the Searchlight link. Gambles was at Albert Green’s house last night. Laura recognised him as the man who attacked her at the Frankby house…”

  Martin frowned and looked over to Cavanagh. “Laura? The Frankby house?”

  “Blake’s missus said she’d been called out to this house in Frankby. It was more like Greasby to be honest. She said she’d been attacked. We sent some uniforms round, but the house was secure. No sign of a break-in…”

  “Are you comfortable there, Cavanagh?” Martin said, his voice really quiet now. Realising the danger, Cavanagh leapt to his feet.

  Blake took some small satisfaction in Cavanagh’s discomfort but kept a straight face. “The reason there was no sign of a break-in is because Josh Gambles is pally with the owners of the house who are on holiday. They also happen to be patrons of Aphrodites. Does any of this sound familiar?”

  Cavanagh opened and closed his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Martin gave a grunt of dissatisfaction. “It’s not good enough. This case has been a mess from start to finish. Blake, I’d hoped you’d take the hint and have a break; not go off on your own personal mission to solve the case. Cavanagh, you’re too cocksure of yourself. I’m not looking to pin this on just anyone. I want this killer fou
nd. We’ve got three dead bodies and now the Kevney girl’s…”

  “She’s not dead,” Blake said.

  Chapter 37

  “Oh, behave!” Cavanagh snapped. “If you’d seen the amount of blood on that dress. You’d say she was dead, Blake…”

  “It’ll prove to be fake or pig’s blood. Where’s the body? What’s this guy’s MO? He leaves the body for all to see. That’s what he wants. That’s how he operates.”

  “And why does he do that?” Martin said, massaging his temples.

  Blake felt himself colouring. “I believe he wants me to solve this case.” Blake saw Martin open his mouth, but he carried on before the Superintendent could stop him. “sir, I know you don’t like my history with the Searchlight programme. I’ve said before, I wish I’d never stood in front of a TV camera, but I did, and we are where we are. Now Gambles doesn’t know the Wirral that well. He grew up here but was moved around a lot. His knowledge seems restricted to the Upton/ Greasby area, maybe a little bit of Birkenhead. It’s a small enough area. If we put the word out that we’re still actively looking for Ellen and flood the place with officers, I reckon we’ll find her safe and sound.”

  Martin drummed his fingers on the table as he looked out of his window, deep in thought. “Okay. Do it,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Blake said, taking a deep breath. “We need to search for anywhere that might be easy to hide someone…”

  “It’d have to be somewhere away from other people,” Cavanagh said. “If the Kevney girl kicked up a fuss, then people would hear. So, storage facilities, sheds, garages.”

  Martin nodded. “Cavanagh, you coordinate the search for likely premises. Blake…”

  Blake raised his hand. “If I can be in the background, sir. Returning me to the case will only stir up the press and that, in turn, might make him react. I’d hate to see another fatality.”

  “Right, let’s get to it,” Martin said, standing up at his desk as if he was about to run off and join the search.