by Lee Weeks
She looked back at Miranda. The rat’s body was slowly disappearing and now half of it was already jammed into Miranda’s throat. It was time to make her move. Ebony began biting the binds on her wrist.
She looked at Miranda. The snake was watching her, but she reckoned it wouldn’t be able to spit the rat out and that gave her time to work on her bonds. Ebony wiggled her legs slowly out of the crushing weight of Miranda’s coils and then she began working at her wrists against the sharp ends of the catches on the locks that held the coffin closed. All the time keeping her eye on the snake’s head, she gently pushed its coils off her. Ebony knelt and applied her weight until the rope began to fray and give way.
By now only the rat’s tail was still showing from Miranda’s mouth. Ebony stepped carefully out of the box and made a circuit of the room. It was a dug-out basement area that had been crudely extended. It had low ceilings and bare rafters, concrete floors. The basement had been used as a wine cellar at one time. It was barely lit. There were shelves still there where the wine rested. She walked cautiously forward. There was a crudely dug pit to her left. She peered inside. It smelt of urine and earth. On the far side of the room she found Miranda’s empty tank.
Ebony moved slowly backwards away from the tank and found a sturdy metal pole, with a hook on the end – a snake hook – then she crept towards the door. She watched Miranda drop off the side of the coffin and onto the floor.
Chapter 52
Robbo was in his office with Jeanie, Pam and James. He sat despondently and stared at the screen. He was trying every way to reconnect with Ebony’s GPS but it was dead.
‘Christ almighty, why isn’t it working? Come on, Ebb – talk to me.’
‘Out of range or inside a building?’ said Jeanie as she put a hand on Robbo’s shoulder. He looked up at her, exasperated.
‘I’d like to think so, Jeanie, but I think it’s more likely Hawk’s found it.’
‘We have to keep trying, Robbo. Ebb won’t give up. She’s a fighter.’
‘She’ll need to be, Jeanie.’ Robbo looked exhausted.
James stood to retrieve something from the printer.
‘I have a list of Yan’s closest friends now,’ he said to Robbo. ‘The ones he talks to most on Facebook.’ He gathered up the printed pages. ‘I have their addresses and phone numbers.’
‘Good – start phoning, and make a list of any you can’t get hold of and I’ll send officers around there. One of them must know where he lives.’
‘Can’t we trace his address through his father and the details of the house ownership?’ Jeanie asked Pam.
Pam shook her head. ‘I’m trying but I’m having no luck so far. I don’t think he had his father’s name. I don’t think they were married.’
‘What about his birth certificate?’
‘It gives his father as Joseph White, but I can’t find out any more about him. I’m trying every angle I can think of,’ Pam said. She looked fraught.
Jeanie smiled at her. ‘I know you are . . . we’re all so worried but we need to stay calm and focused.’ Pam nodded.
‘How’s Carter getting on, Jeanie?’ asked Robbo.
‘He’s throwing everything at it that he can think of. We have a hundred officers walking around the streets off Upper Street doing house to house.’
‘Yan’s not going to answer the door though, is he?’
‘No, but they might get lucky – see something suspicious. They’re also looking for vans and checking out the owners with vehicle registration. We’ve even got a heat-seeking helicopter up looking for the snake tank in case it’s on the upper floor.’
Robbo rubbed his face with his hands.
‘We need to put more officers out there. No squad cars, we need plain-clothes officers out looking for her. We don’t want to scare him into finishing the game too soon, before we have time to find her.’
‘Is that what you think will happen?’
Robbo nodded. ‘He is not going to hand over control of the game or have it taken away from him. He won’t allow that to happen. He’ll end it first. End it on his own terms. Ebony is his pièce de résistance. He’s had this worked out for some time. I can’t imagine he hasn’t thought of everything.’
Ebony crept past the room where Jenny’s corpse was hanging. The corridor took a sharp right before an old stairwell and a door to the next level. Her feet creaked on every step. At the top of the stairwell she turned the door handle and stepped into a kitchen. It hadn’t been updated since the Fifties. She could hear music playing. She heard Yan talking as she crept forwards.
Yan was humming to the music as he prepared Danielle’s face. He applied a layer of thick foundation to her pale skin. He drew red circles on her cheeks and painted blue eye-shadow in a block above her eyes. He worked methodically, slowly.
‘Stay still,’ he said to Danielle, who was shaking violently. He held her head steady whilst he painted on spidery eyelashes up past her eyebrows. It was then that he heard the turn of the handle on the cellar door. He listened for footsteps along the corridor. He knew it was dark. She would have to feel her way. He strained to catch the tiniest movement. He thought he heard a sound the other side of the door.
‘You can run. But you can’t hide. This is my lair. I’m coming, Ebony. Run. Run!’
Ebony flew up the stairs to the next floor and up again. She tried the windows at the top of the house but they were shuttered and she couldn’t open them. She turned to listen to the sound of him coming up the stairs. She was cornered; she ran into a room and immediately she felt trapped; the smell of decay and death was ripe in the air. A chandelier hung down from the ceiling and allowed a sickly light to shine on photos of women, their emaciated bodies posed in provocative poses. Their skeletal bodies were clothed in bikinis like the one she was wearing. There was nowhere to hide in the room. She could not stay in there. She felt as if she were already dead. She heard him standing outside. He rattled the door handle. She stood, both hands gripping the pole, and waited for him to open the door but instead he locked it.
‘My game, Ebony.’
She heard his footsteps fade. She looked around her in a panic. She had to get out of there. She’d become like the women she saw all around her.
Yan went back to Danielle in the front room and stood back to look at his handiwork.
‘One more thing and then you’re ready, my dear.’
He tied Ebony’s pendant around her neck.
Robbo leant towards the screen.
‘What is it?’ asked Jeanie.
‘For one second I thought that Ebony’s GPS signal was back.’
‘Can you trace it?’
‘No, it’s gone.’
Ebony tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge. She kept telling herself she had to get out to save Danielle. If she stayed in that room they would both be dead. She looked around for anything she could find to unscrew the lock. She looked at her snake hook and tried prising it under the brass plate but it wouldn’t go, it was too thick. She couldn’t see properly in the gloom. The chandelier didn’t throw off enough light – it was broken, bits hanging off it. Her eyes stayed on it. She hooked the pole over it and dragged part of it down. She smashed the fitting and was left with a bulb holder. Ebony took it across to the brass door plate and tried to slot it into the top of the screws to undo them but it was too thick. She turned it over in her hand until she found the narrowest part, made of tin, and she bit it hard between her teeth. She tried again and managed to loosen one of the screws a little until the top of the plate was free and then she hooked the snake hook inside and levered it out into the room. It crashed down and the door splintered and swung open. She stood listening for any sound from below. She picked up the snake hook and held it in her two hands as she edged downstairs in the darkness.
At the end of the street Carter was examining a van that had the college logo on the side. There was a deep scratch along the side. The bumper was dented on the driver’s side, soft impact
, thought Carter. He knelt down and ran his hand around the inside of the wheel arch and looked at the residue on his fingers. Dried blood. He rang in.
‘Robbo, I’ve found a van which looks like it could have been the one used in the attacks on Jeanie and Jackson, and Niall Manson.’ He gave him the registration number. ‘Find me the address.’
‘Okay.’
‘Any sign of her, Robbo?’
‘I thought I had a signal but then it went.’
‘Jesus! Okay, I’ll keep going. Let me know if you find anything.’
Carter continued up the street. He knocked at a house five doors up from Yan’s.
‘Did you ever hear of anyone with a pet snake living in this area?’ The tenant shook her head.
‘Has it escaped?’
‘No, nothing like that. Do you know of a man name Yan Stevenson?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
Ebony got back down to the kitchen level. The music had stopped. She knew he was waiting for her but she didn’t know where. Gripping the pole with both hands, she edged along the corridor. She knew it would take all her strength to knock him hard with it. She wouldn’t get a second chance. She had to hit him and make it good.
‘Ebony?’ She gasped. Out from the shadows he appeared, his face smiling in the gloom. The scarf was in his hand. He came towards her, twisting it between his hands. Ebony swung at him but missed him in the dark. She turned and fled back through the kitchen, tried the back door and couldn’t smash it, and then she ran back down the cellar stairs, along the hallway and into the room with the coffin. He came slowly down the cellar stairs after her.
Ebony unscrewed the light bulb from its pendant fitting and hid behind the coffin in the dark with the snake hook in her hand. She had to focus – to keep calm. She heard him calling from outside the door. She heard the door opening slowly and a small shaft of icy air came into the sweltering hot room. He had a torch in his hand. He shone it around. Ebony started crawling around the room. From the corner of her eye she could see Miranda near her. The snake was coming her way. She dashed to the other side of the room and the torchlight flashed across her.
Leaping forward, she knocked the torch out of his hands with the snake hook. It rolled and clattered on the floor and pointed a beam of light towards the far wall and then went out. He made a grab for her and just caught Ebony’s arm as she lunged forward. He held on tight. She smashed his forearm with her fist. He let go and made another grab as she threw herself forward. He held on to her ankle.
Ebony dragged his weight forwards as well as her own as he smashed his foot down into the back of her knee. She turned and kicked him with a sweep of her foot and caught him off balance as he hit the ground and she scrabbled forwards in the dark. Ebony whipped her upper body round and smacked him hard with the snake hook. She heard it contact with something hard. She heard him groan and he seemed to slip back. Ebony lashed out at him again in the same place and the pole hit and slid over the top of his head. She heard him fall backwards into the pit. But not before he had grabbed hold of her leg and pulled her with him. Miranda paused to listen, she smelt the air with her tongue and turned towards the pit.
Danielle lifted her head to listen to the noise from the cellar. The pendant shifted slightly where it rested on her collarbone.
Robbo leaned towards the screen, hardly daring to breath or blink in case it disappeared.
‘Signal, Jeanie. We have a signal. Get Carter. It’s finding an address. Go, go!’
Carter got the call and whistled to his officers on the street. He sprinted up the steps to the house and began breaking the front door down. Wood splintered as they kicked through the panels.
Inside the hallway he took out his revolver and held it ready as he came to the room on his right and nudged the door open with his foot. Danielle was suspended from the ceiling, her face made up, her body clothed in a bikini.
‘We’re police officers. Where is Yan? Where’s Ebony?’
She could hardly speak. She nodded towards the hallway.
‘There’s a kitchen. A cellar.’
Carter signalled to an officer to phone for an ambulance at the same time as he said he was going down alone. Carter understood that Yan would not give himself up. He would take Ebony with him if she was down there. Carter on his own might work – Carter and an army of police officers never would.
He pushed open the cellar door and stepped down one stair at a time. When he reached the bottom he stood listening and heard nothing. He pushed open the door on the right; the light was on and he saw the corpse covered in webs hanging from the centre of the room. It was against all his instincts that he stepped into the room to make sure she was the only one in there. He had a hard job talking himself through it. He knew if he hadn’t been looking for Ebony he would not have gone in there – nothing else mattered to him now. He had to find her. He came out of the room and walked on down the corridor. He checked three other rooms, which were empty, and then he stopped at the last room on his left and turned the handle. He smelt the musty smell of people and animals and fear. He put his gun away. In the darkness he couldn’t be sure of shooting the right person. He stood in the doorway.
‘Ebb?’
He heard a moaning coming from the middle of the room on the left-hand side. He opened up the torch on his phone and shone its bright narrow beam towards the sound and saw nothing. He walked further inside towards where the noise had come from. He was almost in the hole before he saw it. He shone his torch downwards and saw Ebony staring up at him, her body covered by Miranda’s coils.
He stared, speechless.
‘Guv?’ Her voice came out breathless – squashed. ‘Guv . . . get this off me.’ Carter reached inside the pit and took her hand as he hauled her out. He took out his radio. ‘Tell everyone we found her. She looks okay – yes I can confirm.’ He looked at what she was wearing. ‘She’s okay. Get me a snake handler and another ambulance. The suspect is not looking so good.’ Carter shone his torch back into the hole and saw the snake coiled around Yan.
Carter looked back at Ebony. He took off his coat to put round her. She was shivering.
‘Like the outfit. Thought you were in trouble – didn’t realize you were having a holiday.’
‘Yeah, funny. Is Danielle okay?’
He nodded. ‘What about you, Ebb?’
She felt too overwhelmed to speak. It wasn’t like her to cry but she was in danger of doing so. Carter hugged her as officers passed them and spread out through the house.
Chapter 53
‘Away in a manger, no crib for a bed.’
The whole of the cast stood as the audience applauded at the end of the show.
Tracy was sitting in the front row next to Danielle. Jackson beamed at them. He was dressed in his bunny suit and stood fidgeting at the entrance to the stable.
Tracy looked across at Danielle and smiled. She reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.
They walked outside into the bright cold night and Tracy picked Jackson up in her arms.
‘What are you going to do?’ Danielle asked.
‘I’ve applied to be a beauty therapist on a cruise liner and been accepted. I’ll send tickets back for you and Jackson to join me whenever you can along the way.’
‘What about Steve?’
‘We have come to the decision that we won’t divorce for now but we’ll go our separate ways and see how we find it. I’d like to think we could start again but we need time and space for now.’
‘I’m sorry, Tracy.’
‘No, don’t be. It’s a relief for us both. Steve will be able to find out what he wants in life. Instead of always trying to be what I wanted him to be. And maybe we’ll fall in love again – who knows?’
‘What about Christmas?’
‘Steve’s going back to his family for Christmas and I’m hoping for an invite from the two people I really love more than anyone else in the world.’ She gave Jackson a kiss. Danielle smiled. Tracy re
ached over and kissed Danielle’s cheek. Danielle’s face still bore the scars from the suffering she’d endured. ‘I feel like being a mummy and a nanny to two people I think the world of, if that’s okay?’
‘No problem.’
Jackson shrieked as he struggled to get out of Tracy’s arms.
‘Anyone want a dog?’ Jeanie pretended she hadn’t seen them.
Scruffy was still bandaged around his trunk but able to move his legs. He was ready to go home.
Christmas Day
Carter held Archie up and blew a raspberry into his neck. Archie screamed with delight. Carter looked across at Cabrina, who was unwrapping a present that Carter had bought her. She jumped up and kissed him.
‘Thank you, it’s lovely.’ She held up the necklace and looked at it. She did her best to look pleased.
‘I know, I know.’ Carter smiled, shook his head. ‘I’ve kept the receipt.’
Ebony lifted her shot glass and smashed it into Dermot’s.
‘Cheers, Ebb, I hope your face gets better by New Year otherwise you’re going to be disappointed when it comes to twelve o’clock.’ Dermot winked. Ebony laughed. ‘Though – I might rethink that after a few more of these.’ He held up his glass again.
‘Christ, Ebb.’ Tina hid a scowl inside a smile. ‘You’ll break the other leg. If you don’t sit down, you’ll fall down.’
‘It’s not broken, Teen, just bruised. Cheers,’ Ebony said as she took Tina’s help to manoeuvre her bandaged leg onto a stool and sit down. She felt like getting drunk. It took the pain away from her throbbing face and her bruises. But the pain the drink took away was not all physical. She had a lot she didn’t want to think about.
‘Happy Christmas.’ She smashed her glass into Dermot’s again.
Ebony’s phone rang. She had a sense of dread as she looked at who was calling and then she answered it quickly.
‘Happy Christmas, Jeanie.’
‘Just ringing to make sure you’re okay. How’s the head and the leg?’