by Steve Mosby
A phone was ringing.
For a moment I stood very still, shocked by the noise. Then moved out into the hallway.
Where was it coming from? The sound was muffled, so I started off towards the far end of the house, but the ringing grew quieter that way, so I stopped and turned back again.
The front door. The noise was coming from there.
I walked down and peered through the spy hole. There was nothing to see. But it was so dark outside I could hardly even make out the garden.
Do it.
I took out the knife and held it down by my side. With my other hand I undid the chain - then stepped back and pulled the door open.
The cold night breeze rushed in past me.
A sprinkling of rain. Nothing else.
The phone lay on its back on the doorstep, the screen glowing softly. Rather than picking it up, I stepped out into the rain and looked around. The garden was full of shadow: intricate shapes that were barely distinguishable from the darkness around them; the trees just grey skeletons standing shivering against a black background. Despite the rain, the breeze was almost gentle. It rushed and rustled in the distance.
I put the knife back in my pocket and picked up the mobile.
[Number withheld].
I answered it and held it to my ear, scanning the night. If he was nearby, I should have been able to see the illumination from his own phone. There was nothing.
‘Hello?’ I said.
There was no immediate response from the other end, but I could tell someone was there. I could hear a sound like wind on the line.
‘Be quicker next time,’ he said.
The voice was harsh and impatient, and it didn’t seem to be disguised. Had I ever heard this man before? I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t recognise him.
‘Where is she?’ I said.
‘Nowhere.’
‘I want to speak to her.’
He laughed. It sounded very far away. ‘No.’
‘How am I supposed to know she’s not dead?’
‘Because I’m not a killer.’ He spat the words at me in contempt. ‘She’s only been gone a day and a half. Don’t you know how long it takes someone to die of thirst?’
I remembered a mantra from some survival programme on television: something about the rule of threes. Three minutes without air, hours without shelter, days without water, weeks without food. But the body started breaking down long before that, the damage becoming more and more serious. Irreversible. Not to mention the pain.
I put the image of Tori out of my head and didn’t reply.
‘All you need to know is that she’s alone and suffering, and that it’s going to stay that way until you help her. But you won’t.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I’m not doing anything. Just like you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Try harder. This is about whether you choose to stop her dying. That’s all. It’s not complicated, Dave. If you choose not to, you’ll never hear from me again.’
‘Until they find you.’
‘Even if they caught me in time, I’d never tell them where she is. So you’d have killed her, wouldn’t you? This is the only chance she’ll ever have to stay alive. You’ll have to work out what’s important. ’
‘I’m not hanging up,’ I said.
‘Not yet.’
His words hung in the air for a moment, and I sensed a hundred others were being held back. There was such hatred in his voice - such anger at me. I could even feel the venom coiling in the silence.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘Have you got the note?’
I nodded, wondering if he could see me.
There was no reply.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And the email?’
‘I deleted it.’
‘I know that. But your fat friend printed it out.’
How did he know that? I tried to remember some of the people I’d seen in Carpe Diem, or walking near the office, but their faces were lost to me now. I just knew that nobody had caught my attention.
‘I’ve got that too,’ I said.
‘Then the first thing you’re going to do is leave the house and go to your car. Close the front door, but don’t bother locking it. The police will only have to kick it in.’
‘Okay.’
The rain swiped at me as I made my way up the path, conscious of that long, dark spread of garden behind me. I glanced back, but the blackness down there was implacable. As my shoes tapped on the stone steps, I half-expected someone to jump down at me from the arched trees above, but there was nobody there - just the rain softly coming down against the leaves.
My car was still parked up at the bottom of the drive, but there was something else there now.
Someone had left a cardboard box beside the back wheel.
I forced myself to walk across. The lid was closed but not taped up: the four flaps folded one under the other, the way you need to bend one back to do properly. It was slick from the rain. Water was creeping up the sides from where the base touched the driveway.
‘What’s this?’
‘Don’t open it yet.’
Frustrated, I rotated on my heels, looking in different directions. Everywhere was dark. No glow from a mobile.
‘So what do you want me to do then?’
‘Put the box on the passenger seat, then get in and start the engine. At the top of the drive, turn left. Carry along the street for about twenty metres, then stop.’
I took out my keys. The central locking click-clacked open.
‘I need two hands for the box.’
He hung up on me.
The box was about the size of the five-ream paper boxes we ordered in at the office, but whatever was inside, it wasn’t paper. The box was too light for that. I put it on the passenger seat, then started the car. The gears hitched as I reversed around in a loop, then I drove up the steep slope to the road.
At the top I turned left, then pulled in against the kerb a little further on. The wipers squeaked across the glass.
I glanced in the rear-view mirror.
My parents’ house was on a quiet street in a residential area, and the road was deathly quiet at this time of night. But a single car was back there, parked just beyond my parents’ driveway. The headlights were on but dimmed; the wipers sweeping steadily, silently, back and forth.
I could make out the dark shape of a man behind the wheel.
I watched him in the mirror, wondering what would happen if I got out and ran at him. Or reverse quickly, I thought - smash into him. But even if I got to him in time, what exactly was I going to do? I had a knife, but I expected he did too. Even if I did manage to get him, what if he wouldn’t tell me where Tori—
The mobile rang.
I accepted the call, watching the car behind me. A small pinprick of green light was visible in his windscreen.
‘The note and the email,’ he said. ‘Screw them up and throw them out of your window.’
‘I’ll have to put the phone down.’
I took the silence for consent, so rested the mobile on the passenger seat, then scrunched the two sheets together into a ball and threw it out. It skittered over to the far gutter.
‘That okay?’
‘Lucky for her it didn’t go down the fucking drain. Be more careful next time.’
‘What now?’
The lights on the car behind me went to full beam.
‘Drive on a little. About twenty metres. Then pull up again.’
I released the handbrake and eased the car forwards. As I did, his own vehicle began crawling along, neither gaining nor losing ground.
When it reached the bunched paper, he pulled over slightly and came to a stop, and then the driver’s-side door opened. I struggled to catch a glimpse of him, but I couldn’t see anything behind the shield of those headlights, just a sense of movement, like birds fluttering in a column of light. The door clo
sed and I saw him back behind the wheel again.
‘Now what?’ I said.
‘Wait.’
In the mirror, the green light disappeared. He’d put the phone down. It took me a moment to realise that he was checking the paper to make sure I hadn’t tricked him. The contempt and anger in his voice were in stark contrast to the care and precision he was taking with his actions. He’d planned this carefully and knew exactly what he was doing.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’re going for a drive.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Friday 2nd September
Half past eleven at night, and the incident room was teeming with activity. People were taking calls, typing, carrying bundles of paper between desks - all of them working a little quicker than usual. The door seemed to be constantly opening and closing, with officers either bringing in fresh information or taking actions away. There was a buzz to the place, a feeling of energy. The team was pulling harder now, because they all knew that in the last few hours everything had changed.
Currie glanced around and thought:
It should feel like we’re closing in.
Normally it would have, but despite the activity around him, he was frustrated. Itching to move.
He and Swann were sitting across from each other at the far end of the room, beneath the whiteboard. Currie had spent the last twenty minutes making his own notes in the A3 pad he kept on his desk, but the only thing he seemed to have created was a mess.
He put his pen down and looked at the information on the wall.
Swann raised his eyes from the screen. ‘You okay?’
‘It feels like we should be doing more.’
‘Doesn’t it always feel like that?’
A rhetorical question.
Currie said, ‘Found anything interesting so far?’
His partner only grunted in reply - what do you think? - and continued to work at the computer. Earlier on, the IT tech had provided them with a CD full of stills from outside the shopping centre where Julie Sadler’s phone had been used. Swann was now clicking through them, one photo at a time. Not looking for anything in particular, but looking regardless, because it had to be done.
That task summed up the whole investigation. They’d always been left chasing witness statements, opinions, conjecture: following up every possible lead, no matter how insignificant. Currie had contented himself with that before, because a methodical approach would eventually yield results. If they checked everything, the killer would only have to make one mistake, and they’d catch him off the back of it. Now, it felt like they should be more active.
‘But we’re doing everything we can,’ Swann said.
Currie nodded, but he wasn’t convinced.
There were two new names on the board. The first was TORI EDMONDS. Several people in the room were attempting to trace her whereabouts - all of them, so far, without success. There might still be an innocent explanation for her disappearance, of course, but he was sure something had happened to her, and it was this conviction, more than anything, that made Currie need to be moving. Negotiations were in place to access her mobile phone records, but the time involved in arranging that was as frustrating as every other aspect of the case.
The other new name on the board - the one that bothered him equally, in its own way - was DAVE LEWIS.
When they’d interviewed Lewis for Julie Sadler’s murder, Currie had been convinced he’d heard the name before, but couldn’t remember where. This afternoon, he’d dug it out. When Alison Wilcox has been killed, they’d thrown the Eddie Berries abduction to another team. Priorities. That team had briefly looked into it, then thrown it to the bottom of the pile. Currie had scanned the details in a spare moment the week after, and been pleased to see they’d at least spoken to Drake and Cardall. Both had visited Tori Edmonds at Staunton Hospital the afternoon of Eddie’s disappearance, and then gone - where else - to The Wheatfield. A photocopy of the log-in book from the hospital was included in the file to corroborate their story. Dave Lewis had been there too: his name appeared directly under theirs, and he’d left at the same time. So he was connected to that investigation, and now he was doubly connected to the murders.
The person who fled from Tori Edmonds’s house when he and Swann arrived had not yet been identified, but Currie would bet money it had been Lewis. Since then, he hadn’t returned to his flat and his phone was switched off. Someone had been at his office too - and run when officers showed up. No signs of forced entry. They’d soon have a green light on searching the premises, but that didn’t concern him so much as where Lewis and Edmonds were right now.
‘How are you doing over there?’ Swann said. ‘Made any breakthroughs? ’
‘Ha.’
On the sheet on his desk, Currie had written Lewis’s name in the middle. Lines then spiralled out to other names, the vast majority accompanied by question marks and scribbled queries. Some crossed, others went nowhere.
‘Okay,’ Swann said. ‘The usual. Talk me through what we know.’
‘We know Dave Lewis dated one of the murdered girls.’
‘Julie Sadler.’
‘He also dated Tori Edmonds, who now appears to have been abducted by our murderer.’
‘Agreed. And where is Lewis now?’
‘We don’t know. But we know he’s run from us at least once, probably twice, and isn’t showing up in any of the places he should. What we don’t know is why.’
Swann clicked the mouse. ‘Bingo.’
‘And then there’s the fact that, aside from Charlie Drake, Lewis was the last person to see Alex Cardall alive last night. Which brings us to Eddie Berries.’
‘Sam, you’re not listening to me. I said ‘‘Bingo’’.’
Swann’s face was pale blue from the light of the monitor in front of him, and he’d stopped clicking the mouse. He wasn’t even blinking.
Currie walked around and leaned on his partner’s desk - then froze as he saw the image that was on the computer screen. Dave Lewis, in black and white, was turned slightly towards the camera. There was just enough of his face showing to be sure it was him.
‘Entered the shopping centre at 11.57. Left again at 12.09.’
You’re wasting time with me when you should be out there finding the man who did it.
‘We had him,’ Currie said. He realised it was precisely this fact that had bothered him the most when they’d written Lewis’s name on the whiteboard.
‘Yep.’ Swann folded his arms, breathing out heavily. ‘And we’ll get him again.’
The department didn’t have anything as grand as a canteen on this floor. Instead they had a small room, which Currie recalled had been a toilet in a previous life. They’d ripped out most of the fittings and stuck a fridge, counter and cupboards beside the sink, and a coffee machine and water-cooler against the far wall.
Currie clicked through on the machine: black, no sugar. It hissed and spat, the liquid rattling down into the small plastic cup.
There was no way he could have known, of course, but still: he was furious with himself. Full of anger and frustration. They’d had Lewis right there in front of them, and they’d let him go. As simple as that. And now Tori Edmonds was missing. Currie kept going back over what had happened, and it all seemed so obvious to him.
If they dug back far enough, he was sure, they’d find something connecting Lewis to the other victims. As it was, they hadn’t picked up on him until Julie Sadler. During the interview, Currie had mistaken the shock he’d seen on Lewis’s face for surprise that Julie was dead, but now he could see very clearly what it had really been - that Lewis was beginning to panic. He’d thought they were closing in on him. When they’d released him, he’d figured there might not be too much time left, and so he’d started to accelerate.
He moved the first cup out of the way and added another.
Click, whirr.
Of course, it was always easier to blame yourself in hindsight, wasn’t it? But Tori Edmonds was stil
l missing. If she died, it would be because of them. Because of what they hadn’t done. Yes, hindsight made things easier, but it didn’t mean the repercussions would be any less devastating, or the mistakes that led to them any more excusable. That kind of reasoning didn’t change a thing. Never had, never would.
As he took the two cups of coffee back along the corridor, the only questions still remaining hung over Eddie Berries and Alex Cardall. He couldn’t see how they fitted into this. It was possible they were unconnected, but Currie didn’t think so. Lewis had been there the day Drake and Cardall abducted Eddie, and Cardall had met up with Lewis just before he was killed. It couldn’t be a coincidence, but he had no idea how those strands came together.
They’d know more when they had Lewis in custody.
And Tori Edmonds home. Safe and sound.
He pulled the office door open with his foot and put Swann’s coffee down on the table beside him. His partner was resting his elbows on the desk, his face in his hands. Currie knew Swann must be annoyed with himself as well, because his fingers were messing up his hair and he didn’t seem to have noticed.
‘Coffee,’ he said.
Swann looked up slowly.
Currie frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Pete Dwyer just called. His team’s finished itemising the contents of Alex Cardall’s flat.’
Currie blew on his coffee. ‘And?’
‘They found a stash of heroin and money hidden beneath loose floorboards in the bedroom. And guess what else?’
‘Dave Lewis?’
Swann shook his head. Almost laughed.
‘Even better than that,’ he said. ‘Alison Wilcox’s mobile phone.’
Chapter Twenty-three
Friday 2nd September
The man stayed on the phone for the whole journey, giving simple directions whenever we approached a junction, staying silent the rest of the time. As we made our way towards the main roads he hung back a little, keeping that same cautious distance between us, and when we joined the ring road he ordered me to hold a steady pace, then allowed his own car to drop even further behind. Even though the other traffic was relatively sparse, I soon lost his vehicle amongst it.