by Tania Carver
‘You see, I knew you fancied me. All that time, you tried to hide it. Leaving the room when I came in, trying not to talk to me, all of that… But I knew. I wasn’t stupid, I could tell. And I know you knew I liked you.’ He leaned forward again, hand back on her face. ‘But you were shy, weren’t you? Just needed a bit of a push, that’s all. Get you to like me.’ He wagged his finger in her face. ‘Playing hard to get, you were. I know.’ He cocked his head on one side, stopped wagging his finger. Smiled again, moved in closer. ‘All I had to do,’ he said, voice dropping low, ‘was tell you how I felt. In my heart. How deep my love for you was. Then I knew you’d fall in love with me too.’
He dropped his hand from her face, sighed, his memories taking him down a dark, sad street. ‘And everything would have worked out just fine, if there hadn’t been that fire…’ He sat completely still, memories overtaking him.
No longer in the boat, no longer in the present. He felt heat on his face once more, panic in his heart… Then pain, all over, starting at his skin then lancing through him, trapped in a cabinet of flaming swords all slicing through him at once, pushing nerve-deep inside him… no way out…
And the smell… roasting pork…
‘I still hear the screams… they’re in my head. Always.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Trapped there, no way out… I close my eyes and hear you screaming, Rani, screaming… and the flames are, are…’ He sighed. ‘Fire is power, Rani, fire is power… it scares people… and the screams… you and… and me… there’s always this screaming in my head…’
He screwed his eyes up tight, curled his hands into fists, began to punch himself in the temples.
‘Screams… make the screaming… stop… No… no… Out of the cleansing fire… I was born…’
Black.
He opened his eyes. Blinked. He was lying on the floor of the boat. He looked round quickly, sat up. Rani-
She was still there. Lying exactly as he had left her. He breathed a sigh of relief. Allowed himself a small smile. ‘Thought I’d lost you again…’
He shook his head, clearing it of the screams, or at least quietening them down. For now. He didn’t know how long he had been out but it couldn’t have been long. Sunlight still streamed through the slats of the boat, the air was tipped with warmth.
‘You’re still there. Good. I’m not going to lose you again.’ He sighed. ‘Because I did, you know. Well, of course you know. That’s how I found you again, isn’t it? Because you led me to you…’ He giggled again stroked her chin. ‘But you led me a merry old dance, didn’t you? Popping up here and there, different bodies, hopping from girl to girl, teasing me, hoping I’d find you…’ He smiled, kept his hand cupping her face. ‘But still. All worth it. Because now you’re here. And here to stay, aren’t you?’
He looked round the boat, seeing where he lived through her eyes. He felt a sudden stab of shame. It wasn’t much. And he hadn’t kept it good. The place was a tip. She deserved better.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘This place. Not much, is it? Well, not at the moment. But you know what it’s like. Needs a woman’s touch, doesn’t it? You know what us men are like, living on our own…
‘I know you should have better. And we’ll make it better.’ He moved in closer, lay down next to her, slid one arm round her shoulder. She didn’t resist. ‘I know I’ve got to be patient because you told me I’ve got to be patient, but still, you don’t have to do it all today, do you? Haven’t seen each other for a long time. Not properly, anyway…’ His other hand began touching the front of her top, stroking her stomach, his grip tightening, his breath quickening.
‘Got a lot of catching up to do… haven’t we?’
80
Another incident room, thought Phil, another bar.
They had moved over to the Rose and Crown hotel on East Street at the other side of the level crossing. It was an old restored pub with black and white Tudor outer work, uneven floors, roof and ceilings, wooden beams and small leaded glass windows. The façade of authenticity stopped at the contemporary dining-room furniture and the modern hotel block at the rear. But first impressions were good.
Phil wasn’t there for that, though. He had commandeered the restaurant as a temporary incident room, flashing his warrant card and claiming that a murder inquiry took precedence over dinner preparations. The chairs and tables had been arranged in a semi-circle, and those with laptops had them open. Phil’s was open in front of him, a video link to Milhouse back at the station.
Phil hadn’t wanted to stop the team working, finding Fenwick’s attacker and Rose Martin’s abductor. But he felt it was important that they all got together before they set off. All singing from the same hymn book, he thought, echoing Ben Fenwick in the cliché stakes.
He also needed to find something inspirational to say, something to rouse them, drive them on. Saw Marina sitting at the back. Knew he’d manage somehow.
‘This is what we’ve got so far,’ Phil said, standing up to address the room. ‘Suzanne Perry and Zoe Herriot. Both SALTS. Both worked at the Gainsborough Wing at the General Hospital. One missing, one dead. Julie Miller. Occupational therapist. Again, working in the same hospital wing as part of the same team. Missing. Hopefully alive. Adele Harrison. Barmaid. Deceased. No connection to the others that we can find. Yet.’ He paused, letting the toll of the dead and the missing hit home.
‘Christopher and Charlotte Palmer. Julie Miller’s upstairs neighbours. Both deceased. Killed, we imagine, because they were in the way. Because our killer wanted somewhere to watch his victim from.’
Phil sighed. ‘And now a couple of our own. DCI Ben Fenwick, the DCI of this unit, severely wounded, in hospital now. DS Rose Martin, missing.’
‘And Anthony Howe,’ said Anni, ‘don’t forget him.’
Phil nodded. ‘Any news on him?’
‘Stable, apparently,’ said Jane Gosling. ‘Hospital talk for not alive but not dead yet.’
‘Right.’ Phil suppressed the urge to sigh again. ‘Any ideas so far? Any theories about links? Leads?’
‘Adele Harrison, Julie Miller and Suzanne Perry all look alike,’ said Anni. ‘Or, rather, all share similarities. Tall, white, dark-haired. Same bone structure and features. Same ages, just about.’
Phil nodded. ‘And Rose Martin too. On that basis you can add her to that list. It looks like that’s his type, his trigger. ’
Nick Lines put his hand up. ‘I think you’re right.’ He said. ‘Compare the way Adele Harrison’s body was attacked and mutilated as well as killed with the way Zoe Herriot was murdered. Like she’s been dispatched. She doesn’t fit the profile so she’s cut and dumped as quickly as possible.’
Several of the team flinched at his words. Nick didn’t elaborate or apologise.
‘We have to make Mark Turner and Fiona Welch our top suspects at the moment.’
‘What about the boat, boss? The soldier?’ said Anni.
‘There’s a lot of pieces that aren’t in place yet. We keep our options open at the moment. But since Ben was knifed in Turner and Welch’s house, we have to assume they’re a big part of it. The university are looking out for them. They’ve been told to call us the second they set foot there. Although I doubt they will. Nick, anything you can tell us from the house?’
‘Not much,’ said Nick Lines. ‘From the stains and the blood spray patterns, it looks like everything happened in the living room. It also looks like a rug’s been removed recently.’
‘How recently?’
‘Since Ben Fenwick was stabbed.’
‘Wrapping Rose Martin up in it?’ said Phil.
‘An educated guess,’ said Nick.
‘Adrian, any neighbours have anything to say?’
Adrian Wren stood up. ‘A woman opposite does say she saw two men loading a carpet into the back of a van in The Beijing car park.’ The house was next to a Chinese takeaway with a piece of waste ground between that the fast food outlet liked to call a car park.
He shook his head. ‘Just something dark. Quite small. Not a big one. No descriptions either. Both in some kind of work clothes, apparently. Woolly hats and sunglasses.’
‘Comedy Blues Brothers,’ said Phil, no humour in his voice. ‘Brilliant.’
‘The van fits with what Mickey’s been following up, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Black Citroën Nemo.’
‘Get some photos, Adrian. Ask her again.’
He nodded, made a note.
‘Fiona Welch,’ said Phil. ‘One of Ben Fenwick’s innovations, I’m afraid. I never rated her, never liked her, never wanted her here. And after that profile, never trusted her.’ He looked round the room. ‘Please feel free to join in with her character assassination.’
‘Mickey felt the same way, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Spoke to me about her earlier. Said there was something about her he didn’t like.’
‘Why didn’t he mention it to me?’
‘Because you’d said you were going to get rid of her. So that, he probably thought, was that. But he did say something else interesting about her, though.’
Phil listened.
‘He said she went to see Anthony Howe last night. After you’d finished questioning him. In his cell.’
Phil frowned. ‘What about?’
‘Don’t know. No record of that. Only of her visit.’
Phil thought for a moment, glancing round the restaurant. It looked comfortable, the kind of place you’d be happy to spend a few hours in if you were away from home. The bar looked the same. It was yet another glimpse into that other world, the safe, comfortable one, the one he could never inhabit.
‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘we’re jumping to conclusions to say that whatever she said to him contributed to his suicide attempt.’
Anni frowned. ‘Why, boss?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe he taught her at university. Maybe he made a pass at her. Some grudge or other.’ He sighed. ‘Why wasn’t her background checked into? Why wasn’t she properly vetted?’
No one answered. The only person who could was fighting for his life in hospital.
‘OK,’ said Phil. ‘In the meantime we keep an eye on the Greenstead Road house. It’s a long shot, but they may return. We’re also still going through it looking for any clue as to where they might be now.’
‘Don’t forget the boat, boss,’ said Anni.
‘I’m not.’
Anni’s phone rang. Phil stared at her, clearly unhappy with the interruption. She checked the display. ‘Mickey,’ she said. ‘I’d better take it.’
She got up from her seat, crossed into the bar.
Phil wanted to keep talking but knew as well as Anni that Mickey wouldn’t be phoning unless it was something important. ‘We’ll just wait a moment,’ he said. ‘This might be urgent.’
Anni returned, pocketing her phone. She sat down. Phil could sense the energy, the adrenalin, coming off her.
‘What you got?’
‘That was Mickey,’ she said, ‘he’s at the boat. There’s been developments.’ She told the team what he had seen, relaying it in almost as breathless a fashion as he clearly had to her.
‘Oh, lucky,’ said Phil, feeling that familiar tingle pass through him. He knew the others would be feeling it too. ‘A breakthrough. Anni, phone him back and tell him to keep tailing and we’ll get back up to him as quickly as possible. I’m guessing that’s Rose Martin on the boat. We’ll get an armed response unit down there as quickly as possible. Even if it’s not Rose, whoever it is we need to get them out safely. I’ll get down there right now.’ He looked round the room. ‘The rest of you get back to your jobs.’ He sighed. ‘Most of you, if not all of you, know that Ben Fenwick and I didn’t always see eye to eye. Or hardly ever, if I’m being honest.’
A small amount of laughter could be heard, breaking the tension.
Phil continued. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted this to happen to him. Or anything like it. It’s awful. What’s happened is absolutely, bloody awful. So let’s get out there and avenge him. Let’s do this for him.’
The meeting broke up.
81
Rose was terrified.
She lay on her back, on the filthy floor of some falling apart boat, eyes wide open, not daring to move or even to breathe. Like an animal freezing before a predator, hoping that if she stayed still long enough she would be ignored.
His hands were on her. His breath in her ear, raw, ragged grunts. His hands getting faster, moving quickly over her body, roughly tugging at her clothes…
She closed her eyes, trying to expel the vision of his face from her mind, take herself to somewhere she could think. Tried to make some sense of what had happened to her and how best to deal with it, thought back to how she had ended up in this situation.
She hadn’t seen him coming. That much was obvious. If she had, she would have been prepared. And then seeing what happened to Ben, watching him collapse like that. Was he dead? Oh God… All that blood, so much blood…
And now this. She had lain there, terrified, while he spoke to her. At least, she assumed that was what he was doing. She could barely make out any of his words. But that was no surprise. His mouth – his face – was ruined. She had studied him in close up all the time he was ‘talking’ to her. Clearly not Mark Turner. This man had suffered. His face was smooth in parts, pitted and wrinkled in others. Sometimes dead white, sometimes pink and red.
Burns, Rose thought. Bad ones.
As he moved closer she could see veins and arteries below the surface. They looked like fiery little red lines, networked, red hot pipes ready to burst and burn and spray at any moment.
His eyebrows were gone, as was half of his mouth. His teeth were pulled back in a perpetual, grimacing snarl. No wonder she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She understood why he wore the woollen cap, too. When he took it off his head had the same kind of smooth and uneven look as his face. What hair there was left had been razored down to nothing, leaving him looking like an angry, red skull.
He reminded her of a character in one of her little brother’s comics that he used to read. Ghost Rider, a demon biker with a flaming skull. He had terrified her then.
This one terrified her now.
And then that voice… deep, raw and wasted, all breath and pain, but with attempts at precision and diction. Like a horror-film zombie trying to articulate enough to get a job in a call centre.
He grunted loudly. She opened her eyes.
And wished she hadn’t.
He was on top of her now, pulling at her jeans, trying to get his lumpen, misshapen hand down the front. Grunting even more, his other hand pulling at the waist of his army trousers.
Oh God…
She closed her eyes tight shut once more, lay completely still, hands by her side, legs as rigid as possible.
And then she felt something. Her handbag.
Still on her shoulder from when she had been grabbed, it had been tight to her body when she had been wrapped in the rug and was with her now. And in the front pocket…
Oh please, please, let it be there… please God, let it still be there…
It was.
Rose couldn’t believe her luck. She almost shouted out aloud, punched the air, even. But she did neither. Just lay there as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed. But it had.
She had found her pepper spray.
Keeping her breathing as shallow as she could so as not to alarm Ghost Rider. Although the way he was twisting and grunting in his efforts to remove her jeans, she thought he would be beyond noticing any changes in her breathing.
She tried to disconnect from what was happening to the rest of her body, just concentrate on what her fingers were doing. Touching the can of spray, finding the front, fitting her fingers round the container, getting her grip in the right place, readying herself to shoot…
She brought her arm up as far as it would go. Held the can right in hi
s face.
Sprayed.
The effect was immediate. As the pepper hit him in the eyes, he reared back off her, hands going to eyes, clawing at them. She took advantage straight away, pushing herself off the floor, making for the stairs, the exit.
But he was quick. Even half-blinded he knew the boat better than her. His hand clamped round her ankle, pulled. His grip was too strong. Rose’s leg was pulled out from under her.
She fell to the floor, landing awkwardly, feeling something pop in her left knee.
She screamed, tried to rise once more.
Too late. He was on her.
Still clutching the can of spray, she brought her hand up but he was ready, knocking it out of her hand. She heard it land uselessly, somewhere on the far side of the boat, in the mess and shadows.
She tried to rise again. Felt pain arc from her knee all the way up her leg.
She gasped.
Saw his malevolent, red skull in her face once more. Eyes streaming.
Heard him scream in pain and rage.
Glimpsed his fist coming towards her face.
Felt nothing.
82
Suzanne still hadn’t moved. Had barely breathed.
She lay there, eyes wide, staring, straining to hear anything, something that would give her a clue as to what had happened to Julie. Just a scream and then silence. She didn’t know what had happened, but she knew it wasn’t good.
She closed her eyes, the better to concentrate, the better to hear.
Nothing.
She let out a breath. After the scream she had tried calling but received no response. She had tried again. Nothing. Eventually she accepted the fact. Something bad had happened to Julie and she wouldn’t be talking again.
The easiest thing would have been to give in to panic. Scream, shout, pound the sides of the box, kick out… and it was so easy… she had felt it build inside her, a volcanic eruption of emotion looking for an outlet, a screaming, shaking outlet, but she had managed to stop it. Keep it dormant, keep it down. It would get her nowhere. Accomplish nothing.