Her Last Secret

by P L Kane

  She just knew he would soon be in all kinds of trouble.

  Chapter 25

  He was in trouble, serious trouble.

  Jake pressed himself up against the wall, could hear the footsteps approaching. Nearly there, nearly. He tried to control his breathing, though it wasn’t easy – the threat of being discovered massive. And it wasn’t simply trespassing he’d go down for, it would be breaking and entering at this point. Or worse, given the kind of people he was dealing with.

  What the fuck had he been thinking? Just what the fuck …

  Sam had been trying to warn him, and wasn’t there just a part of him that didn’t want to visit her because of that? Not just because she would be able to see right through him about Julie – which, if nothing else proved how insightful she was, how good at reading folk – but the rest as well. What Alison had told him on the phone after his close encounter with the Escort.

  ‘I think I might have something for you,’ she’d said. The text had been sent using a burner phone, which he’d pretty much figured out for himself when he couldn’t get through. Whoever had sent it couldn’t risk it being traced back to them, didn’t want to get themselves in trouble obviously. But – and it had taken some doing, she told him – she had been able to trace where the original message had been sent from. Not a phone at all, but via an email account registered to a Mr R. Auder. ‘Now, I couldn’t find anything about him at all, but there’s an address if you want it.’

  Yes, yes he did.

  ‘Just don’t ask me how I got all this, or say anything to anyone, because the software, it’s … well, it’s not strictly legal. Friend of a friend helping me out and all that.’ He promised he wouldn’t say a word, because what he was intending to do with that address wasn’t strictly legal either. And he got her to promise not to ask him what he was planning … for now.

  He’d thanked her, then said he’d be in touch again soon. But even as he’d hung up, Jake didn’t know if he ever would be again. He’d thought the same as he walked out on Sam, but that had been one of the reasons for going there in the first place – manning up, because he wasn’t sure how this would pan out. Finally mustering the courage to visit her after what he’d done, what he was about to do.

  It hadn’t exactly gone the way he thought it would, or maybe it had. Maybe it had gone exactly the way he imagined, ending with Sam getting hurt (again) and being worried about what he was up to. How could it ever have gone any other way?

  Jake had got in his car then and headed off to the address, once he’d ascertained he wasn’t being followed, that was – he didn’t want whoever was driving the Escort finishing the job. The location was a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, between Granfield and Redmarket; there were fields on either side, so he’d parked some distance away and decided to try and get closer on foot.

  ‘How close we all are to that farm.’

  He’d thought about calling Matt or even Channing before he set off, but it would be the same old story; they couldn’t do a thing without any evidence, and actually he didn’t even know what evidence he was looking for anyway. Evidence of what? Jake was hoping the answer lay inside the house somewhere, or why had that invite been sent to him to begin with?

  And he’d thought then, as he kept low and approached the building which had a couple of lights on, shining through windows, that this was also what they did in those action movies, in Bond films – usually followed by the hero blowing up some outhouses as a distraction. Sadly, he’d left his explosives behind in his other jacket, but when he got close enough a set of floodlights sprang into life anyway.

  Jake ducked behind one of two Land Rovers parked on the drive, keeping out of sight … he hoped. When he peered round the corner of the vehicle, he saw a couple of figures emerge from the house and have a look around. One of them – a tall, thin bloke – asked if the other could see anything, while the second one – smaller and squatter and with a beard – just said something about the motion detectors being too sensitive; that it was probably a woodland animal or whatever. Absently, Jake wondered which of the two – if any – was the mysterious Mr Auder.

  Stepping back, he almost tripped on a stone and suddenly he remembered the fight with Drummond; saw an opportunity to create a different kind of distraction. Jake scooped up the stone and threw it – not at the men, but as far as he could in the opposite direction.

  ‘What was that?’ asked the tall man when it landed, and before the other one could answer they were both heading off to investigate. Jake ran, making a dash for the open doorway, figuring it wouldn’t be alarmed if they’d just come through it, but not knowing if any more people were inside the place.

  Close to that farm … Inside that farm!

  He stepped in and saw a large kitchen with a range running the length of one wall, cupboards and work surfaces filling up the others, with a washing machine and dishwasher tucked underneath. Keeping as quiet as he could, he made his way through to another open doorway.

  Poking his head through this one, he looked right (a set of stairs) and left (a hallway with another open door). He could hear the TV in there before he saw it, canned laughter as some old sitcom played out. And he could see the boxes of takeaway chicken meals, only half-eaten, the cans of beer. He’d obviously interrupted their supper …

  But he didn’t have any more time to ponder that, because he could hear the men’s voices now returning – the bearded man saying, ‘I told you so’ to his mate about the animals and vowing to have a look at the lights again in the morning. They’d be coming through the kitchen door any moment, so Jake had no option but to head right to the bottom of the stairs and scoot up them. Making his way quickly, but hopefully without making too much noise. The men were quite loud anyway, carrying to where he stood paused about halfway up the stairs. They were still talking about the lights, and then started nattering about the programme they’d been watching.

  ‘Classic, this one!’ said beardy.

  ‘If you say so,’ replied the other, mouth full of chicken.

  Jake let out the breath he’d been holding, then carried on up the steps to the top – distributing his weight so they didn’t creak so much. The volume on the TV was turned up and he heard the end of a joke about not mentioning the war, then both men guffawing.

  He continued on up the stairs, treading on the floorboards carefully. Gingerly making his way along the landing. Jake had a flashback then, suddenly, to his old home. Heading for Jordan’s old room, trying not to look at Julie and Greg’s bed (what would that twat think if he knew where his wife had been last night?). He’d snapped out of it, should be concentrating on what he was doing … where he was going tonight. Where to start the search, not that he knew what the hell he was searching for – definitely not small animals, though.

  The room closest to him was open, and Jake could see there was nobody inside; just a bed and a wardrobe with a mirror. The same was true of one on the opposite side. Ahead of him was the toilet and bathroom, and again the door was open, the room empty. He continued along slowly, towards a door that was open a fraction on the far side, and one that was completely shut nearest to him.

  Then he heard it. The noise … The sound at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘That stuff always goes right through me, I’ve told you not to buy it!’ the squat man called back to his friend as he started to head up the stairs. Jake swallowed, hard. Pressed himself up against the wall and tried to control that breathing. He had seconds, at most, before the man was on the landing – about to head to the toilet and relieve himself.

  Close to … inside …

  Seconds before he was discovered up here with no excuse whatsoever. It was like that sitcom they were watching, where they’d be in and out of the hotel rooms, making shit up; farcical, but not funny in the slightest at the moment.

  There was no retreating to the empty bedroom on his side now, he’d run straight into the guy. And Jake didn’t have time to get to the rooms on the opposit
e side of the landing. Which just left the closed one closest to him, pretty much behind him. Checking, searching all of the rooms would have to wait. Right now he needed to hide.

  Just like he’d done with Jordan when she was little, just like she’d hidden things back then – and now. He had no choice, the man was almost at the top of the stairs. Jake turned the handle of the door beside him, hoping against hope it wasn’t locked. For a fraction of a second he thought that was the case, but it was just sticking and turned eventually, allowing him access to the room.

  He opened it, slipped inside and closed it again. The room was in darkness, everything in shadows. Which at least told him nobody was using it right now. Jake heard the man on the landing, not even trying to be quiet as he plodded along towards the loo. Then the sounds of him urinating; he hadn’t been wrong about the brand of beer going through him, it sounded like Niagara Falls, especially as he hadn’t even bothered to close the door.

  Then there was the flush, but no sound of taps. Just the man on his return journey down the stairs.

  Jake slumped against the door, just as relieved as he was.

  Well, if I’m going to search this place I might as well start with the room I’m in, he thought. So he reached around to see if he could find a light-switch, so he could see what kind of space he was in. Another bedroom, perhaps?

  But no. When he finally found the switch and flicked it downwards, he found he was in quite a large space, bigger than the bedrooms, and it was filled with metal cabinets rather than wardrobes. Jake frowned, recognising what they were immediately. They were the sorts of cabinets you kept film in, or used to back when film was used.

  He walked over to the nearest one, which was open a crack, and opened it even more, gritting his teeth at the squeaking sound the hinges made. He’d been right: inside, on the shelves, were rolls and rolls of photographic film and sheets of photographic paper. Not just the kind Jake had used when he was first starting out, but even older than that – the kind his mother might have used, or his grandmother. There were cans of film as well, and boxes of slides, labelled with dates that went back to the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, all in neat little rows. He picked one of the boxes up, marked 1973, and opened it.

  Taking out one of the first slides he came to, Jake held it up to the light. It was a room, a bit bigger than this, and a handful of men were inside it. A couple were in shirtsleeves, grinning, others were still in their Seventies-style suits. He replaced the slide, got out another. This time one of the men who’d rolled up his sleeves was bending over, looking at something Jake couldn’t quite make out because the image was tiny. He squinted, but still couldn’t see what was going on. Written on the slide itself, in faded biro, was a name.

  Still frowning, he took out another. It was quite plain what this one showed: it was a knife, blood dripping from the weapon. The background, though it was hard to tell, looked like it could be pale, pink flesh. The next one showed the damage the knife had done, what looked like stab wounds, the skin torn and ragged around it.

  Jake let out a slow breath this time, and felt quite light-headed. He couldn’t help thinking about Jordan on that market stall, stabbed, left for dead … Was that the connection here, were these killings that were being documented? Had Jordan’s been? Like the photo that had been taken of him and the policeman there?

  Leaving the slides for a moment, he found photo albums on lower shelves. Also dated, these went back to the 1940s, the 1930s … even the 1920s. Carefully, Jake opened one up and found sepia-toned pictures inside that were similar to the slides he’d seen. Men gathering, knives and other implements used on skin and the whole thing recorded frame by frame, names written in fancy handwriting in the white spaces beneath the photographs. But were they the names of the people perpetrating the acts or the people they were killing?

  Jake paused when he flipped over one page and was granted a view of one of the victims, a boy who couldn’t have been more than about 14 or 15, looking up at the camera frightened to death. A man was standing behind him, holding a cleaver high. The boy’s arm was being gripped by someone out of frame, his torso held down by other hands. It was quite clear what was about to happen, but the next photo in the sequence left nothing to the imagination. The arm, cut off at the shoulder, hacked at until it had come loose – and the boy screaming in agony. Jake went from feeling light-headed to physically sick, closing the book so he didn’t have to see any more.

  Forcing himself, he opened up a few of the other cabinets. Inside these he found video tapes, all labelled with names, all dated. There was no player that he could see around, but he could hazard a guess as to what was on the tapes. They were making some kind of snuff movies, surely? Were these being sold on the open market, available to the highest bidder? Christ almighty, it was like something from a bad dream …

  He began to think then, the men in these things were obviously enjoying themselves – clearly having a good time. Were they being paid to do this, like actors in the porn industry? Maybe they were actors? he thought suddenly. Nobody seemed to be trying to conceal their identities, in spite of the fact if what they were doing was real, they could be arrested for it. Hell, back when some of those photos were taken, they’d have swung for it – hanging still a punishment for crimes like those.

  Was all that shit just special effects? He was starting to hope so, but could it have been that good back in the 1920s and 1930s? They’d taken that lad’s arm off for heaven’s sake? All smoke and mirrors?

  Or was it real and the perpetrators were being paid anyway. Had Bannister been paid to do this, but got caught?

  There were more albums accompanying the videos and in spite of himself, he looked inside a couple. They were filled with Polaroids this time, but no less lurid. No less gruesome in what they depicted. They didn’t look fake, but …

  Jake put them down, checked inside another cabinet – this one filled with DVDs and Blu-rays. It was like some kind of warped museum of film and television, showing the ways people had captured images over the last century or so. But he knew that wasn’t the purpose of all this, and it had to culminate somewhere.

  It was then that he spotted it, the laptop in the corner of the room, resting on a table. The top was closed, but when he opened it the screen lit up – it had only been on sleep or something. Probably a good job, thought Jake, because if it had been shut down it would have been password protected no doubt. As it was, the homepage was on display, but nothing was saved on the desktop.

  Jake moved the mouse using the touchpad, opening up the computer section of the laptop and then going into the saved documents. He raised his eyebrows, because there were dozens and dozens of files. There had been some attempt to scan the old stuff in, because some of them went back to the dates of the photos in the albums; back-ups in a modern age.

  He clicked on a folder that was marked last year, opening it up and finding not only jpegs (and the thumbnails of these were bad enough, he didn’t need to see the full-sized versions), but also video files.

  Finding the volume control and turning that down, he clicked on one. Jake stood back, hand over his mouth as he witnessed two men with salt-and-pepper hair carving something into what looked like a young girl’s back, judging from the pigtails. This time her wrists were bound, manacled actually, as the men went to work on her. Fucking hell … are those words? Or symbols? Some sort of occult thing?

  He had no idea what he’d been expecting when he came here, but it definitely wasn’t this. This was so fucked up, so twisted, he was having trouble processing it all. But he had to know, needed to know if Jordan and Bannister had been mixed up in all this somehow … It was why he’d come here after all, though he hadn’t known it at the time.

  Jake went to the toolbar at the bottom of the page and searched for ‘Jordan Radcliffe’. He bit his lip while he waited, couldn’t help tapping his fingers on the desk, though he stopped suddenly because he realised the noise he was making might carry.

  His hea
rt almost stopped too when the message popped up.

  There was a match.

  His hands shaking, Jake tapped on the display which brought up a folder. He looked inside. There were several photos, and a couple of films. Closing his eyes and opening them again, he clicked on one of the pictures. Again, it was hard to make out, but it looked like the top of an arm – the tip of a blade just moving into view on the right-hand side. Though it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do, he clicked on the next one. It showed the blade slicing that skin, redness running from it as it did so. Another he clicked on showed the finished results, but still there was no face. Even though the marks there matched the ones he’d seen in the morgue, the ones he’d thought were down to self-harm, it could still have been someone else.

  That hope lasted until he clicked on the next image which showed the cuts on the arm, and Jordan looking over her shoulder – probably at whoever had done this. Bannister, perhaps? Jake looked at some of the other pictures, all dated just a week or so before Jordan’s death, but couldn’t see the youth in any of them. A couple of blokes there, faces clearly visible, recognisable if he had to point them out in a line-up, but no Bobby.

  Jake stepped back from the screen, rubbed his face. Took a deep breath.

  ‘Your daughter, for example, she was almost 21, wasn’t she? A young woman.’

  ‘And from what I gather, was she so innocent?’

  All the rest of it, the guys, the going out and stuff, he was still trying to understand – although the diary had helped in that respect. But this? This he was having trouble with; it was more than he could handle. That she’d got involved with these … sadists, that’s all he could think of. How? Why? Had that been down to her current boyfriend?

  It just didn’t make any sense.

  Jake’s eyes flicked down to the toolbar and he saw a symbol for an email program there. Moving forwards again, he clicked on it. There were a couple of emails in the inbox, the most recent he saw was basically telling the people here that operations were to cease and desist until the media circus over the death of Jordan Radcliffe had passed by, which was understandable. They couldn’t just carry on with all this while there were so many journalists around … But they hadn’t counted on Jake sticking his oar in, digging into things.