“I am a disillusioned son of a movie star.”
“Bullshit. Not any more you’re not. You’re one of my agents and you had better damn well behave like one.”
“I’ll try to do both, sir. Convincingly.”
“I’ll have none of your cheek! And this girl had better prove useful, because I want the Americans off my back asap!” the chief roars.
Storm rubs his neck. He feels damn tired. It is coming up to four days since the killings, but it feels a lifetime since he had gotten the call that a Mary and George Colton of Los Angeles had been killed using the Devil Claw Killer’s signature. An old colleague of Storm’s at the LA agency had known that he was the lead investigator for DCK’s European murders, so had given him a heads up.
Storm has spent half a decade trying to catch DCK. Trying and failing.
Despite the string of gruesomely murdered bodies that DCK had left across the planet, he left no evidence to point to who he was. Just his calling card – a monstrous bloody pawprint left at each murder scene. A print that belonged to no known real creature, human, animal or otherkind. The mystery of the bloody print, and the fact that many of his victims were young and beautiful women, had seized the press and public’s imaginations, each murder spreading terror for months.
“The Americans should be working with us on this,” says Storm. “International co-operation is what we need to catch DCK.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t try so hard to piss them off,” the chief snaps.
Storm grits his teeth. The chief knows his history with the Americans already. The American team assigned to the new case has no liking for Storm, so they had palmed him off on their useless junior agent. In trying to withhold all useful information, the junior had let slip that the killer had an accomplice. And that the niece of the murdered couple had gone missing. It didn’t take a great detective to figure out who they thought the accomplice was.
“What do we know about this Bellona girl anyway?” the chief asks.
Sensing a respite, Storm emails the information to the boss. There is a moment of silence on the other end of the line as the chief reads what little there is in the file. It had taken a hell of a lot of digging before Storm had even managed to find details of this particular Diana Bellona. There was no record on her at all, curious considering she was an adoptee.
The chief huffs as he finishes reading. “And how the hell does an adopted girl from the USA, who seemingly has never gone to school or set foot outside of these Coltons’ house, get invited to the most coveted party on the planet?” he demands.
“No idea. Yet.”
And oh how frustrating that is. Storm had been sure his search of her room would give him something, but it had not. All of the answers are inside Diana’s head. What Storm wants to know most is how the hell does she know Daxx? And what does Daxx have to do with DCK?
It finally seems like Storm’s habit of keeping a discreet eye on Daxx for so many years is going to pay off.
But damn Daxx for intruding at the exact wrong moment last night. Storm is sure Diana had been on the verge of opening up to him. A few minutes longer and she would’ve told him everything he needed to know.
“What sense did you get from the girl?” the chief asks.
“She’s difficult to read,” Storm admits grudgingly.
“How did she explain flying to Britain the same day her aunt and uncle were murdered?”
“She doesn’t seem to know.”
“Or she’s a very good actress,” the chief retorts.
As if this damn problem hadn’t been plaguing Storm since the moment he had set eyes on her. If she is innocent, why did DCK not kill her? She is his favorite type of victim. Did he come to the house for her but ended up killing her uncle and aunt instead? If Diana escaped the killing, why did she not seek help?
“Sir, we don’t know yet whether she is an accomplice or innocent,” says Storm. He doesn’t add that if she is the latter, the chances are that she is in grave danger.
Remi, who is still on the phone to Leo, excitedly charges over to Storm. “Boss!” she exclaims. “Leo has an update. The chief will want to hear this. Can you put him on loudspeaker?”
Storm does as she asks.
“Chief,” she says. “Leo just spoke to a contact on the American forensic team.”
“And?” the chief says impatiently.
“The prints on the murder weapon came back. The knife handle is covered with Diana Bellona’s prints!”
Storm’s heart sinks. He’d wanted so much for it not to be her. It made no sense. DCK never used accomplices, he never used knives. “You’re sure they’re hers?” he says.
“There’s no doubt. She left multiple fingerprints. Un-smudged.”
Storm’s head spins. No smudges means she was the last person to handle the murder weapon. Damn it! He’d gotten too close to a suspect. He’d let her get under his skin until he couldn’t see clearly.
But she didn’t seem to be having that same problem. She must have seen right through his disguise. Why else had she given them the slip? Storm’s heart sinks. This is all his fault.
“Some good news finally!” the chief says with grim satisfaction. “She did it. Bring her in.”
Chapter 37
DIANA
I lay utterly still in the bed, my heart racing. The urge to cry is so strong that I am scared I will start sobbing and reveal myself. I want to scream at Storm for being a liar. No, worse than a liar. How could he do this to me? And then I want to scream at myself for being such a trusting needy fool. He played me, and I fell for it. I want to scream and make him hurt like I am hurting.
Don’t do it, says her soft little voice in my head. Don’t let them catch us here.
Her return feels like that of a good friend. I never knew how much I missed her. It is a comfort that she must have sensed the rage in my heart. She cares. It is why she came back. I know she must feel it too.
I want to make him pay, I say to her silently.
We will, she whispers.
I hear them moving around the room, getting things. And the woman, Remi, who is definitely not a nurse, makes another call to the guy called Leo who must be working with them. She tells him to widen the search for me.
And Storm makes a call too, as they leave the room. “Hi Caro,” he says, “I need to see you now.”
The door shuts after them.
He’s telling her to instruct the castle security team to hunt for you, the little voice whispers.
Her words should galvanize me into action but I just lay there, too shocked and afraid to move. I feel like if I throw the blanket off and get out of this bed, I will find one of them standing there, waiting to cuff me. To take me to prison.
I can almost feel her presence struggling inside me, trying to make me get up. But she is just a little wisp of a voice. She is powerless to move me.
Storm has got it wrong somehow. The Coltons can’t be dead. It can’t be true. The floral scent wafts into my nose again, sickening me. It must be her scent, Remi’s. Her scent on his bed. The thought of them sleeping together sickens me.
How easily he tricked me into believing he liked me. How easily I fell for him because I was so desperate to have someone to love.
Tears are running down my cheeks and I wipe them away angrily. It is my anger that helps me to get up from the bed and defiantly push aside the hanging curtains and glare out at the room as if daring someone to come arrest me. But no one is here. I am all alone.
Alone in this stranger’s room dressed in a skimpy silk robe and nowhere to go. It is sheer luck that this robe is not mine and does not have their trace elixir on it. The thought of her spraying drops of a magical tracker onto my clothes while I trustingly slept makes me feel sick.
Hurry, she whispers. You don’t have long.
I yank open the wardrobe. Inside are his clothes, neatly hung up, and hers too. His neatly pressed shirts, her pretty blouses and skirts. Side by side. Seeing them t
ogether is like a slap in the face. I want to throw them on the ground and stomp on them. Instead I rifle through them hastily, looking for something to wear. Something that will help me blend in.
Seeing the nurse’s uniform she used to deceive me makes me grit my teeth. She has several different staff uniforms, including a porter’s outfit. It looks just like the ones I’ve seen castle porters wearing. Stolen, no doubt, since they didn’t even have permission to be here.
I hurriedly put it on. No one will notice another porter hurrying around the castle. The blouse and skirt are too big. My panic makes the thick tights a struggle. I hop about, yanking it up my leg, and knock over a satchel from inside the wardrobe. A folder full of papers spills out. Crap! I kneel to scoop them up. A photograph on top makes me freeze. Feeling sick, I pick it up and stare at it.
The image is of a bed, the rumpled white sheets soaked in blood. Just like I saw in my dreams.
Barely able to breathe, I flip through more photographs. Shots of Mr and Mrs Colton’s bedroom. I know it because I have cleaned it every week for years. Now there is blood on the carpet. Blood on Mr and Mrs Colton who are dead on the floor, he in his shorts, her in her nightgown. Blood on a giant clawed pawprint on the wall, still dripping. And there is a knife lying in a pool of blood.
And then my mind seems to go fuzzy and a vision fills it. Dr Carrington is putting the knife there, placing it gently with his gloved hand exactly where he wants the police to find it. And Dr Carrington is taking his shoes off and walking quietly upstairs to my attic room and pressing his ear to the closed door and listening for a long, long time. And then he is turning the key, unlocking the door...
My hands are shaking so much that the photographs drop. They spill all over the floor. I am too horrified to pick them up again, to put them back in the bag to conceal the fact I was here. The vision has disappeared. The Coltons are dead. They really are dead. Just like Ms Celeste said they were.
And Storm thinks I am the killer. He thinks it is me!
You have to get out of here, the little voice hisses.
No. Not before I warn him. Rushing to his desk, I find a pad of notepaper and a pen and scribble a message to him:
Storm,
I know you think it was me, but Dr Carrington killed them. I did not know until now.
What I said about you being strangled in my vision is true. I saw Xander Daxx being shot too. Please believe me. You must warn Xander. Dr Ezekiel Carrington is my psychiatrist. He is DCK. You must find him.
My pen freezes mid-sentence. Dr Carrington was here in the castle. I saw it with my own eyes and yet I told myself my mind was playing tricks. Deep inside I had known it was really him and I ignored it. Stupid me!
Hurry, she urges.
I add that last crucial bit of information to the note:
Dr Carrington is here in the castle. I saw him. Please don’t let him hurt you or Xander.
This is all I can do. I cannot even bring myself to sign my name, let alone bid him goodbye. I cannot go to him in person because they will waste precious time arresting me. A lifetime of being disbelieved has taught me that they won’t believe I am telling the truth. Just like I did not believe Ms Celeste was telling the truth.
Poor Ms Celeste. She really was trying to help me.
My memory of the first night I arrived here flashes in my mind. Ms Celeste must have been watching me in the entrance hall. I thought I had bumped into her by accident but she was waiting for me. She must have been shocked seeing the state of my clothes. I had thought I was so clever pretending to be one of the succubae so I could get the clothes to fit in, but it was really her idea, her fast-thinking that had saved me. She really did invite me here, she really must have known my mother.
And now I have drawn attention to myself and to her. She got videoed trying to help me last night. She was scared the murderer was coming for me and for her, and she was right. Dr Carrington was already here. And now he knows what Ms Celeste looks like. God, how stupid am I that I thought she was the murderer? Just because I saw…
I gasp in horror, my hands flying to my mouth. I saw DCK’s mark in Ms Celeste’s room in a vision. I saw it and it made me think she was the killer, but DCK only leaves that mark after a killing.
Dropping the letter, I dash out of the room. I almost bump into a man and woman leaving the room next door. They shoot me startled looks. The woman looks angry, like she is going to complain. It forces me to slow down. I try to walk calmly but quickly, like a porter who has an urgent message to deliver. Not like a fleeing murder suspect.
I am a porter, I tell myself. I am a porter. If I believe it, so will they.
I get it, says the little voice sarcastically. You are a porter.
The only way I know to get back to Ms Celeste’s room is to retrace the path I took last night. I have to go downstairs and through the central corridor and then upstairs again. There are many people downstairs, all casually strolling towards the breakfast bar. I half-run, keeping my head down, dodging people, politely murmuring, “Excuse me,” any time someone gets in my way.
I dash down the central corridor, my shoes sharply striking the flagstones underfoot, making me wince at the urgency of the noise. They are Remi’s size, too loose, my feet slipping around inside them. I feel like throwing them off, but that will draw attention. Please let Ms Celeste be there in her room. I don’t know where else to look for her.
She’s not our problem, whispers the little voice. She is probably already gone.
The little voice is right. Ms Celeste’s suitcase had already been packed. But the possibility she might still be here keeps me going. I cannot let her die. I didn’t tell Storm to warn Ms Celeste. She had been so secretive that I feel she’d hate for me to tell him about her. So secretive she’d even had an escape plan.
You aren’t so foolish after all, says the little voice. This escape plan had better involve us.
Did Ms Celeste know the killer was Dr Carrington? She can’t have. Even I am struggling to make sense of how he could be DCK.
Why is he doing this? This question hammers in my head, and I begin to feel followed. I can almost sense footsteps coming after me, echoing mine, but I dare not look backwards. I hurry around a corner and then I start running. This is my wing of the castle. This corridor runs right below my bedroom corridor above. I can see a door in the middle that must surely lead to the spiral staircase that goes all the way up to Ms Celeste’s room.
I yank the door open and pull it shut behind me. I race up the narrow winding staircase, getting up a couple of flights before I hear the door beneath open. Footsteps come up the metal stairs. Clanging footsteps. Someone who isn’t bothering to be quiet.
I climb faster, my lungs burning as I gasp for breath. I am unfit from spending my whole adult life locked indoors. Damn the Coltons for doing that to me. The poor dead Coltons. I am so angry at them, but the thought of them dying like that, so horrifically, sickens me. Fear makes me go faster, keeps my aching legs from stumbling.
I reach the top of the stairwell. I yank open the door, and race along the corridor towards Ms Celeste’s room. I bang on her door. It flies open with no resistance. I stumble into her room and bang the door shut behind me, struggling to lock it.
Fuck, says the little voice, even before I notice that the lock is broken.
“Ms Celeste?” I gasp, turning to look into the room.
The first thing I see is her big suitcase not far from the door. Packed and ready to go. She has not left yet, but her bedroom is empty and quiet.
Run or hide, says the little voice. Do it now!
“Ms Celeste?” I call more urgently, running towards the little kitchen.
And then I see it on the door of the kitchenette. A massive bloody pawprint. It covers the top half of the door. The blood is fresh, shiny and wet.
“Ms Celeste,” I gasp, still going towards that door.
My hand reaches for the handle, turning it as if in a trance, because if I had control o
ver my body I would not be turning it. I would be fleeing.
But the handle turns, and the door opens, and there is Ms Celeste on the floor. And then I am kneeling over her, gasping at the sight of the savage gashes slashed into her torso. A deep slice across her neck. My hand is pressing onto it, trying to stop the bleeding. But there is no bleeding. I am too late.
She is dead. I can tell from the way her eyes are staring, and the paleness of her skin, and the amount of blood on the floor that is soaking into my skirt. And the small knife, limp in her hand, that she must have tried to use to defend herself. Such a useless little knife. I gently take it from her.
Psychic for Hire Series Box Set Page 21