by Jack Probyn
Liam led Jake into the living room at the other end of the corridor. A knot of officers was huddled around a coffee table in the middle, light from overhead bouncing off their reflective strips. Standing by the window was Garrison, peering through the curtains.
‘This is where we’re controlling everything,’ Liam said. He pointed at the computers on the table.
‘Where did we get the house from?’ Jake asked. ‘Not another person who owes you a favour?’
Liam chuckled. ‘Not quite. This was the former house of a drug dealer. He managed to get himself in a lot of debt with some even worse people. We seized the house and everything inside it, and it turned out the guy didn’t even own it in the first place. He wasn’t paying any rent, and nobody’s been able to get a hold of the landlord.’
Maybe it’s Lester, he thought, immediately regretting it.
CHAPTER 68
HUN
Lester stalked the streets like a stray dog. Nobody gave him a second look; the first was all it took for something innate inside passers-by to fear him and move across to the other side of the road. The wind whipped between the terraced houses and narrow streets, buffeting the bottom of his jeans and his coat. It was beginning to get colder outside, and the humidity in the air had dropped drastically. He craned his head skywards and lost his gaze in the sky. The clouds were pitch black and thick.
Rain was imminent.
Perfect, he thought.
He was less than a mile away from Jessica Tanner’s house. Despite coming to the realisation that he was being set up, part of him wanted to see what he’d created. It was the monster inside him speaking. The Nasties. He wanted to see how much effort the police had gone to in order to catch him. He wanted to laugh as he watched them wait for him and then panic when they realised he wasn’t showing up. Call it narcissism. Call it sociopathy. Call it whatever the fuck you want, but Lester just wanted to show them that he was still one step ahead, one body in front of them.
He rounded Colegrave Road with his hands in his pockets. It was a mile long, and at the other end, on the left, was Jessica Tanner’s supposed house. Twenty yards in front of him was a tree. He stopped beside it and made a call.
‘Stratford Cabs,’ the female operator said on the other end.
‘Good evening,’ Lester began. ‘I’d like to get a cab please. The corner of Colegrave and Dunmow. One person. As soon as you can.’
‘Where to, love?’
‘Missoula entertainment centre, in town,’ Lester replied.
‘I know the one. Not a problem. Someone will be with you in about five minutes. What’s your name, hun?’
CHAPTER 69
OPPORTUNE MOMENT
It was a long five minutes. In that time, the sky had darkened, the clouds with it, and a light shower of rain had started to fall, gently sprinkling his face. As he waited at the side of the road, he folded his arms to keep the heat in his body. He tapped his foot against the pavement and shuffled from side to side. The excitement was building. The adrenaline was building. The anticipation was building. The Nasties were building. So what was taking the cabbie so fucking long?
Just as Lester was about to call the taxi company to chase them up, a car pulled over. It was clad in Stratford Cab banners and graphics and looked like something out of a Hot Wheels set.
The window rolled down and Lester leant through.
‘All right, mate?’
‘Cab for Jake Tanner?’
Lester smirked. ‘That’s me.’
The cabbie thumbed Lester to get into the back and he did as instructed. The interior of the vehicle was made of leather, and it smelt strongly of strawberries and raspberries; a Jelly Bean air freshener dangled from the rear-view mirror and swayed as Lester closed the door behind him.
‘Where you going, mate?’ the driver asked.
‘Town centre please,’ Lester said with a forced smile.
The cabbie made a right turn onto Colegrave Road and started down the street. Lester tapped his leg voraciously as they drove closer and closer to Jessica Tanner’s house. His pulse squeaked and echoed in his ears, his heart beat furiously against his chest. He licked his lips, savouring the taste of his own sweat.
‘How you doing tonight then?’ the cabbie asked, rudely interrupting him from his stupor.
‘Fine,’ he replied. The last thing he wanted was to make unnecessary conversation.
Lester continued to stare out of the window. He observed the houses and counted down the numbers. Forty-nine. Forty-seven. Forty-five.
Something piqued Lester’s interest on the right-hand side of the road. It was a small detached place, ten house numbers down from Jessica Tanner’s alleged residence. Inside the front window, through a thin veil of material, was a petite woman tending to a baby in a high chair.
Before he was able to focus any more on the woman in the window, Lester’s attention was distracted by Tanner’s house. As they neared it, he noticed a stationary car that hadn’t been there earlier in the day, occupied by two people in the front seats. He knew exactly who they were and what they were there for.
‘Not today,’ Lester whispered to himself.
‘What was that?’ the cabbie asked, slowing down as they came to a speed bump. His eyes flickered into the rear-view mirror.
‘Nothing.’
The cabbie had one more chance. If he spoke one more time, Lester would slice the man’s neck with the same blade he’d used on Carl and Jessica. He needed to shut up if he wanted to survive. It was that simple.
As the cab drove past the Tanner house, Lester beamed. It was on his left, and he was sitting on the right-hand side. He leant across the seats to get a better view. It was beautiful. The police had gone to a considerable amount of effort. They had set up a red room, with red ambient lighting, in the top-left window and had turned all the other lights off.
They assumed it would act as a beacon for him – a lighthouse of lust amidst the overwhelming sea of black and blue.
They were wrong.
Lester gave a small wave to the house, a final mockery, before it eventually passed out of sight.
At the end of the road, rain began to lash at the windows, creating a thin sound on the roof of the car. Lester closed his eyes and embraced the therapy of it.
The cabbie turned left onto Major Road, drawing them closer to the town centre. But there was a problem. Lester wasn’t satisfied. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t feel content with just seeing the house. He didn’t feel content with waving at it either. He wanted to be near it. He wanted to be as close as possible to it. He wanted to give the police one last middle finger.
Less than half a mile away from Jessica’s house, he pretended his phone had gone off.
‘You all right, love?’ he said into the phone, putting on his best cockney London accent. The cabbie glanced in his rear-view mirror and they both locked eyes. ‘Yeah. Oh my God, are you OK? No. Yeah sure. Of course I can. I’ll be right there.’
Lester placed the phone in his lap.
‘Sorry, mate, but could we go back? The missus has just cut herself and I think I need to take her to A&E.’
‘What?’ the cabbie asked, disinterested.
‘It’s a ball-ache, I know. But you don’t need to hang around. I can take her to the hospital myself.’
The cabbie swerved the car into a U-turn. ‘Not a problem,’ he said.
They drove in silence as they started back towards the Tanner house.
‘Which number was it, mate?’ The cabbie leant forward and craned his neck to see out of the front window.
‘Forty-one,’ Lester said, just as the house came into view. The light was still on, but thankfully, nobody was there.
The cabbie pulled up outside and stopped the meter – £5.60.
Lester threw him a tenner, thanked him for his trouble, told him to keep the change and then exited. He stepped out onto the pavement and – carefully – approached the house, psyching himself up. It was all about the act.
It was all about confidence – making it look as though he knew what he was doing, as though he had every right to be there.
Lester ambled slowly towards the house with his arm shielding his face from the rain and any possible method the police might have that would identify him. By the time he reached the door, the cab had disappeared out of sight and out of earshot.
He waited. Frozen. His body began tingling. His pulse bounced out of his skin. His muscles went taut. His mouth dripped with saliva and the rain hammered at his face. Within a few seconds of standing there, he was drenched. His hair. His shoulders. His legs. His feet.
Lester knocked on the door hard, ignoring the numbing sensation that coursed through his body.
There was no response.
He knocked again, this time even harder. On the other side of the door came the sound of a baby crying.
Still no answer.
Lester tried again. He entertained the idea of screaming for help but knew that would draw unwanted attention; even though he understood there were police stationed inside vehicles, he didn’t know how many there were, and he didn’t know how close they might be. At least the sound of his knocking was drowned out by the rain bouncing off the surrounding cars’ roofs.
As Lester raised his fist to knock again, the door opened wide.
Lester gave the woman in front of him no chance to react. He charged in, pushed her against the wall and slammed the door shut. Before she could open her mouth to scream, Lester’s hand smothered it. He then pressed his other arm against her throat and pinned his body against hers, immobilising her legs with his thighs. Her eyes bulged, revealing the shock and horror that appeared in someone’s face moments before they realised something bad was about to happen to them. He loved that look. The whites of the eyes. The pupils growing smaller and smaller and smaller. The exasperated breath. The heaving chest. It all worked together harmoniously in a choir of death. And he was the conductor.
Lester sniffed and smelt fear oozing from her pores. He leant closer, and as soon as he did, her eyes closed. Smiling, he licked her forehead, moving from left to right, and then right to left. The woman screamed beneath him and wriggled. She tasted good – not the best, but good. Satisfactory.
‘Shh,’ Lester hushed, placing his finger against her lips. In the other room, the baby’s crying worsened. ‘If you stop, everything will be OK, all right? I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t. Honestly. You just need to calm down. Nod if you understand what I’ve just told you.’
Eyes wide, the woman dipped her head.
‘I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth now, OK, and when I do, I want you to stay quiet. You can manage that, can’t you?’
The woman dipped her head again, and Lester eased the pressure on her mouth but maintained it everywhere else on her body.
‘Is anyone else home?’
She shook her head frantically; Lester believed her.
‘The baby… I need you to make it quiet. Please.’
The woman groaned, opening her mouth to protest, but nothing came out.
‘Ple… Please…’
‘It’s OK,’ Lester said, placing his arm around her. ‘You don’t need to be afraid. We’re only afraid when we reach into the unknown. Look at me – am I scared?’
The woman didn’t know how to react, so Lester answered for her. ‘I’m not afraid because I know exactly what’s going to happen, and you don’t need to be either.’
The baby was still in its high chair in the kitchen at the front of the house. The infant’s little face had turned red and her mouth was covered in remnants of food and drink. As soon he loosened his grip on her, the mother rushed to the baby and picked her up. She cradled her in her arms and stroked her cheek.
‘Give it to me,’ Lester said. ‘Please.’
The woman retreated, clutching the baby against her chest until she bumped into the wall. Lester smiled. There was nowhere for her to go. He stood in the doorway between her and the exit. His gaze fell on the baby. He’d never done anything with one before. That was an experience he was looking forward to.
‘Please,’ she said, pointing at him, as if that would keep him at bay. ‘Please take what you want. Money? We have lots of it. Please, just don’t hurt us.’
Lester shook his head. ‘Your insurance would pay you back for all the damage. No… I want something more special than that. I want your cunt.’
Lester grabbed at the child, yanked her free from the mother’s grip and threw her to the ground. The baby bounced on the stone floor and lay still. The mother screamed, her pitch piercing his ears. He had to silence her.
Lester punched her in the stomach, smashed her face against the kitchen surface and let her fall to the floor. He stood there with his chest heaving over the two still bodies.
CHAPTER 70
GHOST TOWN
In the last hour, Colegrave Road had been a ghost town. The only thing they’d seen on the road that was of any interest had been a taxi that had come and gone. Liam, as the SIO and the officer in charge of the investigation, had quickly disregarded. At first, Jake had protested, claiming that it should be investigated, but after they’d witnessed a man sheltering himself from the rain enter a house down the road, Jake and the rest of the team had dismissed it.
‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ Liam said, checking his watch as he paced around the kitchen. He waved his finger about. ‘This was our one chance to catch him and we’ve blown it. How? What stopped him from coming? What tipped him off? More importantly, who tipped him off?’
Everyone in the room fell silent. A response escaped them, and nobody was willing to chase it and bring it back.
Liam threw his hands in the air. ‘Am I just talking to myself?’
‘He’s smart,’ Jake jumped in. ‘Smarter than we gave him credit for. He must have realised it was too good to be true. Jessica Tanner – she’d come out of nowhere, and amidst everything else that’s been going on, she still wanted to sleep with him. I think he saw through that straight away.’
‘Well I’m glad you’re piping up now,’ Liam said.
‘It was my idea, guv. I don’t understand why you’re—’
‘Because he’s still out there, and he could be killing someone right now and fucking their skull as we speak!’ Liam slammed his hands on the kitchen surface. The cutlery that was in the drier beside the sink shook from the force.
At that moment, the kitchen door opened, and a uniformed officer entered, panting heavily.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he began, rain dripping from his cap. ‘Guv – you’d better come see this. He’s taken another one.’
Jake watched Liam’s eyes widen. He mirrored him.
‘You’ve got to be shitting me,’ Liam said. ‘Another woman?
‘Sorry, guv, but it’s better if you see it. Especially DC Tanner.’
The officer said nothing else and left the room. For a long moment, Jake and Liam stared at one another, horrified. What did he mean? Why Jake specifically?
He and Liam followed the uniformed officer out of the house and into the rain. At the end of the pathway, they turned right and sprinted down the road. In the distance, fifty yards away on the other side of the road, three police vehicles were stationed outside a house. Uniformed officers had already set up a perimeter and were beginning to roll out the white tape across the middle of the street.
Jake didn’t like the look of this.
He swallowed hard as they reached the first step, where they were met with another uniformed officer holding a clipboard, sheltering it from the elements by hiding it inside his mac. Jake and Liam signed in their attendance and made for the front door.
As he climbed the small flight of steps to the property’s entrance, something in the window caught Jake’s eye. Light burst from inside the room, and there was a thin net curtain distorting his visibility of what was inside. From his position, he saw droplets and smears of red adorning the windowpane and curtain. But there was more on
the other side. A lot more.
Tentatively, Jake entered the house. All he could hear was the heavy sound of his breath and the flashing of the forensic team’s camera lenses.
He stopped at the threshold of the room. Before him was a massacre. On the floor, naked, was a woman and a baby. Both had been heavily mutilated – the mother more so than the little one. She was missing her limbs and the contents of her stomach had been flung across the kitchen counter and the floor. On the lower half of her body, incisions had been made around the vagina and thigh area. Blood still continued to drip down her body and pool onto the floor. The baby, lying a few feet away from her, was almost untouched, save for her missing fingers and tongue.
A lump swelled in Jake’s throat.
‘This is what I wanted you to see,’ the officer said, pointing to the wall directly opposite.
Jake’s eyes rose from the dead bodies and fell on the wall. His mouth fell open and his skin went cold.
Inscribed on the wall were five words:
Jake’s mind went blank. He felt dizzy. Disorientated. Weak. Nauseous. Like he wanted to be back in the avalanche where the wall of snow was trapping and suffocating him. This woman had died as a result of him.
‘Oh my God,’ Liam said. He removed his phone and called Drew, told him to get down to the property immediately and then hung up. To the uniformed officers, he said, ‘How long ago was this?’
‘The blood’s still wet,’ the officer began.
‘Their bodies are still warm,’ came another voice from behind them. The owner walked up to them and introduced herself. ‘Forensic pathologist Olivia Tointon.’