Body Heat

by Candy Denman

  Adrian smiled.

  “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, and she decided that yes she did want to sit down, because she was feeling a bit strange. He hastily wiped the seat with his handkerchief as she sat with a bump and wondered if she was going to faint. Everything seemed very distant. She thought she could hear her phone ringing, and she pulled the phone out of her pocket to answer but it was beyond her. She was aware of someone closer by speaking to her.

  “How are you feeling, Callie?”

  She wanted to answer, but couldn’t get the words out.

  “Here let me help you over to my car, I’ll take you home.”

  It was a kind voice, a voice she recognised but couldn’t quite place and she allowed herself to be led away from the noise and the lights. She wanted to rest, to sleep, and this kind person with his reassuring therapeutic voice was offering to take her home.

  “It’s not far, just over here,” the voice encouraged her when she stumbled and she walked on, leaning heavily on his arm, grateful for his help.

  Chapter 29

  As she drifted in and out of consciousness, Callie realised that she was in the front passenger seat of a car she didn’t recognise. She felt ill and her mind was fuzzy, spaced out, in fact. She vaguely registered that the car was small and that she was feeling sick. She was being thrown around as the car travelled at speed through the streets using minor roads that twisted and turned nauseatingly. She turned to get a look at who was driving, but that made her nausea worse and she closed her eyes again.

  “Please slow down,” she thought she said but she wasn’t sure it came out clearly.

  “Shush now, it will all be fine,” the voice responded and she thought she recognised it. Who was it? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but the voice was reassuring, kind and she allowed herself to drift away for a moment. She came to with a start as they made a violent right turn that flung her against the door. It came to her suddenly. The psychologist, that was it, Adrian something. She really couldn’t think clearly, but she was reassured, she was with a friend and she only half listened to what he continued to tell her in his soothing voice.

  “I never would have taken you, but you were bound to put two and two together eventually. Tomorrow or the next day you would realise that your friend was meeting me, realise that I had connections to Mark Caxton. You’d begin to be suspicious of me then and, given your work with the police, you’d tell them. I couldn’t let you do that. You must understand.”

  His words made no sense to Callie at all. What on earth was he talking about? And she was so tired, maybe she should have a little sleep and then she would feel better and be able to understand what was going on. She closed her eyes again and let his words wash over her. But instead of being able to sleep, she had a sudden flash of memory. It was to do with Mark Caxton, stolen cars and fire. And then it came back to her and she was wide awake.

  “Stop!” she said and started opening her door. There was something stopping her from moving and she realised that her seat belt was fastened. The car veered across the road as Adrian reached across her and the door swung wide, hitting something, a car, a road sign, Callie wasn’t sure, but there was a bang and she heard a shout before the car lurched again. The door swung back and Adrian grabbed it, slamming it shut. She was still struggling to free the seat belt clasp when he hit her, hard, in the face and everything went black.

  When she came to, Callie’s head hurt and she couldn’t think straight. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious. She lay back in her seat trying to brace herself against the lurches of the car. They were driving at great speed. She tentatively opened one eye and saw they were on a minor road with cars parked on both sides of it. If anyone came the other way, they would have no time to stop. She tried to think. She was in a car with Adrian Lambourne, who had hit her, that was why her head hurt. Adrian was the serial killer, of that she no longer had any doubt. Had he hit his previous victims? She thought not. What was it he had used to drug them? GHB, that was it. Perhaps they had all remained drugged because they’d mixed it with alcohol. That made sense. She hadn’t been drinking so she had come round unexpectedly. She tensed as the car swerved round a corner and she was thrown against the door. She couldn’t help a small grunt of pain escaping as her head hit the glass.

  “Don’t even think about trying anything at this speed. We’ll both be killed.” Lambourne had heard the grunt and was aware she was conscious again.

  Callie knew he was right, but she would rather take her chances in a car crash than wait for him to set the car, and her, on fire.

  She wondered if Kate had noticed her missing, or if any of the others at the bar had seen her being taken. Then she wondered why he was driving so fast. Surely he wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself, and the car? He kept looking in the mirror and, as she realised why, her heart soared. They were being followed, that’s why he was not worried about attracting attention for speeding, he was trying to get away. She listened very carefully and thought she could hear a siren in the distance, so help couldn’t be far behind.

  She took a closer look at where they were, the regular rows of houses and parked cars had given way to hedgerows. They were out in the countryside, but she wasn’t quite sure where. She could see he was watching closely, occasionally slowing to look at potential lanes and tracks where he could hide with the car and she knew she couldn’t let him. He saw a turning up ahead and turned off his lights as he approached it. Callie knew that the moment he stopped driving he would be able to turn his full attention to stopping her from escaping or making a noise. He would be able to knock her out, or even kill her. She had no illusions about her ability to defend herself – perhaps she would have been wise to take up martial arts or self-defence classes, but it was too late now. She had to take her chance whilst he was still preoccupied.

  * * *

  They had turned off the road onto what was little more than a rutted dirt track and had therefore slowed a little. Callie slid one hand down onto the seat belt release and as Lambourne turned again into a muddy farmyard track, she simultaneously undid her seat belt and pulled the door handle. Rolling out of the car before the door had really opened, her arm got caught in the seat belt, stopping her from fully falling from the car.

  Lambourne slammed on the brakes and grabbed for her arm, but the sudden jerk of the car coming to a halt was enough to release her arm from the seat belt and he was only able to grab the sleeve of her jacket.

  Callie pulled against Lambourne’s grip, but he had hold of her too tightly, so she cried out in anger, twisted and kicked at the car and in one desperate, ferocious move that tore her jacket, she managed to free herself from his grasp. The sudden release sent her sprawling and winded her. For precious seconds, she couldn’t move. She heard him come after her and she hardly knew where she got the strength, but she was up and running out into the lane, Lambourne close on her heels.

  With a final burst of speed, she flew out into the lane and stopped as headlights dazzled her and there was a screech of brakes.

  “Fuuuuck!” she heard Jeffries shout as the car skidded to a stop, inches short of hitting her.

  Miller was out of the car and running round the front of the car as Lambourne careered out of the opening, and seeing Miller and Jeffries, turned and ran.

  “Go!” Jeffries shouted at his boss. “I’ve got her.” Jeffries ran to Callie, who had sat down in the middle of the road, crying with relief. Miller must have realised that Jeffries’ days of running after criminals was long gone, or rather his days of having any hope of catching them were. So, after a quick look at Callie, who waved vaguely to let him know she was okay and he should go after her abductor, Miller chased after Lambourne. Jeffries took off his jacket and put it round Callie’s shoulders as he took out his phone to let Control know where they were and that they needed support and an ambulance.

  Chapter 30

  They had the heaters on full blast in the back of the am
bulance where Callie sat with a blanket round her shoulders. It was very warm, but she couldn’t seem to stop shivering. The after-effects of the drug, she told herself, and shock, but that didn’t stop the shivering. Jayne Hales sat next to her with her notebook open, ostensibly to take a statement from Callie, but she was doing most of the talking.

  “Good thing you left those messages on the guv’s phone or we wouldn’t have known where to start looking for you.” She had already explained that Miller had switched his phone off whilst interviewing Butterworth and it wasn’t until after the evening briefing that he had remembered to turn it back on.

  “But how did you know it was Lambourne?” Callie asked between spasms of shaking.

  “We didn’t,” Jayne admitted, giving her a worried look, probably wondering if she ought to get the paramedic back in.

  But Callie smiled encouragement and clenched her teeth more firmly together to stop them chattering.

  Slightly reassured, Jayne continued, “The techies had analysed the wording in all the posts on the website connected to our victims and spotted a pattern. The killer was changing names and burner phones for every target, but recycled bits of his profile and messages, using the same words and phrases.”

  “That was clever.”

  “Nigel helped them with that. Of course, he would have got onto the pattern much earlier if we had got access to the instant messaging app Lambourne used once he had made contact with the victims, but they were encrypted and it wasn’t a matter of national security, apparently.”

  Callie, normally a staunch supporter of civil liberties and the right to privacy, had to concede that the police would have caught the killer earlier if they had had access to the instant messages, and it gave her pause for thought.

  “But how did all that lead you to me?”

  “The tech department called urgently this evening to say that they were pretty sure that the same person was in contact with someone else and sent us the details. We recognised the photo as your friend Kate, which was just as well as that wasn’t the name she was using.”

  Jayne looked amused, but Callie just nodded her understanding. She was absolutely not going to ask what name Kate had used.

  “So we phoned her,” Jayne continued, “and she said she was supposed to be meeting him tonight but he had been a no show and someone better had come along.”

  That explained it, Callie thought. The man with Kate was just a random bar user, not the date from the website. That date was Adrian of course, a little late, but there to meet Kate. She shuddered at how close they had both come to being the next victims.

  “We were relieved,” Jayne went on, once she was sure Callie was okay, “but then she realised you had gone AWOL and weren’t answering your phone. She went outside and rang you again, heard the ring tone and found your phone in the gutter and called us back immediately. The boss charged over there and some witnesses remembered seeing a woman who fitted your description, and whom they took to be drunk, being helped into a car. Fortunately, one of them was able to give us a good description. Caused a bit of a panic, I can tell you.”

  Callie shuddered. She hated to think what could so easily have happened if Kate had just assumed she had gone home.

  “I’m just so glad they managed to track down the route he was taking.”

  “Well, that was down to you, I reckon. You tried to get out of the moving car, didn’t you?”

  Callie nodded.

  “Your passenger door took the wing mirror off a cab as the driver was dropping off a passenger. He was absolutely livid. He gave chase and radioed all his mates to help. We just had to follow the taxis.”

  Callie smiled again, but this time it was for real. The thought of the police cars, chasing the taxis, chasing the car she was in was like something out of a cartoon and she was sure it hadn’t really been that easy.

  “Well, I’m very grateful to them.” She sighed and shook her head. “It never occurred to me that Adrian was the killer. I mean, I even knew he’d been through a terrible divorce. But he just seemed boring, petty and ordinary. How can I have been so stupid?”

  She looked over at the police car where she could see Lambourne sitting in the back, hunched and defeated, with his hands cuffed and with a grim-looking police officer sitting beside him. Lambourne had a small cut above the eye and some incipient bruising to his jaw. She hoped it hurt. As she watched, the car pulled away, taking him to the police station.

  Jayne made herself scarce as Miller hurried over to the ambulance, limping slightly.

  “How’re you doing?” he asked, concern and exhaustion etched across his face.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “What about you?”

  “Just a knock.” He shook his head impatiently. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Why?”

  “You, I, well…” He gave up trying to express himself and gave her a hug instead, which surprised her. She would normally have felt uncomfortable about such a display of affection in front of everybody, but tonight it felt good. It was what she needed, and she couldn’t help but close her eyes and sink into the warm embrace, hugging him back as tightly as he held her.

  “Boss?” Miller tensed as Jeffries called to him.

  Callie could see Jeffries behind Miller’s back, gesturing impatiently as he muttered, “For fuck’s sake.”

  This rather broke the mood, for Callie at least, and she pushed Miller away.

  “Go,” she told him. “You’re needed at the station.”

  “But–”

  She could see he was torn between wanting to stay with her, and knowing that he had work to do.

  “Go,” she repeated firmly. “I’m fine. I need to go to the hospital and get checked over, and have my blood taken to check for GHB before it’s out of my system. Now you go and do the interview and make sure you build a rock-solid case against him.”

  He nodded and with a last look at her, turned away and went over to where Jeffries was waiting to drive him back to the station.

  * * *

  Jayne was under orders to stay with Callie as she was taken to the hospital in the ambulance. Much as she liked the policewoman and even counted her as a friend after the events of the past few weeks, Callie was pleased to find Kate already at the hospital waiting for her. She must have had an awful time with no idea what was happening and Callie was glad someone had found the time to ring her to let her know she was safe.

  “I would never have forgiven myself if you weren’t all right,” Kate later confessed. “After all, it was me who got you into the situation in the first place.”

  But Callie didn’t blame her friend one bit. She was okay, and the killer was in custody. She just wanted to make sure he stayed there. There was no doubting that he had drugged and abducted her. She had had the blood tests done and was sure that they would prove it. Lambourne would go down for her abduction if nothing else. She just hoped that the interview or the search of his home and office would provide further evidence of his guilt as far as the other victims were concerned, because a good lawyer might get him off the murders and she wanted, needed, to know that he was going away for a long time. A very long time.

  * * *

  The following morning, after a fitful night’s sleep, Callie insisted that she was feeling fine and persuaded a reluctant Kate, who had slept on the couch in case her friend needed anything in the night, to leave. She wanted some time to herself, she said, to think about the previous night, but in reality, it was more because she didn’t want to think about it that she wanted to be alone.

  Kate meant well, but she was so wracked with guilt and the fright of what could have happened to Callie, that she couldn’t stop talking about it. Callie appreciated that different people have different ways of dealing with trauma, but while Kate needed to discuss it, Callie very much needed to put the fear and the horror of her abduction into a little box somewhere deep in her brain to be taken out and examined at a later date when she felt stronger. For no
w, she needed to do something physical and banal, like cleaning. So, once she was alone, she donned rubber gloves, armed herself with a cleaning spray and sponge and tackled the bathroom.

  It was almost lunchtime when the intercom buzzed to let her know that she had a visitor.

  As she pressed the intercom button to speak to whoever was at the door, the slightly hesitant “It’s me” told her immediately that it was Miller. What she didn’t know as she buzzed him in and opened her front door, was whether or not he was on his own. It occurred to her that a video entry system would be a good idea and added it to her mental shopping list, and was relieved when she saw just Miller coming up the stairs.

  “Come in.” Callie carefully checked the stairs behind him, in case Jeffries was lurking in the stairwell, but the absence of either heavy breathing or swearing indicated that Miller was truly alone.

  He stood just inside the door and made no move to come further into the flat. His coat was wet and she realised that she hadn’t even noticed that it was raining outside, she had been so intent on her cleaning.

  “Can I?” She indicated his coat and moved towards him, hoping that another hug might be on offer.

  “I can’t stay,” he said.

  “That’s fine. You must be really busy. So much going on.” She was gabbling, she realised, and told herself, firmly, to shut up.

  “I just wanted to let you know what was happening, and see how you were.”

  “That’s good of you,” she said. “So, what is going on? Has he confessed?”

  “No, not yet. He’s not saying anything, but I’ve no doubt he will if you’re right.”

  She looked at him enquiringly.

  “If he did this to punish women for adultery, he’ll want to tell the world about it. Make sure everyone knows why they deserved it, in his mind.”

  “You’re right. He’ll want to justify his actions.”

  “I’m hoping he doesn’t save it for the trial, though. It would be good to have a confession before we get there.”