The Flat

by Adam J. Wright

  He drifts into sleep again and the next time he awakes, someone is grabbing his arm. At first, he thinks he’s died and it’s the spirit of the woman under the ice lifting him up, taking him to Heaven with her.

  But it isn’t the woman at all. Two men are lifting him to his feet and on the road, he can see an ambulance, lights flashing and illuminating the snow.

  He looks at the woman and tries to shake off the hands that are supporting him. He doesn’t want to leave her.

  As he’s dragged towards the road and the ambulance, he tries to fight against the hands that hold him but he’s too weak. Why can’t they see that he wants to stay here?

  He tries to keep his eyes fixed on the sleeping angel beneath the ice but he’s bundled into the ambulance and the doors are slammed shut.

  Chapter 33

  Mike stands in the middle of the road and looks from me to the Mini in the ditch. “What happened?”

  “The wheel came off,” I tell him. “Someone loosened it.”

  “Yeah, I saw it on the road back there. Are you okay?”

  That simple question brings a new flood of tears. No, I’m not okay. There’s a dead woman in our house and her parents—who were probably hoping and praying that their daughter was still alive—will have their hopes shattered when they find out her body was stuffed into a freezer in the attic above her own flat.

  Mike sees I’m in distress and comes forward to comfort me. I step back and wipe the tears from my face, holding up an arm to ward him off. “No, I’m fine.” I refuse to break down until I can get word to the police about Caroline. She shouldn’t be in that freezer any longer than she has to be.

  Mike steps back and holds his arms up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “Can you give me a lift?”

  “Of course, get in.”

  I climb into the Land Rover. Mike gets into the driver’s seat and I notice that he’s only wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that has a white logo of some heavy metal band on the front. He’s hardly dressed for the weather.

  Both of his arms are covered with a criss-cross of scars. At first I wonder if he’s self-harmed at some point in his life but the jagged nature of the scars, as well as their chaotic arrangement on his arm, is nothing like the neat slashes I’d expect to see on the arms of a self-harmer.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I ask as he puts the Land Rover into gear and we continue down the road. He doesn’t even have the heating turned on.

  “I like the cold,” he says.

  Why are you asking him about the cold when you haven’t asked him the obvious, burning question in your head?

  “Why are you driving Rob’s car?”

  “I use it sometimes. My car isn’t so great in the snow.”

  “Really? But you have a Volvo. I would have thought that would handle the snow with no…” My voice trails away as I realise that Mike drives a red Volvo, the same as the one in the framed picture of the North family. It’s a later model, of course, but it’s exactly the same colour.

  “I’m surprised he lets you use his car. You two don’t really get on.”

  He shrugs. “We have our ups and downs like most brothers.”

  “Brothers?”

  He nods. “Yeah, it’s no secret. I just don’t like to telegraph it. With him being so stupid, I mean. Best to let people assume we’re not related, you know?”

  I don’t say anything. My mind is working through what I’ve just learned but I’m still confused. “I thought Rob’s brother died in a car accident.”

  He grins. “No, everyone thought that at first but they found me the next day. I spent the night on the beach next to the lake, frozen half to death and sitting in a pool of my own blood.”

  “That must have been awful.”

  Mike shakes his head emphatically. “No, it was wonderful. The best night of my life.”

  I wonder if he’s joking but there isn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  “I saw an angel that night,” he says.

  You were probably hallucinating, I think to myself.

  “I don’t mean I was seeing things,” he says, as if he can read my mind. “There was an actual angel. We made a connection that goes beyond life and death. Do you know what I mean?”

  I shake my head. I have no idea what he means and now he’s beginning to scare me. All this talk of life, death, and angels makes me wish I’d stayed with the Mini and waited for someone else to come along.

  “You might know soon,” he says.

  I have no idea what he means by that either. I shrink back in my seat, wondering if I should get out, maybe even jump out. Something isn’t right here and it’s more than the shock of finding out that Mike is Rob’s brother.

  Then I remember Mike’s tracks in the snow on the day I found him in the shed. They came from the back door.

  He must have come from the attic that day. And the grey duct tape he got from the shed that day is the same tape I saw on the freezer earlier.

  My blood runs cold. I had it wrong all along. The car that Ivy and I heard at night wasn’t Rob at all; it was Mike using Rob’s Land Rover. And the footsteps I heard in the attic were probably Mike’s as well.

  He looks over at me and smiles coldly. “I know you’re not stupid, Kate. You’re probably figuring some things out right now. You went to the press with that story about Rob because you thought the police would find evidence that he killed Caroline, right? I mean, you didn’t come out and say in the story you told but you started the ball rolling and expected the police investigation to do the rest.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m trying to work out how fast I can get my seatbelt off and jump from the car. I have to make sure I don’t injure myself in the process because after I land, I’m going to have to run.

  After letting out a long sigh, he says, “I’m disappointed that you’d give Rob that much credit, to be honest. He doesn’t have that much intelligence. They had to perform surgery on his brain after the accident and the result…well, you’ve seen the result. He’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the box.”

  He looks over at me. “You’re not saying much.”

  I need to bide my time, look for the right moment to jump from the Land Rover. A quick glance at the speedo tells me we’re doing 35 miles per hour. I don’t know how dangerous a jump at this speed will be. If I wait until Mike slows to go around a bend in the road, I might lessen the impact damage and that could mean the difference between life and death.

  “Why did you do it, Mike?”

  “I told you, I saw an angel when I was young and it was the most powerful experience of my life. A couple of years ago, I realised that I could recapture the rapture I felt that first time.”

  “By murdering women?”

  “It isn’t murder; it’s a communion.”

  I don’t even know what to say to someone who harbours that kind of madness. Up ahead, the road bends sharply to the right. He’s going to have to slow down. To the left, in the direction I’ll be trying to make my escape, the snow-shrouded moors seem to stretch into forever.

  Dropping my hand to the seatbelt buckle, I prepare to press it.

  The Land Rover reaches the bend and Mike slows down.

  I release my seat belt and pull on my door handle.

  The door doesn’t open.

  Mike shakes his head. “The doors are locked, Kate, there’s no point trying to escape.” His face darkens and he says, “I’m afraid there’s no escape for either of us.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  After leaving the bend behind, he accelerates again. On our left, the moors flash by. On the right, I can see the cliffs and the sea.

  “Rob didn’t have much intelligence,” Mike says, “but he did have a camera. I had no idea that the dirty little pervert was spying on Caroline. Even when he went to Spain to visit Mum and Dad, he kept the camera running. So when Caroline let me into her flat and I drowned her in her bath, the whole thing was r
ecorded. Rob was furious when he returned home and saw what his stupid little camera had caught.”

  He laughs. “He really liked her. In fact, I think he was probably in love with her in his own sick way.” His face darkens again and he becomes serious. “He didn’t go to the police but he kept copies of the video on his computer and in the cloud. The police are going to find it now. And that’s all thanks to you, Kate. You brought them to our door.”

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask.

  He looks over at me and I see a profound sadness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. “It isn’t where I’m taking you, my angel, but where we’re going together.”

  Chapter 34

  “Careful, Guv, there’s a vehicle ahead,” Matt says from the passenger seat. He’s holding onto the handle above his door for dear life as they race along the road that leads to Northmoor House. There are two beat cars behind them, lights flashing and sirens wailing but even they’re not matching the speed of the Land Rover Discovery.

  Dani dare not slow down. She’s sure Kate Lumley is in trouble. She can feel it in her bones. With her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white, she’s driven from Scarborough at breakneck speed, thankful that the bad weather has kept most motorists off the roads.

  But there’s always someone who is willing to risk a drive out, despite weather warnings from the Met Office, and in front of her there’s a green Land Rover on the opposite side of the road, heading towards her.

  As soon as she sees it, Dani recognises the vehicle as belonging to Robert North. She tried to get a search warrant for the car but was only given one for his flat, as the courts decided the car had nothing to do with the voyeurism offence she was investigating. But she still remembers the number plate and unique pattern of dents and scrapes on the Land Rover and it’s definitely the car driving towards her now.

  “That’s Robert North’s car,” she tells Matt.

  He squints at it through the windscreen. “Yeah, it is.”

  Dani can see a male driver and female passenger in the approaching Land Rover but it’s too far away to tell if it’s Michael North and Kate Lumley. Her gut tells her that it must be. Who else would be in Robert North’s Land Rover in this weather?

  She applies the brakes and turns the wheel, letting the Discovery skid sideways so that it blocks both sides of the road.

  Matt has gone rigid in his seat, his hand gripping the handle above his head so tightly he might rip it off. “Guv, what are you doing?”

  “I’m stopping a suspicious vehicle.”

  The beat cars behind them slow to a stop and turn off their sirens but leave their lights flashing.

  Ahead, the green Land Rover skids to a stop. Dani can see the two occupants now. Michael North is in the driver’s seat and a scared-looking Kate is sitting next to him.

  Before Dani can get out of her car and advance towards the Land Rover on foot, North guns the engine and drives forward.

  “He’s going to ram us, Guv!” Matt shouts.

  But before the vehicle reaches them, it veers off the road and kicks up snow and mud as it traverses the ditch and drives across a field that leads to the cliffs.

  Dani slams the Discovery into gear and follows. “Hang on, Matt, it might get bumpy.”

  They bounce over the shallow ditch and Dani presses the accelerator shooting the car over the slippery field.

  “What the hell is he doing, Guv?” Matt asks, looking as pale as a sheet.

  Knowing what she knows about Michael North’s trigger and desires, Dani is sure she can answer that question but the what she’s about to say chills her. “He’s going over the cliff and he’s taking Kate Lumley with him.”

  Matt leans forward in his seat. “Step on it, Guv. We’ve got to stop him!”

  I brace myself against the dashboard as we bump over the field, heading straight towards the cliffs. “Mike, what are you doing?”

  Despite the fact that the police are chasing him, he seems composed and calm. “I’m completing a circle that started when I was a child. I was probably supposed to die in the lake with Astrid. In fact, I’m sure I did die that night in some way. She’s been waiting for me, Kate. All that remains is for me to take the final step and I’ll be with her forever.”

  In desperation, I pull on the door handle again but to no avail. “Mike, stop. You don’t have to do this.”

  He nods. “Yeah, I do. I’ve been living on borrowed time since the accident and now it’s time to pay my debt.”

  I look in the wing mirror and see DI Summer’s car behind us. I don’t know what her plan is but she’s probably not going to reach us before we go over the cliff edge.

  I remember reading somewhere that if you’re stuck inside a car, you can use the metal prongs in the headrest to break the window. I grab the headrest and pull on it with all my strength. It comes loose and ends up in my hands, the two metal progs sticking out from beneath it.

  I don’t use it to break the window; I ram it into Mike’s face.

  He instinctively puts his arms up to defend himself and I take that opportunity to grab the steering wheel, pulling on it as hard as I can.

  The Land Rover goes into a spin, churning up snow and mud.

  Mike shouts something at me but I don’t listen. I’m too busy jabbing the headrest prongs at him so that I can keep control of the steering wheel.

  I know I don’t have much time. Once he regains control, he’ll turn us around again and head for the cliff.

  The central locking is on a panel on his door. I reach across him and punch the button, hearing the locks disengage. He grabs me but I pull away from his grip and open my door. Cold air and snow rush inside the car and the wind blows the door closed again.

  Mike reaches for the lock controls but before he can hit the button, I wrench my door open again and jump.

  “Kate Lumley is out of the vehicle, Guv,” Matt says. “She’s on the ground.”

  “Hang on!” She turns in the direction of Kate and slams on the brakes. Unhooking her seatbelt, she gets out of the car.

  “What about North, Guv?”

  “Leave him for now. She may be injured.” She runs over to Kate, who is lying prone, arms above her head, face hidden by the snow. She’s holding a headrest in one hand, the prongs slick with blood.

  “Kate!”

  Kate stirs and rolls over onto her back before sitting up.

  “Are you okay?” Dani visually checks Kate over. She’s probably going to know about it in the morning when she’s all bruised up but at the moment she looks fine, if a little shaken.

  “He’s going to kill himself,” Kate says. “You have to stop him.”

  Dani turns back to the Land Rover Defender. Both doors are open. Mike has left the vehicle and is walking towards the cliff edge. Matt is also on foot, running towards Mike and shouting, “Guv, he’s going to jump.”

  Mike reaches the edge of the cliff and looks up at the snow-filled sky. He spreads his arms and throws his head back in what looks to Dani to be religious gesture, as if Mike is commending his soul to God, the sky, the season, or whatever the hell he believes in.

  Then he leans forwards and disappears over the cliff edge.

  Matt tries to slow himself down and ends up sliding and falling onto his backside in the snow. He turns to Dani and shakes his head in despair.

  Dani helps Kate to her feet and tells her to wait in the Discovery. Then she goes over to Matt and helps him to his feet before walking carefully to the cliff edge. Matt joins her and says solemnly, “There’s no way he survived that fall, Guv.”

  “We’ll get a team down there when the weather improves.” Dani searches for any sign of North’s body below but all she can see is the cold, rough sea beating against the rocks.

  Chapter 35

  One Week Later

  Dani sits at her desk watching DC Sandra Sharp take down the pictures from the boards on the wall and place them into a cardboard box. Some of those photogr
aphs have been up there for almost two years; scattered fragments of lives and deaths that have been examined and scrutinised endlessly in the search for the truth.

  No one could have guessed that a car accident that took place almost twenty years ago in Norway would have such far-reaching repercussions and cause the deaths of five women.

  “Weren’t you supposed to go home an hour ago, Guv?” Matt is standing by her desk, a mug of steaming coffee in his hand, shirt sleeves rolled up.

  Dani nods and rubs her eyes. Charlotte goes back to Uni tomorrow and Dani is supposed to take her to the Captain’s Table again for a meal. She’s been so busy with this case that she’s barely seen her daughter the last few days.

  “I’m going,” she tells Matt as she gets out of her chair and grabs her coat.

  He looks at the slowly-emptying board. “It’s going to seem strange. Having a bare board, I mean.”

  “It won’t be bare for long, you know that. There’ll be a new case tomorrow. New pictures. New tragedy.”

  He nods slowly and takes a sip of his coffee. “At least the last one tied itself up neatly in the end.”

  Dani raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think that what they found in the water beneath that cliff was very neat, Matt.”

  “Well, no, but at least justice was done.”

  “Was it?” She puts her coat on and gestures to the faces of the five women on the board. “Do you think their families would have wanted Michael North to kill himself or rot in jail?”

  Matt shrugs. “I don’t know. I suppose it all depends on their personal feelings about crime, punishment, and death.”

  “The important thing is that he can’t do it again. It won’t help the families of those five women but other lives have been saved. Lives we’ll never know about. Women whose faces won’t end up on that board.”

  She bids him goodnight and goes down the stairs to the ground floor before heading out to the car park. It’s dark already, despite it being early evening, and there’s a chill in the air. But at least there’s no snow.