by Jane Adams
‘You keep pictures of all your work?’ Ray asked.
She shifted uncomfortably. ‘Most,’ she said. ‘But not his, he wouldn’t let me. It was some of the best work I ever did, but it was weird, you know? A lot of my stuff I submit to trade mags. It’s good publicity if they show your shots, but I’d never have sent those in. Too strange.’
‘And it never seemed more than just “strange”. That someone should have the faces of dead children inked on his body?’
She shrugged. ‘Look, you’ve got to understand, I was nine years old when those kids died and I wasn’t even living round here. For all I knew, they could be his brothers. I didn’t ask, he didn’t say. He just turned up one night about two years ago and said he’d heard that I was good and could I work from photographs. The last two were newspaper clippings. I didn’t finish the second one. I’d realized who the kids were by then and I’d got scared.’
‘Photographs?’ Ray questioned. ‘Actual photographs or newspaper clippings?’
‘No, the real thing. Glossy five by fours. They were pictures of the boys and other people. He had a selection and I chose the ones I could work from. Most were like, you know, candid shots. Kids playing when they weren’t taking any notice of the camera. Nice and natural. Whoever took them knew what he was doing.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to call the police?’ Beckett said heavily.
She nodded. ‘I did call, twice. I gave a description of him, but I didn’t give my name. I said I thought he might be the killer but I couldn’t tell them anything like where he lived or even what he was called. Just that he was some guy with dark hair and brown eyes and skin art all down his back.’
Beckett sighed and exchanged a glance with Ray. They both knew that such a call would find its way to the bottom of the pile when it came to follow-ups. Such a vague description, with no personal details, would be inputted onto the computer system, but unless there was a crossmatch it would sit there while more promising leads were pursued.
‘Did you tackle him about this? What did you say to him?’
‘I asked him straight out. No. No, I didn’t. He said something like, “You think it’s me, don’t you?” What could I say? Look, he scared me. I thought of moving away, then I thought, well, where would I go? I just kept the door locked and my personal alarm where I could reach it.’
‘And do you think that now? That he’s the killer?’
She looked at Ray, an odd expression on her face, as though she was trying hard to work it all out and getting nowhere. Finally, she shook her head. ‘It doesn’t feel right,’ she said. ‘He was always so gentle. Quiet. I mean, I know that doesn’t mean anything. People said Ted Bundy was a nice guy, but, I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I liked him. I liked him a whole lot. Sometimes, you know, I think he came close to asking me out.’
‘But not to telling you his name?’
She smiled, catching the mockery in Beckett’s voice. ‘Yeah. He called himself Angel. You know, like on the vampire show on TV. I figured he must be a fan or it was some joke about him riding an old bike. Or maybe he’d had hippie-type parents, you know. I was at school with a girl called Peace Windsong. She had a sister called Bliss something or other.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘I don’t want it to be him.’
* * *
The safe house was about nine miles from Mallingham, set well back from the country road with a high wall surrounding it on three sides and a thorn hedge on the other. It was not the kind of place you’d come upon by accident and the sign on the gate described it as a management training centre, a use it was put to from time to time, though no one going on courses there would be returning to banks or corporations to put their newfound skills to the test.
There was a fair amount of tension between Katie’s parents and Martyn Shaw, but the house was large enough for them to stay apart if they wanted. After lunch, however, common sense had begun to take over and an uneasy truce been drawn up between them, fed mainly by Katie’s curiosity. The thought that Martyn Shaw might know something about her background, her natural parents, even her original name, was something Katie could not pass up and her parents knew that it would be unfair not to allow them to talk.
‘I didn’t know you,’ Shaw told her. ‘I’m sorry, but I can tell you very little. Bryn mentioned a woman with a young child. She’d come to a couple of open meetings and then visited the Markham house from time to time. Bryn and Irene left Markham about three months before the explosion, though. Irene’s mother was terminally ill. They stayed with relatives who lived close by so that Irene could help take care of her. I don’t think Lee was sorry to see them go. They were always loyal to Morgan, and I don’t think they liked Harrison much or his influence.’
‘And this woman,’ Lisa Fellows asked, ‘did they know her name?’
‘Julie or Julia, I believe, but they didn’t recall a last name. Morgan was never keen on last names, he said it was patriarchal and confining. Names were borrowed things, we gave them to our children, but they should be free to cast them aside as they grew and be able to choose for themselves. It wasn’t unusual for people who joined the organization to pick a new name and often people joining after that would only ever know them by that name. Records weren’t kept. It was a mess, really.’
‘And did you know my name?’ Katie asked him hopefully.
Martyn shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. If Irene and Bryn were still around I’d suggest you talk to them. But a lot of people came to meetings. Those who went further and joined the Eyes often went to great lengths to leave their past and their families behind.’
‘Seems to be a common trait of religious cults,’ Guy Fellows said angrily. ‘Brainwashing, separation.’
‘Of some, yes,’ Shaw agreed. ‘I have a rule that all members of my organization contact their families at least once a week. Even if it’s just a quick phone call, I want them to maintain links with the outside. I actively encourage it. We have trust funds set up to put our kids through university without them getting into debt. They’re not tied to us. They’re free to do their own thing and leave when they want, come back again if they want. The Eyes of God has open doors, Guy. I won’t have the same ethos as Harrison Lee. I don’t think I could live with that.’
‘Sounds very idealistic,’ Guy said, the sarcasm in his voice unmistakable.
Martyn took his comments at face value. ‘Oh, it is,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t expect you to believe that. Why should you?’
‘Why the Eyes of God?’ Katie wanted to know.
Martyn smiled at her. ‘Because we believe that we’re gathering information for the divine,’ he said. ‘That God is not some omniscient being, but a working, changing, ever-evolving power and as part of that power we should keep our eyes wide open to all possibilities. Our eyes, our ears, our minds, our souls, however you want to put it. And because the eye has been a symbol of divine protection for as long as mankind has used symbols. Morgan believed that in the beginning. There was none of this talk of super beings or messiahs or avatars. Morgan taught that we were all equal because we all had a spark of the angelic within us.’ He sighed deeply. ‘If he had kept that belief, then none of this would have happened. No one would have died. I don’t know if I can ever make that right.’
‘Why should you feel guilty about it?’ Lisa wanted to know.
‘If I’d realized sooner what Harrison Lee was doing, I might have been able to warn someone. If they’d have listened.’
* * *
He had been trying to listen to their voices, Harrison and his father, trying to hear what they wanted him to do, but they sounded so far away. When he crept in at the window and took the boy out, they were so clear. He had decorated the room, left the paintings they told him to leave. He brought the boy here but now the messages were confused, Lee’s presence not so dominant as it had previously been, the voices in his head muted and unclear. And it was so cold in the warehouse where he had taken shelter. James wanted to go home.<
br />
He had tied the boy up and left him in the corner in the back room. Covered him with a blanket to keep him warm. And waited. And when he went in to see the boy, the child cried and moaned at him and stared, pleading into his face, and James had covered his eyes and gagged his mouth so that he did not have to see or hear. He waited patiently for the voice within that spoke from Lee’s soul to tell him what to do and how everything should be.
He had left the light on last night, waiting for the moths to fly in through the window. But none came. It rained and it was cold and dark. Maybe, he thought, they don’t fly when it’s too cold. Maybe his angels were frozen and would never fly again, but by morning the words were clear. The other one had to die before he could move on. The other one had the girl. As dawn broke he went out to look for Nathan.
* * *
Nathan could feel him now, he was on the move again and shifting fast through the streets towards the place where Nathan had lived. Nathan moved too, sliding back through the broken skylight and dropping back onto the stairs. He ran down, careful to avoid the rotting wood and the pools of water on the concrete floor where the rain had been driven through the ruined windows. He slipped the coat from his shoulders and hid it under the tarpaulin that concealed his bike, then ran from the building keeping to the deepening shadow close to the walls.
There was a brief stretch of open land, broken by winter scrub and half-demolished walls. Just four o’clock, but the rain had brought an early twilight and Nathan moved easily, invisible and swift.
He climbed back up onto a factory wall, running along the length of it, balancing with the confidence of a gymnast on the blue bricks of its curving surface, then down again and into the road where Ray had parked his car the night before.
He could see the police, no longer searching now. A couple of them shared a flask, drinking tea in the lee of a house wall. Two others stood beside the garage doors, but the rest had gone. Nathan had watched them go, the searchers withdrawn for the night now that the always uncertain daylight had all but disappeared. Just these four, then, enough though to frighten James and maybe flush him into the open.
Nathan felt the other one move out from between the houses. He moved as Nathan did, swiftly, in short bursts of speed, always finding the next cover before he left the first. And then Nathan felt him halt suddenly and, leaning out from behind the wall, glimpsed him, standing no more than twenty yards away, his body half concealed in shadow. Shock had made him careless though. He had seen the police standing beside the garage doors and realized that Nathan’s hiding place was no longer secret. Nathan could feel the panic rising inside him, and the questions. He had known where to find Nathan, known just where Katie was going to be, and now that certainty had gone.
One last glance at the four officers, fixing their position in his mind, and Nathan stepped out from shelter.
James whirled to face him, his face a picture of bewilderment. For a moment Nathan felt pity for him, then he remembered the children and the moment was gone.
‘She’s not there,’ he told James quietly. ‘They took her far away from here. Somewhere you’ll never get to her.’
James Morgan moved then, he turned and ran, and Nathan followed, taking to the roof tops once again, following where his angel brother led.
Chapter Forty-two
Katie was restless. It was fully dark now and the household had settled in for the night. George had joined them for dinner and he and her father were now comfortably ensconced with a bottle of whisky, swapping army yarns. She had all but forgotten that her father had been in the forces and it was strange to hear him talking about it now. Her mother was flipping through a stack of magazines that George had brought in for her. It was rare for Lisa to bother with magazines, she never bought them at home, but had been genuinely pleased when George turned up with them. It was yet another sign, Katie thought, of the dislocation which the family had undergone. She had been studying Hamlet at school this year and there was a phrase in it, something about the times being out of joint. Katie hadn’t really understood what it meant until now.
She pulled the heavy curtain aside and peered out of the massive window. A man with a large dog glanced across at her and then walked on. It was another odd thought, that she now had armed guards patrolling the house and grounds keeping her safe.
So why did she feel so bad?
Martyn Shaw was across the room staring at the television set, though Katie could tell that he was paying little attention to the programme. She flopped down beside him on the sofa.
‘He’ll still want me. He’ll know I’m not with Nathan.’
Shaw turned his head to look at her. He nodded. ‘I think that’s likely.’
‘He won’t find you here,’ George assured her.
‘That’s what I mean. I should be in Mallingham.’
‘He needs the boys first.’
Katie shook her head. ‘Last time. Three boys and then me. Not all six first.’
George leaned forward, suddenly attentive. ‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
Katie’s mother stood up suddenly, the magazines falling to the floor. She was well ahead of George. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I know just what you’re thinking. You’re talking about using her as bait. No way. There’s no way you’re doing that.’
George shook his head slowly but his gaze never left Katie’s face. ‘Katie’s right though,’ he said. ‘Though I’d not thought of using her. Only of making James and Nathan think that we were. We can find a WPC in Mallingham who matches her for height and colouring. Bring Katie to Mallingham, substitute the other and then bring Katie back here.’
Lisa stared at him as if he had gone mad, but Katie nodded. ‘We’ve got to do it,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared . . . Not really.’
‘How can you guarantee that the killer will take the bait anyway?’ Guy said. ‘He might figure out that it’s a trick. And you’re still putting my daughter in danger just by taking her back to Mallingham.’
‘We can’t guarantee that and yes, we are putting Katie at some risk. We don’t even know that Beckett will agree. But we have to do something. We’re running against the clock here. Beckett and his troops have turned up a blank even though they’re swarming over Mallingham like a plague of flies. We have to flush him into the open. There’s a young boy’s life at stake.’
‘Ray and I should be with Katie and then with whoever you choose as substitute,’ Shaw said. ‘Katie’s parents too. We have to make Nathan believe that we’ve gone back to Mallingham and if we’re all there then there’s a better chance. If Nathan believes it, so will James and they’ll both come.’
George nodded. ‘I’ll get someone to drive me back to town and I’ll talk to Beckett.’ He nodded apologetically at his empty glass. ‘I’ve had a bit too much to take myself.’
Katie’s mother sat back down, staring helplessly at them all. She was close to tears but knew that she too had to agree. ‘Katie goes into the hotel and straight back out again,’ she insisted. ‘Straight out again.’
‘I promise you,’ George said. ‘I wouldn’t put her in any danger, Lisa. I know what it’s like to lose a child.’
* * *
Nathan had kept pace with James. The other one had panicked and his flight had been easy for Nathan to follow.
James had led him towards the twin rivers, across the bridge and to a disused warehouse placed at the point of the headland where the rivers joined. By the time James had gone to ground, Nathan had read two things in James’s mind. James was running scared and the boy, the fourth boy, was still alive.
Chapter Forty-three
Nathan moved through the darkness with a silence and certainty that most people would not possess in daylight. He had returned for his bike, riding to the bridge and then pushing it the remaining quarter-mile. Then he had paused for breath. The Domi was heavy and not designed for hauling over rutted ground. He found a piece of level ground, pulled the bike up o
nto its centre stand and checked that it was secure, looking anxiously about him, hating to leave the bike so exposed. His only consolation was that the bad weather meant the streets were empty and, unless you knew what you were doing, the bike was hell to kick over. Its high-compression engine gave it a tendency to kick back if you caught it on the wrong stroke. If that happened the kick-start was quite capable of breaking someone’s knee.
James had entered the building through the broken door. Nathan took a more circumspect approach. He circled the warehouse slowly and found a place where the old fire escape still looked relatively intact. It had been broken off some eight feet from the ground and Nathan jumped for it, missing twice and scraping his knuckles painfully before finally catching the lowest rung. He hauled himself up with arms that already trembled from the exertion of pushing the bike, trying to keep his thoughts calm and confined, afraid that James might feel how close he was and know what he intended to do.
The fire escape rattled as he swung his left leg over the rung and then pulled the rest of his body after. This was not the way he could bring a child out. He’d have to risk the main door. He moved swiftly up the stairs. One of the fixings had broken free and the landing swung ominously, creaking away from the red-brick wall. He kicked hard at the door, flinching as it crashed inward, then he slipped inside and crouched on the landing keeping very still, hardly daring to breathe in case James had heard.
The silence gathered solidly around him. He waited until he was certain James had not heard and then moved along the corridor and down the stairs. The upper storey had been given over to offices. Desks and filing cabinets had been left behind, papers still strewn across the floor. Nathan glanced swiftly through each door as he passed by but there was no sign of the child. Too high, he thought, too high up for James.
The stairs were concrete, four flights leading to the lowest floor. He travelled as lightly as he could in heavy boots, listening at each turn of the stairs, his mind reaching out for James, trying to pinpoint which part of the building he might be in. And then he heard the child. A soft, muffled whimpering coming from the floor below.
