by D. S. Butler
I smiled as I watched it slither towards her. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to use the syringe this time.
“Please… Please, make it go away. You’ve got it all wrong. I was the one who found her. I called the ambulance. I did everything I could to save her.”
I sat down on top of one of the desks and stared at her. The snake had stopped its approach, but its tongue continued to flicker out, looking for prey.
“I know that’s not true. Lauren Hicks came to find you. She told you that Alex was locked in a cupboard. You could have come to help her straight away, but instead you told her that you needed to finish your coffee first.”
Mrs. Diamond shook her head in horror. “No! That’s not what happened.”
“Are you telling me that Lauren Hicks lied?”
“No, not lied exactly, but she was only a child. She must have gotten things confused.”
I gave her a scathing look.
“It was only a couple of minutes, and then I helped her. It wasn’t my fault. I thought it was just a prank.”
I gripped the side of the desk hard.
Mrs. Diamond threw her head back and screamed.
47
MACKINNON LOOKED UP. HE could have sworn he heard a woman scream. He froze in the corridor, listening.
Sandra Diamond’s office had been locked and there was no evidence of a disturbance as far as he could see. He had considered breaking down the door just in case, but he was pretty sure it was empty. He didn’t fancy ending up with a bruised shoulder and the bill for a broken door if Sandra Diamond had got a lift home tonight with someone else.
The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was the printer in the secretary’s office. The paper jam light was flashing, and the drawer had been removed, but that was hardly cause for alarm.
He heard the scream again, louder this time, and broke into a run, heading towards the noise. He had only gone a few paces, to the end of the corridor and turned the corner, when he ran into a solid wall of flesh.
He was cracked over the head with something hard, and then before he could hit out and react, he felt a solid mass propel him to the floor.
Mackinnon twisted his torso and pushed back hard. A light flashed in his eyes momentarily dazzling him.
He managed to get the upper hand on his attacker by pushing hard upwards and flipping his assailant over.
There was a grunting sound beneath him as the attacker made contact with the floor. Mackinnon put his forearm against the man’s throat, using his body weight to pin him to the floor.
As the torch clattered out of the man’s hands, Mackinnon saw that he was face-to-face with a grey-haired man of around sixty.
“I’ve called the police,” the man said in a strangled voice because Mackinnon was still resting his arm on his windpipe. “You won’t get away with this.”
Who on earth was this? Mackinnon rocked back on his heels, loosening his grip.
“I am the police,” he said.
The man looked at him doubtfully, and with a sigh, Mackinnon wrenched his warrant card from his pocket and showed the man his ID.
“Well, why on earth didn’t you say so in the first place?” The man sounded indignant.
Mackinnon wanted to point out that he hadn’t exactly been given the opportunity to introduce himself, but he didn’t want to waste time arguing.
“I heard somebody call out,” Mackinnon said. “It sounded like a woman screaming.”
The man sat up and nodded. “Me too.”
“Do you work here?”
Another nod. “I’m the caretaker.”
“Did you really call the police?”
The man hesitated and then shook his head. “No, I was only bluffing.”
“Okay. It doesn’t matter. More officers are on the way. Go into one of the offices or classrooms and lock the door if you can.”
Without waiting for an answer, Mackinnon took off heading in what he hoped was the right direction. He’d only travelled a few feet when he heard voices.
“Oh, God, please no. Please, make it stop.”
They were in the classroom just off the main corridor. The desperation in the woman’s voice meant that Mackinnon didn’t hesitate. It might have been wise to wait for backup, but the sheer terror of thinking that might be too late caused Mackinnon to wrench open the door.
When he burst into the room, he saw Sandra Diamond sitting on the floor. Her hands and feet were tied and what had been a gag hung loosely around her neck.
A tall slim woman sat on one of the desks. She smiled at Mackinnon as he entered.
“Police,” Mackinnon said.
“You are too late,” Nicola Brent said and then her gaze shifted to the floor.
Mackinnon didn’t dare take his eyes off Nicola Brent when he said, “Are you okay, Mrs. Diamond?”
It was a ridiculous question. She clearly wasn’t okay. She was tied up and almost hysterical.
Mackinnon made a move towards her to loosen the restraints when he suddenly saw her reason for distress. A three-foot long snake with black circular markings on its back was steadily slithering towards her. Mackinnon recoiled.
“Put that thing away now,” he ordered, but Nicola Brent just stared at him.
“You can stop this now, Nicky. She hasn’t been hurt, and I know you don’t really want to hurt her. This isn’t about Mrs. Diamond. This is about your sister,” Mackinnon said. “I know you think she has been forgotten but she hasn’t.”
“She has to know how it feels,” Nicola said, her voice devoid of emotion. “You should leave now. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Something resembling remorse flashed across her face. “How is that detective? The one with the grey hair?” She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I had to do it. He was going to ruin everything.”
Mackinnon took a deep breath. He couldn’t think straight when there was a venomous snake only a few feet away from him. What had Claude said about striking distance? He wished he had paid more attention.
“He is still in hospital.”
“I thought I’d killed him.”
Sandra Diamond began to moan softly as the snake shifted position.
“No one did anything for Alex,” Nicola Brent said. “You should have helped her. You were the adult.” Nicola was talking to Sandra Diamond, but she was too focused on the snake to pay her any attention.
“Someone should have stopped them. Someone should have brought the bullies to account, but no one did anything for her.”
“You did,” Mackinnon said.
Nicola Brent looked up, surprised. “Yes.” She smiled. “I made them pay.”
“You did,” Mackinnon said. “But no one else needs to get hurt now. You’ve made your point. You can see how scared Mrs. Diamond is. She understands. She is sorry.”
Mackinnon took a step forward towards Nicola. He could see the black bag and figured perhaps if he could throw it over the snake, it might stop moving. That could be a naive hope, but he had to try.
“It’s over now, Nicola,” he said and took another step forward.
Then he saw what she held in her hand.
She had slowly pulled it out of her pocket and held it in front of her.
The syringe.
No doubt full of the same venom that had killed Beverley Madison, Joe Griffin and Troy Scott.
In that moment, Mackinnon’s senses seem to be heightened. He could see the glistening drop of liquid on the tip of the needle.
“Nobody else has to die,” Mackinnon said. “It’s over.”
The snake passed within an inch of Mrs. Diamond’s leg and she was shaking almost convulsively.
Mackinnon heard the welcome sound of police sirens in the distance. It wouldn’t be long until officers were swarming the building.
“You need to put the syringe down now, Nicola. You’ve done enough.”
Nicola Brent hesitated. Her lower lip trembled and then she slowly leaned down and placed the syringe on th
e floor. Only seconds later, police officers burst into the room behind Mackinnon.
“Watch out for the snake!” Mackinnon yelled.
Two officers cuffed Nicola Brent as Mackinnon leaned down beside Mrs. Diamond and started to untie her restraints.
Her wrists were marked with red grooves, one so deep it had drawn blood.
“You’re going to be okay now,” Mackinnon said. “She didn’t inject you before I got here, did she?”
Mrs. Diamond managed to shake her head, but she seemed incapable of speech.
A uniformed officer that Mackinnon didn’t recognise entered the room with a long pole, prodding and poking the corners of the room, clearly looking for the snake.
Mackinnon helped Mrs. Diamond to her feet.
“Ambulance is outside. It just arrived,” one of the uniformed officers told them as they left the classroom. He seemed very reluctant to go inside. “Have they found the snake yet?”
Mackinnon shook his head, and the officer shivered. “I better get someone from the animal unit in. I’m glad it’s not my job to find it.”
48
OUTSIDE ON THE SCHOOL playground amidst the blue flashing lights, Mackinnon met up with Collins. They watched in silence as Sandra Diamond was treated by the paramedics for shock.
“She was lucky,” Collins said after they closed the ambulance doors. “Shock and a few bruises. It could have been so much worse.”
Mackinnon watched his breath form small white puffs in the freezing air.
“Did you hear the latest on Tyler?” Collins said. “It looks like he’s going to be okay. Back to normal. At least as normal as Tyler ever can be.”
Mackinnon managed a smile. “Thank God.”
Nicola Brent was led past them in handcuffs to a squad car. She didn’t look back.
“She doesn’t look like she is capable of killing anyone,” Collins said and he shook his head. “I should have learned by now that it’s normally the person you would least expect.”
“Do we know what triggered it?” Mackinnon asked. “I mean, what happened to her sister was years ago, so why now?”
“We found out she’s been looking after her mother for the past few years. Her mother has dementia and her condition has declined rapidly in the last year. She got taken into a care home last week. I’m no psychologist, but I think that was probably the trigger.”
Mackinnon ran a hand through his hair. “Fancy a drink after we’re done here?”
“Go on then. I’ll buy you a pint. I think we’ve earned it.”
49
MACKINNON WINCED AS SARAH slammed her bedroom door. It had been over a week since Nicola Brent had been apprehended. Despite the sensational news coverage of the Charmer during the investigation, the papers and the news programmes on television were surprisingly quiet about the actual arrest.
The previous week had been filled with paperwork and form filling. Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and getting everything ready for a watertight case for the CPS.
It was the Saturday before Christmas, and Mackinnon sat on one end of the sofa with Katy at the other.
Katy had her feet curled up under her and was engrossed with something on the iPad. Technically, the iPad belonged to Chloe, but with Katy and Sarah using it she never seemed to get a look in.
Katy wasn’t yet back to her normal lively self, but now that plans had been put in place for her to attend a new school next term, she was definitely happier than she had been before. Sarah was a different story.
The plane ticket her father was supposed to be sending her for Christmas hadn’t materialised. In fact, he hadn’t even bothered to ring her yet, and there was only a few days until Christmas. Instead of blaming her father, Sarah took it out on her mother, storming about and generally making everyone miserable. She was only back for three weeks over the Christmas holidays. Mackinnon felt guilty, but for him those three weeks couldn’t pass quickly enough.
Just before Sarah had returned home for Christmas, Mackinnon had received a late-night phone call from her. She’d been drunk and had run out of money, so she couldn’t afford a cab home. Mackinnon had driven across to Kingston from Derek’s place in Hackney to pick her up outside a nightclub.
He tried to tell her she needed to be more responsible and tried to explain why it was so dangerous to get into that sort of situation. That had just earned him a sulky glare.
He hadn’t even mentioned the incident to Chloe. She had enough on her plate at the moment, trying to solve Katy’s bullying problem.
Mackinnon had just reached for the remote control to switch the channel, when there was a knock at the front door. Katy didn’t budge. She didn’t even look up from the iPad.
“I’ll get it then, shall I?” Mackinnon said, getting to his feet.
When he opened the front door, he was surprised to see Derek standing there. Mackinnon stepped back to let him in and then he noticed what Derek was carrying.
“What on earth?”
Derek grinned and held up the largest turkey Mackinnon had ever seen. “You haven’t got one yet, have you?”
Mackinnon managed to shake his head.
From behind him he heard Chloe say, “Nice to see you, Derek, come in. Jack, shut the door. It’s freezing.”
Mackinnon shook his head as Derek walked past him, holding the turkey by the neck.
“That bird could probably feed twenty people,” he said. “And it’s not even plucked.”
Derek shrugged. “It’s organic,” he said as if that explained everything.
“I’ve brought you a turkey,” Derek said proudly to Chloe as he walked into the kitchen and waggled the bird’s head.
Mackinnon followed Derek into the kitchen just in time to see the look of shock on Chloe’s face.
“Oh…How kind.” She shot Mackinnon a worried look. “Where are we going to keep it?”
Luckily Chloe had a spare fridge they kept in the garage, and Mackinnon just managed to fit the bird in there.
When he returned to the kitchen, Derek was leaning back on the kitchen counter, cradling a mug of coffee.
“It didn’t work out,” he said. “It was just one of those things.” He shrugged and looked glumly down at his coffee.
Mackinnon guessed he was telling Chloe about his recent split.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Chloe said sympathetically and then handed Mackinnon his cup of coffee.
“What are you going to do about Christmas?” Chloe asked. “You were planning to spend it with Julia, weren’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Derek said, putting on a hangdog expression. “I’ll be all right. I’ll just spend the day watching telly on my own.”
“Nonsense. You should spend Christmas with us, shouldn’t he, Jack?”
Mackinnon had to grin at the beaming smile on Derek’s face. It was quite obvious he had been angling for an invite, which was why he had brought the turkey.
“You’re welcome to have Christmas dinner with us, mate,” Mackinnon said. “On one condition.”
Derek’s forehead puckered in a frown and he immediately looked suspicious.
“What condition?”
“You help me pluck that turkey!”
50
CHRISTMAS EVE WAS MACKINNON’S last day of work before Christmas. After a heavy day of paperwork, the MIT team had headed to the Red Herring for a drink after work. The pub was packed and it seemed that everyone had had a similar idea.
Tinsel decorations hung around the windows, and there were free mince pies laid out on the bar.
Charlotte was getting into the Christmas spirit by drinking mulled wine, but Mackinnon turned his nose up and ordered a Speckled Hen.
Tyler was holding centre court. He had been released from hospital only yesterday, and Mackinnon was pretty sure his doctors wouldn’t have approved of him heading straight to the pub the day after. Most of his bandages had been removed and he only had a small one now at his right temple. The doctors had needed to shave
off his hair, but it had already started to grow back in grey tufts.
“The next round is on me,” Tyler said.
“You can tell he’s had a bang on the head,” DC Webb said loudly as he cackled into his fourth pint.
“Ha bloody ha,” DI Tyler said. “You better make the most of my generosity. I’ll be back to my miserable self after Christmas.”
Tyler handed over a couple of twenty pound notes to DC Collins, who went up to the bar to order the drinks.
Mackinnon leaned to his right until he was close to Tyler, and when nobody else could hear him, he said, “It’s good to have you back.”
Tyler looked at him with a smirk on his face. “Do you know, I could almost believe you meant that.”
Mackinnon grinned. It was good to have the team complete again.
DC Collins brought back the drinks from the bar and handed them out. Everyone raised their glasses, and they toasted Tyler’s health.
Tyler got to his feet.
“Oh, no, someone stop him. He’s going to give a speech,” DC Webb shouted out.
Charlotte slapped DC Webb on the arm. “Shut up!”
“No, I’m not, you cheeky so-and-so.” Tyler lifted his pint. “I just want to wish everyone happy Christmas.”
Everyone raised their glasses again and said in chorus, “Happy Christmas.”
Tyler sat back down, looked around at everyone chatting and laughing and felt a warm glow. He was in danger of going soft.
The nurse who’d removed his bandages yesterday had told him he’d been one of their most popular patients. He’d had visitors every day he had been in hospital. Everyone from the team had taken the time to come and see him even though he was out for the count. Even DC Webb.
He grinned and raised a glass at DC Collins, who was launching into his famous story about Mackinnon and the Yucca plant.
Evie Charlesworth was giggling uncontrollably as Charlotte told DC Webb off for saying something inappropriate to one of the bar staff.
Tyler relaxed back in his chair. This year hadn’t been his best.
