by Conrad Jones
Anyway, Evie needed walking and I decided that the fresh air would do me good, but I needed to fire up my laptop and check my e-mails and e-book sales before we set off. As my computer loaded, the Facebook tab was indicating that there were over forty notifications on there. The last time I’d seen that many was on my birthday. Curiosity got the better of me and I logged in to see what all the commotion was about. What I saw took my breath away. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Earlier that morning, a window-cleaner had found Peter’s broken body lying in the gutter at the side of some shops on the edge of the town centre. From the comments and postings on the link, it wasn’t far away from the kebab shop in my dream. As I explained previously, he’d married into a big family, and our circle of friends who we had worked with over the years reached into the hundreds. Facebook was buzzing with the news of his death. Of course, the first thing people ask is why and how he died, and one of the comments from a colleague in the force was that someone mowed him down in their car and left him for dead in the road. ‘It was a hit-and-run.’ That was what they said but I knew it was bollocks.
I sat and stared at the growing list of condolences and I had to physically stop myself from telling everyone that it wasn’t an accident. He’d been murdered by a satanic cult known as the Order of Nine Angels. Can you imagine the reaction that I would have received if I’d gone ahead and posted that? His family and friends were devastated and in the early stages of grieving. I knew how stupid and irrational and downright disrespectful it would sound.
I didn’t know what to do or what to think. I needed to speak to someone who would have the details of his death without rocking the boat and upsetting his family. Calling his wife was out of the question, but her brother was a good friend of mine back then. We went back a long way in our previous careers. I decided to call him and pass on my condolences and dig for a little information at the same time. His phone switched over to answering machine a few times, which I’d expected, but on the fourth attempt he answered. He was shell-shocked when we spoke, but he told me confidentially that one of Peter’s colleagues had taken Peter’s brothers aside and told them that his injuries indicated that the vehicle reversed over him several times to make sure he was dead. Although they hadn’t officially announced it, they were treating it as a murder inquiry.
He told me that the CCTV tapes taken by the police showed a vehicle in the area where he was found and that they were almost certain it was the car which had killed him. It would be a week later when they found the stolen vehicle burnt out on the other side of Manchester, and his death remained a mystery to his family until the whole thing blew up in my face. Now I think some of them still believe that I had something to do with it, and in a way, I did, but not the way that they think.
The visit to the asylum the previous day and Fabienne’s foreboding prediction shook me to the bones. She’d said that we were in danger and now Peter was dead. In my mind I was next, and I flipped my lid. For a few hours, I was a nervous wreck. I called my partner and left several garbled messages asking her to call me back as soon as possible, but she was in meetings all day and probably thought that I was either drunk or calling to make an excuse about going to the pub again. Between calls I received a call from Peter’s wife. She knew we were working together in the days before his death, but she had no idea what we were working on. It was a short call and I didn’t tell her that I’d already spoken to her brother. She told me that Peter had died in a hit-and-run accident and that she would tell me when the funeral arrangements were set. I was so shocked at that stage that I just thanked her for letting me know and hung up. Seconds later I realised this wasn’t a coincidence that could be fobbed off. I had been right to believe her all along. Fabienne was innocent and she was right about the Niners. They were coming for us.
CHAPTER 16
Deleted
When it had sunk in about Peter’s death, I went into a blind panic. It couldn’t be an accident. It was too much of a coincidence. I couldn’t get hold of my partner and I knew that she wouldn’t be back until later that evening. I also knew that if I did get through to her, she would think that I’d finally lost my grip on reality. There was nothing else to do except go to the person who knew the most about everything that was going on. I needed to talk to Fabienne again. I had to gather as many details as she could give me to hand over to the police. Mistakenly, I thought that they would automatically connect his death with the investigation around Fabienne. I was certain that Peter’s superior officers would want to talk to me about our interviews with Fabienne. I was right that the police would soon be looking for me, but not for the reasons that I thought.
I jumped into my truck and grabbed my laptop bag. I needed my notes from the research I had done the previous night and now I had dozens of questions to ask her. My plan had been for Peter to accompany me to the hospital to see her that day, but he was already dead, assassinated. That left Fabienne and me as their next targets and I felt alone and frightened.
When I reached the asylum, the car park was full. There were three marked police cars in the ambulance bays and it soon became obvious that something was wrong. I gave up looking for a space and parked on the grass verge. I was in such a flap that I virtually abandoned the truck in the first available spot that I could find. The reception area was busy when I walked in and I sensed that the atmosphere was dark. I waited my turn for the reception desk to clear and then asked the desk clerk if I could see Fabienne Wilder. On my previous visits it had been security guards who I spoke to, but this was within office hours and different protocol applied. The receptionist asked me if I was related to her.
I stopped for a second and thought about the question. Why would she ask that? I lied and said that I was her next of kin, which caused a raised eyebrow from the woman, but I had my story mapped out. I had to talk to Fabienne no matter what. She asked me to take a seat at the side of the reception area and I sat nervously and waited. Policemen were coming and going, and in my mind, I hoped that they had connected Peter’s death to Fabienne’s story. I was way off the mark, but at the time that’s what I wanted to believe. It was the longest forty minutes in history.
Eventually, a young doctor in a white coat approached me and took me into a relatives’ room, which was down a corridor in the opposite direction from the interview rooms. We walked in silence and he opened the door and allowed me to enter first. He was a young man in his twenties, and he looked harassed. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes before he spoke.
‘May I ask who you are?’ he frowned and looked me up and down. I’m the wrong skin colour to be related to Fabienne genetically but he couldn’t say that outright.
‘I’m her stepfather,’ I lied. ‘She’s been missing for months. I’ve travelled up from London overnight and I need to speak to her urgently,’ I said sternly.
‘That won’t be possible. Take a seat.’ He gestured to a couch beneath a window which looked out over the grass towards the new housing estate nearby. ‘Look, this will come as a shock to you and there’s no easy way of telling you this, but I’m afraid Fabienne took her own life last night.’ The doctor put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt my knees go weak. Tears filled my eyes and I could feel my lips quivering. Fabienne was the only person who could help, and she was dead. It wouldn’t sink into my brain. All I could feel was an overwhelming sense of loss. She’d been in my life for a few days, yet I felt devastated. I also felt fear. Stone cold fear. Had they got to her too?
‘What happened?’ I stuttered.
‘She hung herself.’
I don’t know whether it was the shock or the stress of the previous days catching up on me, but I began to faint. I literally felt my body sagging and slipping down the upholstery. I looked to the light outside and remember feeling the doctor’s hands steadying me. I could hear his voice, but I didn’t compute exactly what he was saying. As I looked out of the window, an image came into my mind. It was Fabienne in my head. I was looking a
t the world through her eyes, but everything was in black and white, like an old film. She was lying in a hospital bed. The room was painted white and the walls were bare. The smell of disinfectant drifted into my consciousness. I didn’t understand how it had happened, but they had restrained her. She was strapped to the bed.
I sensed her fear as she lay there, helpless. She was scared and she couldn’t move. I could feel her fear. She was calling for help in her mind. She was calling for me. They’d strapped her hands and feet to the bed, and she called out for help repeatedly. Screams for help are commonplace in an asylum and they ignored her. I saw the shadow of a man looming over her and I felt a sheet slipping around my neck as if I was there inside her body. The cotton sheet began to tighten and cut off her air supply. I felt what it was like to be strangled to death and I felt her desperate struggles as the oxygen in her lungs became exhausted. I felt her eyes bulging out of their sockets, and the pressure in her brain felt like the blood vessels were about to explode. Death approached quickly. I sensed that despite everything, she’d suffered; she didn’t want to die. She clung on and struggled for as long as her body allowed before the darkness descended and her struggles became twitches. As the twitching finally ceased, I felt a flash in my mind and the image faded and disappeared.
‘Are you okay?’ I snapped back into reality. The doctor looked into my eyes and placed a paper cup of water to my lips. I sipped it and waited for my head to clear. I must have been gone longer than I thought, as I didn’t see the doctor move to fetch the water. I was confused and frightened. The news of her death sapped my strength, and combined with the loss of my friend, it was a shattering blow. Experiencing her final tortured moments was the icing on the cake. The world had finally gone mad around me and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of confusion. Nothing made sense.
‘When did they find her?’ I asked the question without thinking about it. The answer was irrelevant. She’d been murdered. I knew that much for sure. Fabienne had shown me the last moments of her life; the moments when they sent someone to erase her. As I thought about her, I felt a tingle of static in the tips of my fingers where we had touched through the Perspex, and the hair on the back of my neck felt like a breeze was touching them. I was playing things over in my mind. Peter was dead – an accident. Fabienne was dead – a suicide. What would my death be? Would they find my body at all? Would I spend my final moments on this earth fighting for my life, or would it be worse? Would they make it slow?
‘Mr Jones?’ A different voice disturbed my thoughts. I looked up and saw a policeman in the doorway. He was youngish and his spotty face made him look more like a student than a serving police officer.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I’m Michael Wilder.’ I didn’t know why I lied at that point, but I did. It didn’t matter anymore who I was, relation or otherwise because she was dead. Maybe Fabienne put the name in my mind, a message from the other side to protect me, but it worked. It bought me vital minutes to get out of the hospital without being dragged into a complicated investigation. Later on, I discovered that her stepfather was indeed called Michael, but it could have been a fluke, who knows? The police officer frowned and was about to speak when the doctor butted in.
‘Do you mind, officer?’ He turned and walked towards him. ‘The man has just lost his stepdaughter. Please show him some respect, he’s obviously badly shaken by the news. Whatever you need to talk to him about, it will have to wait.’ The police officer sheepishly closed the door and left the room, but he gave me a nasty look as he went.
The doctor held his chin between his finger and thumb and gave me the cup of water to hold. ‘Are you feeling strong enough to hold this?’
‘Yes, I’m okay,’ I replied although my hands were trembling.
‘Look, Mr Wilder, I’m not sure what is happening here, but the police have seized your stepdaughter’s body.’ He lowered his voice as he spoke. ‘it’s most peculiar, and they’re asking some unusual questions. I’m not sure if talking to them right now is good for you.’
I didn’t want to talk to them for my own reasons. Trying to bluff my way into an asylum would take some explaining anyway, especially when the person who I was trying to see was dead.
‘You’re right. I can’t talk to them right now. Is there another way out of here, Doctor?’ I asked. My spider senses were tingling. They’d killed Peter and Fabienne in one night and what the doctor told me set the alarm bells in my brain ringing. I had to assume that the police were involved, or at least some of them were. I was guessing at that point that Officer Knowles was not the only one involved with the Niners. I was in trouble because they knew I was there. The officer had asked if I was Mr Jones. How would they know that I was there unless one of them had spotted my truck, and how would they know it was my truck unless they wanted to find out what vehicle I drove? Why would anyone want to know what type of vehicle I drove? The questions were rattling around in my head like a tornado in a tin can factory. ‘I really need ten minutes to gather my thoughts before I speak to the police.’
‘Of course, I understand. Come this way.’ He led me through a door at the rear of the room, which opened into a toilet corridor. ‘There is a fire door at the end of the corridor. Take your time before you come back in, I’ll tell them you’re to be left alone for a while.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’ I shook his hand and darted through the fire door. He smiled thinly as he pulled the door closed. He knew that I wasn’t going back through it. I ran as fast as I could across the lawns to the truck. When I reached it, there was a large box van stopped behind it. The driver was stood on the grass talking into his mobile phone. A police officer was talking to the driver of the car behind him and I realised that my truck was blocking the entrance to the car park. A saloon car could squeeze by, but the delivery truck was too wide.
I stopped running and walked to the driver’s door. The van driver was open-mouthed as I casually climbed into the truck and slammed the door. Luckily, the engine started at the first ask. I heard a torrent of abuse though the glass, but I didn’t have time to swap insults. I wanted to be away from the asylum and the police. As I pulled off the verge, the police officer was shaking his head but made no attempt to stop me. I drove past two officers who were stood there near their patrol car on the car park, but they didn’t even look in my direction. I began to think that I was being paranoid. No one was chasing me, and two minutes later I was on the main road and heading back to the island.
I arrived home confused and frightened. As I said earlier, when it comes to physical conflict, I don’t have a fear gene as long as I can see who I’m fighting. But the Niners were not going to send someone to stand toe-to-toe with me. I wouldn’t know who it was or when they would come, but I knew it would be soon; very soon. Fabienne and Peter were already dead and that was too much of a coincidence. The dreams and visions that I’d had could be nothing more than my vivid imagination working overtime, but they added credence to my fears. Everything seemed real.
I walked into the house and listened for any hint of danger. I heard Evie Jones burst through the dog flap into the kitchen and I could hear her claws scratching along the laminate towards me. She was excited but her behaviour was normal, which allowed me to relax a little. I went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. I needed coffee and a cigarette. I actually needed a drink, but the conversation I’d had with my partner that morning put the brakes on that idea. She hated me smoking, but I was tense, and I needed the nicotine. I made a fuss of Evie while the kettle boiled, and for a few moments, things seemed normal. I made my brew and unlocked the back door, lighting my last menthol on the balcony. The caffeine and nicotine intake made me feel better. As I thought about things, I made a plan in my mind. I had to talk to my partner first.
I called her at work again, which was a huge no-no, but this time she answered. I was expecting a frosty reception, but I was surprised how warm she sounded.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, concerned. ‘I’ve heard the
news about Peter; it’s all over the office.’
‘I really need to talk to you properly. You need to come home as soon as you can.’ I couldn’t tell her why she had to come home in a few sentences on the telephone. She would think that I’d lost all my marbles, so I waffled that it was dreadful news but that there was more to it.
‘You know that I’m working.’ She used her business voice again. ‘I’ll see you later and we can talk then.’
‘Listen to me.’ I was trying to remain calm. ‘We’re in danger. There’s more to Peter’s death than meets the eye, but I can’t explain it on the phone.’
‘What do you mean?’ She sighed. I knew I was flogging a dead horse. How could I expect anyone to believe me? ‘Sorry, I’ll be back in a minute.’ She covered the handset and called to a colleague in the background. ‘Look, they’re restarting the meeting. I’ll have to go.’
‘Peter was murdered,’ I blabbed. I regretted saying it immediately, but I felt as if no one was listening to a word that I said. ‘They’ve made it look like a hit-and-run, but I know who killed him.’
‘And how would you know that, Conrad?’ She was at her limit with me. I could tell.
‘Trust me, I know it’s them, and they’re coming for me next. It’s all to do with that policeman who beat me up and the murder investigation Peter took me on.’ I was desperate to explain everything, but it had to be done face to face. I was concerned for our safety and I needed her help.
‘So, you think that officer is coming back for you?’ she sounded incredulous. ‘Why, what have you done? If you’re seriously worried then call the police, Conrad. I’ll have to go; they’re waiting for me.’
