Deadland

by William Shaw

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Camera on Overy Liberty in Dartford.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s like . . . two hundred metres from where Moon was headed just now. Literally.’

  ‘Why would she . . . ?’

  ‘No bloody idea. But it’s too much of a bloody coincidence now. First one of the boys has her number, and now she’s there.’

  ‘Call Moon.’

  Ice cream was out. Cupidi checked her watch, switched on blue lights and put the car into gear, pulling out into traffic and ramming her foot onto the accelerator. They were still half an hour away at least, even with the siren going.

  ‘Peter. Pick up. If you’re at the lad’s house, look out for a . . . What is it?’

  ‘Red Tesla.’

  ‘Get back to me. Please let me know you got this, Peter, OK?’

  Cars parted ahead of them on the dual carriageway.

  ‘Get some uniforms to that house,’ Cupidi said. ‘Then get back to the incident room and let us know the first sign that car moves again.’

  While Cupidi roared northwards, Ferriter tried calling again.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Instead of a policeman standing in the doorway, lit by the light from the landing, there was a boy. And the boy spoke: ‘Tap?’

  ‘Sloth?’

  ‘What you doin’, bro?’

  ‘Where’s the cops?’ Tap whispered.

  Sloth, beautiful Sloth, stood there, a big grin on his face. ‘Ain’t no cops, bro. Just me. I thought that man might still be here. Thought I’d come and mess him up, y’know. Like we said.’

  And then the smile vanished from Sloth’s face as he took in the room and realised something was wrong.

  ‘Run,’ said Tap, but his voice was too weak.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Run.’

  Everything else seemed to slow except the man, who pulled the door back, stepped forward and grabbed him, knife against his throat, hand over his mouth.

  Sloth stood, utterly bewildered, suddenly terrified.

  Tap fighting so hard to stay awake. The knife so tight against Sloth’s throat that the blood started to drip down his white T-shirt.

  ‘Where’s the phone?’

  ‘Don’t tell him, bro,’ whispered Tap.

  It was quiet for a few seconds. And then came the sound of a car pulling up outside.

  The man holding Sloth tensed, tightened his grip on him.

  A man rattling the front door. ‘Hello? Police.’

  Real police, this time. You could tell. The man was panicking now. He could let go of Sloth and try and run for it, but Sloth would cry out.

  ‘Hello?’

  With a single movement, keeping his hand over Sloth’s mouth, he plunged the knife into his neck. Sloth’s eyes widened in fear and pain.

  Tap could only watch, horrified. He was conscious of a noise coming from somewhere and it took a second to realise that it was from his own mouth.

  When the man removed the knife, blood spurted onto the linen.

  ‘Police. I’m coming up.’

  Sloth fell face first onto the bed.

  *

  Moon noticed the red Tesla, parked a few metres away from the house. What was a car that tasty doing around here anyway? There was a woman in it, who looked away as he pulled up outside the house, phone buzzing in his pocket.

  Funny. The curtains were all drawn, upstairs and down.

  Getting out, he took out the handset. Missed calls from Ferriter, this time. An apology? Like that was going to happen. It was like walking on eggshells, working with some women.

  He was going to have to call her back, though. His hand hovered over the button on his phone, but he stopped. Looked at his feet. Glass on the ground. Something was seriously wrong here.

  A pane in the front door at the address he had been given had been smashed, and recently. There were shards on the doormat.

  The door had been opened. He put two and two together. Someone had broken the door, put their hand inside and let themselves in. Nudging it, it swung back.

  ‘Hello?’ he called into the house. ‘Police.’

  At first, it seemed to be quiet.

  ‘Hello?’

  He was about to go back to his car and call it in, get some uniforms down here, when, from above, he heard the sound of someone sobbing. He listened. There was a deep sadness in the crying, a quality that was impossible not to be affected by. A weariness too. The noise sounded almost animal-like.

  ‘Police. I’m coming up,’ he said. And he started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. For some reason, though, he felt unusually apprehensive. There was a stab vest in the boot of the car, he remembered. He should be wearing it, shouldn’t he?

  But he carried on upwards, towards the sound of pain and distress.

  PART FOUR

  Fear Death by Water

  FIFTY-FOUR

  The road was strangely quiet. No pedestrians, no cars moving. No sign of the Tesla either.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Cupidi. ‘I was sure she’d be here, for some reason.’

  After the dash to get here, it seemed to be an anticlimax, arriving. She spotted a marked police car on the corner and ran across to it.

  ‘We were told to come here and look for a red Tesla. Waste of time,’ said a constable, looking up from his notebook. ‘No sign of anything like that.’

  ‘Have you seen Sergeant Moon of Serious Crime anywhere?’

  ‘Who?’ said the constable.

  Ferriter looked around. ‘That’s Moon’s car there, isn’t it?’

  Moon’s car was parked on the pavement in front of a house, but he was nowhere to be seen, and when Cupidi looked at the number on the front door, she realised that was the address they had been given by Joseph’s mother.

  Something was very wrong. There was broken glass on the front step. The door was open, too, just a couple of inches. She noticed the small jagged hole where someone had reached inside to twist the lock. Cupidi’s heart accelerated. She stepped into the house and smelt the oddly familiar scent, like wet rust, only more cloying, more sweet; she felt her pulse beat in her ears.

  ‘Jill,’ she shouted. ‘Get the constables in here. Now.’

  The living room looked ordinary, untidy. Pizza boxes and empty cans.

  Then a small noise from upstairs. The shifting of a foot. There was someone up there.

  ‘Jill?’ But she would be in the car across the road, on the radio.

  Cupidi climbed the stairs, alert, looking around, moving towards where she imagined the noise had come from.

  On the landing floor, just by the bedroom door, a belt. She looked at it, puzzled for a second. The buckle was still done up, but the leather had been cut.

  *

  Reaching the top of the landing she looked to her right, into a bedroom.

  Beyond the doorway, the carpet changed from dirty pink to a deeper colour, one that seemed to shine in the electric light.

  It was the blood she had smelt when she entered the house. She took another step forward.

  ‘Police,’ she called.

  Then another step, pushing back the half-open door; it knocked against something soft.

  There was someone behind the door. Cautious, she put her eye to the hinge and looked through the crack between the door and the jamb.

  But there was no one there, was there? So what was stopping the door from opening fully? Then, looking down, she saw a dark shape on the floor below her, legs splayed out. Someone was sitting against the wall by the door.

  Heart thumping, she took a step into the room, her foot landing on the wet carpet. Blood rose from the nylon pile around her shoe as her weight pressed down.

  Then she was in the room.

  She stopped. In front of her on the bed were three people. One boy was being cradled by another; the one lying still, his dark hoodie shining with the same wetness, must be Joseph. She guessed he must be the boy from the CCTV sti
ll. He looked in a bad way. Joseph was being held by another boy who was quietly crying. The white boy from the same picture.

  Also on the bed, a woman in a ridiculous pink nightdress, eyes half open, spittle and foam on her lips, her skin paper white.

  It was a small room. The bed took up most of the space. She stepped backwards, back into a blood pool, and pushed the door back to discover who was behind the door.

  ‘Oh Christ! No.’

  Peter Moon slumped, not moving, eyes closed. Some blood still trickled from a wound in his chest. The rest of it lay around him.

  Hands trembling, Cupidi took out her phone. 999.

  You had to think quickly, times like this. She may have seen some bad crime scenes in her time, but nothing as brutal as this, with so many dead or wounded.

  As the call connected, she looked around, pushing the horror away. First duty was always preserve life, but with only one pair of hands, which one do you try to save? The crying white boy looked healthiest, though there was something strange about the way he was behaving, as if he had barely registered her arrival in the room. Was it shock, or something else?

  To her right, Moon was silent, unconscious. So was the woman.

  The fourth person, Joseph, was slowly oozing blood from a wound in his neck but his eyes were still fluttering.

  ‘Hello . . . Which service do you—’

  She interrupted, identified herself, her location. ‘Ambulance. Multiple serious injuries. Four victims. Two stabbings, bleeding out. Not sure about the others. Hurry.’

  She pulled a pillow from the bed and tore off the pillowcase, scrunching the material up into a tight wad.

  ‘Hold it against the wound,’ she told the white boy. She noticed all his clothes were soaking wet.

  He looked at her dimly. There was the strangest smile on his face. It unnerved her.

  The boy was having trouble understanding her, but she took his hand, shoved the pillowcase into it and pressed it hard against the gash in the other lad’s neck. ‘Here,’ she said, looking into his dark pupils. ‘Hold it tight here. You can save his life if you press hard. Do you understand?’

  The wet-cheeked boy nodded slowly, still smiling, and held the cloth on the wound as she had told him to.

  Then she turned to Moon. He was sitting against a wall, eyes shut. Like the woman’s, his face was white. It was a deep wound. He had lost copious amounts of blood.

  Where was Ferriter? What was taking her so long?

  ‘Jill. I need help up here,’ she called out.

  Cupidi was squatting down now, trying to feel Moon’s pulse, but there was nothing at all. Or could there be? Was there some faint flutter beneath the skin or was that just her imagination?

  ‘Jill. Christ sake. Upstairs, now!’

  But no answer.

  She stilled her own breathing to try and feel again for a pulse. Above the bed, a framed picture of a pink rabbit holding a sign: Pink is always an option.

  There was no pulse. He was dead, or very close to it.

  ‘Jill?’

  Someone was moving up the stairs now. She dropped Moon’s wrist and, as it flopped onto his wet lap, straightened, looking around for a weapon. The knife they had been stabbed with was nowhere to be seen.

  Instead, she bunched her fingers into a fist.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  ‘Boss?’

  She breathed again, unclenched her fist. ‘That you, Jill?’

  Ferriter was standing on the landing outside the half-closed door. ‘Coming in.’

  ‘Warn you, it’s a real mess in here, Jill.’

  The door pushed open. Ferriter looked around, eyes wide.

  ‘Ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘Peter,’ Ferriter whispered, and dropped to her knees in the blood.

  ‘No pulse,’ said Cupidi.

  Ferriter burst into tears. Shock affected everyone differently, but this was a man she had slept with, whatever the circumstances.

  ‘Lay him down flat,’ said Ferriter.

  Together, Ferriter at his head, Cupidi at his feet, they laid the sergeant down onto the bloody floor.

  Ferriter leaned across him and started chest compressions with one hand, the other pressed against the wound. Cupidi stepped past her, towards the half-conscious boy.

  ‘You’re doing so well. Let me take over. I’ll take care of him now.’ Cupidi replaced his hand with hers on the nylon pillowcase.

  Slowly the boy nodded.

  ‘Did you do this?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Your friend?’

  Again, the shake.

  She pressed her hand down on the pillowcase.

  ‘Have you taken drugs?’

  The boy nodded slowly, still with that strange smile on his face.

  ‘Don’t close your eyes. Stay awake. Please.’

  But nothing she could say could persuade him to keep his eyes open. He had held on for as long as he could, pressing the cloth to his friend’s bleeding wound, but now he was gone.

  *

  The small road outside the house was crammed full of vehicles flashing blue light on the walls of all the buildings around, on the faces of the crowd that had gathered.

  Cupidi and Ferriter stood in bare feet as the dead and wounded were moved from the house to the waiting ambulances. Their shoes had been abandoned; they were ruined, soaked in Moon’s blood. Upstairs, they had worked on him for what seemed like an age, but without any response.

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘None of this is your fault.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be here on his own except for me. We could have gone with him. I’m such a stupid cow.’

  Cupidi took the younger woman by the shoulders and looked at her. ‘This is not the time, Jill. Look at me.’

  People worked around them. Neighbours had opened windows and were staring at the activity in their small street. More vehicles were arriving, lights flashing.

  ‘What’s going on?’ people called out. ‘We live here. We have a right to know.’

  ‘There was a murderer here,’ Cupidi told Ferriter quietly and calmly. She was still in shock. ‘He’s getting away. We have to think fast. We came here looking for Astrid Miller. If she was here, she’s gone.’

  ‘It’s not her, though? Did this?’

  ‘No. A man did this. I think it’s the one who stabbed Khan. But if she was here . . . she might be in danger too.’ She released Ferriter, leaving bloody hand-prints on both sides of her jacket.

  ‘Her car,’ said Ferriter.

  They scrambled past the throng of coppers who were waiting to be told what to do, towards their car on the other side of the street, closing the door against the growing wailing of sirens.

  Cupidi phoned the incident room. Sunday, half staffed, and a full-on emergency operation underway. It took an age for anybody to pick up. ‘That car you were keeping tabs on with ANPR? . . . Yes. Astrid Miller’s. Can you see if it’s triggered any cameras in the last –’ Cupidi checked her watch – ‘thirty minutes?’

  ‘What’s going on out there? Phones are going crazy here. McAdam’s on his way in. Heard there’s been a major incident in Dartford? Is it true about Peter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus. Dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’ve taken him to hospital.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’

  She ended the call. She didn’t have time to think about that. Focus on the task.

  Ferriter had found some hand wipes and was trying to clean Moon’s blood from her hands and her knees, tugging at her skin, breathing heavily as she did so. The incident room called almost immediately. She listened then hung up.

  ‘There are two pings from the vehicle, both within the last thirty minutes. First one was on the M20 at junction nine. Second in Ashford town centre. You think the murderer is in that car?’

  ‘Christ. She’s driving him, isn’t she?’ said Ferriter. ‘You think she’s a hostage?’

  ‘Or he’s stolen the
Tesla.’

  ‘Sergeant Cupidi?’ A sergeant was rapping on the window. ‘Gold wants to know if you think the person who killed Moon is in the vehicle.’

  Gold command would be running everything now. Cupidi said, ‘Yes. I do.’ She realised their one advantage: the killer would probably have no idea that they had connected him to Astrid Miller through the phone. He would feel safe in Miller’s car, far away from this scene of crime.

  ‘Is Jill OK?’

  ‘Bit shaken up.’

  ‘Ashford? You think he’s aiming for the train?’ asked Ferriter, coming to. From Ashford International you could head to the Continent.

  Cupidi was thinking: but why drive all the way to Ashford to catch a train? There was a station in Dartford.

  Then she had a thought. ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s heading for the station at all.’

  While Ferriter watched, puzzled, Cupidi called her daughter. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Where are you?’ Cupidi asked, when Zoë answered.

  ‘On the beach. It’s warm. There’s a cloud like a dolphin.’ Cupidi could hear the sound of waves crunching somewhere close. It all sounded so normal. She was grateful for it and her beautiful, strange girl.

  ‘Where’s Bill?’

  ‘He’s here.’

  ‘Still with you?’

  ‘It’s like he thinks he’s my dad or something.’ Zoë laughed.

  ‘I need to speak to him.’

  ‘I don’t know if he wants to speak to you,’ her daughter mocked.

  ‘Please. It’s important.’

  Her daughter sounded less certain of herself. ‘You sound funny.’

  ‘Something has been going on here. It’ll be on the news, but I’m fine.’

  Her daughter handed over the phone.

  ‘What?’ he said, guardedly.

  ‘I want to ask you a favour.’

  The man stayed silent.

  ‘Where are you, exactly, Bill?’

  ‘On the beach. Just east of the old Coastguard Lookout. Why?’

  Cupidi pictured it in her head. The Coastguard Lookout was a tall redbrick building from the 1950s with a window that looked out to the Channel. Another luxury home now, of course. It lay a little to the north of the power station, but was almost at the end of the line of cottages that stretched along the beach. ‘Can you see Astrid Miller’s place from where you are?’