by Diane Saxon
She slipped under the covers, tossed an anxious glance his way and then slid further down the bed, pulling the duvet up under her chin.
The light stayed on as she closed her eyes and his grin spread wide. The stupid woman had no idea she’d given him access to an all-night vigil if he wanted to watch her. Fear of the dark had made her more accessible to predators of the night.
Excitement prickled his skin and set his teeth on edge. He could get up and go into her bedroom, take her right now. Rip back the covers so he could skim his fingers over those long, powerful legs, hold her down, powerless, while he licked his way between her thighs, up into the warm heat of her.
He tamped down the desperate craving. It wouldn’t be as good. The anticipation, the humming desire was what it was all about. Sex was the side benefit, he’d learned, not the ultimate goal.
To give her time, he scrolled through the dating app photographs on his phone for twenty minutes and then flicked back to the camera screen, curious to see what she was doing.
He couldn’t have scared her that much, she was fast asleep, one hand curled tight into her cheek. She’d gone out like a fucking light. Taken the sleeping tablets in the bathroom cabinet probably. He squinted at his screen and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest until another twenty minutes had passed by.
Bored, he struggled to his feet in the tight confines of the wardrobe, keeping as quiet as possible. He’d love to disturb her, but he really shouldn’t. He had more work, more setting up. He needed to compile photos, evidence of his work coming to fruition.
The door emitted a soft creak as he pushed it open. He froze, listening for any noise to indicate he’d disturbed her, but the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears smothered any other sound. He snicked the wardrobe door to, holding his breath while he crept from the room, each step a pained torture.
If he disturbed her, he’d have to kill her now and all his surveillance efforts would be for nothing. He’d rather follow the plan but the anticipation of meeting her on the landing was almost worth ditching all his good work.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs before he allowed himself to look back up at her closed bedroom door. The fast hammer of his heart slowing as he controlled his breath and blew out little puffs of air. She must have taken the sleeping pills he’d seen in her bathroom cabinet earlier. There was no way she could have gone that deep, that quick.
Disappointment dampened the rising excitement. It would be no fun at all if the woman was drugged. The whole point was to feel her terror, experience the adrenaline rushing through her, soak in the surge of horror of the torture and wait out the acceptance of her death.
The temptation was strong to simply go back upstairs and touch her, stroke his fingers over her silky skin.
His jaw popped as he ground his teeth and made up his mind.
With one last glance up, he tiptoed along the hallway, into the kitchen and let himself out of the back door, locking it behind him and slipping the key into his pocket before his shadow slipped down the pathway and disappeared into the night.
He had more preparation to complete before he returned, but it wouldn’t be long before it was her turn. He tucked his cold hands deep into his pockets and grinned. It would be soon, very soon.
20
Thursday 6 February, 16:30 hrs
Jenna stared at the screen in front of her until her eyes glazed over, her brain refused to engage any longer with the sheer boredom of research, forensic checks, stepping through all the reports. An entire day with no results. Wasted. The morning brief had brought nothing more to the party. It was like walking through treacle.
‘Nothing.’
She raised her head and rolled her lips inwards as she peered at Ryan. ‘No, nothing. Not a clue, nothing back yet on the DNA. We can’t expect anything yet. Not a damned hint of evidence and yet everything points to it being planned, staged.’
‘He’s a ghost.’
‘Ghosts don’t slice open people’s throats, Ryan.’ She watched him lose his colour, then it flooded back again. He’d got a hold on it, now. He’d steadied. A flicker of pride filtered through the exhaustion as she stared at him over the desk.
‘Perhaps we should go home. Cast a fresh eye over it in the morning.’
Relief flooded his face, but he came to his feet with reluctance. ‘You know…’
She tilted her head to look up at him, kept her voice soft as he shuffled his feet. ‘Yeah?’
‘I feel guilty.’
‘Ryan…’
‘No, please let me say it. Everyone keeps telling me there was nothing I could have done to have prevented it. But I could. If only I’d seen her home, if only…’
‘No, Ryan.’ Jenna leaned back and linked her fingers together, resting her wrists on the desk in front of her. Sometimes, she needed to be the teacher. ‘There was nothing you could do. Everyone is right. It wouldn’t have made a difference if you’d seen her to the door. Whoever he is, he found his way in. Was possibly even inside her house when she arrived home. There was no sign of breaking and entering. For all we know, she knew him. Most people know their assailants.’ She swept her hand over the files on her desk, the computer screen. ‘Whoever the culprit is, knew exactly what he was doing. This was planned, Ryan.’ She emphasised, keeping her gaze directly on his. ‘If not then, it would have been another time. She was targeted. It was deliberate.’
Ryan sank back into his chair and rubbed long bony fingers over his face, rubbing the strain of the past couple of days away. ‘I’ll always feel like I should have done more.’
Jenna nodded. ‘We always do. But to make a good police officer, you have to park that and get on with the job, because if you dwell on each time you believed you should have done more, could have helped, it will destroy you.’ Now she rested her elbows on the table, sank her chin onto her hands. ‘We’re a special breed. Along with nurses and doctors. We deal with death on a regular basis. We need to survive, which is why we’re all such a mess in the domestic field, because there are only certain types who will understand what we do, what we deal with every day.’ She nodded at his phone in an attempt to inject some positivity into the conversation. ‘You chose well when you decided to try and date a nurse.’
He shuffled his backside in the chair, an air of embarrassed reluctance flushing his cheeks.
‘What?’ She tilted her head to one side and gave him an encouraging smile.
‘I feel guilty about that too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was my choice. And I still have that choice on here.’ He lifted the phone, then put it down again as if it burned.
Not sure she understood, Jenna leaned forward. ‘Has your taste changed?’
‘No, but…’
‘You’d still choose the same type?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘But you haven’t looked at the app since it happened?’
He nodded, his lips tightened. ‘No. Because…’ he shrugged. ‘Guilt.’
Jenna slapped her hands on the desk and rose to her feet. ‘Then take my advice and park it. Get on with your life and if that means resurrecting your dating app, then do it.’
With a clumsy scramble, Ryan stood, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed several times, then swiped up his phone and waggled it from side to side. ‘Okay. I will. I’ll look again. Maybe change my profile search.’ He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and slipped his arms into it.
‘Keep it the same.’ She smiled at him as he fidgeted in front of her, trying to get the zipper up on his jacket. ‘It was a good choice. It was your choice. Even in our world, coincidences can happen.’
He glanced at the screen. ‘There was another woman I’d been speaking with, Carla. Maybe I’ll arrange to meet for a coffee during the day, rather than an evening meet-up. It won’t serve as a reminder then of what’s gone on before.’ His voice cracked. ‘Thanks, boss.’ He bobbed his head several times, shoved his hands deep into his
jacket pockets. ‘Have a good evening.’
‘You too, I’ll see you in the morning.’
With long-legged strides, he shot across the room and out of the main office door.
The heavy weight of the day pressed on her shoulders and Jenna picked up her own mobile, tempted to answer Adrian’s message. Coffee, cake, a chat. And she could make it clear that she wouldn’t see him again, that it was inappropriate.
She swiped the screen open.
‘You’re a soft shit at heart.’
Jenna whipped her head around, slipping the phone into her pocket. Guilty heat rushed into her face and she covered up by raising her eyes heavenward at the sight of Mason. ‘How long have you been there?’
Mason came around the desk and dumped himself in the chair opposite her. ‘Long enough to hear everything.’
‘You were hiding.’
‘I’d call it keeping a discreet distance while you dealt with a delicate matter.’
‘He’s a good police officer.’
‘He is.’
‘With a soft heart.’
Mason nodded. ‘Nothing wrong with a soft heart as long as it’s accompanied by a spine of steel.’
She smiled at him and closed the file in front of her, slipped it into her top drawer to leave the desk as clear as she liked it whenever she left for the day. ‘I have a good feeling he has one of those too.’ Jenna ran her gaze over Mason’s smart charcoal suit and pale blue shirt. ‘How did your court appearance go?’
Mason scrubbed his fingers over his forehead and huffed out a weary sigh. ‘Six hours of waiting in the hallway to be told the lead witness never turned up.’
‘Great. Did they throw the case out?’
‘No. They’ve adjourned it and sent out a witness summons. What a bloody waste of time.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘What progress with the murder?’
Jenna came to her feet and slipped her coat from the back of her chair. ‘Salter and Wainwright submitted their report after they’d interviewed Trevor Lockley, the Uber driver, the other day. Nothing.’
Mason’s lips tightened as she continued.
‘Poor guy. Totally flattened by it. Claims he watched her let herself in her front door.’
‘What’s the betting the guy was already in the house?’
Proof was thin on the ground, but it was a line they continued to follow.
‘Yeah, I know. Obviously, we don’t want that piece of information known. Salter and Wainwright said nothing. He blames himself, poor guy. No amount of pacifying helped. Apparently, he was talking about putting his ticket in, how he was sick of dealing with drunks and druggies and couldn’t tell the difference between a nice girl and a prostitute any more. Reckoned they all act the same.’
‘Scary.’
‘Yeah. One good thing though, Salter said he didn’t have a bad word to say about our young Ryan. He didn’t let on he was one of ours, because we’re trying to keep certain information from the press. Kim Stafford seems to be all over it, did you see him hanging around the other day? He always seems to be in the right place at the right time. How was he there so soon?’
Mason’s lips tightened. ‘I’ve no idea, he’s a slippery one. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw his skinny little body. We know what happened when Fliss got taken and he latched onto the fact that she was your sister. Bastard, made out that we’d used extra resources just because she was related, not because there was one dead woman and another one missing.’
Instant anger burned Jenna’s chest at the memory. ‘We would have used the same resources for any missing person.’
‘Exactly. Pompous git.’
Jenna yawned and scrubbed her hand over her hair.
‘So, what did Uber man have to say about Ryan?’
‘He said he was a real gentleman. Couldn’t fault him. Paid the fare, plus a generous tip after the drop-off notification, which Lockley couldn’t pin down the exact amount, but it’ll be logged on the app. I’ve asked Donna to follow up.’
‘Good. So, DC Downey conducted himself in exactly the manner we would expect of him. His father will be proud.’ The discipline and respect Jim Downey had taught his son was evident in every move Ryan made. The exuberant enthusiasm was of his own making.
21
Friday 7 February, 06:45 hours
Sluggish rain streaked down and masked the grey day beyond Carla’s window. Saskia arched her back and rumbled a satisfied purr as Carla tore the top strip from a sachet of food and shook the contents into the cat’s bowl. With a delicate snuffle, Saskia sniffed the bowl with superior disdain, turned and tightrope-walked along the edge of the kitchen bench. Tail high in the air, she hit the floor, turning her head to give Carla a cool wink before she strode from the room, all attitude and condescension.
‘Ungrateful wretch.’ Carla placed the cat bowl on the floor, swiped the empty sachet from the bench, flipped open the lid of the bin and froze as she stared at another empty sachet already inside.
She’d lost her mind. Had to have done. She kept her foot on the pedal and dropped the sachet she held inside, then let the lid slap down. She raised her head to gaze out of the window at the red-lidded bin at the end of her drive. She always put her rubbish out at night, so it didn’t lie festering in the kitchen.
Carla dragged her attention back to the small lime-green pedal bin. She’d fed Saskia when she came home the previous night, thrown the pouch in the bin and then emptied it, slipping a fresh white bin liner inside. The smell of rancid cat food never a favourite, she’d taken the full bin liner out to the bin so the stench of it didn’t hang around all night to contaminate her kitchen. Then she’d gone straight to bed. The pedal bin had definitely been empty.
Puzzled, she picked up her china mug of espresso while she studied the rain and sipped at the hot liquid. The thirteen hour shift the day before had exhausted her, but not so much she couldn’t remember what she’d done. It wasn’t the first time in the last few days she’d felt something out of sync.
She peered around the doorway as Saskia reached the top of the stairs and stopped to stare back down at her, her golden eyes glowed with satisfied superiority. Carla sighed. She was a clever cat, but she’d not yet mastered the art of feeding herself. She also couldn’t make dirty laundry disappear. Two pairs of knickers didn’t just get up and walk away.
Obsessively tidy, Carla knew with certainty she’d placed her underwear in the small, cotton lined linen basket in the corner of her room. In the habit of washing her nurse’s pale blue scrubs on a three day rota, she’d throw in anything else unlikely to shrink in the hot sixty degree wash required for hygiene purposes. But her underwear had gone.
She sipped the last of her coffee, rinsed the mug, turned it upside down on the drainer and paused. Confusion stole through her mind as she reflected on the position of the mug. It had been in the cupboard this morning. Yet the night before, she’d have sworn she left it just where she had now. Where she always did when she was late in, early out.
Carla glanced around to check if anything else was out of place but couldn’t be certain. No. She was just tired. Second-guessing herself.
She pulled the back door closed behind her, turned the single key in the lock and then slipped it into the inside pocket of her Lycra running shorts.
Twenty minutes of warm-ups under her lean-to shelter and she was ready to move.
The drizzle would soon soak through, but if she was to be fit enough for the London Marathon, she had to run in all weather. With one last stretch of her calves, she set off.
Her feet slapped in a smooth rhythm against the wet pavement, clearing her mind of fog and doubts. With natural ease, she allowed her body to take over, pushing aside everything but the satisfaction of her warming muscles and loosened limbs.
Her mind drifted in the freedom of the outdoors. She had a date later. Coffee with a police officer. He looked a little young, a little geeky, but it was only coffee and it wouldn’t harm. Perhaps it was time to go
for young and geeky rather than mature and cocky. She’d had enough of doctors. Maybe the time was right to try a police officer. Or even a fireman. Whatever, a coffee date would be good. No pressure.
She swiped a lock of rain soaked auburn hair from her forehead, smoothing it back into place without breaking her rhythm. Her goal, eight miles, would fly past as the day awakened and movement in the houses and on the road started.
She veered off, determined to keep her rhythm as she headed away from the houses, uphill towards The Wrekin. Her breath came in long, even pulls, comfortable with the speed and distance for now.
Her feet flew over the motorway bridge, as she headed around the long bend, and despite the early morning lightening of the sky, she was plunged into darkness as she edged around Ercall Woods. Never a place she cared to run through on her own, she automatically sped up to bypass it as fast as she could while she stuck to the road rather than go through the woodland. Her feet kept a comfortable rhythm while her mind broke loose and sent doubt flying once again.
She’d emptied the bin. She’d left her mug on the drainer.
The touch of something evil had her glancing over her shoulder as a ripple of fear pebbled her skin. She peered into the woodland filled with dark, threatening shadows and put on a spurt.
Spiteful fingers stroked an icy trail along her spine and sent her speeding up the hill. With lungs burning, the sharp sting of acid filled her throat.
Winded, she pulled up outside The Buckatree Hall Hotel and let the hard whip of temper ride through her as she glanced at her watch. She’d ruined her time through her fear and stupidity. How was she ever to run the London Marathon if she couldn’t control her pace? She sucked in another breath, swiped her dripping hair from her face and bent from the hips, leaning her hands on her knees. Two and half miles, that was all she’d managed and she’d blown it.
