Prosper Snow Series

by Shaun Jeffrey

  A hand snatched at her leg. She let out a little squeal and inched higher, out of the Oracle’s reach.

  The light went out, plunging them into darkness.

  Residual spots of light danced before Natasha’s eyes, but she struggled on, feeling her way.

  Down below, she could hear the Oracle breathing, the sound amplified in the fissure, guttural, almost like a monster, like the one she used to imagine lived in the wardrobe in her bedroom when she was a child.

  She climbed higher, squeezing through a small gap in the rock to find herself on a narrow ledge that allowed her to rest her arms and legs.

  Progressing along the narrow tunnel was a welcome relief after the strength-sapping climb and she hastily pulled herself along the uneven surface, dragging her legs behind her. A cool breeze blew past, making her shiver, and in the distance she heard a ghostly groaning sound.

  It took her a few seconds to realise a faint grey light coated the walls. Moments later, she spied a hole in the rock that allowed light to shine through. She crawled towards it, only to find iron bars across the exit.

  Fighting back tears, she gripped the bars and yanked them, but they were fixed tight. She tried to squeeze her head between them, but couldn’t fit through. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  A shuffling sound emanated from behind her. Getting closer.

  Natasha whimpered. She looked out between the bars and saw a building in the distance with a tall chimney. She assumed it was the structure she’d escaped from. Now slightly higher, she was able to look down on the building and the houses that surrounded it. She shouted. Screamed. But there was no response. The houses looked derelict, their windows broken. In the distance, the sun was setting, throwing a blood red sheet across the horizon.

  Behind her, she heard the Oracle laugh and felt a hand grab her leg and pull her back, away from the bars. Muffling her screams, the hand over her mouth brought with it the same cloying, sweet sickly smell she had inhaled before she passed out the last time.

  CHAPTER 47

  Prosper walked across the hive of activity that was the incident room, trying to remain inconspicuous, which proved impossible. Words of comfort issued from peoples mouths, to which Prosper nodded, unable to look directly at anyone. Working as fast as he could, he gathered most of his files, tucking them inside a copy of the newspaper from on his desk so he didn’t have to answer any awkward questions. He pocketed a packet of cigarettes before he exited the building amid phones ringing, faxes whirring, and people talking.

  Once in his car, he headed back to Wolfe’s house.

  After driving for about fifteen minutes, he noticed a car that seemed to turn whenever he did. He wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been for the driver’s reckless manoeuvre at a set of red traffic lights, causing a torrent of horn blowing as it nearly collided with a large, white van.

  The car eased in behind the vehicle following Prosper, and when that car indicated and turned left, the red light jumper slowed and eased back a little. When Prosper turned left, the car turned left; when he turned right, the car turned right. At first, he assumed they were both going in the same direction, but after purposely turning down two deserted alleys before heading back to the main road, he was convinced the car was following him, and his stomach wrapped itself in knots.

  He indicated to turn left at a junction and slowed down. He saw his pursuer indicate likewise, and then he knocked his indicator off and turned right instead. The car behind followed him, quashing any doubts he harboured.

  But who was it? Was it the Oracle?

  He took the next left, braked hard and parked by the kerb. The car behind turned into the street, but it accelerated away before Prosper had time to identify the driver.

  Prosper pulled away from the kerb, but even though he didn’t see anyone pursuing him during the rest of the journey, he kept glancing in the rear view mirror, his nerves stretched as taut as a bowstring. When he reached Wolfe’s he parked in the drive, and a car drove by and pulled up a bit further along the road. Was it the vehicle that had been following him? With Wolfe’s house so remote it seemed unlikely to be anyone else.

  Prosper slipped out of the car and looked across the lawn to where the vehicle was parked, but it was too dark to see much.

  Whoever sat in the car would be just as visually impaired, so he cut across the lawn, using the trees and sculptures to hide behind. At the road, he clambered over the low wall and ducked behind a bush. He still couldn’t see the car clearly for the foliage. He took a step; a branch snapped beneath his foot and Prosper winced. He held his breath and took the knife out of his pocket. Slowly, he crept towards the car. When he was only a few feet away, he ran towards it and yanked the driver’s door open.

  “What the hell’s going on?” shouted the pimply youth that sat in the driver’s seat. The female passenger looked up from her oral ministrations, looking shocked and scared, the penis in her hand going flaccid and her naked breasts jiggling as she struggled to cover herself.

  The youth made to get out of the car with his trousers around his ankles. “You pervert,” he snarled. Then he saw the knife in Prosper’s hand, and his mouth stayed open in a comical ‘O’ while the colour drained from his cheeks.

  “Sorry,” Prosper said. “I thought you were someone else.” He slipped the knife back into his pocket. “Don’t worry. I thought you were a friend of mine, and I wanted to play a trick on him.”

  “Trick,” the boy said, recovering his wits. “You’ll give him a heart attack, you sick pervert.”

  Prosper shrugged apologetically and walked away sighing between clenched teeth. He heard the car engine start and then heard the squeal of tyres as it drove away. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. He couldn’t take much more of this.

  After recovering the files from his car, Prosper hurried towards the house. Having left the door on the catch, he pushed it open and walked through to the studio. Wolfe stood in front of the sheet that hid the macabre display, staring out of the window.

  Hearing Prosper enter, he turned. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Yes, where have you been?” a familiar voice enquired behind Prosper.

  CHAPTER 48

  Jill stared at Prosper and the other man, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She knew she was taking a risk confronting them, especially if her theory was correct, but of course if she was right, it would do wonders for her career. She stared at Prosper’s friend, his long black hair, tied in a ponytail, just like the man Robinson had described at the scene of the incident he reported. Further evidence for her hypothesis.

  “There are other officers outside,” she lied. “If I don’t come out in ten minutes, they’re coming in. So don’t think about doing anything stupid.”

  Prosper’s face turned ashen. He glanced at a curtain suspended across the room, his left eye twitching. “Jill, what the hell are you blathering about, and what the hell are you doing here? Where the bloody hell were you when my wife was abducted?”

  “Abducted?”

  Prosper pursed his lips and clenched his fists. “Yes, abducted. If we’d been able to reach you, then you’d know. You should have been fucking guarding her. I’ll have your job for this.”

  Jill blanched. Needing time to go over her notes and to try to work a few things out, she had turned her phone and receiver off, so this was news to her. If it was true, then it put a crack in her theory.

  “If that’s the case, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be out looking for her?” she asked.

  Prosper ran his hands through his hair. “Of course it’s bloody true. Do you think I’d make up something like that? Anyway, they’ve taken me off the assignment.” He waved his hands dismissively.

  Although she hadn’t worked with Prosper for very long, she knew he was lying, or at least not telling her the whole truth. But why? What wasn’t he telling her? “What’s that God-awful smell?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “The sewers have been backing up,”
the other man said, shrugging. “Now do you mind telling me who you are and what the hell you’re doing in my house?”

  “She’s my colleague,” Prosper said. “Now I just want to know what the bloody hell you’re doing here. Have you been following me?”

  Jill hesitated, the sore spot on her lip stinging.

  “It doesn’t matter what she’s doing here,” the other man said. “This is my house, and I didn’t invite you in. Now unless you’ve got a warrant, I would suggest you leave. Prosper’s my friend, and a guest. You’re not.”

  “Is there something I might need a warrant for?” Jill asked. “Perhaps you’re hiding something behind that sheet.” She looked towards the flimsy barrier.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide, and I don’t like your insinuations to the contrary.”

  “Then you wouldn’t mind if I had a look.” She started walking towards the dividing sheet that billowed in the breeze from the door.

  The man stepped in front of Jill and held his hand out to stop her. “There’s a work in progress behind that sheet. Call it artistic temperament, but nobody sees any of my work until it’s finished, so if you don’t mind ...”

  Jill halted with the man’s hand inches from her chest. “You’re that sculptor, right. Wolfe something or other.”

  Wolfe nodded, his expression softening a little. She guessed she had appeased his vanity by recognising him, but then he had been in the news a few times, with some people calling him the successor to renowned artist, Damien Hirst. Not that she found either artists style to her liking.

  She looked at the statues around the room, finding their realism unnerving.

  Prosper glared at her. “Just get the hell out of here and find my wife, Constable.”

  Feeling foolish, and needing to re-evaluate her theory in light of the news of Natasha’s abduction, Jill said, “If you’re hiding something, you can be sure I’ll find out what it is.” She cast a final glance at the sheet, and then spun on her heels and flounced out of the room.

  Prosper followed Jill out to make sure she left, then he locked the door before returning to the studio.

  “That was close,” he said, his heart still racing.

  Wolfe grinned and patted his chest “What a rush.”

  Prosper’s eyes opened wide in amazement. “A rush? We could have been arrested.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been ironic? The former inspector leading the hunt for the Oracle arrested by his own partner for a copycat killing.” Wolfe laughed without humour.

  Nausea swelled up from Prosper’s stomach. Wolfe was losing it. Didn’t he realise how close they’d come to being found out. Or wasn’t he bothered?

  He leaned against the statue of a woman, took a cigarette out and lit it to inhale the much-needed nicotine. “So have you spotted anything?”

  Wolfe shook his head. “Not yet, but there’s got to be more to the photographs than meets the eye. Come and see what I mean.” He disappeared through the curtain.

  Prosper followed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of decaying flesh. He was loath to look at Hatchet Man’s corpse as it filled him with guilt. If they hadn’t done what they had, Natasha would still be safe. He took another puff on his cigarette.

  Wolfe had arranged the copies of the Oracle’s photographs on the wall in order of when the victims had died. “So what am I looking at?” Prosper asked.

  “Look at this photograph first. What do you see?”

  Prosper sighed. He’d looked at the Oracle’s photographs more times than he cared to remember, and they didn’t get any easier on the eye. “I see what I’ve seen a hundred times.”

  Wolfe scowled. “Tell me what that is.”

  “Mutilated bodies surrounded by photographs”

  “But there’s got to be a clue in there somewhere.”

  “Not necessarily. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  Wolfe picked a sketchpad up off a table and handed it to Prosper.

  Prosper noticed that Wolfe had written the names of the killers featured on each photograph. “What about them?”

  “Exactly. What is it about them? Why does he put them in the picture?”

  Prosper opened the newspaper to look at his notes. As he did so, the page fell open on the crossword puzzle. Prosper frowned and stroked his chin. “Have you got a pen?”

  Wolfe crossed the room and plucked a biro from a pot on a work table covered with art materials. “What is it?” he asked as he handed the pen over.

  Ignoring Wolfe, Prosper scribbled down the killers’ surnames that were featured on Jane Numan’s photograph.

  Nilsen.

  Kearney.

  Ireland.

  Watts.

  Onoprienko.

  Onoprienko.

  Shipman.

  Dahmer.

  Gacy.

  Then he wrote down each initial: N.K.I.W.O.O.S.D.G.

  “It’s a fucking anagram,” Prosper said, annoyed that he hadn’t spotted it sooner.

  “An anagram of what?”

  Prosper wrote a single word on the page: Kingswood. “It’s the name of the high school we all attended.”

  “It must be a coincidence. There are probably loads of words you can make from those letters. I can see Wind gooks. Good winks, and that’s just at first sight.”

  “No. This isn’t a coincidence. The killer’s fucking with us.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Prosper sat down and rubbed his face.

  “Are you okay?” Wolfe asked.

  Prosper shook his head. “What do you think?”

  He looked up at the Oracle’s photographs, then looked away. They disturbed him on a deep, emotional level. Something about them seemed unearthly, as though the killer had made a pact with dark forces, as if he’d sold his soul.

  “It’s got to be the word Kingswood,” Prosper said. “It’s the only one that makes sense.”

  The implications struck Prosper like a punch.

  He knew the most significant clue in a case like this could be the killer’s choice of victim, so what did it mean when his friends were the victims? How did the killer know which school they attended? And why, what did it all mean? Was the killer someone he knew? Someone he had arrested who now bore a grudge? Someone from school? What about their first target, the kid who stabbed Prosper with the chisel, Gary Smith. Was it him? Or was it one of the other people they’d inflicted their own form of vengeance on? Had one of them somehow found out what they’d done? It was crazy, but there were too many questions and not enough answers.

  “If you’re right, then what about the other pictures?” Wolfe asked.

  Prosper wrote down the initial from each killer’s surname from the photograph of the young boy. “That gives us S. P. E. P. W. N. S. R. O. R.” He stared at what he’d written for a moment, his mind rearranging the letters, and his hand writing them down.

  Spew.

  Props.

  Worn.

  Snow.

  As soon as he wrote the last word, it all fell into place and he wrote two words: Prosper Snow

  Another connection came to mind and Prosper flicked through his files until he found what he was looking for: the word ‘qana’ that had been painted on the wall near where Jane Numan had been abducted.

  “What is it?” Wolfe asked.

  Prosper scanned the notes, one sentence now standing out: An Inuit word for ‘falling snow’.

  Prosper jumped to his feet. “He’s referring to me!”

  Wolfe screwed his nose up. “But how? It’s not possible.”

  “Falling snow. Prosper Snow taking a fall for the murders. He’s setting me up.”

  “But if you’re right, then that would mean the Oracle knew about you before we even framed him for Hatchet Man’s murder. It’s not possible.”

  “Well my name’s there for a reason.”

  “What reason? This is crazy.”

  “Well someone’s trying to frame us, or more specifically, me.”

  Wolfe looked
sceptical. “And who would do that? And why?”

  “In my line of work, hundreds of people.”

  Wolfe stroked his chin. “But that doesn’t explain how or why your name and our school are hidden in the photographs before we performed the copy-cat killing. Unless of course the Oracle really does have the power of prophesy!”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s got to be something else. What if it’s someone we beat up? That might explain why Jerel, Ty and Paris are dead.”

  “That wouldn’t explain the other murders. Or why those names relating to places connected to us are featured.”

  Prosper’s mind was awhirl. “Well you explain it then because it seems more than a coincidence that they were killed by the man we were trying to frame for a copycat killing unless we already know the killer, or the killer knows us.” He stared at Wolfe, teeth clenched. “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but the only people that now know about the Kult and what we did are both standing in this room.”

  Wolfe glared at Prosper. “So what are you trying to say?”

  “I should think that’s obvious.”

  Wolfe snorted loudly. “If I was going to kill someone, I wouldn’t want to publicise it.”

  Prosper’s heart banged inside his chest and he took an involuntary step back. “Why not? You’re an artist, aren’t you? You like to display your work. Showing off is just your style.”

  “What the hell’s that got to do with it? I’m not a killer. If I was, don’t you think I would have already killed you when I had the chance?”

  Prosper recalled how impassive Wolfe had been when he chopped Hatchet Man’s arms and legs off. There had been a cold, dispassionate look about him. To Prosper, it was the look of someone who had killed before.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I can’t because I’m telling you the truth.”

  Prosper wiped his brow with a shaking hand. Was Wolfe telling the truth? Could he trust him? At the moment, he didn’t have much choice. Besides which, his gut instinct told him that Wolfe wasn’t lying, and he had long ago learned to trust his instincts and they hadn’t let him down yet. He only hoped that wasn’t about to change. “Look, I’m sorry. I just can’t get my head around all this. Whoever the killer is, he’s got Nat. I’ve got to find her.”