by Bo Brennan
Colt frowned, had no idea who 'him' was, but could hazard a guess she was inadvertently referring to her father. “But why didn't he tell someone, a teacher or something?” he probed gently, didn't want to risk her clamming up on him now she was talking.
“We had a smelly girl in our class who was in a kids’ home,” she said, screwing up her face. “In comparison to her, I was well off.”
Colt could feel the anger welling deep inside him, knew exactly what she meant. In those days children’s homes were unregulated, providing bountiful employment opportunities for child abusers. Paedo playgrounds they called them in his unit. If kids came out of them without being abused, they spent the rest of their lives wondering what the hell was wrong with them. He encountered many of the childhood residents of those desperate places now in their adult life. Some became social workers and child protection officers. Others had gone full circle and reaped their childhood misery on children of their own. And those of others.
“But he had to tell in the end,” she continued. “One day two big blokes in suits turned up. We had no idea what bailiffs were and we had nothing to give them. Gray went to sort it, but his dad caught him taking money out of the till.” She gazed silently at the wall, her face blank. Colt felt her retreating into the past.
“And . . .,” he pressed.
India shrugged and began clearing their plates. “Instead of coming back with the money, Gray came back with his dad. I lived with them after that.”
Colt felt sick, wanted to know what happened to the parents. Wanted to put his hands around their throats and shake them violently. “So what did the police do?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?” she snapped. “What does it matter to you?”
“I care about you, India,” he said. “I just want to get to know you better, that’s all.”
“There’s nothing to know,” she said, filling the sink with water.
Colt followed her into the kitchen and leant against the worktop, staring at her back. “Pete Davies did go to the police, didn’t he?” He watched her hands still in the water and her shoulders tense, certain that he wasn't going to like the answer.
“Unofficially,” she muttered.
“What does that mean,” Colt snapped, “that no one did jack shit about it?”
“He has friends, cop friends,” India snapped back, furiously turning on him. “They had a choice: report it and lock me up, or let it go and look after me. What would you do?”
Colt swallowed hard, his insides hurt. “Does Len Firman know?”
India glared at him, her cheeks burning red as she roughly dried her hands on a tea towel. She didn't need to answer; her body language gave the game away. Detective Chief Inspector Len Firman was one of Pete's 'cop friends.'
Chapter 51
She heard his heavy boots on the stairs, the creak of the floorboard outside her bedroom door. She knew why he was there.
Sliding her hand under the pillow she closed her fingers around the Swiss Army knife, and rolled onto her side to face the bedroom wall. She knew exactly how many vertical stripes were on the wallpaper. She'd liked it once, but she hated it now. She’d counted those stripes too many times.
Tightly closing her eyes, she drew her knees up to her chest, snagging her feet in the bottom of her pink night dress. If he thought that she was sleeping maybe he'd go away.
She held her breath when the door handle rattled, followed by the high pitched whine of the hinges and the steady clunk of it closing again. She could hear his steady shallow breathing, feel his eyes on her back, smell the sweat of his toil.
The jangle of the heavy buckle of his thick leather belt as he pulled it free of his waistband, terrified her. Even with her eyes shut tight she could see him wrapping it around his hand. Soon, he'd press it between her teeth to stop her screaming, or beat her into submission if she dared to resist. Soon, she'd be looking up from the seabed again.
She felt the weight of her covers lighten as he pulled them back and slid into the bed beside her. She could hear the waves coming to carry her away, feel his hot breath, stinking of peppermint toothpaste, as he kissed her neck. He tugged down her feet and pushed her nightie up around her waist, rolled her onto her back so she could see him smiling down at her. Called her 'daddy’s special little girl' as he pulled her knickers free of her legs. In a few moments time he would be on top of her, hurting her, telling her he loved her.
AJ Colt woke with a start and looked at the clock. He'd dozed off when he should’ve been watching her. He rubbed at his stiff and achy neck. On the sofa bed opposite, India was mumbling and thrashing in her sleep, kicking out with her feet and getting increasingly tangled in the sheets.
He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the sofa bed next to her, watching her become more animated and agitated by the second. Her breathing was rapid and shallow; her face contorting in the flicker of the fire was wet with tears. Colt reached out to stroke her head and calm her.
“I love you,” he whispered in the darkness.
She lashed out violently, stabbing her fists wildly through the air. The first blow struck him in the shoulder, he took several more to the abdomen before the blow to his groin dropped him. Doubled up, he rolled off the bed and landed heavily on the solid wood floor. Sweating and unable to breathe he rolled around in excruciating pain, hands protecting his balls, absolutely certain he was about to die at any second.
“I stabbed him,” she shouted, wide-eyed and wide awake sitting bolt upright amidst a tangled mass of bedding.
All Colt could manage in response to her startling revelation was a small high pitched whine.
Chapter 52
Saturday 18th December
They’d arrived at work together. Firman glared at him and shook his head as they passed his office. Colt threw his hands in the air behind India’s back and returned his glare. What could I do? More’s the point – what would you do, Len? He'd grown up with Len around, thought he knew him. This morning he was looking at him through different eyes.
There were no wise cracks when they took their seats at the incident room table. India was one of their own, and that merely added personal pain to the sense of escalating pressure.
Last night, when she made up the sofa bed in the lounge, Colt was relieved that she couldn't go back in that bedroom. It was bad enough that she'd gone back there at all. He'd lain with his arms wrapped around her ’til she'd finally fallen asleep. The involuntary ache in his groin pressed against her back had taken him by surprise – his arousal had disgusted him, feelings of shame and self-contempt had forced his body to the sofa opposite. In the gentle glow of the fire he'd watched her silently sleeping, blissfully unaware of how his body and heart ached to be with her.
Keeping guard, his mind had gone into overdrive. Thinking about what sort of people her parents must be, where they were, and the life she'd endured. He thought about Len's involvement in protecting her abusers from punishment. Then wondered how many children he himself had unwittingly dropped into a paedos’ playground in the course of his job. And finally, he’d wondered if his own dad knew – if he'd played a part.
Her nightmare had alarmed him the most. He'd never experienced one before, and he didn’t want to again. His balls were still tender this morning. Once he'd settled her back to sleep, he’d turned her place upside down looking for her little Swiss Army knife. She was absolutely convinced she'd stabbed the fucker, and it absolutely was not on that boat. It wasn't in the evidence locker either. Colt had no doubt the scene she'd played out in her sleep was wishful thinking, she'd been in no fit state to fight back, she was barely breathing when he'd found her.
After that, any hope of sleep was gone. In the silent darkness his mind had filled with ever more vengeful thoughts as images replayed over and over again in his head. How she was when he'd found her, how frightened and crushed he'd felt at the thought of losing her, and what he would do when he finally got his hands on the bastard who'd hurt
her. How slow and painful he'd make it, and how much he'd enjoy every solitary second of snuffing his miserable little life out with his own bare hands.
“Jim?”
Colt’s cheeks flushed and he shifted awkwardly in his seat. Thoughts of sweet revenge were consuming his mind while good old uncle Len was addressing him.
“The results are back on the wing mirror glass found in the street,” Len Said. “It's a Porsche but they can't give us the model.”
“We’re still waiting for the paint samples results from your car to come back,” Vicky said. “That might narrow it down.”
“Shit,” Colt muttered. Both of them had seen it, Colt had reversed into it, but neither of them had been able to give a make, model or colour let alone get a plate or partial. Gray was a fire fighter he could be forgiven. What kind of SIO misses those sorts of details at a crime scene? It was a whole fucking car, for Christ’s sake. His fucking car. “Was it definitely his and not a neighbours?”
“Definitely his,” Len said. “Gray Davies chased him through the woodland path up to the lane. He thinks it was one of the 4x4 models. It hit the main road just before the area car sealed it off. Traffic are checking all the cameras.”
India frowned. “What woodland path?”
“The one leading from the road down to your place,” Len said.
“There isn't a path,” India said.
Vicky pulled out the crime scene photos, opened the folder an inch and peered discreetly inside.
“I'm not a child,” India said, extending her hand across the table.
Vicky passed them to her and sat back in her seat, folding her arms. The room fell silent as India flipped the folder wide open and proceeded to flick through the shots of her own crime scene.
“That's new,” she said, tapping the photo of a clearly cut path through the wood.
Colt frowned, taking the folder from her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I'm sure,” she snapped back. “It wasn't there on Monday night, was it?”
Colt felt his cheeks warm, he couldn't say for sure. It'd been dark out there and he was unfamiliar with her place. He'd had lots of other things on his mind that night too: the victims, her drowning, making love on the rug in front of her fire. Gray’s discarded underpants. “I don't know,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well I'm telling you it wasn't bloody there,” India said. “I'd have noticed.”
“It's pretty clear I'm not as observant as you,” he said. “What's a woodland path when I missed a whole fucking car?”
“Don't beat yourself up about it,” Lacey said. “It's human nature. When someone close to us is in danger, everything else becomes totally irrelevant. Even the SIO handbook gets left on the shelf.”
“You see it in the witness statements all the time,” Veronica said. “If a loved one is a witness, their statements are always hazy on the finer details. The colour of an attacker’s top is quite insignificant to them.”
Telling him what he told others all the time wasn't making him feel any better. Hearing it out loud just made things worse. It confirmed that becoming emotionally involved with a team member, no matter how one sided, made him incapable of doing his job properly.
“So sometime between Tuesday and Thursday,” Tom said, tapping Lee’s pad. “He did a bit of gardening down there. That's something we'll make enquiries about.”
“You must know more about him by now,” India said, turning her attention to Lacey. “Who is he?”
“He's a classic narcissist, takes what he wants from a woman. Our guy is a looker, keeps himself fit, flaunts his sexual conquests and encounters. It probably hasn't always been like that, the Somatic is probably recessive.”
“Speak English,” India said. “We haven’t all had the luxury of a University education.”
Lacey raised her brows and glanced at Colt.
“Well go on,” he said. “Keep it simple.”
“Part of an emerging theory in the field suggests Narcissistics usually take one of two modes, the Cerebral and the Somatic. The Cerebral is in love with their own mind; their superior intellect – whether it's real or not – is what drives them. They don't care about their bodies, they are merely a hindrance. The Somatic is in love with their own body, believing they are god’s gift sexually. One side is always dominant while the other is bubbling just beneath the surface, often manifesting after some perceived life crisis.”
“So he might have been a fat ugly bastard who thought he was clever up until recently,” Tom said.
Lacey smiled. “Something will have shaken his thinking life up, made him switch from one type to the other. His cerebral life was probably sex free and sloth like. So he hits the gym and hones his body, believes he's a superior sexual being. His earlier attacks showed a total lack of emotion. He didn’t want to engage with the victims at all. The woman was merely an object, the act was purely functional. But now he wants to engage them, gets pleasure from the pain and fear his power brings. Sexual sadism is his current means of narcissistic supply, where before it was knowledge.”
“I still don't get why he sends the DVDs to Colt,” Vicky said
“He’s taking what is perceived as special to James, using him as his narcissistic life blood and stealing his power. Don’t forget, these women were cheerleaders who chanted his name. He’s most likely harbouring deep seated homosexual feelings for him, which he finds unsettling and confusing. By sending the DVDs he’s bragging about his vast prowess with the opposite sex, reinforcing his denial.”
“Great, so he's morphed from Jabba the Hutt into a body building secret bum boy, who’s looking for a bit of dropped soap in the shower action with the DCI,” Lee said. “That'll cut it down a bit then.”
Colt cringed. He didn't like how it sounded when Lacey said it, coming from the mouth of Lee Sangrin made it sound a whole lot worse. The kid had a certain way of translating technical talk into layman’s terms. Colt could see the advantages this could bring to many an investigation he'd carried out over the years. But right now he didn't need to hear it applied to him.
“These women wanted James. He's feeding off belittling and devaluing him. The women themselves are secondary, just going through the motions of sex because he's refuelling, and because he can. James knows these women.” She raised a hand to Colt when he tried to interject. “Or at least he thinks he does. What he's doing when he sends him the DVDs is bragging: ‘Look at me and all the great sex I'm having with your fan club’.”
“So why go after India?” Tom mused. “All the others went to Uni with Colt, I get that. But India didn't set a foot in a University until last week.”
“Granted it's a major deviation from his MO,” Lacey said matter-of-factly. “But he's simply upping the stakes. He's targeted India for the very same reason as the others. She is special to James; he wants her.”
India stared at her, and Colt looked away, mortified. If it wasn't bad enough her colleague had just implied she was thick, now they all thought she was bedding the SIO. But the implication was crystal clear – Colt's own actions had put her in the firing line. He felt sick.
“I'm interested in this life crisis aspect,” Veronica said. “Colt, how long would it take somebody to hone their body?”
Colt cleared his throat. “If you went flat out, ate right and hit the gym hard – you'd get good results inside six months. Half that if you used steroids.”
“And how long ago was the first attack?”
“Three years ago,” he said, without hesitation. If she wanted him to be more precise he would be able to give her the days, hours and minutes to within a few seconds.
“What were you doing three and a half years ago?” Veronica quizzed. “Think back to the six months before you received the first DVD, what were you working on?”
“I like your thinking, Veronica,” Lacey cooed.
Colt and Firman exchanged furtive glances.
“Close Protection,” Colt said. “Three and a half years ago
there was an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister in retaliation for the Iraq war.”
“And James got in the way,” Lacey said sharply. “A hollow point bullet went straight through his vest and missed his heart by inches.”
“Told you,” Lee said, elbowing Tom in the ribs. “GQ gave him a four page spread when he set up the Paedo Unit, and the only question he refused to answer was whether it was him that got shot that day.”
Tom frowned. “Did they ever get the shooter?”
Len and Colt both shook their heads.
Tom raised a brow. “Is there any possibility this could be politically motivated?”
“Unlikely,” Colt said. “I don’t do the politics, I just do my job.”
“I understand the same magazine did a follow up interview recently,” Veronica said, clicking her pen. “Would the timescales coincide with his latest spree of attacks?”
“A return to the limelight,” Lacey said, glancing at the clock and slipping into her coat. “Certainly gives us all plenty to think about over the weekend.”
“Jim,” Len said. “A word in private please before you leave.”
He slowed down on his approach to the open security gates of the plush dealership frontage, occupying a prominent corner site on the main road – the police car sitting outside was impossible to miss.
He cruised on by to the junction, took a left, and slowly followed the entire perimeter of the Porsche showroom around the corner. Through the wide glass frontage he could see a uniform talking to the suit who'd sold him the car. Two more uniforms were loitering in the service reception.
There hadn't been anything on the news, nothing at all, not even a whisper on the internet. All quiet on the western front. They must know about the wing mirror. The sneaky wankers were keeping it under wraps, trying to catch him out.
He sighed, had wasted a whole fucking morning coming all the way down to Bournemouth for nothing. There weren’t even any hotties on his list to hook up with in this neck of the woods. Now he’d have to go and see that sleazy second-hand cocksucker on the way to Cute Caroline's place.
