Turning around in a side road much further up, he switched off the lights as he came back down the street. He needed to park close to the house and was grateful that his petrol hybrid Volvo XC90 was nice and quiet. It was a coincidence that he had managed to find such an appropriate vehicle, because his main objective at the service station north of Paris had been to find someone who looked similar to him. It may have been the same trick he had used with Franklin in order to get out of the country but, with Johnson not acting in an official capacity, the last thing the authorities would have been expecting was for him to re-enter England.
With plenty of people returning from their summer holidays, he’d had enough to choose from and it was a simple process once he had spotted a suitable target. Unsurprisingly the man had not been alone, but Brandt was grateful that there wasn’t the complication of him having children in tow. Brandt had simply sat at one of the outside benches, apparently enjoying the sunshine, whilst he waited for the man and his wife to go inside and complete their business. They had only been in there for a few minutes before both emerged clutching takeaway coffees. Finding somewhere sensible to place them on entering their vehicle, would prove something of a distraction. And Brandt had only needed the briefest of seconds.
It had been simple and if any of the other motorists had observed Brandt following them and getting into the back, they would have seen nothing amiss. He had opened his door at the same time as the driver had shut his, so as to mask the sound. They were not aware of his presence until he leaned forward to put the large knife to the wife’s throat. That was how they had driven off, with Brandt sipping the man’s coffee, and enjoying the taste despite it having been made with milk; directing them to a secluded spot where he didn’t even bothered to tie up the wife, whilst he put the man in the boot. He had seen many frightened people over his career and had always been a good judge of character. There was more chance of her sprouting wings and flying off than there was her electing to run and leave her husband behind. Besides, Brandt had sounded so reassuring as he explained that he simply needed a ride home and that he was popping the man into the ample-sized boot, just until they had cleared customs in France. To add to the subterfuge, he had her remain in the passenger seat and had called out things like ‘I hope that’s not too tight’ and ‘nod if the gag’s making it hard for you to breathe’ whilst supposedly fixing the man’s bonds; all the while smiling whilst watching his eyes bulge in horror as his life blood drained out from the wide gash to his throat.
It hadn’t surprised Brandt that neither of them recognised him because that just summed up society as far as he was concerned. Living in West London and not fitting the profile of any of his victims, he doubted they had given the news of his exploits more than a second glance. In fact, the wife had remained so compliant that he had even taken the risk of pulling up to a passport window on the passenger’s side. The British attendant had given Brandt the merest of glances before asking him to open the back windows. With the now familiar procedure out of the way, they sailed through customs and Brandt’s wait for the train was much calmer than last time.
The woman had seemed to believe the best course of action was to say as little as possible, but he had coaxed her into conversation to help while away the time until they boarded, and during the short journey back to Folkestone. Her reticence soon faded and, the more she spoke, the more he found he quite liked her. Brandt wouldn’t have described her as attractive but her somewhat plain features, complemented by a thoroughly drab brown ponytail, kind of suited her. What impressed him most was that she made no effort to appeal to his humanity by talking about family or what an important job both she and her husband did. She merely gave honest answers to his simple questions and he appreciated having finally found a woman that didn’t seem to want to play games.
It was therefore with regret that he pulled off the motorway almost as soon as they joined it after arriving at Folkestone, and found the same rutted entrance to the field along the empty single-track road. He had kept his promise to reunite the couple and even allowed her to open the boot to reveal her husband, causing her to believe that he was about to hot foot it into the nearest field and they would be able to continue on their journey otherwise unimpeded. Brandt had watched with interest as it took her brain a while to process the sight before her. Any compassion he had felt was gone as he drank in the moment; even allowing her to air the screams that followed before running the sharp blade expertly across her throat.
As Brandt sat outside DCI Johnson’s house, he thought that there could be far worse ways to meet one’s death. With the couple still in their final embrace mere feet behind him, he fished out his phone. He would send the text before getting out of the car. He couldn’t see Johnson looking out of her window but, just in case, it should prove an ample distraction.
As with his driving up the road earlier, he exited the XC90 neither quickly nor slowly and walked calmly up the short path to her door. For the benefit of any neighbours who might be watching, he moved his fist back and forth, pretending to knock.
Chapter Thirty-four
The incoming text message startled Johnson. She must have drifted off. It was more than a day since she had taken advantage of finishing her preparations by allowing herself a few hours’ sleep. She had awoken on that occasion to find confirmation that Brandt had read the article and, more significantly, the implication that he was coming to get her. With air travel out of the question she guessed it would easily take him the best part of a day to get back to England, which meant he could well be in the country by now and she would know in the next 48 hours whether her plan had worked. Having allowed her body to betray her so early on, even if she had only been dozing for a few moments, was unacceptable to Johnson. Her irritation was such that she nearly forgot the thing that had roused her and almost absentmindedly opened her phone.
A spike of adrenaline ran through her veins as she saw that the message was from him. But its contents confused her.
– I warned you what would happen.
The message was exactly the same as before and she scrolled down to look at the previous one to confirm that her mind wasn’t playing tricks. What did that mean? Was he having trouble making his way back into the country and wanted to remind her? Or was it just an empty threat and he was sunning himself somewhere; hoping to apply what little pressure he could?
It was then that she noticed the symbol indicating that there was a photo attached. Upon returning to her house she hadn’t thought to connect her new phone to the Wi-Fi connection and had been relying on her cellular data, which had the setting whereby it wouldn’t automatically download large files.
It was more with curiosity than fear that she clicked the icon to reveal the attachment. It soon changed as she observed a gagged and clearly terrified Susan. The writing at the bottom intensified the horror.
– If you’re not here within an hour or I even suspect the police are coming, she dies. That’ll make it 2 deaths you are responsible for.
Johnson sat there, stunned. How could she have got this so wrong? Again! It made sense that his primary target would be his wife. He would believe her responsible for the suffering that had led to him becoming a killer. It mattered not that he would see her as being put up to accepting the interview by Johnson; the fact remained that she had been the one who made those enormously disparaging comments. That he could then use the situation to take out the other thorn in his side was just a bonus to him, which is what his message had meant all along. It wasn’t so much of a threat as a plea to not get Susan involved.
Johnson gagged and brought up her meagre lunch of baked beans and tinned fruit, which she had ironically selected as they weren’t likely to create enough of a smell to give away her location in the house. But the stench now it had been regurgitated and was splashed over the bedroom floor, caused her to retch once more.
She wiped away the involuntary tears and tried to get up from her crouched position. A voice in her
head was screaming at her that being a vigilante had only ever served to fuck things up more than they already were, and that she needed to phone the police immediately. But Brandt had been crystal clear: ‘…I even suspect the police are coming she dies.’
An hour didn’t give her long either. With her foot down, she estimated that it would still take her 45 minutes, so she couldn’t allow indecision to cost this innocent woman her life. She would just have to think in the car and work out how to approach this. Tucking the large blade into the back of her waistband, Johnson ran towards the main bedroom, retrieved the small paring knife from under her pillow and slid it into her sock as she raced down the stairs; cursing herself once more. All that planning, and she had been so wide of the mark again. If Brandt’s actions following the first newspaper article hadn’t been enough of a lesson, how easily he had played her in Benidorm should have been.
As she reached for the front door she was put in mind of the proverb: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. With the latch opening in her hand she wondered where she had read it.
She didn’t get to complete the thought.
Former Detective Superintendent Jeffrey Brandt was stood before her.
Chapter Thirty-five
Johnson’s first moment of consciousness was a sense that she had experienced this before. That was the sum total of the feeling and without any context as to what this was. It occurred to her more as a statement of fact but, as she attempted to explore the sensation, she came to understand that it hadn’t been good. Not that she knew why.
She appreciated a choice had to be made because her current state did not represent an existence; merely the gap between two worlds. Johnson wanted to make the decision based on knowledge of the implication of each path but, equally, she knew that to establish the environment of either world was to effectively make that choice.
So, she waited. Unable to shake the belief that either path spelled danger, Johnson started to consider who she was. She grasped at brief snatches of memory, attempting to piece them together to get an awareness of her self. This was far from easy because the fragments were disparate, but she had a logical mind and eventually found ways in which they might fit.
It was then that part of her mind spoke to her, and warned her off what she was doing. It told her that to continue to fight against her current state of being would lead to suffering. But she didn’t like this voice, believing its origin was cowardice and its claims duplicitous. Johnson had already inferred from her splinters of memory that she was a strong woman and so the person in her head must be an unwanted intruder. As a consequence, her seeking to regain genuine consciousness became as much of an act of defiance as a search for truth.
As Johnson grappled with the purpose of her existence, two things became clear to her. She felt both pain and love. Trying to separate them in order to examine them better, she found that they were more than entwined; one did not function in her without the other. With the voice now screaming at her to stop, she explored this peculiar symbiotic relationship and slowly the context for these emotions was revealed.
McNeil. A man. A man she cared for. A man who had caused her pain.
Johnson attempted to focus McNeil. She couldn’t pin-point anything specifically. She knew she found him attractive but accepted that her feelings weren’t based on physical form. But as she tried to explore his spiritual being, she was unable to prevent an examination of the pain. McNeil lived, but only inside her because, in the real world, he had died.
The real world. She considered what that was and, more importantly, why McNeil didn’t exist in it anymore.
In the same instant she realised she had inadvertently chosen a path. Johnson opened her eyes. In the fraction of a second it had taken to do this, she had worked out that it was highly probable her hands would be bound. They were, but behind her back rather than to her bed frame. Nor was she lying down but was sat on one of her kitchen chairs. What’s more, and with great relief, she was fully clothed. This had not been anticipated, but thoughts of its strangeness evaporated when a man walked from behind her and sat in the chair opposite.
‘Hello, Miss Johnson, I expected you to have more of a tan from your recent holiday.’ The observation was conversational, but mirth danced in Brandt’s eyes.
‘Your… your wife…’ She spluttered, total recall and its harsh reality having set in.
He laughed; cruel and mocking. ‘I know you like to play games, so I thought you might appreciate this one.’
‘I don’t… I don’t understand. The photo…’ Perhaps it had been a hoax in order to lure her out. If it was, then he had succeeded. If Susan was unharmed then Johnson felt she could better meet her own fate.
‘Don’t worry, it’s old,’ he responded, deriving huge pleasure from the hope he saw etched across her face. ‘Well, when I say old,’ he continued theatrically, looking at his watch, ‘it’s probably about four hours old now.’
‘She’s...?’
‘Indeed,’ he replied with false solemnity. ‘But before you go blaming yourself, let’s just say she probably had it coming.’ Johnson started retching again, unconsciously trying to bring her hands up to cover her mouth. Her bonds were tight. Brandt observed her with curiosity, as though considering whether it was part of some act.
‘Finished?’ he asked with an arched eyebrow, unable to hide his distaste at the saliva running down her chin. ‘If it’s any consolation, she didn’t seem that surprised to see me. Whatever you said to convince her to betray me, she knew what the consequence would be. In a way I kind of admire that. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.’ He shrugged as though that somehow justified his actions. ‘But what I don’t understand is that you looked genuinely shocked to see me. How can that be so? It’s not as though I hadn’t warned you. Or am I just misreading the situation and you are surprised to find yourself tied up again?’ He tutted good naturedly. ‘You really do have an over-inflated ego DCI Johnson, and to think I thought our fun and games on the beach would have taught you a little more humility.’
Johnson didn’t consider Brandt’s jibes; she was still trying to process that Susan was dead. Had she really expected him to confront her? Why hadn’t she agreed to go and stay with family? With Johnson not there in an official capacity and therefore unable to offer her somewhere anonymous, she knew he would be able to track her down and would therefore be endangering others. Perhaps she had hoped that he would see it as too risky with the reporters camped outside, but even Johnson knew that he would simply have to approach from the back garden and merely wait until she came outside for a cigarette.
‘What do you mean, don’t go blaming yourself?’
‘She told me about your conversation. She told me how you had made her feel guilty for my actions; that she had needed to try and put things right.’ He sighed. ‘I think she wanted me to tell her that she wasn’t responsible.’ A long pause. ‘I didn’t, of course,’ he smirked.
‘You, sick bastard.’
The words had barely escaped her mouth when Brandt lunged forward, grabbing her shoulders; his face now inches from hers. ‘I was compassionate. I wasn’t going to lie to her like you did but I didn’t seek to prove to her that the awful things she said about my… my capability weren’t true.’ He took a deep breath, withdrawing slightly. ‘Don’t you judge me, you fucking bitch. You caused this. You didn’t stick to the rules! It was fine to hunt me, that was part of the game, but as soon as you cheated, you ruined things for both of us.’
‘What are you going to do to me?’
‘See, there you go again. It’s all about you, isn’t it?! You couldn’t accept that I was better than you and that you were unable to catch me. You provoked me, knowing what I was capable of, and you couldn’t accept the consequences. Your colleague… your lover died because of you.’
‘Don’t you fucking dare talk about him!’ she roared, rage coming to the fore.
Brandt sat back, clearly startled but other
wise unaffected. ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, I didn’t mean to kill him.’ The reasonableness to his tone only angered Johnson further. ‘But the point I’m making is that you didn’t then learn your lesson. It’s not as though I expected you to leave it altogether, but I thought you would stick to the rules again and follow procedure.’ He shrugged. ‘I do take my share of the responsibility. I let you get away with what you tried to do in Benidorm. I knew I shouldn’t but… let’s just say I was a little preoccupied by other events. However, whilst they weren’t strictly my fault, what happened with Trish certainly wasn’t yours.’ He sat back, folding his arms, clearly coming to some form of conclusion. ‘Therefore, I suppose it would be fair to say we are both responsible for what happened to my wife.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about your wife,’ Johnson spat. All McNeil’s sister’s words at the funeral had done was uncover the simple truth. A truth that she could only see in its entirety now. Revenge was all that mattered to her now; it was all she had left.
The horror on Brandt’s face matched her own. What had she become? But whatever it was, she wasn’t prepared to face that now because, sitting before her, was the man responsible for her gruesome transformation. All it made her realise was that the fear she harboured was pointless. It didn’t matter what he did to her; he had killed her, the real her, the moment he had plunged his knife into McNeil. Her physical body may have remained but what had been inside, her very being, had been ripped out.
‘You didn’t just take away the man I cared for, you took away my capacity to love,’ she whispered with tears of despair streaming down her face. Johnson wasn’t so much looking at Brandt, more through him and to the emptiness that lay beyond. She barely noticed him lean forward until he raised his arm. She believed for a moment that he was going to put it around her, to seek somehow to provide comfort. But the speed at which it shot forward dispelled that thought, even before she noticed that his hand had become a fist.
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