The Siren

by Alison Bruce

  FORTY-THREE

  Sue Gully lay on her side, her cheek resting against a tight roll of rough carpet, and her chin pressed at an awkward angle to the floor. They were in the back of a van, with one grubby window high in the back door. No other light but it was something.

  She felt a breath on her face, not like the movement of the air against her skin, but the heavy fug of tepid second-hand oxygen that smelt of decaying food, and which meant that someone else’s mouth was quite close to her own.

  She was too close to see him clearly, but as her eyes adjusted to the light she picked out a close-up of open pores and greasy skin, unwashed hair and a glimpse of his half-open left eye. It was enough to recognize him as the man in the enlargement pinned up in the incident room.

  She tried to speak, but it came out only as a gasp for air. She tried to move, hoping to heave herself more upright. Her left hand lifted a few inches, succeeded in making only a twitch, then flopped back to her side again.

  She scowled in frustration and put all her efforts into speech. ‘Stefan,’ she rasped, ‘say something.’

  ‘Uhhh,’ emerged from his throat, but nothing more.

  She managed to move her head just enough to see her own hand. The fingers were swollen and caked with blood. They looked painful but she felt nothing, and although her body throbbed gently, enticing any movement from it seemed beyond her.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the noise of the engine, which sounded as though they were travelling at about fifty. Worn brakes, manual gearbox, she decided. The van bounced on a slightly uneven surface, so she guessed they were on a fast country road. The clear patch in the window revealed only open sky and flashes of passing foliage.

  The van gradually slowed, till the driver applied the brake harder and it slid to a standstill. Gully’s whole body lurched, ramming her face harder into the curl of carpet. Stefan cannoned against her, his upper body rolling heavily on to her chest. ‘Stefan,’ she moaned, ‘get off me.’

  This time something registered in his face and he managed to move his mouth. A tidemark of dried saliva rimmed his bottom lip. A name slipped out with his exhalation. ‘Craig.’

  It took her a moment to place the name. ‘Your boss?’

  Stefan gave a small grunt, and she thought he was beyond speech until he managed two final sentences: ‘He killed her. Us next.’

  They continued to drive, picking up speed again, and at the first right-hand bend he lifted his head just enough for the sway of the van to tip him away from Gully and on to his back. Thank God for that. She took a deep breath and, as she exhaled, realized for the first time that blood was trickling through her hair, and seeping down into the neck of her shirt.

  Maybe that was why her body didn’t hurt so much. Maybe that was why her limbs felt too heavy. She looked up towards the window and saw streaks of cloud flitting past. Seen through her eyes, the sky was becoming anaemic, washing out to a shade of sepia. Or else it was tinted glass. The van was warm and she shut her eyes to block out the rumble of the road.

  Just for a few minutes . . .

  To let herself drift away.

  More officers from Parkside arrived, with the ambulance on their tail. The medics were fast but efficient, attaching a drip and loading Anita on to a stretcher within a matter of minutes.

  ‘Let me go with her,’ Mikey whispered. Goodhew nodded.

  The ambulance switched on its siren and accelerated away from him into the wet afternoon.

  Goodhew hurried to the nearest patrol car, just as Marks was patched through to him. ‘Goodhew, are you sure that Riley’s with them?’

  ‘According to Mikey, Riley has been here at Viva Cottage the whole time. Where else would he be?’

  ‘OK, fair assumption. What about Gully?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything, sir. I just looked round and she’d gone.’

  ‘The helicopter’s up, but nothing seen yet.’

  ‘You know what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Estate car or larger.’

  ‘Great,’ Goodhew replied flatly. He sped away from Viva Cottage, desperate to be doing something, but filled with the fear that there was nothing worthwhile within his grasp.

  The Transit lurched around a tight right-hand bend, quickly followed by a sharp left. Gully saw the tops of a series of lamp posts pass the window. Then nothing.

  The back of the van was filled with the earthy smell of young crops, and she realized they were heading deeper into flat fenlands. She thought of the low horizon: perhaps, in the distance, the cathedral at Ely, or windmills and isolated farms. She knew the landscape well, and closed her eyes to imagine large fields planted in neat corduroy-striped rows, and others black-soiled and left fallow.

  She began to feel dizzy again.

  Then she imagined the double-engined freight train passing Newmarket, lumbering at a steady forty mph. Pulling its rolling stock of sixty open bucket trucks. Unchallenged by inclines. Plugging on with nothing to consider but its eventual destination at the rail depot at Queen Adelaide, on the outskirts of Ely. The driver would apply the brakes two miles before, dissipating the momentum of the load, coaxing it to a crawl, then a final halt on the track. Trains couldn’t afford to make sudden moves.

  She opened her eyes again, and saw streaks of cloud.

  But she now couldn’t visualize sudden moves. In her confused mind everything involved big movements, bold strokes of colour and action, huge skies, vast farms and direct journeys.

  Her eyes closed again.

  She listened hard for the rhythm of the train. Two miles to go, two miles to go.

  ‘Get up.’ The words were spoken slowly the first time, repeated more quickly the second. By the third time she was trying to obey, and by the fourth she finally realized that the voice was her own. By then she’d somehow manoeuvred herself on to her hands and knees, and began crawling towards the back of the van, each sway of the vehicle almost toppling her over. The back doors lay in deep shadow, so she felt along their meeting point. The door mechanism was enclosed, and she immediately realized that it would be impossible to open them from inside.

  Both doors had once possessed a window, but now only one of them remained, the other space blocked with a welded panel. Gully gripped the rough inner edge of one door and with her swollen left hand reached up to the grimy glass.

  What was it with kids and communication? Gillian Reynolds had pondered the same question many times, and on this particular occasion she had a full range of examples here in the car with her: three-year-old Ben who could talk but preferred to shout, eight-year-old Amy who only seemed capable of engaging in anything complicated when paired with another eight-year-old, and Kirsty.

  Kirsty, fifteen years old, permanently texting but only seemingly capable of communicating with her mum via a full dictionary’s worth of silent verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The fact that her choice of GCSE subjects included three languages hadn’t in any way aided her ability to speak.

  Kirsty pressed send on her latest text.

  Gillian sighed in irritation, she realized it sounded slightly theatrical, but then again if that was the only communication they were going to have, she might as well get it off her chest.

  ‘What the . . .?’ Kirsty muttered.

  ‘The traffic’s terrible,’ Gillian lied, and glanced at her daughter expecting the usual accusatory stare in return. But neither Kirsty’s gaze nor her comment was aimed in Gillian’s direction, but straight in front. Kirsty’s expression revealed a mix of confusion and something not so easy to identify. Revulsion perhaps?

  ‘No, look,’ Kirsty gasped, pointing to a tatty Transit van driving about twenty feet ahead of them.

  Gillian ran her gaze over it but failed to see what Kirsty obviously could. ‘What?’ she demanded, a little too crossly.

  ‘There was a hand at the window.’

  ‘A hand?’

  Kirsty nodded, her face now ashen. ‘Covered in blood.’

  Gillian’s foot
lifted off the accelerator, and the gap between them and the van ahead expanded to about forty feet. ‘Don’t be . . .’

  ‘Ridiculous? No, just get closer. There’s blood on the glass.’

  There was something in her daughter’s tone that made Gillian do what she was told. She edged her car forwards until she, too, could see smears on the pane. ‘I don’t think it’s blood. It’s just dirt.’

  ‘That’s the marks on the outside. We’re not close enough yet.’

  ‘Any closer and I’ll be on his bumper.’

  ‘Signal, make it look like you want to overtake – then you can get up his arse and he’ll think you’re just a crap driver.’

  Gillian bit back the urge to reprimand her daughter for her language, but instead signalled to overtake, and then pulled closer to both the white line and the van’s rear bumper. She tilted her head to the right, as if peering along the side of the van for oncoming vehicles, but all the time kept her gaze on the small square of glass in one back door. She was within a car’s length when she spotted the marks on the window. For all she wanted to deny that it was blood, she knew she couldn’t. ‘It’s writing,’ she breathed.

  Kirsty squinted up at it. ‘It says “So”.’

  Gillian nodded. ‘Phone the police,’ she said quietly. She dropped back a bit and memorized the van’s registration number. What lay behind those closed back doors? She wondered why the hand hadn’t reappeared during the minutes she’d been in pursuit. And why it had not attempted to complete its message with a final ‘S’.

  Goodhew slowed to take a left back towards Parkside Station, just as the radio crackled into life. Ford Transit, Victor 3-0-6 Echo, Yankee, Alpha. Location Bravo 1102 travelling between Lode and Swaffham Bulbeck. Reported possible injured passenger in rear of vehicle.

  Goodhew instantly activated the lights and the siren, swinging the patrol car to the right, into the bus lane which ran along the edge of Newmarket Road. He floored the accelerator and the vehicle responded, leaping rapidly to sixty as he kept it on the red tarmac that lay between the kerb and the main flow of stagnant traffic.

  He guessed it was still about two miles to the end of the road, two miles equalling two minutes at this speed. And it just wasn’t fast enough.

  The speedo nudged seventy as he approached the humpbacked bridge that spanned the railway line. At the peak of the hump the patrol car rose in a shallow arc, lifting away from the red stone parapet.

  He gripped the wheel tighter and, as the tyres hit the ground again, drove hard through the sweeping curve that cut through the inter-war housing sprawl on the other side.

  At the end of the bus lane, he veered into a gap between two trucks, over-steering while skidding towards an oncoming learner driver.

  He hauled the steering wheel to the left, and the car responded, first listing then straightening itself in the middle of the road, gobbling up the dirty white line beneath its front valance.

  A crash barrier sprang up, dividing the carriageways a few feet ahead. Goodhew again yanked the wheel to pull to the left of it, and continue the approach to the Quy roundabout. The front wing clipped the barrier and the bumper’s end cap sprang off, bouncing off the car’s body before flying backwards into the road.

  The roundabout itself was a half mile in circumference. Aluminium railings, steel-grey tarmac, then he took the second exit: Burwell and Fordham.

  He shouted into the radio. ‘Have they caught it yet?’

  ‘No, still searching. What’s your location?’

  ‘Quy roundabout. Who’s in pursuit?’

  ‘DC Kincaide, one marked car and the helicopter. There are others on the way but you’re still ahead of them.’

  ‘And no other sightings?’

  ‘Nothing yet. Member of public lost sight of the van during the bends at Swaffham Bulbeck.’

  Craig knew there would be police chasing him, and perhaps a helicopter too, but for anyone who knew the landscape of the Fens it was easy enough. Springtime made the trees flourish, the hedges thick and the countryside more accessible to the public. By early summer it was easy to hide there, if you knew enough about the concealed entrances and derelict grain stores.

  The Transit simply reversed into a farm track and used a thick screen of horse-chestnut and hawthorn trees to let its pursuers rush by. A heap of four rusting cars stood under the overhang of branches, three of them stacked in a precarious pyramid with an old Fiat Strada at the top, decorated with bird droppings and the remnants of dead leaves. The Transit now slipped into the gap between the cars and the nearby tree trunks.

  A minute later the police helicopter passed high above, too busy catching up with and overtaking the police vehicles to notice.

  The car standing on its own was an old-style model Renault Megane. Craig quickly unlocked it and opened all four doors. Transferring Kimberly was relatively easy, as the threat of anything happening to dear little Riley rendered her as good as useless, and she took her place in the passenger seat without any argument.

  He next carried the policewoman, who was now partly conscious. The small amount of resistance she made helped him propel her into the rear seat, directly behind Kimberly. Stefan was the most awkward, flopping around like he had jelly for a spine; ironic that he was the one passenger who would have to change seats yet again.

  Last to be moved was Riley, not destined to sit in the car with the others, but gently placed in the boot like the precious cargo he now was. The look of openness and trust had disappeared from his little face, but he didn’t struggle or cry, just shook his head and said, ‘I don’t like it,’ as the boot lid slammed shut. Craig figured there were a lot of things in life that weren’t to be liked, but that didn’t mean they weren’t necessary.

  He started the engine, and checked his watch before he pulled out on to the road, continuing in the same direction as before. As he changed up through the gears, crunching into second and again into third, he shook his head and indulged in a little smirk. He was entitled to suffer from some nerves, after all, and as much as this part of it was risky, it was also the climax of his plan. Nerves were good: they kept the mind in focus and the adrenaline pumping – and never had his mind been more focused. This, finally, was his endgame, and the prize was almost within his grasp.

  Kincaide passed Burwell and reached the outskirts of Fordham, with the marked car in tow and a helicopter overhead. The Transit van seemed to have vanished into thin air, and the worry that it was somewhere behind them was beginning to niggle at the back of Kincaide’s mind.

  He pressed on, desperately hoping that he’d round the next bend to find the van had crashed, involving only a minor RTA and a humiliating arrest. There would be good coverage from that, his friends in the press would want pictures and then, as far as the police shots went, it would be him.

  He approached a T-junction but there was still nothing in sight. Left or right?

  Where the fuck was that van?

  Better look decisive. He turned left.

  Kincaide considered the report of the blood on the wall at Viva Cottage. He hoped it wasn’t Kimberly’s, since rescuing a dead mother wouldn’t have the same impact.

  But then, again, he’d get the credit for apprehending a killer.

  He uttered one word aloud, ‘Cool.’

  The following police car was approaching tight in his rear-view mirror, so he squeezed the steering wheel and leant forward, trying to see further up the road. He was definitely the man of the moment.

  Another hundred yards and the radio crackled.

  ‘All units. Renault Megane involved in suspicious behaviour on the level crossing between Burwell and Fordham. Please respond.’

  Perhaps there was no connection? ‘Shit.’ Of course there was a connection.

  The railway line was about half a mile behind him.

  He slammed on the brakes and immediately swung across the road and into a wide driveway on his right, mounting the pavement in order to make the turn. As he suspected, PC Rimes
, driving the other car, knew the area less well. Rimes now shot past him, fumbling through a turn further up the road.

  The chopper banked sideways and would have the crossing in sight almost instantly.

  Kincaide screeched back up the same road. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to reach the vehicle first.

  No. No. No.

  He turned right, back on to the Burwell road. The level crossing was ahead, the gates open, traffic flowing freely.

  ‘They’re not here,’ he yelled as he drove across it.

  Marks replied, ‘There’s another crossing. Can you see it?’

  Kincaide looked, and immediately spotted it to his right.

  ‘It’s about half a mile.’

  The next right-hand turn led to nothing much except the railway itself and the adjacent but unoccupied crossing keeper’s cottage.

  The helicopter hovered above, and straddling the tracks was a dark-blue Renault.

  Marks spoke again. ‘If they are in the car, get them out. There’s a train due in three minutes, and we can’t seem to make contact with it.’

  Kincaide pulled up at the side of the road, and leapt from his vehicle at a run. He scrambled to the top of a grassy mound rising ten yards back from the track. The car had three occupants: Stefan Golinski in the driver’s seat, Kimberly Guyver sitting next to him, and PC Sue Gully in the back.

  ‘There’s a train coming. Move the car,’ he shouted. ‘Move the fucking car.’ Kimberly turned her head in his direction, but no one else moved.

  Kincaide looked along the track in both directions. There was nothing in sight. But he’d heard of trains gliding silently into groups of railway workers and he stayed put.

  He didn’t yell again, just stared down into the car. Stefan stared at the middle of the steering wheel, content to wait. At peace with the decision that they all should die.

  But Kimberly never looked away from him, her eyes pleading with him, begging him to help.

  Gully lay in the back of the car, but it was hard to see her clearly.

  He could pick out the blue of her uniform, and the white of her upturned palm. And the rust-red smears that soiled it.