by Ryan Casey
As he waded through the tall grass, the wind completely stopping and a total silence coming over the place, he felt like that main character off Jurassic Park 2 all of a sudden. Wading through the velociraptor filled grass, the velociraptors just waiting for their moment, waiting to drag their prey down into the unknown.
Brian saw another few movements in the grass up ahead—another few twitches—but then something else caught his eye in the distance.
The garage.
It was painted white, and also had moss and ivy clawing out of control on the side. The garage door was big, thick and black. The roof looked solid, sturdy. Along the side, three little rectangular windows lined the wall, clouded through lack of cleaning.
Brian felt a knot in his stomach. He paced through the grass towards the garage. He was desperate to get there now. Andy Wilkinson had seen something here, and if he wasn’t going to speak out to the police about what it was, Brian was going to find it himself.
Or he wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t going to find a thing. Maybe Andrew Wilkinson was diverting them, or the garage was completely irrelevant to the case.
But Brian had picked up a kind of intuition during his many years as a police officer. A little sense that ignited every now and then. And right now, that sense was crying out at him, ordering him to investigate this garage.
He marched through the grass, which got taller with every step as he approached his destination. His legs were completely soaked, his left shoe squelching with water. But he was close. He was almost at the garage. He was almost there.
He stepped out of the grass. Almost slipped, forgetting how algae-covered the ground was. He held his hands out for balance. Made his way around the front of the garage. Reached down to lift the door up.
A padlock. Shiny. Silver. New.
“Fuck it,” Brian muttered. He stepped back. Looked at this garage. He was pissed that he couldn’t get inside. But was he surprised? If this place had any secrets, they wouldn’t just be there for layabout kids to come and see. The very presence of a padlock—a new-looking padlock—told Brian a lot about the garage. It told him that someone was trying to hide something in here.
His spidey senses were tingling like a bitch.
He looked over his shoulder. Looked at the thick hedges at the bottom of the yard area. Looked at the overturned wheelbarrow, bricks tumbling out of it onto the tarmac. Looked at the little wooden gate at the bottom of the yard, splinted and cracked.
He turned back around and crept down the side of the garage.
The windows were high up. Bloody high up. And he wasn’t short. They seemed designed just to let light in the garage more than anything. Brian tried to step on his tiptoes, but it was slippery down this strip of concrete too. One fall, he’d be on his ass in the tall velociraptor grass. One fall, and he’d be a call away from another ruddy trip to hospital.
He tried his best to peek through the glass anyway. His intuition was battling like mad with his common sense, and usually in situations like this, his intuition won. He got a peek into the garage. Got a little peek, just through the dusty window. Saw a cabinet. Saw what looked like a car. Saw—
“What the bloody ‘ell do you think you’re doing?”
The voice nearly made his heart blast out of his chest. He spun around. Slipped on the concrete. Tumbled onto his knees, stinging them in the process.
At the bottom of the yard, by the rickety gate, a man stood. He was bald. Had bushy eyebrows. He was wearing navy blue works overalls, which were covered with oil. So too were his hands. He looked at Brian with the look a sweet shop owner might give a kid if they caught them stealing from the counter.
“I…” Brian’s voice caught in his throat. Bloody bastard intuition, bumming him over again. “I was just—”
“This is private property,” the man said. He walked up the driveway with no trouble in his green, grip-tastic wellington boots. “So I reckon it’d be a good idea to shift before I call the police.”
Brian wanted to tell this thug that he was the police, but he was here without jurisdiction. He was here without a warrant. And he was trespassing.
Besides, he’d seen something else. Something that scared him. Something that clutched at his throat; stopped him from speaking his mind.
“Well, go on then,” the bald man said, raising his voice.
Brian brushed his hands against his stinging knees. Nodded. Wandered down the driveway and past the man, who watched his every step.
He opened the gate at the bottom of the yard. Turned around, and saw the bald man was still looking at him. There was something in his eyes. A knowing. Or a panic, rather. The look a criminal gave when they were so, so close to being caught.
Brian’s intuition told him to rugby tackle this fucker to the ground.
His common sense told him to step out of this driveway immediately and get his colleagues down here.
For once, he trusted his common sense.
As he walked down the road beside the house, his body shaking with a mixture of the cold and the shock, he saw the minivan parked up on the kerb—the minivan with the logo to match that on the bald man’s work overalls.
Galaxy Car Mechanics.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Brian sat in his car and held his phone to his ear, listening to the ring of the dialling tone.
“Come on, Brad,” he said. “Pick the fuck up.”
He felt a dribble of sweat building up beneath his armpits. He’d tried ringing Samantha first, and she wasn’t answering either. Where the fuck were they? They were supposed to be police, after all. Police were supposed to answer their phones when there was a fucking crisis.
And this, right here, was a crisis.
Brian looked out at Damien Halshaw’s house through his car window. He could still see the Galaxy Car Mechanics van parked outside, which meant that the bald guy in the Galaxy overalls was still in there.
The bald guy. Like Harri Johnson had said she’d seen in the car outside her house. Galaxy Car Mechanics, where Andrew Wilkinson insisted his car was in for servicing with.
A Galaxy Car Mechanics employee visiting Damien Halshaw’s abandoned old house, where Andrew Wilkinson claimed he once saw something that ruined his life. Something he was too afraid to talk about, to this day.
The links were undeniable. This wasn’t coincidence. There was something in this.
“You have reached the voicemail of—”
“Shitting hell,” Brian muttered. His legs were stinging after his collision with the ground outside Damien Halshaw’s garage. They were shaking too. Shaking, as common sense and intuition had that ruddy good battle of theirs that always seemed to screw up his life in some way or another.
He tried dialling Carter again and watched the Galaxy Car Mechanics van from afar.
What was a Galaxy Car Mechanics employee doing at Damien Halshaw’s old house?
What was a new padlock doing on that garage door?
How did any of this piece together?
“Brian, give it a rest. I was just in interview.”
Samantha’s voice took Brian by surprise. “Carter, I… You need to—need to—”
“Woah, woah, slow down there,” she said. “You sound like you’ve just run a bloody marathon. What’s up?”
Brian squeezed his sweaty forehead with his left hand. Tried to formulate the thoughts spinning around his head into words. “Samantha, I… you need to listen really closely now. I… I’m at Damien Halshaw’s house.”
“Damien who?”
“Halshaw,” Brian shouted. “The kid who—who Andrew Wilkinson had the fling with. The one we discussed in the interview. With the garage.”
A pause at Carter’s end.
“Samantha, are you—”
“Why are you there?” she asked.
Frustration welled up inside Brian. “Why the bloody hell do you think I’m here? For a nice stroll around an abandoned building? The garage. I came to look at the garage.”
A
nother pause at Carter’s end. “And?”
“And it’s—it’s locked. With a new padlock.”
“Well that settles things.”
“No, it doesn’t settle anything,” Brian said. He kept his eyes on the Galaxy minivan. “A Galaxy employee showed up. Told me to go away. He’s… he’s sniffing around that garage. There’s something in there, Samantha. Andrew Wilkinson wasn’t bullshitting.”
“Brian, Andrew Wilkinson just confessed to the murder of Sam Betts, Beth Turner and Janine Ainscough.”
Brian went silent. A sharp pain sliced through his stomach, rocked his vision. “He… he confessed?”
“Yes, Brian. He did. His lawyer tried to get him to weasle his way out, but he’s admitted it. We’ve got him. We’ve got the Eye Snatcher.”
The joy in Samantha’s voice wasn’t matched by Brian’s feelings. Because he knew there was something off here. He knew something wasn’t right. The coincidences, there were too many. “He’s hiding something. He’s…”
“Brian, he’s admitted to a triple child murder. What could he possibly be hiding that’s worse than that?”
Brian had to admit that Carter had a point. Confessing to the murder of three school kids—no, the brutalising of three school kids—was about as bad as a man could do. He was ruined. He’d spend the rest of his life in jail, punished, tormented, and rightly so.
So what could he possibly be hiding that was worth years of suffering if indeed he wasn’t a murderer?
“Come back to the station, Brian,” Samantha said. “Few of us are heading to the local. And I know how much you love pubs.”
“Yeah, right.” Although the thought of going to a pub was hardly ideal, he had to admit his mind was craving a break from all the craziness of this case. The easiest thing to do right now would be to drive away, go back to the station, celebrate like the rest of the police department.
And Hannah, too. With his mind cleared of the case, he could focus on her pregnancy more, whatever decision she decided to make. He could be there to support her. He could go back to therapy, albeit with a different therapist after the last one sung to Andrew Wilkinson’s lawyer. He could get in touch with Davey for the first time in yonks, actually try to strike up some kind of catch up with him, too.
And then he saw the bald man stepping out of Damien Halshaw’s driveway and walking back towards the Galaxy van.
Brian’s muscles seized up. “My iCloud password is ‘DaveyHannah99’. If you don’t hear from me in the next fifteen minutes, call me. And if I don’t answer, check where I’m at on Location Services.”
The bald Galaxy employee stepped up to his van. Rubbed his hands against his coat, looked up and down the empty road.
“What are you doing?” Samantha asked. “And what’s all this iCloud bullshit—”
“Just do it, okay?”
Another pause on Carter’s end. Laughter in the background. “You really don’t think this is over, do you?”
Brian watched the Galaxy man open the driver’s door. Took another look up and down the road. Slammed the door shut.
“No,” Brian said. “And if you look beyond your nose for a minute, you won’t either.”
“Flattering. Very flattering.”
“What’s the point in being dishonest when you really believe something?”
Brian watched the van. Saw that it was still. Engine hadn’t started up.
“Where you at again?”
“Location Services. That’s where I’m at.”
“Jesus, Brian. Get you and all your technological lingo.”
Brian thought back to the first time he’d really needed Location Services. The way it’d saved his life, but cost a fellow officer theirs. “Don’t come for me if I… Just don’t come on your own if anything happens, okay?”
Carter laughed. “You know me. I’m—”
The minivan kicked into life. Started to pull away from the kerb. Brian cancelled the call.
His chest tightening, he watched as the minivan drove down the road off into the distance. Watched the black smoke plume out of its exhaust.
He waited one second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
And then he started up the car and he drove.
TWENTY-NINE
Darren Hopps drove slower than he usually drove because he wanted to be totally sure the guy behind him in the black Yaris was actually following him.
He took a left turn at the Longridge crossroads.
The black Yaris took a left turn.
He took a right turn at the bottom of the road by Sainsbury’s, the road looping back around in the direction he’d just come from.
The black Yaris bit the bait. Bit it hard.
Darren gritted his teeth. The steering wheel was going sweaty between his fingers. The smell of spilled coffee that he’d knocked over the passenger seat yesterday was strong, unappealing.
He knew someone would come sniffing around eventually. It was something he was prepared for, especially with such a high profile case.
But this guy in the black Yaris. The way he’d been peeking through the garage windows back at the old Halshaw garage. That look on his face when Darren had told him to get screwed and piss off. He looked like a dog that’d shat on the sofa. So knowingly guilty.
So… police.
He stopped at the lights. Rain peppered down on the windscreen of his minivan. The static from the radio hissed out as he entered a bad signal area, so he smacked his hand against it and cut it off.
He checked his mirror. Guy in the black Yaris still there. Still following him.
There was only one thing for it now. Only one thing he could do, one move he could make.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Switched the SIM card. Dialled the number that he’d etched in his memory but made sure to delete from his phone whenever he had to call it—which was rare. He added three reverse digits before the number, then made sure to go into an external calling app to add an extra layer of security to the call.
He listened to the first dialling tone, the lights still on red.
He listened to the second dialling tone, the Yaris still behind him.
Midway through the third dialling tone, he got an answer.
“What do you want?”
“We’ve got a problem,” Darren said.
THIRTY
Brian followed the Galaxy Car Mechanics minivan for what felt like forever.
He squinted at his dashboard. Eleven-thirty. Shit, he must’ve been on this bald bastard’s tail for the best part of twenty minutes now. And he was out around the industrial estates between Grimsargh village and the city centre. Seemed like the minivan had looped around at some stage, but Brian was still on his case, still following from a distance.
As the annoying chatter of radio adverts murmured on in the background, Brian thought about ringing DI Carter again. Getting her to bring a few people down here. He was stupid for following this guy alone, especially if he had something to do with the Eye Snatcher killings.
But Brian couldn’t put his comrades in the same sort of risk as he’d put Cassy Emerson in the past. He couldn’t have another repeat. He wouldn’t make it through it.
The minivan slowed down as a turning to an industrial estate appeared up ahead. This place was barren. It was like a forgotten part of Preston, with no houses, no sign of life, just industrial warehouses. It was like being on another planet completely. Which meant that Brian had to be on his guard.
He waited until the minivan had fully turned down the road before speeding up and indicating. As he turned around the corner, he saw that the van was making a swift right turn part way down the road.
“Not getting away that easy,” Brian muttered, as he sped up his car down this new road and then took a right and followed the minivan.
The minivan was way up in the distance, but the road was long and straight so Brian had good eyes on it. Trees surrounded this road—trees held back by iron fences. The road was narrow, and Brian fel
t the tires of his car bumping over loose stones and fallen twigs. He turned his radio off, knowing that although only he could hear it, he wanted to create the illusion of being as quiet as possible.
The minivan took another right, seemingly out of nowhere, fifty feet or so ahead. Brian accelerated again, being careful to not lose the van but also aware that any sudden movements from him would look totally suspicious.
He hoped he had good signal. Hoped 4G, that he payed a bloody truckload for, was strong around here.
He hoped just to have the security of Location Services even if nobody was coming to help him.
He slowed down when he approached the right turn that the minivan had gone down. It was tiny, even narrower than the road he’d just headed along. Brian looked in his rear-view mirror. The opening to the tree-laden road seemed miles away. He was deep in the belly of the beast, might as well get a little deeper.
When he turned around the corner, he saw the minivan had stopped.
He stopped right away, more out of instinct than anything. Stopped, right there, in the middle of the road.
The bald guy stepped out of the van. He had his phone to his ear, and was speaking rather loud. He took a little glance in Brian’s direction, but there was no recognition there. He looked away as quickly as he’d looked at him, and jogged from the van and into the distance.
Brian clutched the steering wheel with his sweaty hands. He knew that he’d have to get out of his car now the minivan was blocking the route. Shit. He shouldn’t have come here. He should’ve just done the fricking sensible thing and got a search warrant for that garage at Damien Halshaw’s old house. There was something in there. Something to do with Andrew Wilkinson, something to do with some past altercation with the Halshaw family.
Something to do with Galaxy mechanics, and this bald guy working for them.
He couldn’t sit around though, so he took a few steadying breaths and he stepped out of his car.
Looking back at his car as he prepared to close the door, he thought about just getting back inside. Driving back to safety. To comfort and security.
