Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  ‘As you wish,’ he said in a heavier tone. ‘But if the pair of you are to continue, I need a hundred percent commitment. No distractions from what we’re here to do. Understand?’

  She gulped the rest of her wine and nodded. ‘Totally, guv. You have my word on it.’

  His familiar wolfish grin was back. ‘Good. Now, having got that out of the way, you can buy me a drink this time – and it’s a double Scotch.’

  CHAPTER 16

  The female cleaner wrinkled her nose in disgust at the sweet, nauseating smell hanging in the air like a poisonous miasma. Rose Nicholls had been at the Larchfield Secure Psychiatric Hospital for five years now and looking after Dr Emrys Jones’ small consulting room – cleaning the place and emptying the wastepaper bin in the evening twice a week – had always been part of her duties. On this occasion, she’d been told that the good doctor had gone on holiday, leaving the flat assigned to him when he was on cover duty locked up, so she hadn’t expected to have much to do when she dragged her vacuum into the consulting room, but the smell in the place really bothered her. It was almost as if something – a rat maybe – had died and was rotting away somewhere behind the skirting boards. Yet the strange thing was, the smell seemed to be emanating from the flat itself, which she had no access to. Most peculiar.

  In the end, unable to stand it any longer, she went to find one of the security officers and left him with the problem. ‘You might need to call out a pest control officer,’ she advised him, ‘unless it’s the drains again.’

  But Terry Bradley didn’t need to do any such thing. When he finally managed to open the door of the flat with his skeleton key, it immediately became apparent that the smell had nothing to do with a dead rat or a blocked drain, and at the same time it also became apparent that Dr Jones was not away on a fishing trip, as the hospital had been led to believe. In fact, the psychiatrist was still there, in his private quarters, but his corpse was showing definite signs of degeneration and the pencil projecting from his right eye-socket indicated that he had certainly not died from natural causes.

  *

  Kate was reluctant to leave the bar she had gone to with Roscoe, since that meant having to return home to Hayden, and she did her best to try to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. As a result, she consumed more red wine than was advisable and by the time the DI dropped her back at the police station she was developing a nasty headache. To make matters worse, it was only after she had climbed into her car – blatantly ignoring the fact that she had to be well over the alcohol limit – and was a couple of miles down the main road, that the disembodied voice which suddenly joined her in the car reminded her that the TETRA police radio she should have returned to the station at the end of her tour of duty was still in the long pocket of the leather coat she had dumped on the front passenger seat beside her.

  But the lapse paled into insignificance with the message being broadcast by the control room operator.

  ‘Burglary in progress. Any mobile able to attend …’

  She didn’t wait to hear the full address. She already knew it. She had been there before, following the murder of Elsie Norman. Disentangling the radio from the lining of her pocket and clutching it in her left hand and the steering wheel in her right as she gunned the little car to well over 70mph, she acknowledged with her call-sign and confirmed that she was on her way. But there was a sting in the tail.

  ‘Single crewed,’ she added breathlessly. ‘Request back-up.’

  ‘Negative at present,’ the operator replied after a brief pause. ‘All other units committed.’

  ‘Great!’ she muttered cynically to herself, remembering having to respond to similar ‘shouts’ on her own in the recent past and wondering why this sort of thing always seemed to happen to her.

  But there was nothing she could do about it – it was just sod’s law – and she could only hope that another unit would be freed up by the time she got to Elsie Norman’s home.

  She was out of luck, though, and when she finally pulled in on the opposite side of the road to the former crime scene, extinguishing the lights of her car as she did so, she saw just an empty, moonlit street in front of her.

  For a moment she sat there, studying the chalet bungalow through narrowed eyes, but the place was in darkness – not even the faintest glimmer of a torch showing in either of the front windows. The driver’s window was partially open and she listened intently. A dog barked from one of the bungalows further down the street, but otherwise there wasn’t a sound, save for the ticking of the Mazda’s hot engine.

  Then, quite suddenly, her radio barked, shattering the silence, and with an oath she snatched it from the front seat and switched it off. Damn it! She should have thought about that and silenced the thing before her arrival, but the damage was done now. She could only hope that the sound of it had not been picked up outside the car or if it had, it had not been recognized as a police radio.

  Very carefully she opened the car door and stepped out, her torch in her hand. Then, closing the door with equal care, she walked quickly across the street to the opposite pavement. The dog was barking again and she heard the faint sound of music coming from one of the other adjacent properties. The gate to the chalet bungalow stood wide open and, slipping through, she resisted the temptation to run for the cover of the porch. Instead, she walked slowly and as quietly as possible up the concrete path to the bay window, which jutted out to her left.

  The curtains had been pulled across, so she was unable to see into the room that lay beyond. She pressed her ear against the window, closing her eyes to concentrate on her sense of hearing – a trick she had learned from an old sweat during her probationary constable days – but she could detect no sound of movement inside.

  She had seen on her approach that the bay window on the other side of the porch was also curtained, so made no effort to check it out, but instead headed down the side of the house along the narrow passage that led to the back door. She found the smashed window in the door immediately, her feet crunching on the broken glass before she picked out the shards glittering in the moonlight.

  She tried the door and felt it give. Gritting her teeth, she pushed it open, waiting for the creak of hinges, which never came. She forced herself to stand still for a few seconds. Silence, but her sixth-sense told her that she was not alone. Her straining eyes failed to pick out any sinister figures lurking among the shadows, but something told her that someone else was there, in the bungalow, maybe someone who had detected her arrival and was standing motionless somewhere in the gloom.

  Common sense dictated a quick withdrawal. Perhaps the intruder was just some opportunist tearaway, capitalizing on Elsie Norman’s death and simply breaking in to steal whatever he could find? A no-account tea leaf, who was likely to make off as soon as he realized he had been sussed? On the other hand, this could be an entirely different kind of villain. A nasty thug or deranged junkie perhaps, who had no intention of taking to his heels, but would stand his ground, come what may. If that were the case, she could be running the risk of a violent confrontation that could end very badly for her. But she had never been a quitter and her inherent stubbornness, coupled with an adrenalin-fuelled determination to ‘feel someone’s collar’, overruled any fears she might otherwise have had for her own safety.

  Gripping her heavy torch in one hand – and cursing her negligence in leaving her police issue CS gas spray in her drawer in the CID office – she advanced a few cautious steps across the kitchen to the inner door and paused again, her heart thumping and her eyes searching the gloomy hallway.

  Then, satisfied that there was no one hiding there, she stepped through the doorway and turned to check the half-closed door on her left, directing the beam of the torch into the room on the other side. It proved to be a bathroom and toilet, and was too small for anyone to use as a hiding place.

  Next to this room was another much smaller door and she found it accessed an airing cupboard, complete with slatted she
lves over a copper hot-water tank. Nowhere to hide in there either, she mused grimly, pushing the door to.

  On the same side of the hallway, just beyond the staircase, she found a dining room, furnished with a long table and chairs, an old-fashioned sideboard, and some sort of glass-fronted cabinet containing porcelain figurines. Again, there was no sign of anyone inside.

  Conscious of the fact that she was trembling, she crossed to the opposite side of the hallway, pausing for a second to pluck up courage before pushing another door open with the butt of her torch. She glimpsed the settee and two armchairs of a neat sitting room, but only briefly, for the next instant she heard the sound of footsteps overhead. The intruder was in one of the bedrooms under the eaves.

  Quickly switching off her torch, she shrank back into the shadows as a beam of light illuminated the stairway from above and she heard the creak of the risers. Whoever had broken into the bungalow was now on his way down from the upper floor, but his unhurried, clomping steps suggested he was, as yet, unaware of her presence and saw no need for speed or stealth.

  She tensed as a tall, thin figure dressed in a dark coat stepped into view. But on the point of springing from the shadows to challenge him, she froze as the figure suddenly turned towards the kitchen. There was a mirror on the wall beside the kitchen door, facing down the hall towards the front of the bungalow, which briefly reflected not only the beam of his torch but also the face of the person holding it. In its glare the completely bald head and single glittering earring were unmistakable. This was no opportunist tea leaf or spaced-out junkie, but none other than the ruthless psychotic murderer half the force was currently looking for.

  Taken aback by the killer’s sheer audacity in returning to Elsie Norman’s home, Kate stared after the retreating figure with a sense of shock. What the hell had drawn him back to the scene of his brutal crime? Curiosity? To gloat? Or was there a more sinister reason? Like maybe to search for an address or any other information that might reveal the whereabouts of Iris Naylor?

  Whatever the reason, Kate was now presented with a terrible dilemma and, as she finally managed to shake herself out of her shocked reverie and stumble after her quarry, the question was burning in her brain; what could she possibly do on her own? As a police officer, she had a duty to try to make an arrest, but knowing she was up against someone who had already killed twice and from her own experience had shown himself to be a powerful antagonist, the likelihood of her being able to overpower him was virtually zero – and George was unlikely to throw his hands up in the air and say ‘It’s a fair cop.’

  There was no sign of the killer when she got to the end of the short garden and stopped to peer out of the open gateway into the lane that lay beyond. At first, she thought her dilemma had been resolved for her and she had lost him. But in the act of reaching for her radio, she saw an old Land Rover Defender with a light-coloured canvas hood parked a few yards away and caught a glimpse of the tall figure climbing in behind the wheel.

  Without thinking, she lurched forwards at a trot and managed to reach the rear of the vehicle just as the Land Rover’s lights came on. As the gears were noisily engaged and it began to pull away, she sprang for the tailboard and hauled herself up over it. Only when she had landed among the pile of hessian sacks that the back of the vehicle contained did the thought suddenly occur to her – what if the killer had spotted her climbing aboard in his rear-view mirror? She studied the back of the cab in the gloom and made a grimace. Well, it was too late to worry about that now and whether she liked it or not, she was going wherever George chose to take her. It was then that she checked her pocket and found she must have dropped her police radio in the lane and, not for the first time, had also left her personal mobile in her car.

  *

  Ted Roscoe was about to climb into bed in his small flat when the telephone rang. Muttering curses under his breath, he lifted the handset and snarled an answer.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Highbridge control room, guv,’ the caller replied. ‘We have an incident in progress.’

  Roscoe shook his head quickly to try and clear the fug that had developed after the two double whiskies he had downed following his visit to the bar with Kate Lewis.

  ‘What sort of incident?’ he retorted.

  ‘DS Lewis, guv,’ the operator continued. ‘She’s gone missing.’

  ‘Missing? What the hell do you mean by that?’

  ‘She attended an “intruders-on-premises” shout an hour ago and didn’t call in afterwards.’

  Roscoe’s anger almost boiled over. ‘I dropped her off at the nick earlier tonight and she was to go home. What the hell was she doing attending anything?’

  The operator remained calm. ‘She responded to an intruders-on-premises call, but failed to report back afterwards. We sent back-up to the address, but though the team found her sports car parked in the street outside, she was nowhere to be seen, and her radio was later found lying in a lane at the rear of the place. There’s an intensive search underway as we speak.’

  Roscoe was fully compos mentis now. ‘But surely you didn’t send her there on her own?’ he exclaimed, reaching for his trousers and shirt which he had draped over a chair beside the bed.

  ‘All other units were committed at the time,’ came the slightly defensive reply.

  The DI practically exploded. ‘Bloody hell, then she could have walked into almost anything,’ he fumed. ‘Give me the address.’

  And it was when the operator passed on those details that Roscoe started to feel really sick.

  CHAPTER 17

  Kate was a lot more than uncomfortable in the back of the Land Rover. George’s standard of driving was about as accomplished as a teenage novice on their first lesson, with noisy lurching gear changes and sudden heavy braking that could have rivalled Ted Roscoe’s worst efforts. As a result, she was forced to cling to the tailboard of the vehicle to avoid being tossed about from one side to the other like a straw bale.

  So far it did not seem likely that her unintentional abductor was aware she was on board and it was at first unclear where they were actually heading. But their destination did not remain a mystery for long. When the Land Rover slowed right down to turn into a suburban side street twenty minutes later, she was at last able to let go of the tailboard, slide across to one side of the vehicle and lift up part of the canvas soft top for a quick look. At once recognition dawned and she knew exactly where they were going – to Mabel Strong’s home address.

  She guessed George was aiming to break into the dead woman’s bungalow in much the same way as Elsie Norman’s place. She had already suspected that; he had to be after Iris Naylor’s address and now, having drawn a blank at the first crime scene, he had obviously decided to try the second. Why else would he risk capture by returning to both scenes so soon after the murders? But whatever his motives actually were, this time they were thwarted by circumstances he obviously had not foreseen. As they drove past the bungalow, Kate glimpsed a police area car parked outside the property and a uniformed figure standing at the lighted sitting room window, staring out into the street.

  She smiled grimly in the gloom, remembering that Roscoe had insisted on the latest crime scene being kept secure until the SOCO team had had the opportunity of carrying out a further forensic sweep in daylight. You’re out of luck, this time, George. So, what will your next move be? Slink back to your grubby bolt-hole to try and work out what to do next?

  As it turned out, she had hit the nail right on the head. Speeding away from the bungalow, the Land Rover headed deeper into the Levels, finally turning into a narrow, rutted track off a back road a few miles from Glastonbury. About a quarter of a mile further on, the vehicle came to an abrupt halt on a concrete hardstanding.

  Kate quickly burrowed into the sacks, pulling some of them over herself, just in case George decided to take a look in the back for some reason. But it didn’t happen and moments later she heard the killer climb out of the vehicle and slam the doo
r shut. Heavy footsteps receded and shortly afterwards there was the faint sound of another door slamming shut a lot further away.

  Carefully removing the sacks, she crept to the tailboard and peered out into a moonlit farmyard flanked by open fields on her right and a line of wooden barns and other ramshackle buildings on her left.

  Craning her neck to peer round the edge of the soft top, she saw that the Land Rover had been halted by a fence and five-barred gate, which separated the farm outbuildings from a wide area of broken tarmac with a two-storey, stone-built house at the far end. Pale yellow light flickered in one of the downstairs windows.

  The tailboard quivered uneasily as she climbed over and dropped to the ground, and she flinched as it then slammed back into the body of the vehicle with a loud metallic ‘crack’, which she felt sure would have been carried to the farmhouse on the still air.

  Darting across the yard to a gap between a wooden barn and what appeared to be some sort of low-walled enclosure, she crouched down in the gloom and stayed perfectly still as a door was thrown open and heavy footsteps marched quickly towards her hiding place. George obviously had very sharp ears despite the distance of the house from the Land Rover.

  The footsteps stopped just feet from where she was crouching and she shrank back against a large cattle trough, screwing up her nose as a nasty chemical-like smell, apparently issuing from the walled enclosure, enveloped her.

  There was silence for several anxious minutes and she visualized the killer standing there, motionless, eyes searching the moonlight while listening for a repeat of the sound that had alerted him – and the night was certainly alive. She became aware of faint rustlings in the stubby grass at her feet and something, probably a mouse, scurried from under the cattle trough and over her foot before vanishing into the shadows. Then a bat whirred past her face, barely missing her, and somewhere out in the fields the blood-curdling scream of a vixen cut through the air like a knife. Nocturnal country sounds that at any other time she would have found intriguing, but at that precise moment she had more important things on her mind than nature’s wonders.