All Her Fears: DI Tracy Collier Book 3

by Emmy Ellis

  “Stop it,” Father says. “And give me that.” He snatches the letter, scanning it, his face going redder by the second. “Shit.”

  “Yes. Shit. That’s what you are, a huge piece of it. So tell me, is she worth it? She’s married—you see that? Irene Roberts she’s called now. Don’t you think you ought to stay away from her? It’s clear she listened to my warning all those years ago. A slap or two helps and all. She’s getting on with her life, unlike you. Oh, and we mustn’t overlook what else it says in the letter. That you’ve told her you’re coming to get her, that you’ll send other people after her if she doesn’t do what you want. And that, I presume, is running away with you.”

  “Mind your own business,” Father says.

  Mother gapes at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing.” Father crumples the letter and slings the ball of paper into the open fire.

  It crackles and spits and growls, the flames licking upwards, as though the tips are trying to escape up the chimney, away from the tension.

  From the safety of the corner, he scrunches himself into a ball just like that letter and wishes his parents would be quiet, be like a normal family, same as the ones on TV. He stares at the fire, the sudden urge to throw himself on it taking over, and he shivers, afraid and confused at his feelings.

  Father and Mother shout at each other, but he’s tuned them out. He can’t listen anymore. There’s the sound of a door slamming, and it snaps him out of his trance. He looks at Mother, who rushes over and yanks him up by the collar of his shirt, dragging him into the kitchen.

  She sits him down at the table and tells him how wicked Irene Roberts is, how wicked Father is, and that they must be stopped, the pair of them. Then she outlines a plan, saying, “When your father is gone, I’ll be the one telling Irene fucking Roberts that people are coming to get her, and when I’m gone, too, you’ll take over.”

  Every day of his life for the next few years, she repeats it, goes over it, until it’s branded into his mind and becomes all he can think of.

  Mrs Roberts is a bad lady.

  Mrs Roberts has to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He sits in the taxi a few houses down from the green door, on the other side of the road, and waits. It’s six-thirty, and he thinks she’ll come out in a minute, to go off then stroll along Jester Street, ready to tout for business.

  Zello didn’t call him in on his night off to make up for the extra shift he’d missed because of Mrs Roberts. If that stupid cow hadn’t turned up at the care home, she’d still be alive. He’d got over it, over her, had taught himself some mindfulness activities, and it meant he’d forgotten about her, becoming the man who didn’t wear the trousers, the shirt, and the taupe tie—becoming this self, the one he is now—again—just because Mrs Roberts had grown old and needed care.

  She always was such a selfish bitch. Always took what she wanted without a second thought. Well, she can’t think at all now, can she, and he hopes her soul is rotting in Hell while her body is stone cold in the morgue fridge. Cold like her actions back then.

  Dirty Girl opens the green door, steps outside, and closes it behind her. She totters to the kerb and sticks a key in the lock of an older model car. What? She owns a vehicle? He wasn’t expecting that at all, and the thought flits through his mind that she must park up in town then go on foot to Jester Street. It’s a sensible thing to do, what with men out there willing to kill prostitutes—it should be funny, but it fucking isn’t—but this has messed with his plans.

  He was going to follow her in his car, slow, while she walked, until she turned the corner into an alley that leads to the high street, then nab her there, but now?

  You absolute bitch.

  She gets in the driver’s seat, and her headlights splash into the darkness. Can she see him across the street? Is he now visible as a silhouette inside the taxi, a greyed-out shape that’ll put her on alert?

  Fuckfuckfuck.

  He slams the heel of his hand on the steering wheel, and the horn blares. While he curses himself for his stupidity in allowing anger to take over, and stares over at her silhouette, he shakes his head and raises his hands as if to say: What a dumb sod I am, eh?

  Her shoulders lift, as if she’s shrugging, thinking nothing of what just happened, already relegating it to a file in her mind labelled INSIGNIFICANT. She backs up a bit, then oozes out of her parking space to drive right past him, not looking out of the passenger-side window. He has to be quick if he’s going to keep up with her and swears at himself yet again for parking this way round. She would have walked in the direction she’s now gone, so why didn’t he think of that?

  There’s too much on his mind. Too much going on.

  Why couldn’t life have stayed as it was those ten years before Mrs Roberts had come along? Why did everything have to go so wrong?

  He turns the car and manages to catch up to her, his front bumper inches from her rear one. Coaching himself calm, he backs off a little—he can’t be doing with her catching on to him tailing her. For all he knows, she could have clocked that he drives a taxi, back there when he’d hit the horn, so to see one right up her arse now isn’t what he needs.

  She drives to the multistorey car park, finds an empty spot on the lowest level, and gets out. No one else is around, so he swerves in beside her, leaps out as she’s turning the key to lock up, and punches her on the back of the head. Her keys go flying, landing with a clatter. She doesn’t have a chance to fight back. She surges forward from another punch he wallops her with, forehead smacking into the driver’s-side window, and he hits her again and again, until she’s subdued and dazed enough that he can bundle her into the boot of the taxi and zoom away.

  Cameras. There’s bound to have been cameras in there.

  That’s something he’ll have to think about later. He’ll decide what to do then. But he isn’t dressed in his usual clothing, and he looks nothing like who he really is, the person deep inside who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, doesn’t want to remember his childhood, doesn’t want to remember all the things he does, so if he’s seen on any CCTV, what does it matter?

  The taxi may pose a bit of a problem, though. Again, thoughts for another time.

  He travels through the streets at a sedate pace, not wanting to draw attention to himself. The light on the roof of the taxi is out, and he looks for all the world like a cabbie on his way home after a long shift.

  In his street, he glances around, ensuring no one can see him. Then he parks on the drive, gets out to open the garage door, then he’s back in the car, easing it inside. Engine and headlights off, he takes a moment, sitting in the darkness, to think about what just happened. Mother always said that if the plan deviates, things unravel. Things go wrong.

  He can only hope she isn’t right this time.

  Sucking in a long, soul-soothing breath, he exits the car, shuts the garage, and opens the boot. The little interior light comes on in the top-right corner, concentrated on her head and the tangled hair on it.

  He frowns.

  He lifts Dirty Girl out, and she groans, one arm wedged between them, the other dangling. She lifts that one and rubs her forehead, then her scalp, probably trying to ease the pain he’d inflicted. There’s a whole lot more pain in her future, but once she’s gone, he has nothing to worry about. There’s no one she can tell about what he made her do at Blooming Age. What he did to Mrs Roberts in that field. It seems ages ago now, as though it happened in another lifetime.

  What if she’s already told someone what happened?

  He flicks that annoying thought to the back of his mind and carries her into the house, recalling, for some bizarre reason, when this garage had been added to the property. His father had employed builders, and the new construction had sprouted up between this house and the one next door, and it hadn’t been long before the neighbour had done the same. These two houses had been the only ones with driveways between them. The rest are terraced, so only one neighbour
is joined to him, and they won’t hear anything anyway. Seems they’re out.

  While he takes her down into the basement, he recalls playing in the driveways with his skipping rope, before the garages had been built, before he’d been forced to become who he is now, when he’d worn other clothes more suited to who he truly is.

  He drops her on the floor, and she cries out. He switches on the light. Stares at the bitch in the corner, who has hope in her eyes, which quickly douses upon seeing him. Who had she expected other than him? Maybe the silly cow is delirious with hunger.

  “You can help me this time,” he says, “instead of sitting there watching like a useless piece of shit.”

  She sniffs in a breath, and he wonders if she’s imagining skinning Dirty Girl with him, just like he’d done in front of her with his latest acquisition in the other corner. No. He wouldn’t trust her with a fleshing knife—or any knife for that matter. It would end up plunged into his gut, his face, his heart.

  “You can kill her for me. That’ll teach you, won’t it, Irene?”

  She narrows her eyes in confusion, and he has no idea why. Doesn’t she remember her own name?

  “You can suffocate her,” he says. “That won’t take much energy, tying a bag over her head. You’ll be weaker than I’d like. I forgot to feed you, didn’t I?”

  Irene whimpers and nods, and Dirty Girl seems to come alive at the sound, snapping her head up and pushing on her hands so her torso is off the floor.

  “Irene?” Dirty Girl whispers. “But she’s dead… She’s old…”

  “Shut up.” He kicks Dirty Girl in the stomach.

  She lets out an oomph and rolls onto her back, clutching her midsection and crying.

  Noise. It hurts his head.

  “Stop that!” he snaps.

  Dirty Girl laughs, bordering on hysterical, and he stares at her. What the hell set her off?

  “Oh God,” Dirty Girl says, more burbles coming out of her wide mouth. “To think it’s going to end like this. I thought…I thought it would be somewhere else, at the hands of someone else.”

  “What the fuck are you on about?” he says, getting hacked off at her babbling.

  “Oh, knob off, you,” she says, sounding weary of him, like he doesn’t matter, is of no consequence.

  His anger level rises. She’s supposed to be frightened of him, not laughing. He kicks her again, but she only cackles louder.

  “You,” he says, pointing to Irene. “You’re going to shut her up.”

  Irene shakes her head, and he bends over to haul Dirty Girl to her feet, shoving her against the wall so her head smacks into it. She glares at him, defiance and maybe a hint of madness in her shining irises, and he has to look away, the freckles on her cheeks dancing in his mind’s eye. Why hadn’t he noticed them before? If he had, he’d never have chosen her. Mrs Roberts hadn’t had any.

  Shit.

  “What’s the matter?” Dirty Girl asks. “Lost your bottle?” She smiles. “It’s easy, you know, killing, although I reckon being killed isn’t. Want to find out?”

  What is this? Reverse psychology? He isn’t having any of it, isn’t allowing her to derail his plans. She’s going to die, and that’s the end of it. No pissing about.

  He drags her to the table in the middle, forcing her to bend so her front is flush against the top. Syringes and small bottles skitter off and land on the floor. It sounds like one of the medicines have broken. He reaches into the drawer beneath for cable ties, the bright yellow of them glaring, too much for his frazzled nerves. He binds her wrists behind her, then grips her hair and slams her face down. A satisfying crack, a pained growl, and blood splattering onto the wood.

  That’s her nose fucked.

  He smiles, more in control now, and secures her ankles together. Then he whips her over onto her back and stares at the new freckles on her cheeks, only they’re red and not brown.

  “Do you want to find out?” he asks, “what it’s like to be killed?”

  She grins, her teeth claret-covered. “I do.” Her eyes gleam even more. “I fucking do. Go on, do it. Kill me. Make all this shit go away—all the lies, the deceit, the bastard fear.”

  He frowns, unsure what to say to that. She’s meant to fight it, to be afraid of death.

  “I’m tired of it all,” she says. “Of everything.”

  “Shut your fucking face,” he says, sensing the control slipping from him to Dirty Girl. This wasn’t how it was meant to go, her taking the reins, orchestrating events. He roughly manhandles her to a chair at the other end of the table and presses her into it. “You’re going to sit there and shut the hell up.” Then he stuffs a rag into her mouth.

  The bitch laughs again, the gurgles muffled.

  She’s insane, got to be.

  “Now you,” he says, grabbing scissors from the table drawer and going over to Irene. He snips the cable ties and lifts her to her feet. “You’re going to do exactly what I said. That bag over there.” He jerks his head at a plastic carrier hanging from a hook on the wall by Mother and her crones. “Empty the contents out and put the bag over this bitch’s head.”

  Irene hobbles as though she hasn’t walked for months, and he almost laughs along with Dirty Girl, who is still letting out an irritating racket. Irene takes the bag down and shuffles to the table, wincing, tears falling, and pours the things out. Several glass eyeballs roll over the wooden surface, a few onto the floor, and Irene squeals, jumping back as much as she’s able in her condition.

  Shit stains her legs.

  Dear God…

  “Do it,” he says. “Put that bag over her head and pull it tight around her neck.”

  She does as she’s told, sobbing, sniffing, and while Dirty Girl just sits there and lets it happen, as though she’d meant what she’d said, and she’s truly had enough, he shoves her hair inside then secures a long cable tie around her neck, pulling the strap tight.

  “And now we stand and watch her suffer,” he says, “for what the likes of her do to people like me and Mother.”

  He stares, transfixed as Dirty Girl breathes, and the bag flattens to the contours of her face, then billows out as she exhales. The fascinating motions repeat, repeat, repeat until the bag is sucked to her face and doesn’t release again. Despite claiming she wants to die, once there’s no more air, Dirty Girl struggles. She brings her hands up to the cable tie, fingers scrabbling to gain purchase, and her body writhes. Then she falls off the chair, slapping onto the floor, and he’s unable to take his attention off her.

  She’s dying, without him having to do a thing—he’s not to blame for this one.

  Irene is.

  Irene.

  He spins, glancing around—there’s Mother, there’s the fake Mrs Roberts, and the new bitch makes three, but Irene isn’t there with them or in her corner. He spins again, and she advances on him, the scissors he’d used to clip her cable ties raised above her head, the point aiming straight for him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tracy had stayed with Barrows for longer than her time slot, the therapist saying Tracy was her last patient and she didn’t have anything to rush home for. They’d nattered for ages, Tracy actually comfortable for once, the same as she was when chatting with Damon, or when she’d been proper friends with her old mate Kathy.

  It didn’t make sense, was alien, but she liked it.

  “Therapists also fuck up in life,” Barrows said now. “I’m divorced. No kids. Married to my job and patients. Apparently, I care more for them than I did my ex-husband, and now I look back on it, he was right.” Barrows shrugged and smiled, although it was a sad one.

  “Glad to know it isn’t just me who’s a fuck-up,” Tracy said. “I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever be free of this shit. At the moment, it’s all my fears getting to me—fear of what might happen if… Well, that subject is what I told you I won’t talk about.”

  “It’ll come out eventually, you know.” Barrows sipped her coffee—they’d switched
from Coke an hour ago, and it was coming up to seven-thirty.

  After this cup, Tracy would have to get going. She couldn’t sit here all night, much as she wanted to—which was strange, considering she didn’t ‘do’ friends and had a job to finish at the station. Still, Damon would ring if he’d found anything. She’d texted him at the official end of her session and let him know she’d be stopping on for a bit. Guilt was chewing on her nerves now, though, at the thought of him working away while she chilled out. She was pleased to feel that guilt. Like Barrows had said earlier, if Tracy felt guilt, it meant she wasn’t a complete psychopath, maybe just three-quarters narcissist.

  Tracy had laughed at that. Oddly, the remark hadn’t upset or rankled her.

  Barrows was good for her soul, it seemed.

  “What makes you say I’ll spill it all to you eventually?” Tracy asked.

  “I can tell. The things you’ve already told me—in and out of the session—isn’t usual for a first appointment. Most people who have big things to hide, like you do, well, they don’t divulge much at first. Too busy worrying about whether they’ll slip up and blurt something out. But you? You’ve had years to perfect the art of not allowing secrets to pop out, so you feel safe to natter to me.”

  “That sounds awful,” Tracy said. “‘Perfect the art’. I’ve basically been lying since I was a child.”

  “Out of necessity, remember.”

  Tracy nodded. And she would remember that. During the Collier case, she’d repeatedly told herself she wasn’t to blame for her childhood, that it wasn’t her fault her whacko father had totally lost the fucking plot, the pages, and even the actual book cover, and since forever she’d made sure she didn’t allow anyone to point the finger at her and say something was her doing when it wasn’t.

  It had become a bit of an obsession, but it was time to let that go. To let lots of things go. Already she felt better, actually seeing the light at the end of a previously long tunnel, but Lisa was still there in the shadows somewhere, pressed against the brickwork, the Pied Piper, playing her tune, and Tracy the rat, dancing to it.