All Her Fears: DI Tracy Collier Book 3

by Emmy Ellis

  Mannequins.

  She switched her attention to the rest of the space. A table with blood on it, and beside it, to the right, two people on the floor…and more blood.

  Tracy motioned to Damon, who was still on the stairs. She held her hand up and showed two fingers to indicate how many people they had to deal with. He joined her and looked across, then darted forward, dropping to his knees to check for a pulse on a man, light-brown wiry hair, moustache to match, trousers, shirt, tie, blood soaking his front. Tracy went to the woman—or she assumed it was a woman, going by the clothing. She had a plastic Morrisons bag over her head, her back to Tracy, who leant over her.

  “Oh, fucking hell!” Tracy recoiled. “Damon, take a gander at her, will you?”

  He stared. “What the hell went on here? He’s dead, by the way.”

  Tracy stood and walked to stand behind Damon. She stared at the woman, the bag split into a small rectangular opening, just enough to expose the eyes. One of them dangled out on a phlegmy thread, and what appeared to be a fake one sat in the socket, too large for the hole, so it looked like the victim was in shock. Her other eye was intact, in place.

  “What’s with the eyes?” she asked.

  Damon stood and glanced around. “What’s with them more like.” He jerked his head in the direction of the mannequins, then walked up to them. “Um, this skin has been sewn together…”

  “What?” Tracy went over and inspected them. “Real skin?”

  “Maybe. Christ Almighty…” Damon pulled out his phone. Dialled. “I’ll ring the front desk,” he said to Tracy, then, “Damon Hanks. What’s the ETA on our backup?” He paused. “Okay. Send Gilbert and SOCO along, will you? Yep. A bloody mess, pardon the pun and all that.” He ended the call and slid the phone away.

  “Sorry, but I’m waiting outside,” Tracy said. “This is too weird for me. Plus, we really should get protective clothing on now.”

  Damon nodded.

  Tracy trudged upstairs, clammy and tainted by the scene. Out on the path, she took a deep breath. Whatever the fuck had happened down there was anyone’s guess, although the woman who had come out of there earlier had stabbed the man. Who was the woman on the floor, and, if those mannequins really were covered in real human skin, who were the victims?

  And where the hell was Chrissy Ordsall?

  “Damon,” she said as he came to stand beside her. “Ordsall?”

  “I’ll get on to Blooming Age. She might well have swapped shifts or something.” He made the call.

  Tracy walked to the car and took out the whites and gloves. She put hers on over her clothing, then went to Cowdell’s door and knocked. She thought about the taxi. If it belonged to the dead man in the basement, he’d deliberately registered it to a neighbour. That indicated he’d intended to pick up victims in it—he’d known exactly what he’d been doing.

  Drawn out of her thoughts by the door opening, she smiled at Cowdell. “Is she okay?” she asked.

  “She’s in the kitchen, eating. Hasn’t said a thing.” He looked Tracy up and down.

  “Ah.” She gestured to her white suit. “Standard procedure.” She didn’t want him knowing there were dead people in that house yet. “An officer will be here in a second to take over looking after…God, don’t even know her name, do we.”

  The sound of tyres on the road had her turning. She left Cowdell standing there and walked towards the police car and waited for it to park. PC Newson got out, as did a female officer. Tracy hadn’t met her before.

  “Boss,” Newson said.

  “Two houses to deal with here,” Tracy said. “Lady in this one behind me. Said she stabbed a man in the one down there—see the door open?”

  Newson nodded. “That’s Claudia Pringle with me, by the way.”

  “Thanks for letting me know her name,” Tracy said. “No Simone with you?”

  “Off sick, boss.”

  Claudia made her way around the front of the car and stood beside Newson.

  “Claudia, you sit with the woman. She’ll need someone to comfort her while we work out what’s gone on here.” Tracy grimaced. “Don’t let her wash that blood off just yet. Once SOCO get here, I’ll send someone by to deal with her. Swabs and whatever. Newson, you stand at the front door over there and sort the scene log, all right?”

  He nodded and strolled off.

  Tracy led Claudia up Cowdell’s path. “This is Simon.” She smiled. “He’s been looking after the woman. Try to get her name out of her. Write everything down, okay? Oh, and call a doctor for her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Tracy bristled. “Boss.”

  Claudia raised her eyebrows. “Boss.”

  Claudia went inside with Cowdell. Tracy left them to it and met up with Damon.

  “Any luck on Ordsall?” she asked.

  “No. She isn’t due into work until tomorrow night. Maybe she went out.” He shrugged.

  “She didn’t say she lived with anyone, did she?” Tracy thought back to their conversations with Ordsall. No mention of a housemate or boyfriend.

  “Didn’t come up on her address when the team did searches on all the nurses either,” Damon said. “No other person registered here.”

  “That’s not unusual when you think about it. The bloke may have only just moved in. I mean, look at what’s-his-face, that fella…Pete Hewson, Jasmine Locke’s ex-partner. He was recorded as living at her house, but he wasn’t. Could be the same deal here.”

  Damon turned his lips down. “Could be.” He bobbed his head. “Gilbert and SOCO.”

  Tracy pointed at the crime scene house so Gilbert knew where to park. He drew up at the kerb and got out, smiling at them over the roof of his car.

  “Anything juicy for me?” Gilbert asked, going to his boot and taking out his medical bag.

  “Um, it’s unusual to say the least,” Tracy said. “Downright weird, if you ask me.”

  “Weird is good. Breaks the monotony.” Gilbert chuckled, shut the boot, and stepped onto the path. “So what’s happened from your perspective?”

  Tracy explained about the woman running out and confessing to stabbing a man. “So we went in. Man in the basement, lying opposite a woman who has a bag on her head with a hole in it, just her eyes showing—three eyes.”

  “Pardon?” Gilbert eased his head back in disbelief.

  “You heard me. Three eyes. And as for the rest…” Tracy sighed. “You’ll see soon enough. You’re going to be busy, put it that way.”

  “Ah, well, better than being bored, I suppose.”

  “Someone’s needed to get swabs off the woman in the house down there,” Tracy said.

  “I’ll get an officer on that now.” Gilbert wandered away to speak to SOCO, all of them putting on protective clothing.

  “They’ve got a task and a half in there,” Damon said.

  “Yep. Working well into the night and through until morning, I reckon.” Tracy went to rub her forehead but remembered she had gloves on.

  She didn’t speak for a while, thinking about where Lisa fitted into this equation. Where was she right now? Out on the streets, working? Was she living with Ordsall—and was the taxi hers?

  Bloody hell…

  “Come on then,” Gilbert called. “The dead await.” He laughed and walked up the path, signed the log Newson held out, then went inside.

  SOCO followed, as did Tracy and Damon, all of them signing in. Some officers split off the group and went to other rooms in the house. The rest trooped into the basement. Tracy and Damon trailed behind them and waited while a petite female took photographs.

  Gilbert stood with them. “I see what you mean. Taxidermy after a fashion.” He jabbed a thumb towards the mannequins. “Might have the devil of a job working out who that skin belongs to. Three different people. Good luck with that.”

  “Thanks,” Tracy said. “We’ll sodding well need it.”

  It took a few minutes for all the images to be snapped, then Gilbert ambled over to t
he bodies. “That bag was opened after she died. She suffocated. The signs are there.” He pointed to his eyes. “And as for hers… That’s a glass one, same as on the table.”

  Tracy hadn’t noticed them before—too much else to focus on—but, yes, several eyeballs were on the table. What the actual? She studied the mannequins. The eyes were the same. They were dealing with one sick motherfucker.

  “He’s been stabbed with those scissors there.” Gilbert pointed. “So I’d say he—or the woman who stabbed him—opened that bag on her head and took her eye out to replace it with a glass one. Nowt queer as folk.”

  “Twisted, I’d say.” Tracy pursed her lips.

  “That as well.” Gilbert crouched. “Let’s have a look at you then, shall we?” His features softened as he looked at the male victim. “Come and stand by me so you can see better, Tracy.”

  She did, but Damon stayed where he was, by the wall near the stairs.

  Gilbert undid the man’s shirt buttons. “Oh, what’s this then?”

  Tracy frowned.

  The man’s chest was wrapped in wide bandages, from beneath the armpits to halfway down his torso. Gilbert fished about in his bag and withdrew some scissors. He cut the material from the bottom up, and as it parted, breasts were revealed.

  “Oh Lord!” Gilbert said.

  Tracy sucked in a breath. “It’s a fucking woman?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tracy moved closer. Yes, definitely a female chest. “Take off that moustache? Unless it’s an unfortunate real one, that is.”

  Gilbert took an evidence bag out of his, laughing all the while. Then he picked up tweezers and peeled the strip of hair off, popping it into the bag. He passed it to a SOCO. “Wig?”

  “Seems so.”

  He removed it.

  Tracy blinked, her heart missing a beat. “Fuck me, Damon. Look who it is.”

  He stepped forward a few paces. “Ordsall?”

  Tracy nodded. “Um, this is too odd, but at the same time, it makes sense.” What didn’t make sense was why Lisa’s hair had been found on Irene Roberts’ pillow. “Ordsall had access to Roberts. She covered her tracks well, I have to say. I didn’t suspect her at all.”

  “Why is she dressed as a man, I wonder?” Gilbert passed the wig to another officer.

  “God knows. The obvious reason is a disguise. But if she’s the person who killed those people over there”—she pointed to the mannequins—“then sewed them up over what I assume is a body shape of sorts underneath, why did she do that?”

  Damon coughed. He was probably having a hard time being here with five dead people. “Um, what’s the woman whose hair matches You Know Who got to do with all this? How did she even get involved?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Tracy shrugged. Maybe she’s doing a repeat of the Collier case. Helping to kill people because she knows it’ll be me who finds them. She’s got my attention—she’s in my mind, exactly how she wants it.

  “Well, I hate to break up your little chat, but let’s get down to business,” Gilbert said. “He—or rather, she was stabbed—as you said. Four times in spaced-out places, so I’d say it rings true with a panicked attack—self-defence as it were. Now the other one… Suffocated with the bag, that’s a given. I’ll just check whether there’s anything else going on with her.”

  Gilbert moved behind the bag-headed woman. “Pass me my snippers, would you? They’re in my case, in one of the transparent pockets.”

  Tracy found them, passing them over.

  “Thanks.” Gilbert cut the yellow cable tie at her neck and held it up in the snipper’s grip.

  Damon fetched an evidence bag, opened it, and Gilbert dropped the tie inside. He carefully took the bag off, and Tracy held back a scream. Purple hair spilled out, and now the face was exposed, the features matched those etched in Tracy’s brain, ones she’d never forget.

  “Jesus Christ,” Damon said. “It’s her.”

  Oh, it was her all right, and Tracy staggered backwards, unable to stop staring, needing to make sure it was her, really her, and it wasn’t some mirage she wanted to see instead.

  Laughter bubbled up inside her, and she folded her lips over her teeth to stop any sound coming out. Euphoria streaked through her—it was over, it was the end of her nightmare, and she didn’t need to find Lisa and kill her, because she was already dead. Ordsall had suffocated her for whatever reason, but it didn’t matter anymore. Tracy didn’t care how Lisa had died, or why, just that she had.

  She dared to look at Damon.

  He moved his attention from Lisa to Tracy. Said without saying anything at all: We’re free.

  Tracy nodded.

  “Who’s this then?” Gilbert asked, breaking the spell.

  “Long story,” Tracy said. One I don’t want to talk about right now.

  “Ah.” Gilbert nodded sagely. “History there?”

  “You could say that. She stabbed Damon.”

  “Oh, bugger me,” Gilbert said.

  “No, thanks.” That was from Damon.

  It broke the weird tension in the air, and while the men chuckled, Tracy laughed until she thought she wouldn’t stop, until tears ran down her face and the blessed relief of liberty swam through her veins. Her knees went weak, and she had to concentrate to stop herself from dropping to the floor.

  “Outside, I think,” Damon said, guiding her towards the stairs.

  SOCO stared at her, their faces expressing their thoughts: Has she gone mental or what?

  She ascended, still laughing, though not as maniacally, and once she signed out of scene, she brushed past Newson and made her way to the car. She needed a moment to compose herself, to tell Damon how fucking happy she was that this had come to an end—this torture, this outlandish terror.

  They didn’t bother removing their protective clothing and sat in silence, Tracy sobering quickly, thinking of all the hassle to come. Okay, while other hassles had been solved, Lisa’s death brought new ones. The Collier case might have to be looked at again, her team crawling all over parts of her life, insects scuttling into her private business, The Past, and everything that went with it.

  “She’s gone, Damon. We can move on now.” The first truth she’d told him regarding Lisa. It felt good to say it.

  “I never thought I’d be the type of person to be glad someone’s dead, but God help me, I am.” He turned to look at her, his eyes wet.

  “Me, too.” But I was happy about my father and John being dead. Hell, I was happy I killed one of them. But it still won’t fix things—Lisa being gone just means I don’t have to worry about her grassing me up. “Sounds bad, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, and no one else would understand. Not unless they’d been through similar. Shit, I feel like you now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled. “Thinking nasty things about people.”

  Tracy laughed again—hard. “Now you’ve got an insight into what it’s like to be me. Joy for you, eh? Do you feel wicked?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I most of the time.” Except recently, a compassion bone had grown right near her heart, the fucker.

  Damon took his gloves off, raked a hand through his hair, and stared through the windscreen. “Sodding hell… I can’t believe it’s finished.” He shook his head. “She’s rotten through and through.”

  “Was.”

  “What?”

  “You said she’s. Like she’s still alive. She was rotten.”

  “Christ, it’ll take some getting used to, accepting she’s really gone. I mean, since she did what she did to me, I’ve worried about her coming back. I’ve said that to you before, haven’t I. Now she can’t touch us.”

  “No.” Not in the sense you mean, but, like my father and John, she’ll always be inside my head—and in yours. She blew out a stream of air. “I had a thought earlier about the Collier case being nosed at again. My past… Well, more people at the station will undoubtedly find out he was my
father now. It’s one thing to have it on the news and me have the same surname, but to find out he was definitely my dad? Reckon they’ll look at me differently?”

  “The team don’t, so why should anyone else? It’s not like it’s your fault he was your family. You didn’t ask to be born.”

  “Suppose not.” Her earlier elation had fizzled out, replaced now by body-numbing exhaustion. She rested her head back on the seat and longed to close her eyes. “There’s still so much to find out. Why Ordsall killed Roberts, among other things. Was she the one who was out to ‘get’ Irene?”

  “Seems likely. Why, though, I have no bloody idea.”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of it at some point.”

  “Are we carrying on working tonight?” he asked.

  “Don’t see why we should. Nothing we can do now, except maybe visit Irene’s son, let him know we’ve found who killed his mum.” She sighed, tired to the bottom of her soul. “Ordsall might have killed Roberts, she might not, but we know the woman who stabbed you had something to do with it.”

  “I still think it was her who did Irene Roberts and Jasmine Locke. Will we ever find out who she is, d’you think?”

  “God knows. Does it matter?” Please say it doesn’t.

  “No. So long as she’s dead, I don’t care.”

  Thank you, God…for once.

  “I should really give Winter a bell,” she said and got on with removing a glove and dialling him while Damon shut his eyes, probably thinking he’d get a decent night’s sleep now without any nightmares. I promise you, they don’t go away, even when the cause of them is dead.

  Winter answered after three rings. “Tracy? What’s up?”

  “We found the killer,” she said.

  “That was quick.”

  “One of the nurses dressed up as a bloke.” She rubbed her forehead. Why was she so intent on blaming Ordsall for this and not Lisa?

  “Bloody hell! Any idea why?”

  “Not yet. We’ve got another two bodies—Chrissy Ordsall the nurse, and an unidentified female. I say unidentified—me and Damon recognised her as the woman who stabbed him. She’s the one who…um…lived with my father during his murder spree.”