The Spider's Web

by Ben Cheetham

  Jim’s eyes narrowed with disgust but not surprise. ‘What? And you think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Not only do I think it’s a good idea, I also want you to make it clear that Mr Villiers is completely innocent of all the accusations.’

  Jim turned to Garrett. ‘And what about you? You’re willing to play along with this, are you?’

  Garrett made a helpless, apologetic gesture. ‘What else can we do, Jim?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what else we can fucking do.’ Jim jerked his chin at the mocked-up image of Gavin. ‘We can catch that bastard.’

  Chief Constable Hunt gave a doubtful huff. ‘Face it, DCI Monahan. Gavin Walsh is long gone. He’s most probably lying on a beach somewhere right now laughing at us all.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not without Emily Walsh.’

  ‘We’ve scoured the length and breadth of the country for him. I fail to see how he could have evaded capture, unless he has the ability to vanish into thin air at will.’

  ‘Maybe he has,’ Jim muttered drily, recalling what Emily had said about Gavin claiming to possess magic powers.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The Chief Constable made an impatient noise. ‘So what’s it going to be, DCI Monahan? Will you issue the apology?’

  ‘I’d rather tear my own tongue out, sir.’ Jim’s voice was strangely calm. Like the eye of a storm.

  ‘Then as of this moment you’re off the investigation – an investigation which, need I remind you, had been suspended because of your actions until the revelations about Gavin Walsh came to light.’

  You say that almost as though you wish it had stayed that way, Jim thought disdainfully, resisting an urge to pull out his police ID and fling it in the Chief Constable’s face. However much he wanted to quit, he knew he couldn’t. Not whilst Villiers and all the rest of them were still breathing free air. He was off the case, but that didn’t stop him working it. And to do that effectively he needed access to police files and data. He needed to hold on to the bitter end. He rose from his chair and approached the board of names. Stephen Baxley, Laurie Boyce, Charles Knight… Forty-four names. A web of depravity. A maze with no way out. His calm dissolved. The storm took control. He tore the board off the wall and hurled it past the Chief Constable’s goggle-eyed face. It ricocheted off the desk, forcing Garrett to dodge aside.

  ‘You’re out of your bloody mind,’ exclaimed the Chief Constable. ‘You might as well hand in your badge right now, because your time is just about up.’

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You and all the other cronies and arse-lickers.’

  Chief Constable Hunt’s jaw muscles worked like he was chewing something unpalatable. He spoke in a voice of quiet rage. ‘I suggest you make yourself scarce, DCI Monahan, before one of us does something we’ll both regret.’

  Jim unblinkingly returned the Chief Constable’s stare. He’d been around far too long to be intimidated by his angry Yorkshireman act. His eyes moved to Garrett. The DCS struggled to meet them. ‘If saving this department means apologising to Villiers, then this department isn’t worth saving,’ said Jim. Then he turned and left.

  A full public apology. The words swirled around his head like debris caught in a whirlwind. They made him want to pound his fists into something. He drove out of the city centre, not thinking where he was going, but unconsciously heading south. He soon reached the edge of the city. The patchwork hump of the moors loomed in front of him. He turned towards Thomas Villiers’ house and parked across the road from it. Someone had spray-painted in red letters on the garden wall ‘BURN IN HELL CHILD RAPIST’. The gates were closed, the driveway empty, the curtains drawn. Villiers was no doubt keeping his head down in some distant place where no one was likely to recognise him. A Mercedes rolled up to the gates and he saw that he was wrong. It was Villiers! The electronic gates swung open. Villiers pulled into the driveway. Jim accelerated sharply after him, blocking the Mercedes in. He got out of his car. Villiers stayed in his. Jim eyeballed him through the glass. There was no arrogance left in Villiers’ eyes. Only anxiety and exhaustion. He looked a shadow of the man Jim had interviewed three weeks or so ago. But that wasn’t enough for Jim. He pressed a hand against the window. A hand that itched to get at Villiers. To punch and punch him until blood and truth flowed from his bastard mouth.

  Cringing away from the violence he saw in Jim’s eyes, Villiers snatched out a phone. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  Slowly, as though he was struggling against some unseen force, Jim drew his hand away from the window. He pointed at Villiers as if to say, I’m coming for you. Then he returned to his car. As he drove away, he hauled in a breath, knowing how dangerously close he’d come to losing control. And knowing too that Villiers had got the message loud and clear. There would be no apology. Not now. Not ever.

  His phone rang. He frowned at it a moment before answering the call. ‘What do you want?’ His tone was none too friendly.

  ‘To apologise,’ said Garrett. ‘I told the Chief Constable you wouldn’t go through with it, but he refused to listen.’

  You should have told him the whole idea’s fucking shameful, Jim felt like retorting. He knew it would achieve nothing though. In recent weeks Garrett had proved himself to be more than just the careerist Jim had thought he was. But going directly against the Chief Constable was a line the DCS wouldn’t cross.

  ‘Try to see things from his perspective,’ continued Garrett. ‘It’s his duty to protect the reputation of—’

  ‘If this is another attempt to try and convince me to go grovelling to Villiers, you know what you can go do,’ Jim cut in.

  ‘Like I said, I know that’s never going to happen. I just wanted to tell you I think you’re right. Apologising to Thomas Villiers would be a betrayal of everything we stand for. I also thought you should know…’ There was a slight hesitation, as though Garrett was unsure if he should say what was in his mind. Then he went on, ‘As of today, we’re no longer keeping tabs on Emily Walsh. The Chief Constable’s convinced Gavin has fled the country.’

  Jim’s eyebrows knitted. Maybe the Chief Constable was right, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Gavin had sworn by his god that Emily and he would be together. And his god – not Cernunnos, but his true god: the god of self-gratification – would not be denied. No doubt word that Emily was unguarded was already leaking out, trickling its insidious way towards Gavin’s ears.

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ said Jim. Without waiting for a reply, he hung up and plotted Emily’s address into the satnav.

  25

  The dream was the same every night. There was nothing cryptic about it. Emily was running frantically through some dark place. Running and running, but getting nowhere. Something was chasing her. She couldn’t see what, but she could hear its breathing. Heavy breathing, like an obscene caller. Her own breathing was ragged. Her limbs felt impossibly heavy, weighed down by exhaustion and fear. A voice boomed out from behind her. ‘We will be together!’ The words hit her with physical force, knocking her off balance. Letting out a strangled cry, she fell to the ground. Powerful hands flipped her onto her back. She found herself staring up into a face that glowed with a red iridescence. It wasn’t Gavin’s face. It was a goat-like face with slanted eyes and pointed ears. Horns twisted out of the goat-man’s head. His torso was that of a muscular man, but his legs were woolly with matted brown hair, through which protruded a grotesquely oversized penis. She tried to cry out again. No sound would come. She tried to struggle. Her limbs refused to obey. She was paralysed. Helpless.

  She felt her legs being prised apart. She felt a searing pain as the monster forced his way inside her. Then, suddenly, her eyes were open and her hands were flailing at the empty air above her bed. Mouth agape, tears streaming down her cheeks, she pressed her knees together and clasped her hands over her crotch. Gradually the nightmare’s tendrils withdrew into the black hole from which they’d slithered, but the fear
refused to let go.

  Emily flinched at the sound of a dog barking somewhere outside the house. She slid from beneath the duvet, padded to a window and parted the curtains a finger’s breadth. Nothing moved in the orange glow of the streetlamps. Her gaze skimmed over the vehicles parked along the kerb. They all appeared to be unoccupied. But then again it was difficult to be sure. Another bark. Another flinch. She ground her teeth against the sob of resentment that rose in her throat. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Sleepless nights. Anxious days. Afraid to be alone. Constantly looking over her shoulder.

  The police had tried to reassure her. ‘We don’t believe you’re in any danger,’ the officer who’d come to the house earlier that day had said. ‘Which is why we no longer feel it’s necessary to keep watch on you.’ According to the officer, the manhunt’s failure proved Gavin had almost certainly fled the country. But the officer hadn’t been in the woods that night. He hadn’t seen the look in Gavin’s eyes.

  Heaving a sigh, Emily returned to her bed. But she didn’t close her eyes. She lay staring at the light seeping through the curtains, wondering if it would ever again be possible for her to sleep and live without fear.

  Emily sat biting her lip irritably in the passenger seat of her foster carer’s car. With her grandparents no longer in custody, she accepted that being ferried to school was still a required precaution. Although even if she’d been allowed to make her own way, she doubted whether she could bring herself to step out the front door alone.

  The car pulled up outside school. Her eyes scoured the street. Then she thanked her carer for the lift and, ignoring the calls of her friends, hurried into school alongside the teacher who’d been assigned to escort her from and to the gates.

  In form class, the teacher reading the register had to repeat Emily’s name several times before she responded. It was the same in her other classes and the session she had with the school counsellor. Her eyes were lost in some place beyond the reach of her teachers’, the counsellor’s, even her friends’ voices. At first her friends had asked her about what happened. Their questions were met with pained silence. How could they understand what she’d been through or what she was feeling, when she barely understood it herself? One thought preoccupied her. One question that grew angrier every time she asked herself it. Why should I have to live like this?

  At lunch break, when her friends went to a nearby parade of shops, she ate in an empty classroom. Every noise from the corridor drew an uneasy glance from her. She didn’t want to be alone. But neither could she bring herself to go outside. Not even into the playground. She felt caught, frozen in the headlights of her fear. Face twisted with hate, she threw most of her lunch away. Why the fuck should I have to live like this?

  At home time, as she was escorted to her foster carer’s waiting car, a boy approached her. ‘Hi, Emily,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, Leo,’ she replied, barely giving him a glance, quickening her pace.

  ‘Wait up, I want to ask you something. I’m having a party at my house tonight. Will you come?’

  Emily grimaced as if the question pained her. She wanted to say yes, but how could she? It wasn’t only about being afraid. Parties were for normal people. And she wasn’t normal any more. She’d heard people whispering. She’d changed. She was weird. And they were right. She had changed. It wasn’t simply that she’d become distrustful and withdrawn. It was something deeper than that, more permanent. It was as if a door had been blasted open in her mind. A door to some place where everything seemed more distant yet sharper, unreal yet too real, like her nightmares. Sometimes she felt as if she still hadn’t come down from the mushrooms. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever really come down.

  ‘Everyone’s going to be there,’ persisted Leo.

  She shook her head and broke into a run. When she got to the car, she couldn’t bring herself to even say hello to her carer. She had the feeling that if she opened her mouth she would start screaming and crying and wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Back at the house, she went straight up to her bedroom and crawled under the duvet fully clothed. She scrolled through her phone’s contacts list to ‘Grandma Fiona’ and pressed dial. Her grandmother picked up after a single ring, as though she’d been expecting the call. ‘Hello, Emily, love.’

  Just the sound of her grandmother’s voice soothed away some of the torment. Not nearly all of it, but enough so that she could speak. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

  ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘I don’t want to be here. I want to be there with you.’ The words were true – the thought of moving in with her grandma was pretty much the only thing that had kept Emily going the past fortnight – but they weren’t what she truly wanted to say. She feared that if she said what she really wanted to, if she bared what was inside her, then Grandma Fiona wouldn’t want her to come live in Sheffield.

  ‘And you will be very soon. Anna tells me everything should be sorted in the next few days. A week at the most.’

  ‘A week,’ murmured Emily. Thinking of a week was like thinking of forever. It made her head reel.

  A shout came from downstairs. ‘Tea’s ready, Emily.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, Grandma.’

  ‘OK. Speak soon. Bye, love.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Emily went to the top of the stairs and said, ‘I’m not hungry. I’ve got a headache. I think I’m just going to go to bed.’

  ‘I’ll make you up a plate in case you change your mind,’ came the reply.

  Emily lay staring out the window, forehead wrinkled. She was too tired to read, too tired to listen to music, too tired for anything besides sleep. But she didn’t want to sleep, especially not tonight of all nights. As the daylight faded, biting her lips to keep herself awake, she set the alarm on her mobile phone in case sleep ambushed her. A week. She wondered if she could survive that long without sleep. And what if she did? Would the dreams stop once she was in Sheffield? Why should they? Gavin would still be out there, as invisible and all-encompassing a presence as the god he worshipped. She cringed as if from an unwanted touch. She felt like crying but didn’t have the energy for it. Her eyes were so heavy, so fucking heavy…

  … Darkness. She was running, falling. The goat-man, the fear, the pain. Then her phone was beeping, her eyes were snapping open and she was clutching the duvet to her chest, gasping, sobbing. Fighting to control her breathing, she stared at her phone although she knew the time – half ten. Leo’s party would be in full swing. Again came the question, Why should I have to live like this? Again her forehead wrinkled as if she was hesitating at some thought. But the wrinkles fled as an answer rang out like a challenge in her mind. I shouldn’t. I won’t!

  Emily rose from bed and changed into jeans and a hoodie. She brushed her hair and applied thick black eyeliner, then peered out the window. Other than a blonde in a miniskirt and heels, the street was empty. She switched off the light, quietly left the room and closed the door behind her. The sound of the television filtered up from the living room. On soft feet, she descended the stairs and reached for the front door handle. Her hand hesitated, vibrating like a fly caught in a web. The murmur of voices spurred her to action. She slid out into the night. The air was warm, but its touch made her shiver as she hurried away from the house.

  ‘Where the hell’s she going?’ Jim murmured to himself, following Emily with binoculars. He’d been watching the house and surrounding streets since the previous evening. The house was situated on a quiet road that ran along the bottom of a shallow valley. Its rear garden backed onto that of an identical house. Parallel streets of houses and flats rose steeply in front of it. He’d found a spot several streets away where the house was visible from the flat roof of a three-storey block of flats. He’d checked the roof out cautiously before setting up camp, aware that Gavin might be lurking thereabouts for the same reason as him. There was no sign that anyone had recently been there.

  He was too far away, he knew, to react quickly sho
uld Gavin attempt to snatch Emily from the house. But he was willing to take that risk so as to remain undetected himself. Besides, even with the plain-clothes officers no longer stationed outside the house, he doubted Gavin would attempt such a thing. The man was too clever, too patient. In the past, he’d spent months grooming victims for himself or others. With Emily, circumstances had forced him to move too quickly. But now he had time to watch and wait for his moment.

  Jim had expected that moment to most likely arrive when Emily plucked up the courage to make her own way to school. But he hadn’t expected this. This was simply begging for trouble. He found himself caught between watching her through the binoculars or tailing her. He knew the route she took to school. But he didn’t have a clue where she was going now. If he lost sight of her, he might not be able to find her again.

  Emily paused outside the entrance to a park at the end of the road. She glanced around herself as if looking for someone. Even at that distance, Jim could see the nervousness in her movements. ‘What’s she playing at?’ he wondered out loud. As she headed into the park, the ever-present grooves on his forehead deepened. The park was a large expanse of unlit, mostly pathless grass dotted with wooded clumps and enclosed by a thick hedge. Walking through it alone at night wasn’t merely naiveté. It was madness. And yet her movements were deliberate, calculated. Her expression too had suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. It was almost as though she was putting herself out there as bait. He suddenly found himself wondering whether this was part of some police operation to lure Gavin into revealing himself. He scoured the bushes and trees, half expecting to see snipers lurking amongst them. But there were none. He dismissed the idea. Surely Garrett would have told him if such an operation was under way.