by Amy Cross
“Wow,” she replied, “that's...”
He couldn't help but smile as he saw the expression of amazement on her face. “Just beamed down from the mother-ship, yeah?”
“I...” Pausing for a moment, she looked back across the room. For the first time since escaping from the farmhouse, she was starting to feel as if the whole world was open to her, even though she had no idea what to do or where to go. “No-one's called for me?” she asked, turning back to the guy. “I mean... No-one's come looking for me, have they?”
“You in trouble?” he asked.
For a moment, she imagined Renton pulling the knife from his chest and getting up, ready to come after her.
“No,” she said finally, “just...”
Again, her voice trailed off.
“Alright, space cadet,” the guy replied, heading out into the corridor, “have fun. No smoking in the rooms, though, and that includes herbs. You wanna do that, go outside or if it's raining you can use the fire escape.” He waited for her to reply, before muttering something under his breath and pulling the door shut.
“What -” Turning, she realized she was too late.
She was alone.
For a few seconds, she imagined what it would be like if she went to a police station and told them her name. There'd be questions, lots of questions, and... Thinking back once again to Renton's body in the farmhouse, she realized she might be accused of murdering him. Then she thought of her family, people she barely even remembered now, and how they'd react to her return. The whole ordeal just felt far too horrifying, as if she wasn't really the same person anymore. She'd been a little girl when she was kidnapped, now she was a woman. Looking at herself in the mirror above the sink in the corner of the room, she realized she barely even looked like Becky Bridger these days. She'd found some old newspapers in Renton's house after he died, with headlines covering her disappearance. Becky had been built up as such an angel, she knew she could never live up to that ideal.
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the wad of cash she'd taken from Renton's farmhouse. There'd been close to ten thousand pounds in his bedroom, but she wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Her best idea was to just hide it away somewhere and go away, to take some time before she made a decision. Time seemed to be one of the few things she should still control, so she figured she could spend one night in the hotel and then...
She paused.
“Just be someone else,” she whispered, and as if by magic all her fears and worries seemed to fade away. She figured she could worry later about who, exactly, she would become.
For now, it was enough to feel different.
To not be the little girl from the frontpage.
Looking around the room again, she spotted a TV in the corner. Heading over, she switched it on and, a moment later, the screen flickered to life. She sat on the edge of the bed and watched as a news broadcast continued, showing images of soldiers in some far-off place, while a line of text on the bottom of the screen warned about the possibility of a terror attack on London. She didn't understand what was going on, of course, so after a moment she grabbed the remote control and began to turn the volume up.
“We live in a dangerous world,” the news anchor said, as she interviewed a man in a suit, “and these dangers are increasing all the time. When are we going to face up to the fact that if we don't take special measures, our very way of living is in danger? The streets are filled with crime, no-one's safe, and that's before you start considering the threat of cyber-terrorism. Where's it all going to end?”
“We need to make decisions,” the man replied, “but they need to be the right decisions, not knee-jerk reactions to the latest headline. We can't let our entire lives be driven by the media.”
Staring wide-eyed and shocked at the screen, she began to take it all in. A whole new world.
Chapter Twenty-One
Today
“Your phone was going off,” Tricia said as she passed Laura in the corridor. “Hey! Did you hear me?”
Stopping suddenly, Laura glanced back at her and realized the words hadn't really sunk in. She'd been in something of a daze ever since she'd arrived at work a few hours ago, and a spell in the archive hadn't helped. Halveston had left a huge list of paperwork on her desk, and she'd just been going through it all robotically, trying to avoid thinking about Nick or Daniel Gregory. Operating on auto-pilot, she blinked a couple of times as her mind emerged from the fog.
“What?” she stammered.
“Your phone,” Tricia said again, with a faint smile. “I heard it ringing loads of times. Like, several times a minute, it was driving me crazy. I almost went in there and answered the damn thing.” She waited for a reply. “Laura, are you -”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Because it's hard to believe that you possibly could be,” she continued. “Laura, Nick's dead, and you seem determined to act as if nothing happened. You just seem to have withdrawn completely into yourself.”
“Well, I...” Pausing, she realized that something was nagging at the back of her mind.
“It hurts, doesn't it?” Tricia continued. “I know Nick could be annoying, he could be blunt, and when he got drunk he tended to go off on long rants about the state of the world, but... I don't know about you, but I'm going to miss him. He was always the life and soul of the party, you know? Someone you could always invite safe in the knowledge that he was going to keep the conversation going, even if the things he said were going to drive everyone up the wall.” She paused again, as if she was waiting for Laura to join in with the conversation. “So are you going to the funeral next week?”
“I can't. I'm busy.”
“Too busy to go to your friend's funeral? Seriously?”
“I've got a lot of paperwork to do.”
“So? It might be cathartic. I'm going, pretty much everyone's going.”
“Then I don't need to, do I?”
“And you're looking after yourself, yeah?”
She nodded.
“Laura...” Sighing, Tricia stepped toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let's go out tonight after work. We'll hit a bar, have a few drinks, and most importantly we'll talk.”
“I'm fine.”
“You're walking around like a bloody zombie! Come on, there's nothing to be gained by lying to me, or to yourself. Have you gone to see Doctor Richards?”
“Why would I see her?” Laura asked with a frown.
“It's mandatory for anyone who -”
She shook her head.
“You'll receive a form,” Tricia continued, “telling you that you have to see someone for counseling.”
“Good job I'm in charge of the paperwork and can bin it, then,” she replied. “I'm fine, I'm just getting on with this new job Halveston has given me. He told me to keep my head down, so here I am, keeping my head down. For the first time in my career, I'm doing exactly what I was told, how I was told, to the absolute letter. And the reason I'm doing it is because I really don't want any more hassle. I don't even want to talk to anyone.” She paused for a moment. “I just want to do my bit and draw as little attention to myself as possible.”
“Sure, but -”
“And now I have things to do,” she continued, turning and heading to her office. She knew Tricia was watching her, so she very deliberately refrained from looking back. She knew that if she even thought once about Nick's death, she'd start obsessing over Daniel Gregory again, and she'd made a very deliberate decision to close that part of her mind off and let someone else deal with the investigation. As soon as she reached her office, she shut the door and made her way to her desk, where she spotted her phone by the keyboard. For a moment, she felt like ignoring it, since she figured it'd just be someone else asking if she was okay or telling her they were available to talk.
Picking it up, she tapped the screen to see who had been calling her.
/>
She frowned again.
“Huh?”
Scrolling down, she stared in shock.
“One hundred and eighty-two missed calls?” she muttered. “In less than an hour?”
Bringing up the number, she realized that it wasn't one she recognized, so she hit the button to call back. She waited as the call connected, and finally someone picked up on the other end.
“Hello?” a female voice asked cautiously.
“Hello?” Laura replied. “Who is this?”
“Kelly.”
“Kelly?”
“Yeah.”
Laura waited for a moment. “Um... I got a missed call from this number not long ago. A lot of missed calls, actually.”
“Yeah,” Kelly replied, “I think that was probably the psycho girl.”
“Psycho girl?”
“The one who was swearing a lot and drinking tons of those little cartons of triple espresso coffees.”
“The...” Pausing, Laura realized the description could only mean one person. “Ophelia? Is she there now?”
“Sorry, this is a payphone.”
“Where?”
“Dominbells motorway service station, near Reading.”
“What?”
“Dominbells -”
“I heard you, but...” For the first time since Nick's death, her mind was racing again. “Is the girl still around?”
“No, I think security threw her out a few minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“She kept shouting at the phone. Something about someone being too stuck up her own ass to answer, and about there not being enough coffee in the world. To be honest, she was kinda scary.”
“Are you sure she's not there now?” Laura asked.
“I'm pretty sure I saw her driving away.”
“Driving?”
“Yeah. Not very well, either. She knocked over a sign for the drive-through, but she just kept going. To be honest, it didn't look like she really knew what she was doing. I kept hearing her missing gears, like she'd never driven a manual before.”
“I don't suppose you've got a number plate for the car, have you?”
“I'm sorry, it was all kind of a blur.”
“If she -”
Hearing a knock at the door, Laura turned and saw that Tricia was waiting for her. She could tell immediately that something was wrong.
***
“Emma Jane Lynton,” Tricia explained as they stepped through the doorway, entering a cramped apartment that was already filled with police officers and scene-of-crime analysts. “Worked at a supermarket, she has a housemate but she was alone this week. From what we can tell, she went out this evening for a few drinks and evidently brought someone home with her. There are strong signs of -”
“Let me see,” Laura replied, pushing past and making her way to the next door. Stopping as she reached the bedroom, she immediately felt a shiver pass through her chest as she saw the body on the bed. Just from the way it was laid out, she knew instantly that this was the same killer. Turning to look across the room, she imagined Daniel Gregory leading the woman to the bed.
“Before you -” Tricia began.
“It's him,” she said, stepping forward.
“That's why I brought you down here -”
“The wounds are identical,” Doctor Maitland said, as he examined the slashes on the dead woman's back. “And when I say identical, I mean absolutely identical. This is someone who went to great lengths to replicate the wounds on both Natasha Simonsen and Sarah Jenkins. The position of the body is the same too, the arrangement of the arms and so on.”
“Everything's the same,” Laura muttered, looking around the room. “It's him.”
“Agreed,” Tricia replied, “whoever did this, it's most likely the same person who -”
“It's Daniel Gregory.”
At this, Tricia paused for a moment. “Well, let's not jump to -” As her phone rang, she took a look at the screen. “I have to take this one.”
Making her way over to join Maitland next to the body, Laura looked down at the dead woman's face.
“I'm not going to argue with you,” Maitland said after a moment. “There are half a dozen details here that weren't released to the press, things only the killer could know. Whoever killed this young woman was absolutely responsible for the murder of Sarah Jenkins as well, and most likely Natasha Simonsen.”
“Cut her open,” Laura replied.
“I'm sorry?”
“We need to see if there's anything in her stomach. Maybe a message, something like that. He always leaves messages in his victims.”
“When I perform the autopsy, I'll -”
“There's no time for that,” Laura replied, crouching next to Maitland's bag and starting to root through for a scalpel. “I need to know now.”
“You can't just -”
Before he could finish, Laura pulled a scalpel from the bag and sat on the bed.
“Stop!”
“I need to know!” she said firmly, rolling the woman's body over. Pulling the shirt up, she placed two fingers on the exposed belly as she tried to work out where to cut. “There has to -”
“We've got another one,” Tricia said suddenly.
Laura turned to her.
“A couple of miles away,” Tricia added, with an expression of pure shock in her eyes. “In East Hill. Another body, and it looks like...” She glanced down at the body on the bed. “It looks like the same killer has struck again. Two murders in one night. They're sending some images to my phone, but so far, from the description, it seems as if the wound pattern is exactly the same.”
“We need to track down Daniel Gregory,” Laura replied. “Every available resource -”
“I don't think Halveston's going to go for that.”
“Tell him it's for Gregory's safety. Tell him we have intelligence to suggest he's at risk and that we need to take him into protective custody.”
“We don't -”
“Lie!” Laura hissed, heading to the door. “For God's sake, it's not hard, just make something up. And cut her open, find out what's inside. I'm going to -” Hearing her phone in her pocket, she pulled it out and answered the call.
“What do you think?” Tricia asked, making her way over to join Maitland next to the bed.
“I think...” He paused for a moment. “I think we need to be careful. Laura's a good detective, but she seems convinced that this killer is specifically sending messages to her. There's a possibility that she's developing a form of paranoia. She sees herself as being at the center of this whole mess, and she's picking and choosing what evidence she prioritizes in order to pursue a narrative that continues to have her playing a key role.”
“Could it be part of her reaction to Nick's death? A kind of shock?”
“That's certainly possible.”
“So you don't think the killer's targeting her?”
“I think that would be highly unlikely,” he replied. “Laura's seeing connections where there aren't any, she's over-reacting to certain information and assuming that Daniel Gregory is out for some kind of revenge. Just now, before you interrupted, she was about to start cutting this woman open, right on the bed, just to check the stomach contents. I mean, that's the kind of thing you'd expect from that Ophelia girl, not from a detective with years of experience, and it's all part of her determination to propagate this theory that Daniel Gregory is engaged in a personal vendetta. That sort of thing simply doesn't happen in the real world. We have to find a way to make her understand that no-one is out to get her, or -” Spotting a shocked look on Laura's face, he waited for her to say something. “Laura? Are you okay?”
Slowly, Laura lowered her phone.
“Laura?” Tricia asked. “What's wrong?”
Laura stared at them both for a moment, with an ashen expression. “My house is on fire.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Come on!” Ophelia hissed as she followed Josephine and Kathy alo
ng the dark path that ran beneath the train bridge. “You owe me!”
“I don't owe you anything!” Josephine hissed back at her. “You owe me for all the times you've been a goddamned pain in the ass!”
“When have I ever -” Pausing, she realized she perhaps needed to try a different approach. “You sold me out,” she continued finally. “Don't deny it, I know you took money from that reporter to spy on me! I saw you, and Dave backed me up!”
“Fair pay for fair work,” Josephine muttered. “You don't get no favors from me. You want me to work, you pay me.”
“I'm not asking you to actively do anything!” Ophelia continued, stepping in front of her and blocking her way. “I'm just asking you to keep your eyes open, and spread the word. There's a guy, his face should be all over every screen in the next few hours, even the big ones in public places. If anyone mentions seeing him, get them to call me.” Pulling a piece of paper from her pocket, she handed it to Josephine. “That's my number.”
“You've got a phone number now?”
“Even better,” she replied, turning and pointing toward Joe Lewis's car, which was parked a little further away. “Tell everyone there's a prize. No-one can resist a prize. The first person who brings me information that helps me find this Daniel Gregory guy will win the car.”
Josephine stared at her for a moment, before narrowing her eyes. “For real?”
“For real,” she said firmly, dangling the keys in front of her.
“It's not stolen?”
“Its owner isn't in a position to claim it back.” She paused, seeing the look of wonder in Josephine's eyes. “Think about it,” she continued. “It's one thing to have a trolley full of crap -”
“There's no crap in my trolley!”
“Sorry, a trolley full of valuable items you've gathered,” Ophelia continued. “A trolley's fine, but a car? Imagine how much stuff you could fit in a car!”
“And you think one of us is gonna see this guy?” she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“I think if you can spread the word, there's a chance. He's going to be keeping a low profile, avoiding places where the cops might spot him. In order words, the same kind of places where people like us tend to hang out. It's a long-shot, but it's all I've got right now.”
