Firetrap

by David Hodges

  She drained her brandy glass and carefully levered herself up off the settee, trying hard not to let him see her wincing at the pain ripping through her chest and desperate to extricate herself from a potentially awkward situation. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I need to go home to get a hot bath and some rest.’

  He hesitated. ‘You could always stay here the night,’ he said hopefully, then immediately coloured up at his own suggestion. ‘I would sleep on the settee, of course.’

  She smiled faintly. His offer sounded like a line from a romantic Hollywood movie. The only thing was, Cary Grant had no part in this one, just poor old homespun Hayden. Reaching forward, she picked up the keys of his Jag from the coffee table and dangled them in front of him. ‘Home, Jeeves,’ she said soberly. ‘And don’t spare the horses.’

  Twister stood for a long time in the shadows of the bus shelter, even though the sudden sleet storm had now abated. Only the tip of his cigarette revealed his presence and he hardly moved a muscle. The bus had already gone, but he was not there to catch buses – just to watch the tower block opposite. The first-floor windows facing him across the road had held his gaze for the past fifteen minutes and not a glimmer of light or a sign of movement had showed in all that time. Kate Hamblin had obviously still not returned home and that suited him to a tee. He would have the time to make himself comfortable in her flat – ready to welcome her back. Dropping the cigarette in front of him, he extinguished it with the toe of one shoe and, turning up the collar of his coat, headed across the road with quick business-like steps.

  Twister knew he was in trouble. He hated to admit it, but he had seriously underestimated Kate Hamblin. Before snapping Ray Jury’s neck, he had learned from the terrified little proprietor of the breaker’s yard all about her visit to the pound with the man in the Jag – including the fact that the pair had apparently found something under the MX5 and taken it with them when they’d left. The tracking device; it had to be – which meant that his target must now be well aware that she was under surveillance and would be watching her back. Worse still, it was almost certain she had the bloody tracking device to flash around too, not to mention having got a pretty good look at the Land Rover – maybe even himself – when he had driven her into the rhyne. Things were stacking up against him and he was beginning to feel vulnerable.

  The one saving grace was that Hamblin seemed to be doing her own thing rather than working as part of the police investigation. It was common knowledge – in all the papers – that she was in deeps with the murder team and the fact that she had not sorted out some backup for her meeting with Duval under the pier suggested she had not been able to. It was unlikely then that she would be running to her mates with the information she had, but just the same, bit by bit she was putting things together all on her own and she was getting much too close for comfort. This time he had to make sure he croaked her and retrieved the tracking device. No more mistakes or contrived bloody accidents; a straightforward hit was the only option. And seeing as she’d quit the hospital, the best place to look for her was at her flat. The only complication was the arsehole with the Jag. He needed to find out who he was and fix him too – just in case. Maybe he’d get little Miss Kate to tell him what he wanted to know before he shut out her lights. Pulling on a pair of gloves, he licked his lips in anticipation. Yeah, he liked that idea, liked it a lot.

  There was no alarm on the flat and the lock on the door was easily sprung – good old council properties – but he was careful to close the door properly behind him. Once inside, he removed the light bulbs from the chandelier in the living room, closed the blinds on the single window and poured himself a stiff whisky from the kitchen cupboard. Then, swinging an armchair round to face the door, he settled back to wait.

  The street was deserted when Kate was dropped off outside the tower block and the nearby street lamp, its glow reflected in a pavement that once more gleamed with a thin covering of ice after the recent sleet storm, seemed to be watching her with a cold cyclopean eye.

  Lewis had offered to see her in, but she had politely but firmly declined the humiliation of being escorted to her own flat and he had driven off in a huff.

  She sighed as she approached the main door of the building. Poor old Hayden. He was a real brick, but she knew what would have happened if she had agreed to his offer. He would have been through her door (‘just make sure everything is OK in here’) and one thing would have led to another. She liked Hayden a lot, but she had only just ended one long-term relationship with local solicitor, Alan Morey, after finding him sharing his bed with two call-girls, and she wasn’t ready for another romantic entanglement just yet – especially in her present fragile emotional state.

  She shivered as she climbed the stone stairs to the first floor, screwing her nose up at the dank atmosphere of the place and wondering why the stairways of council tower blocks always smelled like urinals. Maybe she would be able to find some little country cottage, like Hayden’s, to rent when this awful business was over. That was, of course, if she still had a job by then – or, more importantly, a life!

  She hadn’t admitted it to Hayden, but the revelation that someone had actually taken the trouble to bug her car had unnerved her almost as much as the sinister circumstances of her so-called accident. The realization that she was being stalked gave her a funny jittery feeling, adding to her sense of insecurity – not just because of the obvious risk to her person, but because of the intrusive nature of the thing; the knowledge that her every move was being closely monitored by someone who had invaded her life and her privacy. There was also a sense of indignation, despite the fear factor, that some low-life had had the audacity to put a police officer under surveillance, rather than the other way around.

  She wondered just how much the killer knew about her and what she had been doing. Had he seen her pick up the note in the Highbridge café for instance? Had he seen her meet Duval under the pier? And did he know that she had found his tracking device? At the same time, the strange irony attached to the situation was not lost on her, for by targeting her in the first place, he had only lent weight to Duval’s claim that he was innocent of the murders of the police surveillance team. But that in turn raised another question – if not Duval, then who and, just as important, why?

  The timer controlling the lights activated as she fumbled in her pocket for her key, plunging the stairs and landing in darkness, and she had to press the plastic stud in the wall to switch the lot back on again. But by then she had found her key and, inserting it in the lock, pushed the door open. The interior of the flat was in darkness and she tried the light switch several times before irritably accepting the fact that the ceiling chandelier was not working. With a soft curse, she kicked the door shut behind her and felt her way across the room – and into a nightmare.

  Twister had heard the hollow sound of footsteps on the concrete floor outside the flat seconds before someone turned the key in the door. He smiled as the hand fumbled for the light switch and heard a muffled curse when, after several clicks, it dawned on the young woman, whose long auburn hair was briefly backlit in the doorway by the landing light, that the cheap chandelier in the living room was not working.

  He sat very still in his corner as she shut the door behind her, then clumsily felt her way across the room to the kitchen as if she couldn’t walk properly. Maybe the car crash had done her some harm then. Good! He heard her try the kitchen light and curse even louder when she found that that was out too, rapidly flicking the switch on and off in obvious temper. Her voice was uneven, catching sobs every few seconds, and, though he couldn’t see, it was evident that she had made for the sink, because he heard a tap being turned on and a loud splashing sound, suggesting she was dashing water over her face.

  Very carefully he climbed out of the chair and edged along the wall past the window to one side of the kitchen door and waited, controlling his breathing and remaining motionless.

  She appeared suddenly in the doorwa
y, apparently holding on to the frame. He could hear her breathing, smell the sweat on her, and was surprised that he couldn’t catch a single whiff of perfume. But there again, she had probably discharged herself in the same clothes she had been wearing at the time of the crash and hadn’t had time to freshen up. Pity, for she wouldn’t get another chance now.

  She took a couple of steps into the room and stopped. It was almost as if she could smell him too and he inwardly jumped when she spoke. ‘Who’s there?’

  Clever girl. She had keen senses – but not keen enough. One powerful arm had encircled her chest in a crushing embrace before she knew what was happening and even as she opened her mouth to scream, he had found the vital pressure point in her neck and she was out cold.

  In the darkness he smiled to himself as he dragged her across the room to the armchair he had vacated and dumped her into it. A length of nylon cord ripped from the blinds on the adjacent window and cut in two with his pocket knife provided him with the means to lash her thin wrists to the chair arms and a piece torn from her blouse and stuffed with tissues from one of her pockets made an excellent gag. Now all he had to do was wait until she regained consciousness and then the interrogation could begin. He felt a most unprofessional, but almost sexual, thrill at the thought of it and he quietly hummed to himself as he switched on the standard lamp behind the chair. ‘Now, Miss Katie,’ he murmured, ‘I wonder what you’ve got to tell me, eh?’

  Terry Duval had been crouched in the tiny maintenance cupboard for the best part of an hour and a half, waiting for Kate Hamblin to return home. From his cramped position, he had been afforded a clear view of the flat across the landing through a tiny gap between the edge of the door and the frame and his patience seemed to have been rewarded when the slender auburn-haired girl let herself into the flat just as he was about to give up on his uncomfortable vigil. He had been ringing Kate on the mobile number she had given him at various times throughout the day, but without success and had decided on the more direct approach in a mood of desperation. He needed to know whether she had managed to retrieve the note before he could decide on anything. Without it he was on to a hiding to nothing, but time was fast running out for him. Twice he had only avoided being spotted by a police patrol by the skin of his teeth and he knew that the odds on his luck continuing were pretty bleak. Kate Hamblin was his one chance, but could he count on her? He wasn’t so sure about that, but he sure as hell was going to ask her.

  He waited a further ten minutes before deciding to leave his hiding-place and only then after listening carefully for the slightest sound that would indicate someone was using the now blacked-out stairs. But all he could hear was the blare of a television coming from the floor above. Satisfied, he very gently pushed the door open and began to squeeze through – only to freeze again when a shaft of light suddenly sprang out across the landing as the door of the flat he was watching was pulled open. The next instant a tall, powerfully built man, dressed in a hooded coat, emerged and stood there for a second, apparently checking out the landing. Easing the cupboard door closed, Duval remained in a half-crouched position, balancing on one leg, but afraid to move in case he gave himself away.

  But he was in luck this time and the next moment he heard footsteps ringing on the stone stairs, followed by the sound of the main entrance door in the lobby downstairs closing with a resounding bang. Taking a calculated risk, he peered out again, but the landing was deserted. The mysterious visitor had apparently switched on the landing lights as he left, but the automatic timer cut them off even as Duval straightened up and shut the cupboard door behind him. He made no effort to hit the switch again, however; sometimes the dark could be a useful ally and right now he sensed that things were best left the way they were.

  The door of Kate Hamblin’s flat was ajar and he frowned. Who the hell had she been entertaining? Her departing visitor had not looked like the sort she would be interested in romantically and Duval had been involved with the police long enough to know that it hadn’t been Old Bill either. So who then? His instinct told him something was very wrong and he should get out while he could, but curiosity got the better of him and he couldn’t resist pushing the door back to peer inside.

  At first he was partially dazzled by the standard lamp in the corner, but his eyes quickly adjusted to the light and, suddenly realizing that the woman sitting in the armchair beneath it must have seen him, he lurched across the room towards her, kicking the door shut behind him. ‘Don’t make a sound,’ he snarled, ‘or I’ll kill you.’

  But even as he got to her, it became apparent to him that someone else had beaten him to it. He saw the cords binding her wrists to the chair arms first and when he bent down beside her to gingerly pull the long hair away from her battered face, he saw the gag in her mouth and found himself staring into wide-open sightless eyes.

  His gruesome discovery sent him staggering back from the corpse with a choking cry, colliding with a wall and another piece of furniture on the way. Then, wrenching open the front door with shaking fingers, he blundered out on to the landing, slamming the door behind him as if seeking to contain some unimaginable horror that was in pursuit.

  He snapped the landing light on again as he stumbled towards the stairs, his eyes wild and unseeing, the perspiration pouring down his face in the panic of the moment. The elderly man going through his post-box in the lobby stared after him in astonishment as he crashed through the main door and out into the street, but he hardly noticed him.

  Kate Hamblin was dead, that was all Duval could think of – dead – which meant that he had lost the one chance he had of proving his innocence. As he climbed behind the wheel of his Land Rover and churned away into the night, however, something else hit him with almost physical force: he had just stumbled upon a murder scene and, like a fool, he had left his prints all over it.

  Dick Stacey, the office manager, was sorting through some files on his desk when Hayden Lewis pushed through the door of the otherwise empty CID office.

  Lewis raised an eyebrow. ‘Still here, Dick?’ he queried. ‘I thought you’d be home in front of the telly long before now.’

  The admin man shrugged. ‘Asked to stay on,’ he replied. ‘Bit of a flap going down at the moment. DI’s been trying to get hold of you.’

  Lewis poured himself a coffee from the machine, keeping his back towards Stacey to hide the alarm that must have registered in his expression. ‘Yeah, got a problem with my mobile,’ he lied, adding a little too casually, ‘What sort of a flap?’

  Stacey grunted and Lewis heard him push his chair back as he got to his feet. ‘Only another murder,’ the other replied drily.

  ‘Murder?’ Lewis turned quickly, the coffee cup partially shielding his face as he took a sip.

  Stacey studied him with a kind of grim amusement, then shrugged again as he crossed the room towards a half-open filing cabinet in the far corner, a wad of files under his arm. ‘Yeah, a Bridgwater car-recovery merchant by the name of Ray Jury.’

  ‘Jury?’ Lewis choked the name through his coffee, then pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his chin.

  Stacey bent over the cabinet, apparently inserting the files inside in some sort of set order. ‘Local plods got an “intruder on premises” call,’ he said, ‘but when they got there, they found Jury lying in the yard with a broken neck.’

  The admin man slammed the drawer of the cabinet shut. ‘Detective Super and DCI are down there now. Nasty business.’

  But Lewis was no longer listening – all he could think about was Kate – and when Stacey turned back towards his desk, he was surprised to find the detective had gone, his footsteps thumping off down the corridor outside, leaving his cup of coffee leaking through the screwed up paper in one of the office’s cane wastepaper bins.

  ‘Dirty bastard,’ Stacey growled, grabbing some kitchen roll from the coffee tray to clear up the mess and briefly cocking an eye towards the door as a vehicle left the car-park outside with a screech of tyres.

&n
bsp; 2 SOCA – Serious Organized Crime Agency

  chapter 15

  HAYDEN LEWIS WAS scared – not for himself, but for Kate. He had to admit that at first he had been pretty sceptical about her claim that she was being targeted by some shadowy assassin, but discovering the bug on her car had changed all that and the fact that the murder of Ray Jury must have been committed within an hour or so of their visit to the car-breaker’s yard was just too much of a coincidence. Kate was in deadly peril, he was convinced of it, and he feared that the clock was already ticking. Why the hell hadn’t he overruled her protests and insisted on escorting her to her flat in the first place? He would never forgive himself if anything had happened to her.

  ‘Weak, weak, weak,’ he blazed at himself, hammering the steering wheel with the palm of one hand. ‘Always so damned spineless.’

  He continued to beat himself up most of the way to Bridgwater and it was because of his angry recriminations that he failed to spot the Land Rover in time. It passed him on the opposite side of the dual carriageway just after he had left Dumball Wharf behind and even as it disappeared into the elastic darkness, his wide-eyed stare confirmed that the vehicle was identical to the one Kate had earlier described to him: a grey coloured, hard-top Defender, with a snorkel fitted, showing one red and one white light to the rear.

  Travelling at speed on the opposite side of a substantial central reservation, he had no chance of picking out the driver or even part of the index number, but he knew instinctively that it was the right vehicle and his skin crawled at the thought of where it must have just come from. Gordon Bennett – Kate!