by David Hodges
‘No reply,’ he breathed, his voice flat and unemotional. ‘Just an answer message. She must have already left. So, Mr Detective, what do you suggest we do now, eh?’
But Lewis just stared into those cold reptilian eyes and felt his stomach muscles tighten in another spasm.
chapter 23
DCI CALLOW COULD feel her patience evaporating, along with her resistance to the cold. She had parked her car three to four doors down from Lewis’s cottage after seeing Kate’s taxi drive off and she had been standing in the gateway of the house next door – concealed behind a large oak tree – for the best part of forty minutes. Yet in all that time there had not been a movement or a sound from inside the little thatched cottage.
Lewis’s distinctive Jaguar had been parked in the drive alongside the house on her arrival, so she had naturally assumed he was at home and, as she hadn’t seen Kate actually knock on the front door and then head round the back afterwards, since she had still been parking her car at the time, there was no way of her knowing that Kate was alone inside.
Nevertheless, her febrile imagination did its best to unsettle her. So, the stupid cow had run home to her boyfriend, had she? Even now the pair were probably sharing a nice bottle of wine while they studied what was in the padded envelope. Maybe there was even a bit of shagging going on too, eh? Yeah, right – and she smirked through her near frozen facial muscles. She couldn’t see Miss Tin Knickers doing anything as common as shagging. Sex was strictly for the lower orders. She glowered in the darkness, feeding off her own sour mood.
OK, so she shouldn’t have made a play for the silly bitch when she’d joined the team; ought to have known she was straight. But to actually be given the cold shoulder by a snotty little tart like that really got to her. What made Miss Kate Hamblin think she was so special? Her numbers weren’t even dry yet. And if Roz Callow had anything to do with it, they never would be – she would be out on her delicate little ear. All that was needed was enough dirt to throw at her and though she had got away with the little game she was playing so far, maybe, just maybe her luck was about to run out.
Callow was so preoccupied with her hate agenda that she failed to hear the front door of the cottage open and close, and it wasn’t until the footsteps crunched into the gravel within spitting distance of her that she realized her target was on the move. The engine of the Jaguar started immediately and the DCI only just managed to shrink back into the gateway before the powerful car emerged with blazing headlamps and a grinding of gears, turning in the direction of the village of Mark.
Hell’s bells, she couldn’t lose her now; that would be too much. Unused to running, Callow was panting heavily when she climbed back behind the wheel of her Audi.
The Jag’s tail lights had already faded by the time she pulled away, but if there was one thing this DCI could do well, it was drive and she demonstrated that now, catching up with Kate just as the Jag swung off the Burtle road to head towards Highbridge.
Callow frowned. Where the hell are you going now, she mused? Surely not back to the nick? That would be a real bummer after she herself had endured forty-minutes’ purgatory standing in the cold under a bloody tree. For a while it certainly looked that way though. After entering The Causeway, a mile and a half from Mark village, Kate continued left at speed through Watchfield and eventually on into Highbridge itself. Now she slowed, but passed the police station without the slightest flick of her brake lights and shortly afterwards swung right again into a side road.
Knowing the road went nowhere, Callow pulled into the kerb just before the junction and parked outside the darkened premises of Wadman & Son Funeral Directors. Then, switching off her police radio, she followed the wall of the building round the corner on foot. Within a few yards she spotted the Jaguar’s exhaust smoke issuing from the mouth of a cul-de-sac running parallel to the main road behind the building. She crept closer and, slipping into the shadows in front of two large wheelie bins, peered round the corner. The car was parked opposite the rear gates of the funeral directors, its engine ticking over with a low growl and Kate sitting motionless in the driving seat. What on earth was she up to at this time of night, Callow mused – especially here? And why was Hayden Lewis not with her? After all, it was his car she was driving. She compressed her lips into a thin, hard line. Somehow she knew that finding out would be well worth the wait and, flicking up the collar of her coat against the cold, she leaned against the wall, determined to do just that.
Kate had no idea she was being tailed, not because Callow was such an expert at mobile surveillance, but because her mind was sick with worry over Hayden. The realization that his cottage had been broken into and her discovery of the bloodstains had really shaken her and she had spent a further ten minutes checking out the garden in the light of one of Lewis’s torches to satisfy herself that he wasn’t lying somewhere seriously hurt.
She should have called out her police colleagues, of course – in the same way as she should have alerted them to what was going on from the very start of the murder inquiry. After all, that is what she would have expected of anyone else in the same circumstances. But she had been through all this mind-searching before and it was far too late to do the official thing now. What had she got to tell them now anyway? That Hayden was AWOL, his French doors had been forced and there were traces of what looked like blood in the living room and kitchen? And what if she was wrong and it wasn’t blood, but a spillage of red wine, or Hayden had cut himself on a glass, then gone to a friend in the village for a plaster? Maybe there hadn’t even been a break-in – Hayden had forced the French doors himself because he had forgotten his front-door key? There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything and perhaps she was simply being neurotic. Somehow she didn’t think so, however, and anyway, she now had a face and an address for her suspected killer and that had to be followed up as a priority – regardless of what had happened to Lewis.
She sniffed nervously as she stared at the solid wooden gates. A dilapidated sign fixed to the adjoining wall which bordered the road to the end of the cul-de-sac read: ‘Wadman & Son, Funeral Directors. Do not obstruct.’ She snorted. Obstruct? If it had been left to her, she wouldn’t be within ten miles of the bloody awful place.
Easing the car forward, she took it to the end of the cul-de-sac, squeezing between a fish and chip van left half on and half off the verge and a Ford tipper lorry parked close to Wadman’s wall. Then, mounting the verge behind the lorry, she reversed into the end space of a three-car-parking bay, concealed by the projecting bulk of a smart looking caravanette.
Switching off, she continued to sit there for a few minutes, trying to pluck up the necessary courage to force herself from the warm security of the vehicle to carry out a quick reconnoitre. Then, finally making up her mind, she pocketed a small torch she had found in the glove compartment and opened the door. It was a bitterly cold night and the road surface already sparkled with frost. But the sky was clear, with myriads of stars, and the veined face of the moon blazed with an intensity that blinded her for a moment. Not exactly the ideal night for a burglary, she mused, staring at the heavens from under one upraised arm and futilely hoping to see a few clouds moving in on that near featureless white face. The brilliance of the moonlight soon turned out to be the least of her problems, however. Checking the gates of the undertaker’s, she discovered that they were bolted on the inside and a small pedestrian door in the right-hand gate also proved to be securely locked.
Drawing her coat more tightly about her, she stood for a few moments in their shadow, considering her options – not that she was exactly flush with those.
Going round the front and knocking the proprietor up was obviously not a good idea and trying to force an entry through the small pedestrian door with whatever implement she could find in the Jaguar’s boot was likely to cause so much noise that it would wake up half the neighbourhood. That left her with just one alternative – scaling the wall – which, in her present poor p
hysical condition, was certainly not something to be attempted lightly. But at least one helpful lorry driver had provided her with a leg-up, lessening the amount of pain the climb was bound to involve, and furthermore, as the tipper was half-filled with rubble, it would put her even closer to the top of the wall.
Getting up on to the back of the lorry, however, proved to be more difficult than she had anticipated. For a start, the tipper was a lot higher off the ground than she had imagined and the wheels and sides were also covered in a slippery icy crust. She was forced to make several attempts before she was able to secure a foothold on top of one of the rear wheels and hoist herself up. But it was well worth the effort, as the summit of the rubble proved to be an ideal vantage point.
She found herself staring into a rubbish-strewn yard with a gloomy looking two-storey building at the far end, apparently fronting the main road, and a big garage with business-like steel doors extending back from it in her direction. The place was very still, one light showing in a downstairs window. She shivered and very nearly jumped down from the crates to drive off into the night. Then she thought of all those who had died – Andy Seldon, Alf Cross, Linda and the poor breakdown man, Ray Jury. Most of all she thought of Hayden who, as far as she was aware, was still alive, and she knew she had to stick with her plan despite the obvious risks.
Gritting her teeth against the searing erosion of her ribcage that now seemed to be underway again, she gripped the top of the wall with both hands and hauled herself up, digging the toes of her boots into the rough stone. Then she was straddling it, one leg each side as she looked down into the yard, wondering if she should simply jump off despite her injured ribs and hope to land safely, but distrusting the dense shadows below where the moonlight failed to reach. In the end, left with no alternative, she pivoted round to face the road and again gripping the top of the wall with both hands, swung her right leg over to join the left before lowering herself down the inside as far as she could and letting go.
She landed clumsily, jarring her ribs again, but managed to stay on her feet and avoid doing herself any serious damage by bending her legs on impact. Then, straightening up with one hand clutching her chest as the other dug into her pocket for her painkillers, she leaned back against the wall, trying to manufacture enough saliva to swallow her tablets. Anxiously studying the back of the funeral parlour at the same time, she listened for the slightest sound, fearing that there might be a dog on the loose. But nothing moved, apart from a noisy motor cycle on the main road, and she breathed a tremulous sigh of relief. So far so good – the first phase of her illegal trespass completed and she had got in without detection.
But she was wrong about that and on the corner of the cul-de-sac, DCI Callow’s malicious smile said it all. ‘Gotcha,’ she murmured as she reached for her police radio.
Twister had spent the best part of half an hour pacing the small cellar, smoking one cigarette after another in a mood of increasing agitation. It was plain that he was in a dilemma and it didn’t take the wisdom of Sherlock Holmes for Lewis to deduce that he was the cause.
In the end the psychopath seemed to come to a decision and he bent over his captive, staring fixedly into his eyes. ‘Does anyone else have the key to your desk?’ he said.
Thank God. He had bought the bogus story.
Lewis shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t be much sense in putting the tracker in there if someone else had access,’ he replied.
Twister acknowledged the point with a brief nod and straightened up. ‘Where is your key?’ he said. ‘Do you have it on you?’
The detective thought quickly. If he said ‘yes’, he could be inviting trouble as there was no way his captor could just pop into the police station to retrieve his property and anyway, Lewis wasn’t sure he had a key on the ring in his pocket that looked like a drawer key. On the other hand, if he said ‘no, it’s at home’, the killer might decide to drive back there to collect it himself and, as far as Lewis knew, the only keys he possessed, apart from those on the ring in his pocket, were his spare car ignition keys hanging on a hook in his cottage.
‘How are you going to get into the nick to unlock the drawer anyway?’ he prevaricated, conscious of the beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. ‘There is a security door and you would be challenged if someone saw you.’
Twister treated him to a mirthless smile and suddenly Lewis realized he had been outwitted. ‘There is no locked drawer, is there?’ he said softly. ‘You were just playing for time.’ His smile faded and the empty expression was back in his eyes. ‘Well, Mr Detective,’ he went on, ‘your time is up.’
Lewis caught the glint of steel and stared in horror at the cutthroat razor in the other’s hand. ‘First, I shall cut off your left ear,’ Twister said, ‘then your right. And if that doesn’t work, I shall turn to even more sensitive areas.’ His face was now inches from the policeman’s. ‘So, tell me, where is my tracker?’
chapter 24
THE BIG STEEL doors of the garage were securely locked. Kate made a face in the moon-dappled shadows as she carefully tested them. No way in there then, she mused, and peered round the corner pillar to study the rear of the main building from which the garage projected some thirty feet. As she had noticed before, a light burned in one of the downstairs windows, but otherwise the place was in darkness – apparently as dead as the people in its fridges.
She shivered again, then crept slowly along the garage wall towards the light, pausing every few seconds to scrutinize the building and listen for any sounds of movement. Once her foot struck what looked like a discarded beer or cider can, lying with the multitude of other rubbish that was scattered over the concrete hard-standing, and it shot away from her with a loud clatter, freezing her into immobility. But the noise seemed to have gone unnoticed, for no additional lights came on and no one came out to investigate. Essentially that was a relief, but it also occurred to her that maybe no one had materialized because there was no one in the building to start with. After all, why would anyone be in a funeral parlour this late in the evening except through shortage of breath? Perhaps she had got it all wrong and Larry Wadman had taken Hayden somewhere else entirely. It could be that she was wasting her time here, but there again, what other options were open to her?
Watching where she put her feet this time, she moved off again and kept going until she reached a wide paved area close to the back door of the building.
The light burning in the window turned out to be a flickering ceiling globe illuminating a small shadowy room with a crucifix glinting on a pedestal at the far end. The floor was fully carpeted and there was a narrow window (internal, it had to be) above the crucifix that seemed to be composed of coloured glass. This had to be the so-called chapel of rest – and it was just her luck that someone happened to be resting there at the moment. A long table covered by a cloth occupied the centre of the room and an open coffin stood on top of it, wreaths leaning against the sides and the end nearest to her – the unfortunate incumbent obviously having been prepared for viewing before their final journey.
She didn’t fancy climbing into a room with a corpse and tried the handle of the back door first, but, as she had expected, it was locked. The top panel of the door was glass and she pressed her nose against it to try to see what was on the other side, but it was pointless; the glass had a heavily frosted pattern and whatever lay beyond was in darkness anyway. Smashing the glass as a means of entry was out of the question, so reluctantly she turned her attention to the window, gently tugging on both corners of the frame. It creaked, but remained steadfast, even though she could see that the stay at the bottom was already sheared. Damn it! Patting her pockets, she felt for anything she could use as a lever. Usually she carried a mini make-up case in her coat pocket to cater for emergency repair work, but the very time she needed the little leather case, she had come without it. Then she remembered the wallet in her back pocket and tugged it free. Her credit card was just about the right thickness, but was it stron
g enough? All depended on the window catch.
She was actually in the process of inserting the card into the narrow gap between the window and the outer frame, when the light blazed through the half-panelled glass door. Hell’s bells! Someone was coming.
Unbeknown to Kate, the sound of the tin can clattering across the yard, while unnerving for her, had bought a temporary reprieve for Hayden Lewis. Although the cellar lacked fanlights of any sort, there were two vents located high on the wall close to the ceiling and the noise, though muffled, had been loud enough to penetrate the room – and, more importantly, to distract Twister.
‘Seems we have a visitor,’ he murmured, closing the razor with a snap and returning it to his pocket. ‘And a none-too-quiet one at that.’
He studied his captive thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want to gag you,’ he said. ‘You might choke with your nose the way it is and we don’t want you dying on us just yet, do we?’ He thrust his face close to him. ‘But make one sound,’ he added, ‘and I’ll come back and cut your tongue out. Just remember that.’
Then he was moving swiftly across the cellar to the stairs, his soft-soled shoes making hardly any sound. The stairs creaked once and then Lewis heard the door at the top close with a sharp ‘ping’. He was alone and unashamedly shaking in his shoes.
Saved by the bell – or in this case, what sounded like a tin can. But for how long, that was the point? Lewis thought about ignoring the killer’s warning and shouting to attract the intruder’s attention, but straightaway decided against it. First, it was unlikely that they would hear him and, secondly, even if they did, how would they know where he was? There was also the question of why they were on the property at all. It was unlikely to be for a legitimate purpose and if they were up to no good, they would hardly be keen on coming to his rescue, would they? Furthermore, he had no doubt that the killer would make good his threat to cut out his tongue and even though he knew he was likely to end up with his throat cut eventually anyway, he had no desire to hasten that moment.
