The Murder Code

by Mosby, Steve

  For long stretches, I was totally alone. The few vehicles I met coming the other way were mostly rusted pickups, scooters, an occasional cyclist angling past. I drove slowly, the tarmac passing smoothly beneath my wheels, keeping my senses tuned for a sign. I didn’t know what. What could there be that would be obvious?

  But still …

  And then I braked—a little quicker than I intended.

  Something had caught my attention. For a moment I wasn’t sure what it was. But as the car slowed to a halt, I heard a slight crackle and realised it had been that. Just a sound. The slightest variation in the texture of the road beneath the tyres.

  I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw nothing. So I cranked on the handbrake and got out of the car.

  Outside, the smell of the countryside hit me properly. The area felt fresh and full and alive; a slight breeze wafting through the woodland brought out the rich scent of the undergrowth. The trees to either side were packed tight. The grass at their bases was swirled and messy, but had grown high enough in places to wrap around the lowest branches, forming green curtains.

  I listened. At first, everything was silent, but then the world resolved itself into tiny clicks and buzzes. Not human noises. Looking all around me, I might as well have been the only person in the world.

  I walked a little way back down the road, kicking at the tarmac, looking for whatever had made the noise. It didn’t take long to find it—to find them. Hundreds of tiny white pellets of wax, scattered over the surface of the road.

  I crouched down. The car tyres had smeared a lot of the wax into streaks, while the morning sun had already begun to melt other bits. It looked like glue on the tarmac.

  He waits by the roadside, I remembered.

  Maybe flags down cars for help.

  Maybe knocks cyclists over.

  I stood up quickly again. The world remained quiet and still.

  It took a minute or two to establish the range the wax had spilled over and work out where the accident must have happened. Levchenko would have been riding from the opposite direction, back from the warehouse, and come off his bicycle a little past where I’d pulled up. At which point, the bike would have skidded along, the wax spilling across the road. I imagined the sound of rice pouring into a metal pan.

  There was no sign of the bicycle itself, but that could easily have been hidden in the undergrowth somewhere along the road. The killer could have dealt with that. But not the wax. There was nothing he could have done about that; there was too much of it. Maybe he’d figured it would disappear soon enough, as it was already beginning to.

  Or maybe he hadn’t noticed it at all.

  I walked back to the car, feeling nervous but excited. I kept an eye and ear on the woodland to either side of me. It appeared deserted. Dead. Even so, I reached under my jacket and unclipped my gun holster. In all my years of active duty, I’d never had to use my firearm. Not once. And I didn’t take it out now. Not yet.

  Okay.

  Now what?

  My radio was on the passenger seat of the car. I picked it out, clipped it on to my belt, then locked the vehicle. The sensible thing to do—the right thing—was to call the scene in. SOCO wouldn’t be pleased to have me trampling all over it any more than I already had.

  I listened again. Nothing. No human sounds. It was deceptively tranquil here.

  Let’s just see first.

  I walked up and down the road, looking for a likely entrance into the woodland. There was nothing obvious at first glance on either side, so I picked the beginning of the wax as my starting point. It must have been more or less where Levchenko had been struck, and it stood to reason that the killer wouldn’t have wanted to drag a semi-conscious man too far up the road. He’d have wanted to get him out of sight as quickly as possible.

  The undergrowth crunched beneath my shoes as I stepped through, using my shoulders rather than hands to support me against the trees. A little way in, the grass was more pressed down, and I spotted blood on a fanned blade of leaves. My stomach dropped, but my heartbeat picked up, my skin tingling. I could picture it in my head. This was where the killer had left Levchenko before returning to the road for the bicycle.

  There was still no sign of that. Presumably he’d dragged it deeper into the forest, along with his victim.

  I edged sideways between the trees, avoiding the blood, then crept softly through the foliage, moving branches aside as quietly as possible.

  A short distance ahead of me, the trees opened out into a clearing of sorts. The ground was uneven, as though mounds of something had been dumped in piles and had then grown over. Here and there, recognisable debris poked out of the mulch. The rusted corner of a washing machine, rubber hanging from the rim of its huge, half-submerged eye. A scatter of empty CD cases. The twisted handlebars of a child’s tricycle.

  An old rubbish tip, I realised. Long forgotten now.

  By most people.

  I stood listening for a few seconds. Everything seemed quieter than back on the road. There was a hush to the place, as though the world was holding its breath. As though something invisible was standing nearby, keeping still and silent. Waiting.

  Nobody here, though. Not right now …

  And then, scanning the clearing, I saw it. There was a higher ridge of earth over to the left; it looked like the lip of a crater beyond. On the top, lying on its side, there was a bicycle. It was old and worn, but it clearly hadn’t been here as long as the other rubbish. The handlebars were wrenched to one side. It looked like its neck had been broken.

  Levchenko, I thought.

  But he had to be here, of course. Didn’t he?

  I moved around the perimeter of the clearing until I reached the bottom of the ridge. The earth there was a mess of leaves and soil and litter. It compressed under my feet as I walked up, then lifted itself again behind me. I reached the top of the ridge and stared over. Down the slope, there was another clearing, and …

  It was the place.

  I fell still.

  They were all here. Furthest away, two bodies were like husks, little more than piles of old clothes. What skin was visible was so discoloured that it barely stood out against the ground. I spotted a third corpse half in the trees on the far right-hand side: a man lying on his back, with his shirt wrenched up around his armpits, black holes spiderwebbing a pale, distended stomach. A fourth victim was lying on his front with his bottom in the air, like a baby sleeping. Another was seated against a tree.

  The sixth was curled into a foetal position in the centre of the clearing. This was the man I’d watched being murdered in the video—and the sight of him made me shudder, because that hadn’t been how he’d been when the camera turned off. He must somehow have still been alive when the killer left—just barely. Some meagre scrap of life had caused his body to move, searching out that first and final position of comfort.

  And Levchenko …

  He was lying on his back at the bottom of the ridge, just below me, his head tilted back as if to stare up at me. But he had nothing to see with any more. The killer had obliterated every feature below his hairline. His forearms poked up in the air, fingers splayed, as though frozen in the act of playing a piano. The slight breeze ruffled his hair softly.

  This was the place. The killing ground.

  I stared down at Levchenko, holding myself as still as the victims before me—

  Squawwwk!

  I spun around, my foot skidding on the mulch slightly, sinking in, sending a scattering of it down the ridge. It was the radio at my hip. Birds scattered in the trees above, but the first clearing, behind me, remained empty.

  I unclipped the radio.

  ‘Hicks,’ I said.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Laura’s voice sounded loud and harsh in the silence of the woodland. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. An old rubbish tip just off the Hawthorne Road. Not sure where—a couple of miles up from the Newark end. It’s … I found it.’
r />   ‘The dump site?’

  I glanced behind me at the bodies, then started back down into the first clearing. ‘Yes. I’m going to head back to the road. I need support out here asap. This is … it’s going to take a while.’

  ‘Do we want …?’

  ‘To stake it out?’ Did we want to draw attention to the scene, she was asking, or could we observe it from a distance—wait to see if ‘Jimmy’ returned. ‘I don’t know. He’s taking them from the road, so if there’s another way into the site, we could maybe access it from there, keep surveillance on the road itself.’

  ‘I’m on it. Dialling IT with my free hand.’

  ‘Good. I need people out here, Laura. I really need them. I’ll keep it secure in the meantime.’

  ‘Soon as.’ She hesitated. ‘Take care, Hicks.’

  ‘I will.’

  I shut down the connection, clipped the radio back on to my belt and walked back across the clearing, towards the road. Just as I reached it, something clicked in the undergrowth to the right, and I froze.

  Listened carefully as I peered between the trees.

  Nothing. Just the sounds of a forest growing.

  Out on the road, the sun dappled the tarmac, the light trembling as the breeze gently shifted the boughs above. The back window of my car glinted, the roof steaming slightly in the heat.

  It was so peaceful here. If you didn’t know, it would be unbelievable to think that seven people had met horrific deaths only metres away, but the scene was burned into my mind. As I stood there, I felt it throbbing behind me. A pocket of darkness, hidden away amongst the trees.

  What had driven someone to do this? The letters alleged that there was a reason—a pattern to be found—but the reality was entirely at odds with that. So the letters had to be a lie. Apart from anything else, the scene behind me wasn’t the product of a rational mind. That wasn’t someone sane at work back there: dragging victim after victim to a stinking pit and filming their slow, tortuous deaths. Not the actions of someone creating a code, to whom the murders meant nothing. No, it was the work of a man who enjoyed suffering for its own sake, and for the power it gave him. Someone not indifferent to death but who revelled in it.

  Which didn’t fit.

  I had a flash memory of Levchenko’s missing face. I’d failed him again, hadn’t I? That was how it felt. There was more to it than that, though. It was a coincidence that he was a victim here, and yet … it didn’t feel like one. Once again, I had that familiar sense of gears grinding out of sight: cogs below the surface of the world, rolling and locking into place. As though everything that had happened had done so for a reason I couldn’t see, and perhaps never would …

  And then I heard it.

  In the distance. The sound of a scooter.

  I stepped back into the tree line and listened. My heartbeat was loud in my ears. The scooter was approaching from the direction of the city, and sounded some way off yet. I reached under my jacket towards my gun, but didn’t take it out yet.

  My hand hovered there.

  Not necessarily anything.

  Keeping in the undergrowth, I moved a little way in the direction the vehicle was coming from, and found a tree at the edge of the road to prop myself behind. The noise was louder.

  I peered out.

  The scooter was probably a hundred metres away now, leaning slightly to one side as the rider corrected from the meander of road that had brought it into sight. It was coming quickly too: an angry mosquito buzz to the engine. The rider was a man, dressed in black, with shoulder-length brown hair that was swept back by the speed he was driving at. I couldn’t make out much of his face, but the scooter itself was bright crimson.

  Kate Barrett’s?

  What had the registration been? I couldn’t recall it—and then suddenly I could, at least a little. F765 something. I remembered that much. The numbers counted down.

  I stepped out into the road.

  Saw: F765 …

  One hand still in my jacket, I held my other palm out.

  ‘Stop! Police!’

  He spotted me, of course—twenty metres away at most now—and I saw him stare in shock: raise himself back from the handlebars slightly, as though someone had clicked their fingers in front of his face. He was only young, I realised. Perhaps this was a mistake—but then he lowered his body again, expression grim, and accelerated straight at me.

  Shit.

  I pulled the gun out as quickly and smoothly as I could, but there was no time for a two-handed grip: I just fired three shots one-handed towards the scooter itself, heard the bang of the front tyre exploding, the ching of bullet on metal, and then leapt to one side. Too late, though. I had a momentary image of the bike suddenly on its side, coming at me like a scythe, and then my legs were flung sideways and I landed face first in the undergrowth.

  Behind me on the road, there was a tortured scrape of metal as the downed scooter spun away along the tarmac.

  And then nothing.

  You’re okay.

  There was no pain. Then suddenly, a silent, dipping heartbeat later, there was more pain than I’d ever had in my life. My left leg felt like it had burst into flame: the burning unbearable. I rolled on to my back, mouth gaping open, but hurting too much to make a sound, and reached down out of instinct to grasp my thigh. Through the fog of pain, it made me realise that my hands were empty.

  Where was the gun?

  I shifted slightly, scanning the undergrowth around me, finding nothing, then glanced up the road. The rider was lying on his side a short distance from me. As I watched, he too rolled on to his back and then slowly lifted a hand to the side of his head.

  Get up, Andy.

  Get up!

  I reached for the nearest tree and used a low branch to pull myself up slightly, then a higher one to get to my feet and support myself. There was no strength in my injured leg at all. My thigh muscle felt like it had been destroyed. When I tried putting my weight on it, pain flared and the leg buckled. I gripped the branch harder.

  On the road, the man lowered his hand and rolled back on to his side, then over on to his front, pushing himself up on to his knees. Making an effort to stand. His hair trailed on the tarmac, and I could see him gritting his teeth. Then he let out an awful howl—pain at first, then rage—and pushed himself to his feet.

  Where’s the gun?

  I looked desperately at the ground by my feet. Nothing.

  When I glanced back up, he was standing in the road, swaying slightly, staring at me. There was blood down one side of his face. It didn’t conceal the expression of absolute hatred.

  ‘Jimmy,’ I said. ‘It’s over.’

  He stared at me for a moment longer—long enough for me to think again: Christ, he’s just a kid—then he walked slowly and awkwardly up the road. Limping slightly, but not as injured as I was. My gaze followed him to the downed scooter, which had spun all the way to the opposite tree line. He couldn’t think it would be of any use to him, surely? But he crouched down at the back, and I heard clattering, and when he stood up again, I saw he was holding a claw hammer.

  Panic took me.

  Not trying to get away at all, then. And as he turned and walked back towards me, I had an image of the bodies in the woods, only a short distance away. What had been done to them. What was about to be done to me.

  ‘Jimmy.’

  He continued walking towards me, carefully, as though he wasn’t sure of his step. His fingers kept curling and uncurling around the handle of the weapon. Eyes fixed on me. Grim determination on his face.

  ‘Jimmy, it’s over.’

  He ignored me. I tried to move back into the woods, where I would have a better chance against him, where it would be harder for him to swing that fucking hammer—but my leg gave out and I fell backwards into the undergrowth, then sat up again quickly.

  He was still coming. This was going to be how I died, then. As badly as anyone had ever died.

  It was Rachel I thought of, and the
son I would never meet.

  ‘Jimmy—’

  But then I saw the gun. It was just a little way in front of me, lying in the grass close to the edge of the road. Pretty much where I’d fallen, and yet somehow I’d missed it. Now, it was as obvious as a stone. The panic inside burst and filled me.

  Everything that happened next was a blur.

  I launched myself forward, using my good leg, and ended up kneeling beside the gun—just as Jimmy saw it too. He came at me faster. I scrambled in the grass and found it. Jimmy shouted in anger, raised the hammer just as I raised the gun. But he wasn’t close enough, and I was faster. I got there first. He didn’t have time to swing.

  My heartbeat in my ears.

  We were both frozen in place for a time: me kneeling, pointing the gun at his face; him standing two metres away, hammer held up behind his head. Eyes locked on each other. I don’t know how long it lasted. In the corner of my eye, I saw a droplet of blood fall from his ear. I heard the trill of birdsong and the click of the woodland behind me, impossibly tranquil.

  Then:

  ‘Jimmy,’ I said quietly, ‘it’s over.’

  He stared at me for a few seconds longer, and I think he wanted to do it—was weighing it up to see if he had the courage to die. But then his expression slackened and he took a slow, awkward step back.

  ‘Drop the hammer.’

  It clattered on the tarmac.

  ‘Face down on the ground.’

  He did what he was told. He kneeled down carefully, then lay on his front and knitted his hands behind his head. I lowered the gun as he went, keeping it aimed on him. Then he lifted his head to rest his chin on the tarmac. Eyes bright against the dark red blood beside them.

  It took Laura another ten minutes to arrive. The whole time we waited, we didn’t take our eyes off each other, and we didn’t say a word.

  Forty-Six

  ‘TAKEN ABACK?’ LAURA SAID.

  ‘A little.’

  It was early afternoon, and we were walking—limping in my case—up the front path of a two-storey house on a quiet suburban road. The neighbouring houses were all the same—wide and low and white-faced—and the gardens were well tended. A few houses up, a sprinkler was pulsing out of sight behind a flat hedge. Driving up the road, I’d seen an old man pushing a buzzing mower back and forth. It was a good area, this one. Neat and upper-middle-class and expensive.