He carefully checked his tools—the camera, charged and memory cleaned; the nitrile gloves, vivid in blue sterility; and his suitcase. It was old battered leather, his mother’s travelling trunk, but the bag of lavender from her dresser masked the smell of the girl who had slept in it for two days before her journey to the lake. Soon, it would carry another passenger.
Why didn’t she stop him? That was what he didn’t understand. She should’ve come to him by now, begged him to return to her. But she remained elusive and distant. He gave her plenty of opportunity—there was the forum, his blog, email. He’d made sure she knew how to reach him, had written them all out very carefully for her, placed the little folded note in her hand while he wasn’t looking. She’d smiled at him, and his entire world had exploded into colour in that dark, dingy room full of kids pretending they were too old for this place.
He shook his head, scattering the happy memories, and focussing on the future. If he didn’t make it count now, she would never come back to him. He had to make sure she really knew what she was missing. He would prove his love to her, drive her wild with jealousy, until she begged him to take her back.
He wrote:
My heart bleeds for you, but it still beats for you. When will you realise that this isn’t a game? You can stop me, freebird. Just say the word. You’re everything to me. I’m waiting for you, freebird, to run back to me and be free.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Don’t Wait Up
Gina was tired and ready for her bed. Her king-sized bed was squeezed into her room with hardly any space to get out of it either side, but was still the most amazing bed ever. She would sink into it, wrap the duvet around her shoulders and persuade Laurie to bring her a cup of camomile tea.
Twelve hours straight at the library was knackering. Still, the bloody essay was done and she could now return to the joyous chaos of the house. They had barely cleared up from the party last Friday night and there weren’t many ways to get week-old tomato juice out of the carpet.
She walked along the back of the Union, smelling the distinctive scent of marijuana floating in the air. Her first-year halls had stank of it, and she remembered that bloody awful day when she’d eaten the inviting chocolate cupcake at Hayley’s party and spent the rest of the night off her head. Messing with chocolate was sick and wrong.
As she passed under the bridge, a shiver went down her spine, the feeling of being watched settling between her shoulder blades. Gina looked around—nothing. The whole road was deserted, and she shook her head and walked on. This stupid serial killer was making her jumpy.
It wasn’t that she was bothered about being out alone at night, even with those two missing students—she lived a five-minute walk from uni and she wasn’t going to let a little thing like the dark put her off pulling a late one in the library.
The rain had tailed off into a misting drizzle, barely rain at all, but she quickened her steps. Almost home. The slightly haunted feeling hadn’t left her and the hedgerows menaced, every dark corner a hiding place, every shadow a man with a length of rope...
Her heart was loud in her ears and her breath caught in her throat. Fuck, she was better than this. She deserved to feel safe in her own town, damn it, and this wasn’t fair. Bastard.
Gina fumbled for her key outside the front door, trying to find the right one under the flickering light of the one broken streetlamp on her road. Of course it would be outside their house. She would ring the Council on Monday, get it fixed. Do something to stop this feeling of dread lodged in her stomach.
Finally, she found the key and wiggled it in the lock, forcing the door open. They really needed to get that fixed and she added it to the list. She took off her knit cap and shook out her dark curls, setting down her messenger bag by the door.
She heard a noise coming from upstairs. It was a scrape-scrape-scrape sound, like wood against plaster. Laurie couldn’t be putting up shelves at this hour, so what was it? Gina shrugged off her coat and hung it off the banister, trying to place the sound—then froze. It was the headboard knocking against the wall.
“Laurie?” she called, and the noise stopped. Who the fuck was upstairs with her girlfriend?
Running footsteps sounded across the landing, and Gina started up the stairs as a man in black ran into their bathroom and slammed the door. Gina tried to shoulder it open but he’d bolted it. She heard the window swing out and the clatter as he jumped onto the shed roof and away into the garden.
The house was quiet. Gina turned, looking at their bedroom door, her heart starting to beat double-time in her chest. She thought: I can’t believe she’d cheat on me. She thought: Who was that man? She thought: I can’t hear her breathing.
The bedroom door was ajar and Gina walked in, as if in a dream. And there was Laurie, sprawled naked on their bed, open eyes fixed on the ceiling, and a trail of blood dripping down her leg.
And all Gina could think was: He was here. The Cardiff Ripper was in my house.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Cry Me a River
Jason started awake at one o’clock in the morning, his phone blaring at him. He groaned and reached blindly for it, hearing Cerys complain loudly from the room next door. “What?” he answered, irritably.
To his surprise, Amy’s voice came down the line, sounding very far away. “Jason, I’ve been texting you. You need to get to the crime scene and take pictures. There’s a body.” He sat up instantly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and trying to take in Amy’s instructions. “Any camera will do,” she was saying, “but I want the photos as soon as you’re done.”
The line went dead. Jason took the phone away from his ear and stared at it. How was he meant to know where this body was, exactly? If he walked into Cardiff centre, would his Spidey Sense start tingling and lead him to the latest victim?
Then he realised he had six new messages. The address, sent through twice, ten minutes apart; a message telling him to get out of bed, another telling him to drag himself from the pub; and then two that just said Call me. Amy must be desperate if she was resorting to using old-fashioned telephony to get what she wanted.
Jason, on the other hand, wasn’t sure old-fashioned blagging was going to get him very far on this one. He wasn’t a police officer—in fact, he was an ex-con, and Bryn hated him at the best of times. Turning up at a fresh crime scene in the middle of the night was only going to fan the flames of disharmony between them. But what Amy wanted Amy got—she had already sent another text asking him to bring her the victim’s laptop. Jason threw on yesterday’s T-shirt and jeans before sloping off down the stairs.
“Jason?” Gwen called from her bedroom door, and he looked up, waving a hand at his mam.
“I’ve just got to do a favour for a friend. I’ll be back in no time.”
Gwen’s face hardened. Jason hadn’t seen her look like that since his court date. “A favour? At this time?”
“Mam, you have to trust me,” he pleaded.
She didn’t say a word, just shut the door and left him to make his way down the stairs.
As Jason’s brain started firing on all cylinders, the last vestiges of sleep fading away, the significance of Amy’s call began to sink in. There was another crime scene. There was a body. He had killed again.
As he pulled on his trainers, a quiet despair settled in his chest—they had failed to find him in time, and now Jason had to take pictures of the consequences. There was part of him that protested—he wasn’t a cop, he could just go back to bed and hear about this on the morning news, like everyone else. But he now had the urge to know, the need to seek the truth. He wanted justice for these girls, and he wanted to see this piece of shit in a high-security prison, where every bruiser who wanted to hurt something knew his cell number.
Armed only with Cerys’s camera, Jason stepped out into the cool of a Cardiff night, pushing down his feelings of failure, and co
ncentrated on the righteous fire burning in his chest. They were going to get him now. There was no alternative.
* * *
Jason hovered behind the police line, craning his neck for a glimpse of Bryn. He was honestly the last person Jason wanted to see at two o’clock in the morning, and he imagined he was skirting the bottom of Bryn’s list too. But he was here now, jumping from foot to foot in an attempt to keep warm, clutching the digital camera to his chest as the tips of his fingers turned blue.
He’d approached the nearest officer ten minutes ago and told him who he was and that he needed to speak to Detective Hesketh. The guy had looked at him sceptically but had gone inside. After he’d come back, however, he’d ignored Jason’s attempts to catch his eye. Great, he really was going to be stuck here all night.
Jason figured he’d give it another ten minutes before asking again, because leaving without the photographs wasn’t an option. Three women were dead and Amy was the only person actually discovering things about the girls’ deaths. So Jason would make her toast or bring her photographs in the early hours, if that was what would help. He looked round the crowd of morbidly interested onlookers, feeling apart from them. He was a man on a mission.
He also felt a touch guilty. Despite his efforts over the weekend, he hadn’t found out anything useful about Melody. He’d written down the few facts he had discovered and left them on Amy’s desk, tactfully not telling her how he’d come by them. He didn’t think Bryn would approve of him sleeping with the victim’s housemate.
But then he had brought in the CCTV from the headboard lead—that had all been him, and they now had their first glimpse of the killer. Except that had done fuck-all to stop him, hadn’t it? Jason’s grip tightened on the camera.
An ambulance was parked at the end of the street, just within the bounds of the police cordon, and Jason could see the back doors were open. At first, he thought they were here for the body, but from his vantage, he could see a pair of legs hanging below the line of the door, a red blanket trailing in a puddle. Perhaps it was someone who knew the victim? Maybe they could tell him something important.
Abandoning his post by the front door, he worked his way through the sparse crowd, the people who would be interviewed by the news crews later and, yes, he could already see a photographer and a BBC Wales van parking up. Bad news travelled fast.
At this end of the cordon, there were no police officers—at least none paying attention—and Jason easily slipped under the tape and towards the back of the ambulance. He stuffed the camera in his pocket and straightened out his jacket before rounding the open door.
A woman sat on the back step, clutching the blanket and shaking. It looked like she was trying to send a text, but her fingers were jittering off the keys and her cheeks were wet with tears. She looked up as he approached and hastily wiped her eyes, her bottom lip trembling. “H-have you moved her out yet?”
“Not yet,” Jason said softly, and sat beside her in the back of the ambulance. “I know this must be difficult for you, miss, so many people asking questions, but can you tell me what happened?”
The woman’s expression was suddenly fierce. “I’ll tell you. I want you to catch him. H-he killed Laurie.” Her eyes filled with tears again and she buried her face in her blanket. Jason put an awkward arm around her shoulder and she curled into him, shuddering with her sobs. “M-my name is Gina Matthews. Laurie’s my...” She trailed off, shook her head. “I came home from uni—I think it was nine-thirty, and I th-thought I heard something. It sounded like...like the bed moving.” She gasped, choked with tears. “I thought she was cheating on me.”
Jason rubbed circles into her back, making vague shushing sounds as Gina released her sorrow and her guilt. There was nothing to be done but wait, holding her against his shoulder, as her tears slowly subsided. She stayed there, shivering with cold and shock, and wiped her nose on the edge of the blanket.
“I saw him,” she said.
Jason started. “What did he look like?” he said, trying to keep his tone calm. If she’d seen him, got a good look at his face, they might be able to find him in less than a day, his whole damn face in every paper, on every channel, on the internet. They’d have him in their sights.
But Gina shook her head, her cheek rubbing against the lapel of his jacket. “Just the back of his head. He had dark hair and he was wearing black. Not very tall and not fat. God, I’m useless.” She scrubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and moved away from Jason, drawing the blanket closer. Her voice grew flat and she looked very far away. “And then I found her. He had...raped her. There was blood, but she...she was still warm.” She looked back to Jason. “She looked terrified. And I wasn’t there.”
Jason tried to remember the questions they always asked on cop shows, the ones that would get useful information for Amy. “Did she have any enemies? Did anyone want to hurt her?”
“Everyone loved Laurie. It was always me that caused trouble. She was always out with friends from her course and everyone at that Aussie club loved her. She started doing shifts there—not ’cause we needed the money, but because she loved the place.”
The Aussie club... “Wait—you mean Koalas? Laurie worked there?”
Gina nodded, and Jason couldn’t help the thrill that rose in his chest. The nightclub was the key. Two of the victims worked there, and now he was sure they’d find a link to Melody. They had a body, they had a witness description—maybe Amy wouldn’t even need the photographs to figure this one out.
“Was there anyone Laurie had a problem with at work? Any of the guys giving her hassle?”
Gina thought about it for a moment, then frowned. “There was this one guy, had a problem with her being a dyke. He made no secret about it too, was fucking rude when I was there last night.”
Jason leaned forward. “What was his name?” He held his breath, as she raided her memory, so intent that he completely missed the approaching footsteps. “Um...Dan? I think it was Dan.”
“Well, this is cosy.”
Jason looked up to see Bryn and Owain staring down at him, Bryn looking perturbed and Owain honestly stunned. Bryn folded his arms and shook his head as if he were dealing with a particularly disobedient child. “Come with me, boy.”
Chapter Twenty-Six: Dead Men Tell Tales
Giving Gina a pat on the shoulder and thanking her for her time, Jason followed the detectives, waiting for the bollocking that was surely due. Bryn leaned close, breath stale with cigarettes and cheap coffee. “So, she tell you anything?”
Jason blinked, but wouldn’t let go of this opportunity to be useful. “Laurie worked at Koalas, same club as Kate. There was a guy there who had a problem with her...girlfriend, name of Dan. I met him—seemed like a good bloke, but who can tell, eh?”
Owain frantically typed everything Jason said into his phone, as Bryn looked at him appraisingly. “No, you never can. Come on—Amy’s been texting me all flaming night. Take your pictures and get them over to her before she burns a hole in my phone.”
For one horrifying moment, Jason thought she might actually be able to do that, then dismissed it as ridiculous. However, his hand unconsciously went to his pocket and removed his phone, only to find another three texts. Done yet? R u coming over? R u dead?
He sent back No soon no as Bryn led him across the police cordon and into a white tent that had been set up in front of the door. An efficient woman with a clipboard looked at Jason as though he were the living embodiment of contamination.
“Overalls, boots and gloves.” It was obviously a well-rehearsed phrase and she intended to enforce her rules to the letter. “And this...officer will have to sign in and remain under escort at all times.”
Bryn gestured to a set of white overalls that were neatly bagged and tied behind the woman. “Could I just have those back?”
“New entrance, new se
t.” The woman’s robotic demeanour was terrifying. Jason hurriedly scribbled his name on the clipboard and shifted into his overalls, keeping the camera in his hand until he could slip it into the overall pocket. The woman looked pointedly at the device but said nothing. The boots were more like flimsy shower caps, which barely fitted over his trainers, and the gloves were too tight and restricted his fingers. He could already feel sweat gathering on his palms under the latex.
Owain had excused himself, but Bryn was dressed in the same sterile white getup. Jason hoped he didn’t look half as ridiculous as the detective, beer belly warping the suit to turn him into a plastic polar bear. “Let’s get inside.”
Jason followed Bryn across the threshold, not sure what to expect. But the place was quite nice inside, wooden floors and everything in matching black and white. There were framed photographs of Gina and Laurie, and one of those Andy Warhol-style prints of the two of them in four different psychedelic poses. The place was fairly neat, with a few books scattered round, but nothing much in the way of clutter or mess. Two large bin bags sat by the back door, overflowing with paper plates and plastic cups. They certainly hadn’t been robbed or searched, at least not obviously. Jason turned on Cerys’s camera and lined up a few shots, including the ghastly Warhol replica. He turned to find Bryn waiting expectantly on the stairs. “She’s not looking for interior design. Get up here.”
The top floor was crowded, with several police officers and crime scene techs at work, all ghosts in the same anonymous white overalls. Two were in the bathroom, carefully lifting footprints from the tile floor and the windowsill. Jason took a snap.
Bryn walked into the front bedroom and Jason followed without thinking. And froze.
Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) Page 11
