The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  The screen showed a driving licence photo of Johnson, but I only half glanced at it. I remembered him well enough from his visit to my house: a big, bulky man, unkempt and messy, who’d only partly managed to tame that wild appearance for work. A slight sheen of sweat over his forehead, the base of his hair damp. Personable enough at the time. Chris was wrong. You can’t tell.

  He did look like Jonathan Pearson, though – facially, at least, which would have been enough for his purposes. We’d find Pearson on his list of jobs too, I was sure. Someone who looked just enough like Johnson for him to keep a key, revisit the property, and steal some photographic ID that he could have on him in the event that he was ever stopped for acting suspiciously.

  I tapped my finger on the steering wheel, waiting for the lights to change.

  Thinking.

  Planning ahead.

  The best-case scenario was that we took Adam Johnson now, quickly and easily, at his home. The next best was that we ended up with a siege situation, where at least he was contained and nobody else was at risk. The worst was that he was inside his next victim’s house right now, waiting for tonight.

  If that was the case, we had a real problem. The list of his previous jobs was extensive, and there would be no obvious, easy way to sieve it for potential scenes. It wasn’t like the security company recorded the age and sex of the people who booked in to have their locks changed. If Johnson wasn’t home, we’d have to hope there was some indication of where he actually was. If we couldn’t find any, we’d have to trawl his jobs as best we could, and hope he wasn’t planning an attack for tonight. And in case he returned to the house, we’d have to do all that without announcing a police presence and scaring him away.

  ‘He’ll be home,’ Chris said.

  ‘It’s like you can read my mind sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s more open than others. He took the day off sick.’

  ‘No, he took the day off on purpose.’ I didn’t want to say it, but it was true. ‘He could be anywhere right now.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s just sick.’

  The lights changed. I set off, not replying.

  Because I don’t believe in best-case scenarios.

  Johnson lived in Horsley, a suburb about five miles north-west of the city centre. It was a mixed area, but generally upmarket. There was an estate – of course – but it wasn’t notorious so much as cheap and practical; obviously distinct from the nicer cottages and clusters of clean new-builds, but hardly a trouble spot. It was closer to the countryside here, and it showed. As we drove, there were fewer and fewer side roads, and more expanses of fields and wooded groves. Approaching Horsley itself, the main road ran close to the canal, separated only by a sloping stretch of grass dotted with horses, then obscured by a row of quaint old cottages, all three-storey and crammed in tightly side by side.

  A street away from Johnson’s house, I found a decent length of free road. I indicated and parked up, and the cars and van followed suit, pulling in behind. Most of us got out, and Chris and I met the head of the door team by the middle car.

  Sergeant Connor is a no-nonsense bull of a man, with a shaved head that looks polished to a sheen. I like him. He never seems bothered enough to look other men in the eye, and when he does, you tend to see them shrink a little. Now he rested an oversized tablet on the bonnet and began pointing out the salient details on the map he’d loaded up.

  It was an overhead view of Adam Johnson’s house, zoomed out enough to show the blue pulse of our GPS position on the next street. He ran his finger just above the screen.

  ‘Obvious approach.’

  ‘Obviously.’ I leaned in and pinched the screen, zooming in to get a good view of the property.

  It was a detached cottage, set alone and slightly back from the main road. There was a field on one side, with what looked like a small car park and a playground. On the other side, a thatch of woodland, separated from the house by a dusty footpath. The path led into the woods, which spread out behind the area, reaching all the way down to the canal. What appeared to be a short fence separated the property from the field, but it seemed entirely open to the footpath and woods on the left-hand side. At the rear of the building, there was what looked like a gravel parking area, and then another fence against the tree line.

  ‘Not great,’ Chris said.

  He was thinking about containing the scene – possibly that Johnson could head into the woods if we didn’t handle the situation correctly. But at least the field was open: we’d see him if he took off in that direction. And if he didn’t know we were coming, we’d have the advantage.

  ‘Could be worse,’ I said. ‘Let’s see the house.’

  Connor swiped and tapped. A moment later, we were rewarded with a street-view image of the cottage.

  ‘Looks the type,’ Chris said again.

  This time, it was harder to disagree. There was some irony in Johnson’s house being close to that playground, as it looked very much like the sort of building children would tell each other ghost stories about. It was a two-storey cottage, with a wide chimney sprouting from the front, and stone walls coated in tangles of ivy. What passed for a front garden was massively overgrown.

  In some ways it should have looked homely and welcoming, but everything about the structure was slightly off. The whole building was set at an odd angle to the main road, so that it faced the world with an oblique point, turning a shoulder to it. It was difficult to imagine how the interior was organised. There were several windows, but they were oddly spaced and in locations that didn’t look like they would work with each other. From the road, you couldn’t see where the doors were. As a whole, it looked more like an object than an actual home: something predatory that had seen a house once and was pretending to be one.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ Connor asked.

  ‘Like this,’ I said.

  A minute later, we split up. Chris got in one of the cruisers behind, and I drove alone, allowing his vehicle to overtake me, so that I was second in the queue.

  In the silence, I had time for the reality of what was about to happen to sink in. Maybe it was strange, but I didn’t feel much in the way of nerves. I never do, really, in situations like this. I’ve always found waiting to be harder. If you’re getting on with it, and dealing with the problem outright, then you don’t have time to be nervous. It was the same when I was a teenager, especially after I fell away from Sylvie and lost whatever nominal protection I’d enjoyed there. When I knew someone had a grudge and was coming for me, it was the anticipation that was the worst; it always felt better just to march up to them and get it over with, however it played out. This was no different. And in this case, we had a good team and we were going to get him.

  That was what I told myself, anyway. That one way or another, this was all going to be over. Maybe in the next few minutes. Definitely in the next twenty-four hours.

  Up ahead, Chris’s vehicle signalled, then turned into Johnson’s street. I did the same. And just like that, we were on. To the right, almost immediately, I saw the field, with its small playground. A car was parked up, and a family was playing in the tarmac area: a man, a woman and two children. I saw them stop and watch us as we approached.

  Then everything accelerated.

  Chris’s car passed the playground, followed by mine, but the one behind me turned quickly, veering off into the car park. The officers inside would spill out across the field, towards the side and back of Johnson’s property. The van with the door crew sped up to fill the gap.

  Johnson’s house came towards me on the right.

  Chris took a hard turn down the wide path on the far side. He and the officers in that vehicle would park up past the far corner of the property, covering the rear and the woods.

  I pulled in on the main road, blocking the entrance to the path.

  The van screeched up behind me.

  A second later, most of us were out, hitting the pavement at the same time. In the field t
o the right, I saw four officers fanning out towards the cottage. Up ahead, further down the dirt road, Chris and another three officers were heading around the back.

  I ran down the path, my feet kicking up the sun-baked dust. The front garden was open to this dirt road, but didn’t appear to have been cut back in years, and the brambles had grown high enough to collapse into themselves, filling the yard like dense coils of barbed wire. As far as I could see, they reached the short fence by the field, and filled the space down the side as well; no way Johnson was going to be escaping through that.

  I found the front door halfway along the structure, opening almost directly on to the dirt road. Further round, the back yard looked in better condition – tarmacked over in a rectangle behind the building. Chris and the other officers were covering that. So the property was contained.

  No car, though.

  He’s not here.

  I banged on the door as hard as I could, shouting:

  ‘Adam Johnson. Police. Open this door!’

  There was no response. I took a step back as the door team caught up with me, and glanced at the windows. In real life, they seemed even more strangely placed, like eyes in a malformed face, all of them dark and blank. The nearest – a kitchen, I guessed, from the glasses and disinfectant spray on the window ledge inside – was grey and grimy, thick with triangular webs in the top corners.

  I gestured at the door. ‘Open it.’

  Two officers moved in front of me, holding an iron battering ram between them by its massive handles. In unison, they swung back only slightly, then forward, the rounded end landing with a painful thud against the lock. The frame split and the door wobbled inwards, tottering back like a shoved drunk.

  I was through it first, moving into a small entrance area. Glancing to the left, I saw the kitchen, the tiled floor greasy and the air misty and opaque, as though something had been burned in there a long time ago and the air had never cleared. A cheap blind hung down at an angle over the window, letting the sunlight through it like a batwing.

  There seemed to be only one other room down here, a living room to the right. When I saw it, the feeling of wrongness intensified. The carpet was a faded swirl of pinks and browns and yellows, organised in ornate patterns, and the settee and chairs rested on elegant wooden feet. The textured wallpaper was a Braille of beige curls and crowns, interrupted only by the ancient three-column gas fire hanging from one wall by metal brackets, like a half-detached circuit board. Adam Johnson was in his early thirties, but this was the living room of a pensioner.

  The staircase led up in front of me, curling around to the left, growing darker as it went. I started up, the door team fanning out below me into the kitchen and front room. Despite my certainty that the house was empty, I took the bend carefully, raising my arms in front of me, ready to deflect any attack with my elbows. None came. The upstairs landing had three rooms off it. Two doors were open, one revealing a dirty rectangle of bathroom, the floor thick with plastered-down whorls of hair, while the other led into Johnson’s bedroom.

  I leaned through the doorway. It was impossible to take it all in at first glance. The room was too full: a confusion of cluttered possessions. Johnson’s single bed was against one wall, dividing the rest of the space into a horseshoe shape tightly packed with belongings. My gaze picked out details. An awkward construction of shelving filled with trinkets and toys, empty bottles, odd figurines. A wardrobe without doors, the top bulging down under the weight of the suitcases and half-crumpled boxes stuffed in above, pressing up against the ceiling. A mess of strewn clothes and snaking cables on the floor. An old television, grey plastic, shaped like an astronaut’s helmet. An antique wooden dresser, the drawers all open to different lengths, like bad teeth. And then the posters stuck to the wall above the bed.

  They were old and faded, and not really posters at all, but pages cut from magazines; one long side of each was feathered from awkward scissoring. I recognised that technique, as it was one I’d used myself as a child, cutting out pin-ups. Johnson’s were typical of a teenage boy: they showed beautiful women in exaggerated poses. Bikinis. Pouts. Thin bare legs leading up to impossibly tiny waists, like half-open compasses. One was a large image of a woman’s face, her black eyeliner running around her eyes, as though smeared by crying and rubbing, her perfect lips slightly parted. Sunlight had faded the bottom corner, and the paper had curled around the drawing pin he’d used to attach it to the wall, like a tiny hand around a nail.

  I stepped back out on to the landing. One of the door team was perusing the final door up here.

  ‘Padlock,’ he said.

  ‘Let me see.’

  He moved, taking a couple of steps back down the staircase. When he was safely out of the way, I aimed a solid kick against the door, close to the lock, breaking it open in a crunch of splinters.

  ‘I could have done that,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and so could I.’

  I stepped into the room.

  Christ.

  The curtains were closed in here, and the room was filled with a meagre blue light. It was the same size as Johnson’s bedroom, but practically bare. The only item of furniture was an armchair, positioned with its back to the nearest wall, so as to face the one opposite. The rest of the room was empty and spotlessly clean.

  I stepped in, saw the wall and immediately felt sick.

  Looking from the display to the armchair, it was easy to imagine Johnson sitting there, perhaps for hours on end, with no extraneous possessions to distract him from the view. I crossed the room slowly. Beneath my feet, the carpet felt lush and bouncy. There was no itch of dust in the air in here, just a tingle of electricity from the space being so off-kilter, an obvious physical manifestation of someone’s bizarre inner world.

  The far wall had been divided into square spaces, drawn neatly on to the plaster with a pencil. Each one was about half a metre wide and high, and had a single nail driven into the wall at the top. One had been painted entirely black, and some were empty, but twenty or so were in use. In those ones, a key hung from the nail, and a name had been scrawled on the plaster beneath it. I scanned them, recognising some as belonging to the women in our case. But there were far more keys here than victims.

  Below the names, he had used drawing pins to attach pieces of paper. Some of the squares were so full that the pieces overlapped. There were printouts of women, photographed from a distance. Sheets of notepaper covered in writing: a small, tight script that was hard to read, but which I could tell contained observations and details on their behaviour. My gaze flitted across dates and times, comments, even what looked like short poems.

  But it wasn’t just paper tacked to the wall. There were also items of women’s underwear, socks, rings, gold and silver chains. Mementos, of course. All of them. Things he’d stolen from people’s houses, either after attacking them or in the weeks beforehand, when he’d been inside their houses without them knowing. When he’d let himself in and out as though he was a part of their lives …

  A possibility suddenly occurred to me, and brought with it a slice of panic – a visceral, physical sensation in my stomach. The squares that were in use were spread around the wall rather than lined up, perhaps in a pattern that meant something to him, so there was no way of telling which one was last. I had to scan them all quickly, crouching down, searching the squares closer to the carpet …

  And there I was.

  Zoe Dolan. My own name, written carefully on the plaster.

  Below it, there were no secret photographs of me. Perhaps he’d been worried I might recognise him, that I’d be paying special attention as a cop. But there was a photograph. It showed me as a teenage girl, standing beside my mother, one gangly arm lifted so my elbow could rest on her shoulder, a cocky expression on my face. My mother looked smug too, smirking almost, beneath the tilted beret she wore. Think you shouldn’t mess with me? Wait until you meet my daughter.

  It was from the album I kept in my bedside draw
er.

  Beside it, I recognised the piece of black underwear he’d tacked to the wall. But I only glanced at that for a second, my attention returning to the photograph. For some reason, that annoyed me far more.

  Chris crouched down beside me.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  I could hear the awkwardness in his voice, and feel the sudden tension of his body, as he recognised what he was seeing. Then I realised that the door team would come in here shortly and see this. That other officers would follow. For a ridiculous second, I resented them all.

  ‘He’s been in your house.’

  ‘Obviously he fucking has.’

  It’s not Chris’s fault, I told myself. But the protectiveness in his voice infuriated me, and I had to fight the urge to turn around and hammer my fists at him. I half wanted to tear my underwear off the wall too, but forced myself to stand up instead, direct the anger at Adam Johnson. Because I wasn’t embarrassed, and I wasn’t going to let anyone make me be.

  ‘Zoe …?’

  He’s been in your house.

  ‘My key’s missing.’ I turned and walked out of the room. ‘He’s there right now.’

  Twenty-Six

  Jane lay very still on the bed, her whole body immobilised by the fear. Aside from the shivers, which rolled over her in regular waves.

  He’s going to kill you.

  She listened to the sounds of him moving about downstairs, hearing thuds and bangs. They gave no clue as to what he was doing, so her mind conjured horrors. She heard the rattle of a kitchen drawer being yanked open, and the terror she was feeling intensified.

  Knives. Forks. Corkscrews.

  It didn’t seem possible for her to be any more afraid, and yet it kept happening. Because this was him. The man who had raped and mutilated those women, killed the last one, told her all about it over the phone …

  And he’s going to do exactly what he described in the calls.

  She didn’t even know where she was. Once properly inside her flat, the man had quickly overpowered her. It had been ludicrous, really – she’d never stood a chance against him, because of his size, but also because she’d been too startled to fight. It had all happened so fast. Holding her in place on the stairs, his knees either side of her arms, he’d immediately stuck the tape over her mouth, then rolled her over on to her chest and wrapped more of it around her wrists, and then her ankles.