The Nightmare Place
Page 23
Another flashback then. As well as the physical discomfort of the night, there had been bad dreams. The earlier ones had already vanished, but she remembered the most recent one clearly. There had been a phone ringing, and she didn’t want to answer it because she knew it would be him on the other end. Adam Johnson. Calling to tell her in grotesque detail about something he had done, or was pretending to. There had been someone else there with her – Zoe, she thought – telling her with increasing urgency that she needed to take the call, that she had to, that it was very important. And the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, so eventually she did as she was told and picked up the receiver.
It wasn’t Johnson. At first, in fact, it didn’t sound like there was anyone there at all, and yet the silence seemed too heavy for the line to be entirely empty. After listening for a few seconds, Jane thought she detected faint breathing, and then something that might have been a faraway voice, or the ghost of one. She couldn’t make out any words, but there was somehow the idea of them.
Jane didn’t say anything; she simply listened. After a few moments, she heard a second voice on the line. And then another. And then another. None of them were any more audible than the first, and they all seemed to be saying different things, but despite that, they somehow began to coalesce into a whole: a single voice, made from all the overlapping words being spoken and the gaps in between. It was still too quiet for Jane to make out what was being said, but she could tell it was a woman speaking: a single voice that was struggling to form itself from the combined static of the others.
‘Coffee?’ Rachel asked brightly, leaning around the door frame from the kitchen.
Jane rubbed her eyes again.
‘Mmmm. Yes please.’ She was a little hungover, but not half as catastrophically as she’d expected. ‘Morning, by the way.’
‘It is, you’re right. Sorry: I didn’t mean to wake you. I was going to try sneaking out in a few minutes and just leaving you with a note and a spare key.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t.’
Rachel came through washed and dressed for university, her cheeks still warm and red from the shower. She was carrying the cup of coffee with both hands, fingers splayed around the top and base so that Jane could take the handle.
‘Thanks.’
‘No worries.’
She retreated, then came back a moment later with her own cup, shoving the rolled-up blanket to one side and perching on the opposite end of the settee from Jane.
‘Sleep okay?’
‘Oh, probably as well as I could hope.’
They chatted for a bit, making small talk as they sipped their drinks. It was just after eight o’clock. Rachel had supervisions to handle from nine until the middle of the afternoon, and would be back around five. She told Jane that she was welcome to do whatever she wanted in the meantime: hang around and work here; let herself out; whatever. Then she gave her the spare key and asked whether she’d be staying over tonight too.
‘Because it’s totally not a problem if so.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘I might need to pop home to pick up a few things whatever I do.’
‘Yeah, that’s cool. But you’re welcome, is all I’m saying. And … well, you know what I think.’
‘That it would be a good idea.’
‘Yeah. At least for a few days.’
‘Okay.’ Jane smiled. ‘I’ll see. Thank you.’
‘It’s cool. Make yourself at home.’ Rachel stood up and stretched on her tiptoes, holding her empty cup out to one side. ‘You’ll be able to find anything you need. If not, just give me a bell.’
Make yourself at home.
It wasn’t something Jane was used to, imposing on others, and it went against her instincts. But Rachel sounded like she meant it, and as though she’d actually be disappointed if Jane felt too awkward to accept. They were friends, after all, Jane reminded herself. If the situation had been reversed, she would have said the same things to Rachel, and felt the same way.
After the girl had gone, Jane showered and dressed, then made herself some more coffee. There was bread and eggs in the fridge, so she cooked up some scrambled eggs on toast. Afterwards, she washed everything up, dried it, and put it away in the cabinets and drawers. Polished the counter, as well. It seemed the least she could do.
Then she unpacked her laptop and organised her notes for the translation she was supposed to be working on. With the events of the past few days, the project had fallen behind. She made some progress now, but the time dragged and her attention kept wandering. It was hard to concentrate here. There was too much of a sense of displacement, and it wasn’t entirely down to the unfamiliar surroundings. It felt like there was something else she needed to be doing but was subconsciously avoiding. It brought back the urgency of the dream. Zoe’s voice. Answer the phone, Jane. It’s so important.
She set the laptop to one side on the settee and tried to think. It was Johnson, of course, nagging at her. The police weren’t taking what he’d told her seriously, but despite the fact that he’d lied to her in the phone calls, she believed that in Zoe’s bedroom he’d finally been telling the truth. And if that was the case, this other man – the monster – was still out there somewhere.
So what was she supposed to do?
Stay here for ever?
Her instinct had always been to leave things to other people to deal with. To not interfere. To not get in the way. But she wasn’t the same person now, was she? She was stronger. While her father’s you can’t do this was still there, it had gradually slipped as far away as the voices in last night’s dream. In reality, there was nothing stopping her from doing whatever she wanted.
Just look, then.
What harm can it do?
She picked up the laptop again and minimised the windows that were open for the translation work, then opened the web browser. Make yourself at home, Rachel had said, so she checked around the back of the television, finding a tall black box with pale blue lights running down the side. She could tilt it enough to see the label on the back, and read the password for the wireless. It wasn’t like Rachel was going to mind.
She spent the next hour searching for information online. The attack Adam Johnson had talked about must have been mentioned in the media, because that was how he’d learned about it, but she had no real idea where to look. She started with the websites for the local papers, using the search boxes to find any story that might be relevant. All she knew was the little that Johnson had told her, and she wasn’t sure how trustworthy her memory was, so she stuck to the key facts. Woman. Assaulted. Home. And it would be a story from sometime last year.
The immediate problem she had was that the keywords were too vague. Or rather, that the number of stories they applied to was absurdly high. Using just those simple terms produced pages and pages of results.
Painstakingly, she checked each article. The more she read, the more she felt herself growing numb from the accumulation of detail. Most of the reports were cases of domestic violence: petty squabbles that had escalated, with a few serious assaults scattered amongst them. But several were more disturbing: a woman and child who had been inexplicably killed by her partner; a revenge attack by a woman’s jealous ex-lover, who had thrown bleach in her face; a woman beaten, then shoved from the fifth-floor balcony of a block of flats, all in the presence of her daughter.
The worst thing was that Jane couldn’t remember even hearing about most of the cases. They had all taken place over the last eighteen months, and had clearly made the news, but she hadn’t taken them in. Laid bare by the search terms now, the extent of the violence was shocking. After nearly an hour, she was almost ready to give up. There had only been a handful of articles that might have fitted the description Johnson had given, but in each case someone had already been arrested. While it was possible that the police had got the wrong man, it seemed unlikely. The attacker she was looking for would still be out there.
Just a couple more.
She stared at the screen, trying to extract more detail from the small number of lines, and failing. She opened a new window to do some follow-up searches on the same incident, but there was nothing: no mention of the assailant having been caught, and no further information on the victim, or what had happened to her since.
She returned to the original article and read it again.
The details fitted. The age of the victim. The time of night. An attacker who didn’t appear to have been caught. And the vague address and the place of work would have given Johnson enough information to recognise the woman from the report.
So now what?
Go to the police? She wished she could, but this wasn’t going to be enough. It wasn’t like they were amateurs. Presumably, at some point in their investigation, they would have examined this case and discounted it for some reason. Perhaps it hadn’t appeared similar enough: just one more assault on a woman in her home with nothing obvious to connect it. Whatever their reasoning, she was positive they would know about it already. At the same time, there wasn’t much here to pursue on her own.
God.
Are you actually thinking of doing that?
She leaned back on the settee, closing her eyes. Searching online was one thing; it would be another entirely to follow up on this herself. The laptop jittered slightly on her thighs, the underside warm against her legs. Was she really going to do that?
After a moment, she thought: Yes.
Yes, I am.
She opened her eyes and read the article for the third time. Not much to go on, it was true. Cragg Road in Westfield. She’d never been there before, but she could find it easily enough. Then what? Knock on every door and ask about this woman? Not totally out of the question, but hardly appealing.
Eyecatchers Beauty, though. That was surely a better option.
Are you actually—
She cut the voice off. Enough with it. She would keep moving forward, one step at a time, just as her therapist had told her. Because one step at a time, when you knew you could stop at any moment and yet didn’t, was what got you where you wanted to be. It was the way to approach every challenge.
Jane returned to Google and began typing.
Thirty-Six
It was possible to drive for a short distance along the towpath of the city’s canal, but not as far as we needed to go, so with a good half-mile still between us and the scene, Chris parked up in a large turning space by Horsley lock. The tyres crackled slowly on the crumbly ground as he manoeuvred us in behind the two police vans already present.
The side of one of them was open, and an officer was sitting on the sill drinking coffee. As we got out of the car, he stood up and walked towards us.
‘Morning, sir.’
Chris nodded by way of reply.
I closed the car door. The sound echoed, but didn’t seem to go anywhere. Aside from the trickle of the water in the lock, it was deathly quiet here. On this side of the canal, there were two huge metal containers, like something you’d see being loaded on to a ship. A short way behind us, a black metal bridge spanned the water, and on the far side a lush field dotted with yellow dandelions sloped gently up to the first trees of the woods, where a footpath disappeared into the shade. Officers were stationed at the entrance to the woods, and also directly on the far side of the bridge. Not doing anything for the moment: just helping to secure this end of the two-mile stretch of towpath that had been sealed off this morning.
Under different circumstances, it might have been idyllic, but knowing what awaited us further on, the silence seemed too heavy, and the tranquillity of the scene an illusion. The hush felt more like one of shock than peace.
I joined Chris and the officer, who was gesturing vaguely over his shoulder, further down the canal. It was blocked off by a triangular metal gate, strapped across with more police tape. I interrupted whatever he was saying.
‘We know where we’re going.’
‘Of course, ma’am. Morning.’
‘Isn’t it just.’
What had been done to Jemima remained in my thoughts, but I’d had to put it to one side for the moment, after the news of what had happened out here. It made me feel even more guilty – it was just like when I’d pushed her out of my mind in the past – but I was determined that this time would be different. When this case was closed for good, I was going to do something, even if I didn’t know what yet. But in the meantime I needed to concentrate on this.
On the possibility that the monster really was still out there.
Beyond the lock, the water was flat and still, perfectly reflecting the bright blue sky, and I watched as a swan and cygnets sailed slowly along by the far bank, small ripples spreading backwards. The trees there were close to the edge, the beginning of the woods that lay directly behind Adam Johnson’s cottage. His former home was less than a mile away.
I glanced behind me at the footpath. On the journey here, I’d studied a map of the area. That path snaked up the sloping land, between the trees, until it emerged on the Horsley road, directly at the side of Johnson’s house.
It could be a coincidence, of course.
‘Pathologist on site?’ I said.
‘Yes, ma’am. Sam Dale.’
‘Right.’
I took a deep breath, thinking of Johnson’s second man, the monster. But we couldn’t know anything for sure right now, not until we’d attended the scene.
‘Let’s go and see her.’
We encountered other officers as we walked, along with SOCOs in bright white uniforms who were combing the tree line to the side of the towpath. The land fell away quickly on this side: steep embankments, thick with coils of undergrowth, leading down to factories and construction sites below. There were flatter stretches, where we passed wooden benches, and at one point we came close to the thick metal struts of a pylon, wired off from the path in a square of overgrown brambles. The only sound was the electricity buzzing ominously in the air.
‘God, it’s desolate here,’ Chris said.
I nodded, although that impression was partly due to the circumstances. Normally the footpath would have been much busier than this, and would probably have seemed more friendly, more welcoming. The canal threaded through the suburbs and then out into the country, and it was a popular route for walkers and cyclists. Never exactly crowded, but you wouldn’t have felt threatened or isolated at any point on the route. There would always be other people around. Today, though, desolate was the right word.
Because of the way the canal curled and straightened, we saw the scene a good minute before we reached it. A hundred metres ahead, a white tent had been erected over the footpath, with just enough space for people to move around it. The area was teeming with officers, and a dive team were in the canal to the side. From this distance, they looked like seals bobbing in the water. The SOCOs stood out against the trees, bent over and moving steadily, searching the nearby undergrowth.
Neither of us spoke as we approached. Jemima aside, I imagined Chris was thinking much the same as I was. The proximity of this scene to Adam Johnson’s house. Too much of a coincidence.
Sam Dale edged out of the tent as we reached it.
‘Gentleman,’ he said. ‘And lady. How are we doing this morning?’
‘We’ve been better,’ I said.
‘You could be worse, believe me.’ Dale glanced back behind him. ‘Yes indeed, you could. Oh look, here comes the not-so-good sergeant.’
The officer in provisional charge of the scene joined us from the other side of the tent. DS Gregory Timms was old and a bit fussy, but a good officer, and I was glad he’d been out of earshot for Dale’s reproach. Timms knew us well enough to be aware that we wouldn’t be poaching the investigation off him if we didn’t have
to – and also, that we really wouldn’t want to. Like the rest of us, Timms wanted it all to be over. For Adam Johnson to have been the end of it.
‘Greg,’ I said. ‘What have you got?’
‘Zoe, Chris.’ He sighed. ‘A headache, to be honest. And an upset stomach. Victim is a young girl – well, early twenties, at an estimate. It looks like her name is Amanda Jarman. We found ID in a handbag over there in the trees, along with some of her clothing.’
He gestured to the far side of the tent. The trees were further away from the path up there: a semicircle of grass with another of the wooden benches. A thin path wound back through the wood, out of sight. It made me think of Jemima again.
‘You think that’s where the attack took place?’
‘Yeah, it looks pretty certain. There’s a small clearing in the trees.’
‘A copse.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Anyway, it’s covered overhead, and you wouldn’t see it from the path. That’s where we found some of her things. There’s a lot of blood in the undergrowth too.’
‘So why move her body to the path?’
‘He didn’t. He dragged her out and put her in the water.’
‘Ah.’
‘Right,’ Timms said. ‘Tell me about it. I have no idea why he did it. He covered the body up a fair bit with foliage, so it wasn’t like he wanted it to be found, but he wasn’t exactly hiding it either. Maybe he was trying to erase evidence.’
Dale glanced at the canal dubiously.
‘Maybe he was trying to improve the water quality.’
‘That’s nice, Dale.’ Timms shook his head. ‘A walker noticed her first thing. It was impossible to miss her, really.’
Between them, Timms and Dale filled us in on what appeared to have happened. From a preliminary examination, Dale estimated she’d been in the water for several hours, and he thought it likely she was dead when she went in. Coupled with the fact that it was unlikely that her killer had brought the body here, the evidence pointed to her walking along here sometime last night or early evening; her assailant had been waiting on the bench, or possibly back in the tree line, and had grabbed her as she went past.