The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  Rubbish, of course. But still.

  The feeling of strangeness was only amplified when I stepped outside, carrying the cats in the holder. The scene was both familiar and ridiculous at the same time. My street had been transformed into a circus, filled with police cars and vans, many with their lights flashing silently. There was an ambulance to one side, while officers were busy unrolling a yellow cordon around my property. What I presumed was Johnson’s car was parked outside, caught within that perimeter.

  There was no media presence yet, but that was going to change very shortly. Several of my neighbours were out on their doorsteps, and I felt their eyes on me as I walked down my path towards the cordon. A part of me actually felt like waving at them.

  Hi there. Yes. This is about me.

  Bit too busy to be sorry about that right now.

  I headed to the ambulance. Jane Webster was sitting in the open back, slightly hunched, with her hands gripping the edge of the vehicle and her feet only just reaching the tarmac. With a blanket draped over her shoulders, she looked like the world’s tiniest boxer recovering from the world’s hardest fight. Which I supposed was fair enough.

  Actually, Jane had surprised me. She had proved much tougher than I’d have given her credit for. When she first came in, I’d pegged her as a timid little creature who would skitter under furniture if you raised your voice. And then at Mayday, she’d been borderline pathetic, practically hugging herself at all the conflict going on around her. After everything that had happened today, I’d have expected her to crumble into pieces. And yet she hadn’t.

  We were still debating the best course of action to address the siege situation we were faced with when Jane had unlocked and unbolted the front door and simply let us in. She’d looked a little dazed, certainly, but not obviously in shock. Determined, more than anything. ‘He’s upstairs,’ she’d said, and walked down the path. For a second, nobody had even tried to stop her. Now she watched me approach the ambulance, and the gaze she kept on me seemed just as purposeful.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

  ‘I need to talk to you as well.’ I walked straight past where she was sitting and opened the door of the nearest empty cruiser. ‘Join me.’

  I put the cats on the passenger seat for now, and when both of us were ensconced in the back seat, I leaned through and pressed the button to dim the windows for privacy. As the glass grew slightly darker, I noticed Jane watching it with something close to relief. However brave she was being on the surface, that instinct to hide clearly hadn’t gone away completely.

  ‘There,’ I said. ‘Now let’s quickly run through exactly what happened.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well … doesn’t it have to be recorded, or something?’

  ‘Eventually. We’ll do it officially later. In the meantime, I just want to get an idea of the chain of events today. Preliminaries, really, to help us out.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So let’s start with how you ended up here.’

  ‘He turned up at my house this morning,’ Jane said. ‘He showed me his ID through the door – the security company he worked for. I was half thinking about calling someone anyway, but he told me you’d sent him.’

  ‘Me?’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘He said that you were concerned about my security.’

  I wished I’d had the foresight. For a second, I was quiet, wondering how on earth Johnson had found out where she lived. But then I shook my head. He had fixed the locks on my house after the burglary, and must have overheard the conversation between me and Chris. A coincidence, of course, but a fortuitous one for him. He’d taken items from my house, but I was a good ten years out of his age range, and hardly in the same league as the other women he’d gone after. No, he’d been interested in me because of my connection to the case, and just because he hadn’t taken covert photos of me didn’t mean he hadn’t been following me from time to time. One of those occasions must have been when Jane first reported the calls. He could have trailed us to Mayday, realised who she was, then switched to following her when we left.

  I said, ‘What happened after he got inside?’

  It was Jane’s turn to shake her head. ‘I’m not even sure. There was a moment when I realised it wasn’t right; that he was just off, somehow. And he must have seen that I knew, because one second I was thinking about what to do, and the next he had hold of me.’

  She’d fought, she told me, but that was always going to be futile against a man of Johnson’s size. He’d tied her up and carried her out of the house in plain daylight. At that point, presumably, he had known what he was going to do and didn’t care about being seen.

  ‘He put me on the back seat,’ Jane said. ‘He was apologising the whole time, but it was hard to listen. I was panicking. We drove for a while. Not long. Then he picked me up out of the car again, and carried me in there.’ She nodded back in the direction of my house. ‘I didn’t know where I was. He took me upstairs.’

  Even though on first glance it didn’t seem like Jane had been raped or assaulted like the other victims, I was still dreading the next question.

  ‘And then?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘He apologised again. He told me how sorry he was, and he promised that he wasn’t going to hurt me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I didn’t believe him. I thought I was going to die.’

  ‘I can imagine. Did he untie you?’

  ‘No. He left the tape on my mouth, too. He said he was sorry about that as well. But he told me he didn’t want me to scream, or even talk to him. He just wanted me to listen.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Just listen?’

  ‘Yes. Like when he rang Mayday.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Because he liked talking to you?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what he said.’

  ‘And that’s why he abducted you?’

  ‘I think so. He didn’t say it, but that was the impression I got: that confessing to me helped him a little – helped him to deal with what he’d done. When I got sacked, he didn’t have that outlet any more. It was like his safety valve had been taken away.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just talk to someone else there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There was a flash of anger from her at that. Another new experience. ‘I don’t know why he wanted me.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Actually, I could think of a couple of reasons why Johnson might have wanted her. For one thing, although I’d not been privy to the conversations, I imagined Jane would have been far less confrontational than another volunteer might have been. More to the point, it was becoming clear that Adam Johnson formed genuine relationships with the women he encountered – even if only in his head. Once he was fixated on someone, he concentrated on them, at least until it became clear that they were far from interested in him in return. Until reality intruded and drove him into a frenzy of rage and hate. It wasn’t so hard to believe that he felt he’d formed a bond with Jane, and that it would have distressed him to have it broken.

  ‘A safety valve,’ I said.

  Jane nodded. ‘Like I told you before. During the calls, it felt like he was unloading what he’d done. Passing the burden on to me. Without that, he couldn’t cope any more.’

  ‘And what about today?’

  ‘He killed himself in front of me.’

  Suddenly Jane looked like she was going to cry. Whatever else I’d seen during my career, I’d never seen what she’d had to witness today, and I almost reached out to put my hand on her shoulder. But she had already gathered herself together. Her hands were bunched into fists on her thighs. No. I have to get through this. It’s important.

  ‘Jane,’ I said. ‘I know. It’s okay.’

  ‘It is okay. Because I’m sure that was what he was planning all along. Which means it was his decision. He couldn’t deal with what he’d
done, and needed to end it all. And before he did, he wanted to confess.’

  ‘Everything he’d done?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Everything he hadn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He never touched those women. It was the monster.’ Jane looked at me. Stared at me, to make sure I understood. ‘The phone calls he made, the things he said … none of it was true.’

  She looked away and took a deep breath.

  ‘The monster’s still out there.’

  Part Three

  Twenty-Nine

  Sitting on the rattly bus, her head resting at an angle to her own sunlit reflection in the window, Margaret realises she is smiling. In recent months, returning from the library has always made her slightly nervous. The outings are moments of freedom, whereas at home she has always felt slightly under siege. But that has changed, she realises.

  It’s changed.

  With the sun beating down on her, she makes her way steadily up the cul-de-sac, the bag of books growing heavy in her hand. As she approaches the end, she sees that Derek is out in his garden, wielding a hosepipe at waist height. Because of the weather, a ban is in force, but he clearly doesn’t believe it applies to him, or else he’s confident that nobody will say anything or report him. He is whistling to himself as he sprinkles water over his ornate flower beds.

  Margaret decides to ignore him. There has been no interaction between them since the argument over the bees, and if he is upset with her for not getting rid of them, at least he hasn’t pressed the issue. Most likely it was just as Karen said in the tea room that time, that he’s been taking things out on her, and that deep down he isn’t really bothered.

  She walks past the bottom of the neighbours’ garden and then turns up the footpath between their houses. It doesn’t occur to her to wonder what Derek is doing there at this time of day. She’s too busy concentrating on ignoring him as she steps on to her own path, and that’s when the first one crunches very softly beneath her shoe.

  Immediately, Margaret stops.

  And then she looks down. The path ahead is dotted with them. At first, the sight doesn’t make any sense, because it is like the ground has been scattered with the tiniest clumps of earth. But then she realises how quiet and still the warm air is. Nothing is flying. She looks at the hedge. Even when she stares through it, no movement appears.

  She steps back carefully, and then crouches down. The bumblebee she has trodden on is dead, but some of the others lying on the path are not. Here and there, a mandible or a leg is quivering slightly. One of the bees appears to be chewing hopelessly at the air. She looks upwards at the corner of the house, and there is no movement there at all.

  She stands up slowly, refusing to accept that it has happened. It is impossible. This is her house. Surely he wouldn’t dare.

  Behind her, Derek is still whistling happily to himself. When she turns to face him over the fence, he glances across, and with his free hand he throws her a mock salute.

  I can have someone come round if you don’t know how.

  I know people.

  Then, still whistling, he goes back to watering his garden.

  Margaret stares at him for a few seconds more. She is trembling, but she doesn’t know whether it’s from anger or shock, the invasion of what he’s done, or simply the sheer meanness of it. Right now, it is so difficult for her to comprehend what has happened that she can’t believe it actually has.

  I have said it, and so it shall be done.

  After a few moments, she turns her back on the man and walks the rest of the way down the path, careful not to stand on any of the dead or dying bees. For some reason, that feels important. When she gets inside, she locks the door against the outside world, and something is snuffed out inside her. A feeling leaves. She leans down awkwardly on the kitchen counter and begins to cry.

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  I’m sorry.

  I’m so sorry for what I’m going to do to you.

  It kept coming back to Jane at odd times, what Adam Johnson had done to her. She had expected to revisit it in nightmares, but for the last couple of days her sleep had been sound. Perhaps the memories weren’t deep enough down for that yet. Instead, it emerged during the day. She would be sitting on the settee, or preparing a meal, or trying to work, and she would find her body was suddenly still, and she was reliving the events in her mind.

  I’m sorry.

  When it was obvious that Adam Johnson had finished talking to her, she’d been terrified, convinced that he was going to kill her. He’d stood up, sobbing to himself, then moved to the head of the bed beside her, holding the knife. She’d tried to roll over, but he’d put his free hand on her – gently – and stopped her. She could still feel the pressure there.

  Hold still.

  His voice had been so soft that she’d done what she was told. Johnson had leaned down again, and carefully cut the tape holding her ankles together.

  Roll over.

  A second later, her hands were free.

  As he stepped away, Jane had scrabbled back into a sitting position by the headboard, then stared at him, wide-eyed, as he walked to the base of the bed.

  Thank you.

  He’d stood there for a long time, with his eyes clenched shut, before suddenly raising the knife to his throat and violently cutting it. His body had dropped instantly. As he lay there, half on the bed, half off it, Jane had listened to the hideous noise of the blood leaving his body, like tap water gurgling down the sink, and thought: oh God, oh God, oh God.

  She heard it again now, then flinched, brought back into the present by the sound of the doorbell.

  She shook the memories away and checked her watch. It was a little after twelve, and whoever was downstairs was her first visitor of the day. God, she’d actually started to imagine it might be over. The last forty-eight hours had been a gradually diminishing scrum of press attention that had kept her constantly on edge. The phone rang endlessly, though she’d stopped answering it on the first day; she had no idea how they’d got her number. And the last time she’d opened the front door, she’d been confronted by a man with a camera for a face, angling back across the pavement to get a shot of her. For a second, she’d been taken back to that day, when Adam Johnson had attacked her at the bottom of the stairs. She’d closed the door quickly, and ignored it ever since. A trimmed-down photo of her had appeared in the papers anyway.

  The doorbell again.

  Leave me alone.

  And yet she got off the settee and moved to the top of the stairs.

  The thought had been building: perhaps she should talk to the press. Because it was clear the police weren’t taking her seriously. After everything she’d been through, and all the details she’d given, there had been no follow-up calls, and nothing in the papers about the man Johnson had told her about. The monster. The implication was clear enough. They didn’t believe her – or him, at least. They were probably just glad to have the case closed.

  It wasn’t that easy for her, though. Just as with his calls to Mayday, Adam Johnson had passed knowledge to her, and it sat like a stone in her chest. She had tried to give it to the police, but they wouldn’t take it from her. What was she supposed to do? It was a desperate feeling. As much as she might have wanted to leave it alone, she knew that she couldn’t. If she did, the knowledge would only ever get more and more uncomfortable.

  The front doorbell rang again.

  What are you going to do?

  Jane hesitated.

  And then she decided.

  I’m going to go downstairs. I’m going to open the door wide. And I’m going to tell the media exactly what Adam Johnson told me.

  Perhaps it would spur the police into acting. The press would demand answers, and wouldn’t be fobbed off as easily as she’d been. The idea of making herself the focus of attention was terrifying, and it would be the most confrontational thing she’d ever done in her life, but it needed
to happen.

  You can’t do this.

  Yes I can, she told her father’s voice. Because I have to.

  Jane began trotting down the stairs. Go quickly; don’t hesitate. She was halfway to the door when the letter box clicked open, and she saw a couple of fingers protruding in between the brushes.

  ‘Jane?’ The voice was muffled. ‘It’s me. It’s Rachel. Are you there?’

  Despite her decision, relief flooded through her. The press could wait.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hang on.’

  It was only early afternoon, but Rachel had brought a bottle of red wine with her.

  ‘I thought you could maybe do with it,’ she said.

  Jane surprised herself by not even pausing, never mind arguing. An hour later, sitting at her kitchen table, they’d got through most of the bottle, and she had told Rachel everything.

  ‘Shit.’ Rachel sat back in her chair. ‘I’ve been following the news. Obviously I have. But there’s been nothing about this. I mean, the police haven’t said anything.’

  Jane shook her head. They’d drunk the same amount of wine, but whereas Rachel seemed relatively untouched by the alcohol, Jane could feel herself getting more than a little fuzzy. Midday drinking. Maybe it wasn’t for her after all. She pushed the current glass slightly away from herself.

  ‘The police don’t believe me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, they probably believe me. But they don’t seem to be taking it too seriously. They don’t believe him, is what I’m saying. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got their killer, and he’s dead, and that’s that.’

  Rachel considered it.

  ‘Are you sure they’re not right?’