by Steven Dunne
He moved towards the large curtain-free window, catching his foot on a box as he did so and causing a sharp clanging noise. Brook slipped his hand into the box and pulled out a bottle of Nuits St Georges. Same label, same year as the two bottles left at the Wallis house. He tried a couple more. They were the same.
He rose from his haunches and moved over to the window. The moon was beaming down, bestowing sufficient light to pick out the various items stored in the room. One was a box packed with two bottles of a colourless liquid. One bottle was half empty. A different box, full of hypodermic syringes still in their sealed hygienic packets, sat beside it. Brook shook the colourless liquid then unscrewed the lid and gave the contents a tentative sniff. It was odourless. He replaced the top. Brook was willing to wager that this concoction was some incarnation of the drug used on members of the Wallis and Ingham families.
He swept his torch around the walls. In one corner rested a tripod, though it wasn’t supporting a camcorder at the moment. Three doors lid off the room he was in and all were slightly ajar. Brook stepped through the first one and tried the light again. Still nothing. Perhaps Sorenson’s account had run out of funds, though that hardly seemed likely. He shone his torch over the kitchen appliances, coming to a halt at what seemed to be a large chest freezer. He stepped over to it and opened the lid. He smiled faintly; there were at least a dozen of the same blue and white striped bags found at the Ingham home, containing meats from the butcher’s in Normanton. He closed the freezer. It was working normally, the green light winking on the display. Clearly there was power in the plug sockets. Perhaps the fuse for the overhead lighting had blown.
Brook looked through several kitchen units, searching for the fusebox without success. Instead he found a set of wine glasses identical to those from the Wallis house and a small box of Swann Morton PM60 scalpels. He took a deep breath. It was all here — all the evidence they needed.
He went into another room. This was less of a storage area than the main room and the kitchen, this was somebody’s space. He couldn’t see any personal items on display, but there was a bed and a small sofa, a desk with a laptop and a shelf full of books. Brook examined them as he had Sorenson’s library two decades before. He smiled when he saw The Collected Works of Albert Camus — Drexler’s philosopher of choice. There were also a couple of slim volumes of Wittgenstein who, Brook knew from Drexler’s book, had been quoted in blood at the scene of the California killings.
He turned on the laptop and approached the small stereo, next to which was a stack of about twenty CDs — all classical. Brook ran his eye down them. Debussy, Wagner, Faure, Beethoven, Mozart, Shostakovich. How many people would die before these discs were exhausted? He opened the Debussy case. It was empty.
Brook continued his sweep. His torch alighted on a large canvas lamp on the far side of the bed and he padded round to switch it on. It worked so he flicked off his torch. Now he had light, he saw the copy of The Ghost Road Killers on the floor. He checked for an inscription but found none.
He moved to the window to look out over the flyover and beyond to the red ‘Westfield’ sign of the new shopping mall. His eye dropped to the laptop on the table beneath the window. The welcome page was waiting for a password. He typed in ‘The Reaper’, then ‘Sorenson’, then ‘Peter Hera’, then ‘Petra Heer’ in turn. No joy.
He turned back to the room. In one corner sat a pile of papers topped by a large colour photograph. Brook picked it up. It was a picture of Jason Wallis standing by a stretch limousine with several other young men. One he was sure was Stephen Ingham. He looked at the date on the back. This was taken just before Brook’s camping holiday had come to an end, the day young Wallis had been released from White Oaks. In the pile were more pictures of Wallis and friends, which Brook examined carefully. He paused before picking up the next picture. The image showed Brook stepping out of his car at St Mary’s Wharf.
And there were others — some taken at the crime scene with Grant and Hudson, some outside the Ottoman house, and several of Brook and Grant going door to door on the Drayfin. He sifted through and counted them. There were twenty-three pictures in total of Brook. The next one was taken at night and showed him walking away from the Midland Hotel towards Magnet House, chatting with Grant by his side. Judging by the angle, this photograph had been taken from the window of the flat. He turned these over and picked up the next batch, standing for several minutes examining them. He nodded. Grant walking her little circuit late at night, Grant looking up at the camera, a look of concentration on her face. He stared at the next one for a moment longer.
‘You don’t seem too surprised,’ said a voice from the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-One
Drexler looked at Ashwell. The resemblance was clear. Then he looked at the girl.
‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’ The girl set her jaw and looked away.
‘It’s Jacob Ashwell, Mike. What are we going to do?’ said McQuarry.
‘Why are you here?’ Drexler pressed the girl.
The girl’s eyes blazed back at him. ‘That man was going to rape me. He raped my sister.’
Drexler’s brow creased. ‘You’re English?’
‘It’s Jacob Ashwell, Mike. We have to do something.’
‘You’re English,’ said Drexler again, staring at her. His eyes widened when the resemblance hit him. ‘My God, you’re Nicole Bailey. You’re alive.’
‘That man raped my sister. He murdered her. He would have raped me…’
‘What did you do to him?’ said Drexler, picking up the hypodermic with a handkerchief.
‘I defended myself,’ said the girl.
‘But Sorenson said…’ Drexler ran his hand through his hair.
‘Can I get dressed?’ asked the girl softly. Drexler nodded without thinking, just to let his brain work on the problem. She stepped gingerly into a pair of jeans as though the whole of her right side was sore.
He looked up at McQuarry. ‘Nicole Bailey. What the hell?’
‘This is some kind of set-up, Mike. Has to be.’
Drexler nodded. ‘It’s that all right, but Sorenson didn’t tell me about the girl…’
‘What are you talking about, Mike?’
Drexler looked up at his partner. For a second he hesitated. ‘Sorenson offered me a deal. In exchange for my father’s whereabouts I was supposed to kill someone, someone who deserved it.’
‘Who?’
‘He didn’t say. Just that it would be soon.’
McQuarry nodded and looked over at the prostrate night manager, spittle oozing from his uncontrolled bottom lip. ‘And Sorenson led us right to him. Neat.’ She paused and turned back to Drexler. ‘What did you say?’
Drexler pulled the M9 from his jacket.
‘Whose gun is that, Mike?’
‘Sorenson’s…’
‘Mike!’
‘Don’t try and stop me, Ed.’
McQuarry held up her hands and backed away from him. ‘Easy, Mike. You do what you gotta do. No one’s gonna stop you, just take it slow…’
Drexler turned to her, eyes blazing. ‘Don’t talk me down like I’m a perp, Ed. Just shut up while I do this thing. We both know this piece of shit won’t be missed.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this, Mike?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
‘What are you waiting for?’ said the girl from behind him.
‘Shut up!’
Drexler raised the gun so that it was pointing at Jacob Ashwell’s temple. He took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
Brook turned and let the picture of Laura Grant waving to the camera fall to the floor. He stared into Grant’s eyes, a sad smile deforming his face. ‘Hello, Laura.’
‘Damen. Why couldn’t you have found out tomorrow?’
‘When you’ll be far away.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You were coming here that night you saw me in the car, weren’t you?’
She sm
iled. ‘A minute later and I’d have been at the door. That would have saved you some time. How long have you known?’
Brook looked her over. She was dressed head to toe in figure-hugging black jeans and a sweater. No ski mask today. ‘Before yesterday it was just a vague unease.’
‘Caused by what?’
‘Oh, the coincidence of Joshua being ill keeping you in Derby the night of the murders. That was a little too neat.’
Grant nodded. ‘I didn’t like it either, but I had to be in town for the Inghams. I’d had a couple of weeks off beforehand. We’d done so much preparation. Also, we figured if Josh was ill, you’d suspect him first.’
‘I did. How did you pull that off?’
‘A few nasty bacteria stirred into my curry when he was in the toilet. He always finishes my meals when we’re on expenses.
Is that all?’
Brook peeled off his gloves to cool his hands. ‘Yesterday, interviewing Ottoman, you asked him why he didn’t kill Jason, but you were actually looking at me, asking me.’
Grant smiled at him. ‘It was the right question. Do you have an answer?’ Brook said nothing. ‘Anything else?’
‘I suppose your uncanny ability to move the case forward rankled — that brainwave with the rope and the trapdoor for instance.’
Grant chuckled, her cold eyes boring into him. ‘Maybe you couldn’t accept that I was a better detective than you.’
Brook smiled. ‘Actually, I think I had accepted it until our walk in the Peaks.’
‘What did I say? I really tried to be careful.’
‘You were, Laura. But you can’t stifle muscle memory. You crossed that bridge to take the short cut to Alstonefield before me. Without a map, only a local would know that path.’ Brook patted for his cigarettes and reached into a pocket. Grant produced a small revolver. It didn’t seem natural in her hand.
She held his eyes but lowered the gun when Brook took out his cigarettes and lit up. Grant indicated the sofa with a dart of her eyes. Brook moved over and sat.
‘Someone raised in Ashbourne, say.’
Grant’s eyes widened and her hand seemed to stiffen around the gun. ‘That was careless.’
‘Hardly that, Laura. Or should I call you Nicole?’
She was wrong-footed for a second, then smiled faintly. ‘Now I see why you’re so highly rated. I’m impressed.’
‘Don’t be. Your partner gave me a copy of his book. It’s all in there if you know how to read between the lines.’
Grant’s smile faded. She looked towards the copy of Drexler’s book on the bureau. ‘Agent Drexler? Did he?’
Brook could see confusion in her face. Perhaps in giving him the book, Drexler had overstepped the mark. There were private things in there. Brook decided to press home this small advantage.
‘I must say none of the pictures look like you.’
‘It’s not hard to alter your appearance in California, Damen.’ She looked out of the window for a moment. ‘My life as Nicole Bailey was over. Caleb and Billy Ashwell killed her.’
‘And yet you’re the body even the FBI couldn’t find.’
Nicole smiled at that. ‘Thank God Uncle Vic found me first.’
Uncle Vic. Brook flinched at the phrase he’d first heard uttered by Sorenson’s niece, Vicky, two years earlier. Like it or not, Brook couldn’t deny the unswerving loyalty and affection the professor inspired in others. He took a deep pull on his cigarette. It tasted bitter.
Nicole looked down at the floor then hard at Brook. ‘He saved me, Damen. He saved me from those monsters and he saved countless future victims.’
Brook nodded. There it was. ‘SAVED’ — The Reaper’s mantra buried deep inside her.
‘I was half-dead and out of my mind in that cabin. Small windowless room. The smell. So hard to breathe. So claustrophobic. You can’t imagine. I … we were in hell. Every time that door was unbolted I was ready for death. A few days earlier … my sister…’ Her face crumpled for a moment but she blinked away the tears and stared back at Brook defiantly. ‘But one night there was Uncle Vic, my dad’s friend. Covered in the blood of Caleb Ashwell. The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.’
She laughed coldly. ‘Funny, when he saw me from the door he didn’t move at first — just stood there with a strange look on his face. He hadn’t expected survivors. It threw him. I was too young to know, I couldn’t realise what he was thinking, not until later. It’s what I’m thinking now.’
Brook smiled. He was now a living witness. ‘Trust.’
‘The very word. Could he trust me with his life? He must have known he could never be sure, not for definite, I was just a kid. But he saved me anyway, risked everything he’d worked for, not knowing if one day I’d give him away. The professor was a great man. Instead of protecting himself he took me to his house and hired someone to nurse me back to health.
‘You know what? If he’d killed me I would’ve understood. I could have died happily knowing my family’s killers had been executed. But he took a leap of faith. I’ve spent the rest of my life repaying that faith, Damen.
‘And later, when he explained how he’d found the Ashwells and how he found … other families, suddenly I knew how to make that payment. Ridding the world of those who prey on others.’
‘Caleb and Billy got what they deserved,’ replied Brook. ‘No argument.’
‘As did Sammy Elphick and Bobby Wallis. And of course Floyd Wrigley,’ she added with a tilt of the head.
‘Floyd Wrigley was a mistake. I’ve been trying to correct it ever since.’
‘Have you?’ Nicole shook her head. ‘Uncle Vic said you were a moral man. That’s why you were so right to be The Reaper. He never told me you were weak. In the early days, he’d tell me how he met you after Harlesden; how he knew you were the one, the one to take his work forward. He said you got so close that you were the only one who could’ve caught him; the only one capable of understanding what he was trying to do. He said you became friends.’ Brook looked away. ‘He was so happy to find Floyd Wrigley for you — to give you Laura Maples’s killer.
‘You were my hero, you know.’ She smiled. ‘I even think I had a crush on you. Then two years ago, after Uncle Vic left Jason Wallis for you to finish and you resisted, he wasn’t so sure. But he said we owed you another chance to come to your senses, to recognise the value of The Reaper’s work. It would’ve pained him to know that you failed him again.’
‘You really did expect me to kill Wallis.’
‘Why not? We killed Harvey-Ellis for you as a gift — to remind you. I trained for weeks to get in shape. It was quite difficult not to give it away, especially when I got back from sick leave. I had to play the delicate flower for a while.’
Brook smiled. ‘The way you sprinted up that hill on the walk followed by all that fake panting — that was a nice touch. So it was you who ran Harvey-Ellis down and drugged him.’ Grant nodded. ‘How did it feel pushing him into the water?’
No answer. ‘You wanted him dead, don’t bother to deny it,’ she said finally.
‘It doesn’t mean I would have killed him…’
‘Because you couldn’t, not after you’d assaulted him that time. We understood. So we did it for you. You owe us, Damen. And we made it easy for you. Was removing Jason Wallis so high a price to pay? You must know what a stain on the face of the earth he is.’
‘Maybe. But he’s not stupid. Wallis knew it was a trap.’
‘He didn’t know for sure, Damen. But you’re right. He would have suspected. So we were careful. We were confident he wouldn’t speak to the police, and if he didn’t turn up it wasn’t a problem. But he did turn up, Damen, because, thanks to John Ottoman, he thought he’d made a deal with The Reaper. I wish we’d known at the time. I’m willing to bet Jason would have held up his end and killed his friends if we’d just left him to it — maybe not the young boy or Mr and Mrs Dysfunctional, but the others, the ones who killed Annie Sewell. If we made it easy for him, he’d
have done it. Just to get himself off the hook. He’s a very dangerous young man.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘You saw him in hospital. He didn’t give a shit that his friends were dead. And worse, thanks to you, he’s survived a visit from The Reaper twice. Now he thinks he’s untouchable.’
‘He’ll get what’s coming to him.’
‘Will he, Damen? I hope so, before others suffer. He’s got a taste for killing.’
‘And have you?’
Nicole’s face hardened. ‘Don’t try that Lesson One psychology on me. What I do is valuable work. I take no pleasure. It’s clinical, like removing a tumour.’ Nicole, tired of standing, went to sit on the bed. Brook stood to stretch his legs. Nicole’s gun was still raised.
‘You know how to use that?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to test me.’
‘The strong woman in a man’s world?’
‘I’ve had to be.’
‘I’m sure … but stop waving it around, please. You won’t kill me no matter how much I get in the way.’
She hesitated. ‘Why so confident?’
‘Because I’m just as exposed as you — Sorenson saw to that with Floyd. That’s why you could afford to hang around and film me in the hope I’d slit Jason’s throat.’
‘Which you nearly did, apparently.’
‘You weren’t there?’
‘I had to get back to the hotel.’
‘On the remaining bike,’ nodded Brook. ‘How’d Mike get away?’ Nicole stared hard at him. ‘You can tell me. Mike and I have an understanding.’
Nicole narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you?’
‘We’re the good guys, remember. We’ve served. So have you. That’s your weakness. You call me weak but you sent me the film of Ottoman to clear him. Because he’s a civilian. You can’t stand by and watch him sink when he has no part in your war.’
