Dead Scared

by S J Bolton

  ‘You are my guest.’

  We were out of the door, heading across the side courtyard.

  ‘Have you registered with a GP yet?’ he asked me, when we were ten yards from the car and I was sure I could see eyes gleaming at me from the back seat.

  ‘Why, are you touting for business?’ I asked, catching the flick of a white tail. Oh, I was so busted.

  ‘On the contrary, I was going to ask you not to register with us,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I said, which wasn’t too bright, I grant you, but there was a white paw on each of the front seats and a long white nose was pointing right at me. Any second now …

  ‘Because if you’re my patient, I can’t ask you to have din—What the bugger?’

  Dog and man were eyeballing each other on either side of the passenger window. Given that one had tried to shoot the other minutes earlier, the other was looking remarkably pleased to see the one.

  ‘Please tell me this isn’t …’ He stopped and just looked at me. I had to admit, he was cute. Joesbury’s height, but not quite so bulky. Not that I’d ever really gone for the body-builder type.

  ‘Well, I’d like to,’ I began. ‘I’ve just never been a particularly good liar.’ Which in itself, I suppose, was a lie. I’ve long been an excellent liar.

  ‘Do you know how many thousands of pounds of damage a dog can cause in a field of pregnant ewes?’ he asked me.

  ‘He didn’t though, did he?’ I said. ‘There wasn’t a speck of blood on him. That dog hasn’t killed anything.’

  He opened his mouth, closed it, looked round, opened it again. I think he might have been the only man in the world to make such a gormless act look appealing.

  ‘Do you also know that I, and several other men in that house, are quite within our rights to shoot it right there in your car?’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to get the keys off me first,’ I said. ‘And no, you’re not.’

  He blinked and ran one hand through his hair, making it stand upright on his head. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

  ‘If a dog is attacking livestock, and the only way to make it desist is to shoot it, you have a defence in law if the dog’s owner takes issue with you,’ I said. ‘You do not have any right to put down an animal without the owner’s permission. Only a judge has the authority to make that happen.’

  ‘What the hell are you, a lawyer?’

  OK, I was on dangerous ground now. Not only was I being Lacey again, I was demonstrating knowledge that Lacey, not Laura, would have.

  ‘An animal lover,’ I said, which was another lie. There’s hardly been time for animals in my life. ‘Oh, look, I’m sure he didn’t kill any sheep.’

  ‘The entire bloody field could miscarry during the night.’

  I looked down, then peered up at him again through my eyelashes. I think I even dropped my head to one side.

  ‘Well, aren’t you more likely to get compensation from the owner if the dog is delivered home safe and well?’ I said. ‘I’ll take it to the nearest dog shelter in the morning. I’ll also report it to the dog warden. Sorry, I’m just a bit soppy about dogs.’

  ‘And if it’s a stray?’

  I shrugged. Pouted a bit. ‘It’ll be in the dog shelter,’ I said. ‘Can’t get up to much in there.’

  He looked as though he were about to argue again and then shook his head. ‘I give up,’ he said, but he was close to smiling now. ‘If I agree to say no more about it, will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?’

  Joesbury would kill me. Or might not give a toss. Either way. ‘Seems churlish to refuse,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll pick you up at eight,’ he said, properly smiling by this time. I waved cheerfully at Nick in the rear-view mirror as I drove away. Well, they do say to keep your enemies close.

  ON THE QUEEN’S Road Joesbury found an empty parking space and opened his laptop. He connected to Scotland Yard’s central computer system and typed in a six-digit code. A few seconds later he was looking at a map of Cambridge. A red dot travelling along the A1303 told him his quarry was getting close.

  He pushed the seat further back and closed his eyes for a second. He should have left for London half an hour ago. People were expecting him and God knows he was tired. He’d go, just as soon as he’d seen her.

  When he opened his eyes again the red dot was very close. He could see her headlights approaching from behind. He watched, half hoping she’d see the reflection of his eyes in the mirror and stop. She didn’t. She drove on before reversing into a space just five yards or so from his. He heard the engine die, saw the headlights disappear and felt a moment’s exasperation. What the hell was she thinking of, parking this far away from the buildings? Any old low-life could be hanging round.

  Joesbury smiled to himself. Any old low-life was probably exactly how she’d describe him.

  The driver’s door opened and she got out. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into flat-heeled boots and a bottle green military coat. He knew, because he’d seen the receipts she’d submitted, that the coat had cost twenty-five quid in one of the bigger supermarkets. Even in daylight it wouldn’t look cheap on her. Nothing ever did.

  She’d opened the rear door and was leaning inside, as though talking to someone on the back seat, and if she’d brought some half-drunk kid home for a quick shag he might just blow his cover and land the git one.

  She’d got a dog.

  A dog, the size and shape of a greyhound, but with the white markings on its legs, face and tail that gave away its collie parentage, had jumped from the car and was wagging its tail as if it had been reunited with its owner after years of separation. She’d fastened something round its collar to act as a lead and was bending into the car again.

  Joesbury rubbed his eyes. He’d been on some stakeouts in his time.

  She was out of the car again and the dog was beside itself with excitement. Joesbury watched as Lacey bent down and pulled a small square Styrofoam box from a large paper bag. She opened it, picked something out with her finger and thumb and popped it into her mouth. The rest she put on the ground and let the dog help itself.

  Three minutes later, when the dog was licking the grease off the empty box, Lacey reached into the car again and brought out a half litre of bottled water. She poured some into the carton and let the dog lap it up. When it had done, she walked it up and down the small patch of grass until nature took its course and the dog stopped and squatted.

  OK, that was it. If she left it there he was arresting her for allowing her dog to foul a public space and to hell if it blew both their covers. She didn’t. She bent, scooped the shit up into the takeaway carton, and dumped it in the nearest bin before disappearing with the dog into the college buildings.

  Perfect excuse to follow her, ask her what the hell she thought she was doing sneaking livestock into a Cambridge college. He’d invent some reason for still being in town. She’d offer coffee, try to talk him round. They’d be alone. Joesbury’s hand was on the door, the ignition key in his hand, when he came to his senses.

  He replaced the key and started the engine.

  SMUGGLING A LARGE, over-excited dog into a college bedroom wasn’t the easiest challenge of my career but I managed it. I bumped into three boys at the foot of the stairs but none of them looked sober. ‘Mascot,’ I said to them, when they stared at the dog. None of them thought of an answer in the time it took us to run up the stairs and disappear along the top corridor.

  Joesbury, it went without saying, would be livid if he knew what I’d done. He’d argue that drawing attention to myself without good reason was stupidly compromising my cover. I could always counter, of course, that students were known for doing daft things, and if anything it could even cement my cover. Whatever, I really didn’t care. I just didn’t want the dog to be shot. The following morning, I’d report it to the dog warden and drop it off at the local dog rescue centre.

  Talaith wasn’t in our room, no surprise there, and the dog spent ten minutes exploring
the various smells before turning on the spot three times and settling down on the rug in front of my desk. I made myself tea and spent an hour updating Joesbury on everything that had happened that evening and, in particular, my worries about Evi. Then, more because I wanted to show willing than because I believed I’d find anything, I started my daily trawl around the Cambridge websites. Someone called Jessica hadn’t been back to her room for the past two nights and her friends, Belinda and Sarah, were wondering if they should let her tutor know. Otherwise, nothing.

  All the time I was working, the dog didn’t once take his soft brown eyes off me, as though he found every movement of my fingers on the keyboard completely fascinating. Oddly, it was comforting to have him there.

  When I’d been on every website I knew of, I sat back to think some more about Danielle Brown. As soon as I’d prompted her to use the word scared, it seemed she couldn’t stop. Danielle had spent her last weeks at Cambridge afraid. Scared of failing, she’d told me, of letting down her parents who’d been so proud that she’d got into Cambridge. Scared of not keeping up with the others. Of being proved not good enough. Ironically, it seemed, the more scared she became, the more her work suffered and it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Not really thinking what I was doing, I typed Danielle Brown and Cambridge into Google and pressed Return just to see what would happen. Several references came up, some of which were from newspaper archives I’d seen before. One was about her being part of a winning sailing team in her first year. One reference was on YouTube. Not really expecting anything I clicked on it.

  This footage has been removed as it breached YouTube’s publishing code.

  Mildly intrigued, I typed Danielle Brown and YouTube into Google and pressed Return again. I found one chat-room discussion, mainly about YouTube’s policy on removing offensive material, with a brief reference to the case of video footage, taken on someone’s mobile phone, of the attempted suicide of Cambridge student Danielle Brown.

  Earlier, Joesbury had speculated that Danielle’s suicide might have been a practical joke that went too far. That the kids who’d cut her down and phoned for help might actually have helped string her up in the first place. So had they filmed her dangling before stepping in? I sent another quick email to Joesbury asking him if he was aware that Danielle’s attempted death had been filmed.

  At half past midnight I brushed my teeth, took my make-up off and went to bed. Sniffy-Dog followed me into my room, gave everything a good checking out with his nostrils and then settled down on the rug next to the bed. Realizing I was actually quite glad of the company, I let him stay.

  Shortly before I dropped off, someone screamed outside. It was followed by giggles, a yell and running footsteps. Youthful high spirits, nothing more, and certainly nothing like the scream I thought I’d heard earlier at Nick’s farm, but it meant that, as I fell asleep, the sound of a woman screaming for help was uppermost in my mind.

  Just after one o’clock in the morning, Joesbury walked into his office in Scotland Yard. Not entirely to his surprise, the room wasn’t empty. Two of his colleagues, currently assigned to other cases, worked quietly at their desks, a third was on the phone. His boss, DCI Pete Phillips, whom everyone called PP, but only behind his back, was in his glass-walled room in the corner. He glanced up as Joesbury settled himself at his desk and held up one hand, fingers splayed. He was asking for five minutes. Joesbury opened his laptop.

  Four cheerful pings as emails arrived. The first from the accounts department, the second from his younger brother. The third to arrive was from DC Flint. Joesbury clicked it open and blinked at the sheer amount of text in the message. She’d sent it just forty minutes ago, which meant she’d gone straight back to her room and started work on it immediately. He began reading.

  The most ordinary of sounds can twist themselves round when they enter your dreams, or so I’m told. Not being a dreamer, I have little experience of such things, but I’ve heard, for example, that the sound of milk bottles being put down gently on a doorstep can, in the dreams of the sleeper upstairs, take the form of bones rattling; that the gentle rat-a-tat of the postman can sound like a troll trying to break its way into the house.

  It was the opposite for me that night. The sound I heard in my dream wasn’t threatening. It was quite pleasant in its way, but when I woke and heard it properly I knew immediately it wasn’t raindrops that I could hear running down the window pane. It was fingernails, scratching against the glass.

  I lay there, my heartbeat getting faster, telling myself it would be a joke, just another student prank. All I had to do was sit up, open the window and shove the bozo off his ladder.

  Except I couldn’t move.

  Halfway through Lacey’s account of the academic soirée at that tosser Bell’s country pad, Joesbury’s smile had disappeared. He got up, crossed to the coffee machine and pressed the button for double-strength espresso, knowing she was trying to wind him up and knowing also that it was working.

  ‘We expected you an hour ago,’ said the boss’s voice behind him.

  Joesbury muttered something about an accident on the M1. ‘Car came up zilch,’ he added quickly, referring to the car Lacey’s three assailants had escaped in three nights ago. ‘Registered to a canteen worker in her late fifties. Didn’t even know it had been “borrowed”.’

  ‘Student prank then?’

  ‘Almost certainly. Soaking barely clad young women happens a lot, from what I can gather. And they’d never have targeted her this quickly.’

  Phillips circled his forefingers on his temples as though easing a nagging headache. ‘Well, it’s a long shot they target her at all,’ he said.

  Joesbury said nothing. He’d argued that himself more than once.

  The coffee was poured and both men moved away from the machine.

  ‘You know, guv, if we go public, it ends. Once the authorities and the students themselves know what’s been going on there, it can’t go on.’

  ‘If we go public, we’ll never catch them. They’ll move to another town and start the whole thing again. There’s too much money involved for them to give up. And that’s not to mention the unholy row we’d have with local CID if we accuse them of missing umpteen unlawful deaths but haven’t a dicky bird to back it up.’

  ‘Ever occur to you that local CID might be involved?’ said Joesbury. ‘Every so-called suicide neatly wrapped up, all the supporting evidence in place, every box ticked. What are the chances of that in the real world?’

  Phillips was silent for a moment. ‘Well, that would widen the goalposts a bit,’ he said.

  ‘Width of the whole fucking field,’ said Joesbury.

  For several minutes I thought my room was darker than usual. Then I realized I just couldn’t open my eyes. A little way to the right of my head, where the window ledge served as a bedside table, I could hear the scratching sound. In my head I could see thin, bony fingers, long, yellow fingernails, the hand clenched like a claw as it was drawn down the glass once more. In reality I could see nothing. My eyes just would not open.

  I tried to make a sound. Just the smallest noise in the back of my throat to prove I was still in control of my body. I could hear nothing except the relentless scratching. Then the sound of scratching stopped. It was replaced by that of the window catch being forced from outside. Then that of the window opening.

  I could feel cold air on my face, then something else that could have been the curtains being blown against me. Then, worst of all, a creaking of metal, the friction squeak glass makes when it’s touched, then a soft bump. The sounds of something climbing in through the window.

  ‘I’ll have someone look into it. See if any of the locals have form. Or if any of them are flashing cash around.’

  Phillips returned to his office and Joesbury to Flint’s report. Oh, for fuck’s sake, white horses and falcons! Who did the twat think he was? Robin Hood?

  Joesbury sighed. It might take him fifteen more minutes to finish
the latest episode of War and Peace and type a quick response, and then he could go. He was due to see his son the following day for the first time in three weeks. Spending any time at all with Huck these days was getting increasingly difficult. Which was ironic really, given that his supposed neglect of their child was one of the reasons why his wife had left him.

  Joesbury read through to the end and realized he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He highlighted a chunk of text and forwarded it, marked urgent, to his boss. When he saw PP slip his reading glasses on to see the screen, he stood up and crossed the room. He opened the door without being invited in. PP glanced up.

  ‘She’s getting too close,’ said Joesbury.

  No response. PP looked down at the screen again.

  ‘We should pull her out,’ Joesbury tried.

  ‘Give me a sec,’ said PP.

  Joesbury gave him two. ‘She knows about the video of Danielle Brown on YouTube. She’ll have it figured out in days,’ he said.

  ‘Days might be all we need,’ PP replied. ‘This Dr Oliver’s a worry, though.’

  Joesbury stepped forward and leaned on the desk. ‘Well, exactly,’ he said. ‘I really don’t have a good feeling about these practical jokes and disappearing emails. If Oliver’s getting dodgy emails, someone could have infiltrated her system. If they know she’s been feeding us information, she could be at risk.’

  The other man leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘If someone’s accessing Oliver’s files and if there are emails from Flint among them, the whole op could go belly up.’

  ‘We should get her out of there.’

  Phillips’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘DC Flint or Dr Oliver?’

  ‘Both. Dr Oliver can take a couple of weeks off sick. Laura Farrow can quietly disappear.’

  PP leaned back in his chair. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Nearly nine months’ work and these two bloody women could blow the whole thing apart.’

  ‘No disrespect, guv, but I didn’t want to send her there in the first place.’