Dead Scared

by S J Bolton

  ‘Casualty upstairs.’

  Joesbury stepped forward; George’s hand on his shoulder held him back. The sergeant ran heavily up the stairs and disappeared into a room on the right. A second later, they heard a radio call summoning an ambulance. Joesbury set off again and this time he wasn’t stopped.

  The air at the top of the steps seemed denser somehow, pressing closer, holding him back, as though trying to prevent him from seeing the prone form. He saw it anyway. A spreading pool of blood steadily making its way across the faded carpet. Bright-coloured hair dark and sodden. A serious head wound. Long, jean-clad legs. Blue sweater. Nick Bell.

  AFTER I’D KICKED the knife away from me, I scrambled to my feet and tried the door. Locked, of course. There was no way out of this wooden box short of kicking the walls down and I really didn’t think I had the energy for that. So I pulled the gore-covered top sheet away from the bed and dropped it into a corner. There was no water in the taps but I cleaned myself as much as I could with a towel. On the bed was a blanket that was largely clean. Naked and freezing, I climbed beneath it, grabbed hold of Joesbury’s teddy and did the only thing possible. I fell asleep.

  The phone woke me. My own phone, close by. I followed the sound and found it beneath the pillow. They’d missed my phone. How they’d been so stupid I had no idea but seconds were all I needed to tell someone where I was. The screen was bright. Joesbury! Joesbury was calling me.

  ‘It’s me. They’ve got me. I’m at the industrial estate. Unit 33.’

  ‘Easy, Flint, keep your knickers on,’ replied Joesbury in his distinctive south London accent. ‘Now, do you have anything serious to report? Because I’m about to finish for the day.’

  ‘I’m at the industrial estate. They’re going to …’ I stopped. This wasn’t Joesbury. And I could hear him in stereo, over the phone and from directly above me. At that moment I became aware of light getting stronger, flooding the room and coming from overhead. I heard a stifled giggle and looked up.

  The false ceiling of my ‘room’ had been removed, and behind the powerful spotlight that shone down on me I could see right the way up to the roof of the industrial unit. Then the spotlight shifted a little, to pool its light against my fake wardrobe, and I could make out a narrow gangway about ten feet above my head. Standing on it and leaning against a safety rail were Talaith Robinson and John Castell. Talaith’s hair trailed down around her face like weed in a stagnant pond.

  Then I heard clanging, the sound of two sets of footsteps walking along the gangway. Scott Thornton and Iestyn Thomas making their way towards Castell and Talaith. When the two newcomers reached the couple, they all looked down at me.

  And there they were at last, the three men who’d singled me out as their latest victim on my very first night here, and the woman who’d probably tipped them off in the first place.

  They were about to try again. I hadn’t walked into their trap earlier and I’d known they wouldn’t give up. This was where I had to be calm and clever. Play for time. Don’t give them what they want but don’t wind them up too much. I raised my left wrist, and looked at the spot where my watch would normally be.

  ‘Anyone got the time?’ I asked.

  No reply. Talaith’s shoulders shook a little, as though she was almost, but not quite, laughing. Castell had a phone in his hand. It had been he imitating Joesbury just now.

  ‘Because I think you people might be running out of it,’ I went on. ‘Scotland Yard know all about this place and all about you. They’ve been watching you for months now.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Castell.

  ‘There’s water at the foot of the bed,’ Talaith told me. ‘It should still be fairly warm. And some clothes. Get washed and get dressed.’

  Being washed and dressed seemed like a very good idea. Doing it in front of these guys another matter entirely.

  ‘You left one of those rat tails you call hair in the editing suite upstairs,’ I told her. ‘It’s probably being analysed by the Met’s finest forensic minds as we speak. If I were you, I’d be running very fast.’

  Talaith shot a sideways look at Castell. He gave the smallest shake of his head. ‘She’s lying,’ he told her. ‘And even if she isn’t, she’s been sharing a room with you for a week. She could have brought any number of hairs in here herself.’

  ‘If you don’t get washed, Lacey,’ said Iestyn Thomas, ‘we’ll hose you down. That always goes down well with the punters.’

  Talaith had recovered from her brief moment of alarm. She leaned even further into Castell. ‘What is it about wet female flesh?’ she asked him.

  ‘Works for me,’ he replied, looking directly into her eyes.

  ‘Take the money and run,’ I said. ‘You might even get away with it. But if you kill a police officer, they’ll never stop hunting you.’

  All four looked steadily down at me. None seemed even remotely moved by my threats. It wasn’t going to be that easy. I began casting my mind around the room, for any possible weapon, any place to hide.

  ‘Oh, we won’t kill you, Lacey,’ said Castell eventually. ‘You’ll do that yourself.’

  ‘You know, boys,’ said Talaith, ‘I’m not sure that scene we shot of you guys in the woods really came out that well. What do you say we go for a second take?’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ I was yelling now. I could not go through that again and stay sane. ‘I told my senior officers about you lot at seven o’clock last night. They’ve had, what, twenty-four hours to put their plans in place. You psychos have got seconds, if that!’

  ‘Oh, I knew there was something we should have told her.’ Talaith clicked her fingers and looked up at Castell in mock annoyance before leaning over the guard rail at me again. ‘Sorry, love. That cute boyfriend of yours is dead.’

  She was lying. She was an evil, manipulative bitch and lying was second nature. She had to be lying. And yet my ribcage was shrinking, squeezing everything inside it like a juicer crushes the flesh of an orange. Nick had called me earlier that day; he’d called a number that nobody knew but Joesbury. How had he done that?

  ‘He had an accident on the A10 last night,’ said Castell. ‘Tyres blew out. He left the road and cartwheeled down a bank.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to have seen it,’ Talaith told him.

  ‘It was quite a sight,’ he agreed, before turning back to me. ‘He was taken to the Lister in Stevenage and pronounced dead on arrival.’

  ‘He phoned me last night,’ I told them, but I think I was really just reminding myself.

  ‘No, don’t tell lies now,’ said Thomas. ‘He sent you a text, saying he’d been delayed and that you were to sit tight and contact no one but him. I wanted to add a little personal message but John said that was going too far.’

  Minutes earlier, Joesbury’s name had flashed on to the screen of the phone they’d left beside me. How could that have happened unless they had his phone? The only way they could have got my new number and given it to Nick was if they had Joesbury’s phone. I’d heard nothing from him since he’d left the evening before. Just text messages. He’d have called, surely, if he’d been OK. No. They could not be telling me the truth.

  ‘Would you like to reconsider the knife, Lacey?’ asked Castell.

  HARRY SAT ON Evi’s kitchen floor, occasionally running his hand down the long, slim flank of the dog lying beside him. He was vaguely aware that he was hungry. He’d lost track of time but hours had passed since he’d set off on his journey south. He had no idea what he was waiting for. Only that there was nothing else he could do, and nowhere else he wanted to go.

  The uniformed police team who’d arrived shortly after the discovery of the dog had been fast and thorough. They’d probably known what they were looking for. Within minutes, they’d found hidden surveillance and broadcasting equipment in several rooms. Someone had been watching Evi in her own house.

  ‘Sir.’

  The detective sergeant was in the kitchen doorway. In his right hand was
a clear plastic wallet containing a single sheet of white paper.

  ‘Your name is Harry, is that right?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Harry Laycock,’ he said, getting to his feet. The dog whimpered beside him, not wanting him to leave.

  The sergeant held the wallet out. ‘I need you to read this, sir,’ he told him. ‘And then help me work out where she might have gone.’

  Harry took the wallet as the dog got unsteadily to its feet. Evi’s handwriting was large and neat, with intricate loops on the tails. She’d used a fountain pen and violet-blue ink. The note was just five words long.

  Gone to be with Harry.

  ‘What does it mean, sir? Where would she go to look for you?’

  ‘She thinks I’m dead,’ said Harry. ‘This is a suicide note.’

  Mark Joesbury watched the paramedics slide the unconscious Nick Bell into the ambulance. An oxygen mask covered his face to help him breathe, an IV line was already starting to replace some of the fluid he’d lost and shiny silver blankets were stopping his temperature from falling further.

  As the ambulance set off, forced to go slowly along the unlit, potholed track, a liver and white pointer followed it a few paces before sitting in the middle of the track to watch it disappear. Joesbury felt the world around him slip further away.

  He turned back to the house, more because standing still for any length of time made him dizzy than because he had any reason to go in there. In the harsh artificial lights the police team had brought with them he could see blood on the snow.

  The first time he’d seen Lacey Flint she’d been covered in blood. She’d arrived at a murder scene just as the victim died. The victim’s blood had spattered across her face, stained a deep scarlet patch on her shirt. The paramedics she called had thought she was badly hurt too.

  Over by his car, George, his back to Joesbury, was talking on a police radio. He flicked the radio to receive and spoke to the detective at his side. Joesbury caught the last few words as he approached.

  ‘Can’t tell me what?’ he asked.

  George’s shoulders stiffened, and when he turned to face Joesbury his avuncular face had clenched itself into tight lines. ‘She’s not at the industrial unit,’ he said. ‘SOCs are going in now.’

  Two things had struck him the instant he’d laid eyes on her. The first, that she was almost certainly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The second, that she was probably a cold and calculating killer.

  ‘What can’t you tell me?’ he repeated.

  George held out one hand, as though to keep Joesbury at arm’s length. ‘Guv, it’s too soon to know anything. We should get back. We can check her room again. We’ve got people searching her car. Come on, you know her as well as anyone. You’ll be in the best position to spot anything.’

  Joesbury didn’t move. The two officers exchanged a look. The other detective dropped his eyes to the mud.

  George sighed. ‘It’s pretty clear someone left in a hurry,’ he said. ‘They didn’t have time to clear up. There was a lot of serial-killer paraphernalia, apparently. Not difficult to see where they were going with that. And the team that went in found a pretty good mock-up of her room at St John’s. It’s possible something happened in there but it’s too soon …’

  ‘What did they find?’

  ‘A lot of blood, Mark. And body parts. Organs.’

  She’d looked directly at him, with those hazel-blue eyes that could turn so cold, as if daring him to challenge her. She’d looked at him the way he’d only ever seen the guilty look.

  ‘And a knife, I’m afraid,’ continued George. ‘With her name on it.’

  The dog was standing at the door of Evi’s kitchen, whining to go out.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ said Harry.

  ‘Stay near the back door,’ the constable who’d been waiting with him said. ‘We’ll need to search the garden before we’re done.’

  Harry opened the door and kept his hand on the dog’s collar as it stepped outside, sniffed the rear step and climbed the small stone wall edging Evi’s patio. Harry went too. Light from the house reached about a quarter of the way across the lawn. Beyond it was the soft twilight that snow brings to the darkest of nights.

  The garden was large, longer than it was wide, and flanked on either side by high stone walls. It sloped downwards to a much lower wall, with a central gate. Beyond the lower wall was a line of pollarded willow trees.

  The dog began to whine at the exact moment that Harry spotted the footprints in the snow. He took his hand off her collar.

  The footprints led across the lawn, around the cedar tree, to the gate. Small prints, made by small feet. Uneven footsteps, the one on the right much deeper and firmer than the one on the left, made by someone who walked with a pronounced limp. A few inches to the side of the left print were small indentations, left behind by a light, aluminium walking stick.

  The dog made it to the gate a second before Harry did. She stood on her hind legs, barked once and then fell back on to all fours. As Harry pulled the gate open, she leapt the wall in a single bound.

  Beyond the wall was a short stretch of snow-covered ground that sloped to the riverbank. A wooden pier leaned out across the water. On the bank beside it was a canoe that looked silver against the snow. Sitting close by the canoe, one arm wrapped around her knees, the other cradling the dog, was Evi. She looked round and her face was spectral pale.

  ‘Hello, Harry,’ she said.

  They were approaching Cambridge again. Joesbury had a sense of tall old buildings rising up around them. He’d taken Lacey out for a meal that first night, practically forced her into going with him. She’d sat opposite him in a restaurant on the Wandsworth Road, in an orange jumpsuit, her face shiny-pink from the shower, and he’d thought, how can this be happening? How can I be falling for a killer?

  ‘Nothing in the St Clement’s address either,’ said George, who was at the wheel and seemed to have some idea where they were going. ‘Just a whole lot of computer gear. The hard drives appear to have been wiped but it looks as though most of the surveillance was done from there. The industrial unit was for the more advanced filming and the editing.’

  ‘They’re gone, aren’t they?’

  Joesbury couldn’t summon the energy to turn his head. He couldn’t feel any pain, he realized. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and as though every second the real world was slipping further away from him, but no pain. Whatever they’d given him at the hospital was strong stuff. Perhaps they’d let him take it for the rest of his life.

  ‘Looks that way,’ agreed George. ‘But they can’t have gone far and if they’re in their own vehicles there’s a good chance traffic will pick ’em up.’

  She’d been with him at one of the worst crime scenes he’d ever come across and hadn’t flinched. She’d calmly and quietly followed him round the corpse, done everything he’d asked her to, and then, even though she’d seen exactly what the killer did to women, she’d agreed instantly when he’d asked her to make herself bait. She’d walked off into the darkness without looking back and he’d told himself that he was never going to put her in danger again.

  Attention all units, attention all units.

  George increased the volume on the police radio. They were almost back at the college.

  Any cars in the vicinity of St John’s College, I need you to report there immediately. We’ve received a phone call about a potential suicide on the chapel tower. White female, early twenties. Believed to be a student called Laura Farrow.

  One of the porters appeared beyond the gates ready to open them. Joesbury didn’t wait. He jumped out of the car and sped across the short stretch of grass to the main student entrance. He raced past the porter on duty and was in First Court. The tower was immediately ahead of him.

  ‘Alice called you, didn’t she?’ said Evi. ‘I’m sorry I scared you.’

  Harry slipped his jacket off and wrapped it round her. He’d forgotten how her hair gleamed in the dark, how it remi
nded him of polished walnut. He hadn’t forgotten how soft it was.

  She reached up, maybe to pull the jacket more securely on to her shoulders, maybe to touch him. Her hand against his felt like the snow, damp and cold.

  ‘We need to get you inside,’ he said. As he sat down beside her, his foot caught the edge of the canoe. It slid a little further down the bank. Harry stretched forward to catch the rope.

  ‘Leave it,’ Evi told him.

  There was a hammer on the ground in front of them, a fragment of pale-blue wood clinging to its claw foot.

  Evi leaned a little closer to him, the side of her head resting lightly against his shoulder. ‘I knew you couldn’t be dead,’ she said. ‘I worked it out, once the pain went away. If you’d died, Alice would have phoned me, not just sent a newspaper cutting. There would have been some mention of it on your Facebook page. I realized they were just messing with my head again.’

  The canoe slid a little further towards the water. Evi put her hand on Harry’s arm, to stop him getting up. ‘Let it go,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ he asked her. ‘Who’s been messing with your head?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. But I know one of them’s a senior police officer. He’s going to make trouble for me, if he’s still around.’

  ‘He’s got to get past me first, pet.’

  The tiny lines on the side of Evi’s face appeared slowly, almost reluctantly, as though she hadn’t smiled in a while and her muscles couldn’t quite remember how it was done. ‘I’d forgotten you used to call me that,’ she said. ‘I think it all started with a very damaged young man, who found some relief from his pain by tormenting and terrifying others. And then somewhere along the line more people got involved and the whole dark business began to feed on itself until it was almost unstoppable.’

  The canoe had reached the water. The river, sensing a prize within its grasp, began to tug at it. Harry blew out through pursed lips and put his arm round Evi. On the other side of her, the dog licked his hand. He had no idea what she’d just been talking about but it hardly mattered. They had plenty of time. ‘What was the hammer for?’ he asked her.