‘What about Collier?’
‘I left the body at the house just as you wanted.’
‘Good.’ The room fell silent as the woman took another sip from her cup, the rain continued to hit the window. ‘We need to speed things up a little, so I want you to keep your eye on Collier’s house, eventually Rae will send someone over and when he does I want you to inform the police.’
‘I’ll see to it.’
‘It pays to keep them guessing, Mr Williams.’
‘I agree.’
She looked at him, her eyebrow arched in surprise. ‘I don’t care if you agree or not.’
This time he merely nodded in understanding. The woman kept her eyes on his face, anger swirling in the dark depths. ‘I suppose you are wondering what this is all about?’ she asked.
Williams shrugged again. ‘It’s none of my concern, I simply do the jobs you pay me to do.’
She smiled and tilted her head. ‘Well said, Mr Williams, but eventually I will explain the real reason and when I do, I dare say even you will be shocked. I could have achieved my aims in a less elaborate manner but sometimes taking the scenic route in life is more pleasurable than rushing to your destination. Do you agree?’
‘I guess so,’ Williams replied, not at all sure he did agree though. You want someone killed, you killed them, simple. Not turn it into a soap opera.
‘Finish your tea,’ she said, the smile still in place.
Williams tilted the cup and drained it.
‘What about my money?’ he asked, standing up he dwarfed the woman in front of him.
‘You don’t trust me?’ she queried, imperiously.
‘I trust no one,’ he replied honestly.
She looked up at the man, taking in the hard eyes and broad shoulders, his hands slowly curling into fists.
Turning away she crossed the room, her footfall silent on the thick carpet. Going to a dresser, she slid open the drawer and reached inside lifting out two thick wads of notes, she pushed the drawer closed with one immaculately manicured hand before moving back towards Williams.
‘There’s twenty thousand here and if you are still standing at the end of all this there will be another twenty to follow.’
‘Oh, I’ll still be standing, don’t you worry about that.’
She held the money out and when he tried to take it she tightened her grip on the cash. Williams looked at her in surprise.
‘I can assure you, I’m not worried in the slightest about you,’ her hands opened releasing the money.
Williams pocketed the cash, his face impassive.
‘Now, can you do me one last favour, please?’ she asked,
‘Of course.’
Dipping a hand into her pocket she lifted out a plain brown envelope with a printed label on the front.
Williams glanced at the address.
‘You get to play postman,’ she said, her eyes shining with dark humour.
‘No problem.’
‘Good. Now fuck off and do your job,’ she hissed.
Williams stepped back in shock, her face was writhed with black fury, her eyes igniting with a boiling hatred. All his working life Williams had dealt with the unhinged, sometimes he had been paid to kill them, other times he had worked for them but seeing the woman transform in front of him was something new. He tried to hold her gaze but it pierced his soul, his spirit quivered and quaked and he couldn’t do it. The need to lick his lips grew and then he spun away and headed for the door, as he opened it he couldn’t help but look back into the room.
She was standing with the hostess trolley by her side, Williams opened his mouth unsure what he was going to say.
‘Get out, you cunt, and keep me informed,’ the woman spat, the air seemed to shimmer around her as if agitated by her fury.
Williams did as she demanded, closing the door quietly as he left, before breathing out heavily.
‘Mad bitch,’ he mumbled, striding away down the long, panelled hallway.
58
Marnie hesitated then hurled the heavy rockery stone through the glass panel of the orangery door. The chunk of stone shattered the glass before landing with a thump on the white-tiled floor. She waited for the wail of alarms and then frowned when the house remained silent.
Moving forwards, she lashed out with the heel of her boot, diamond chips fell to the ground, then she squeezed through the gap.
After matching the lace bracelet with the one in the photograph she had called Reese to explain what had happened, he had told her to hang fire and he would be there within the next thirty minutes. As soon as she had ended the call Marnie had gone in search of an open window but in the end her frustration had become too much to bear so she had used the stone to gain entrance.
Now, she stood amongst the broken glass, no doubt Reese wouldn’t be happy with her gung-ho attitude but any concerns about a reprimand were pushed from her mind as she thought of the missing Rowan Hall.
Walking forward, she left the glass room and went through to the kitchen, a quick look around and then she headed into the hallway. Seeing the four short steps leading down to a stout black door she stopped and sniffed the air, her brow creasing in distaste. Hanging above the door were half a dozen tree-shaped air fresheners, their sickly scent mingling with something dark and sour.
Marnie walked down the steps, her footfall loud in the confined space. Reaching the door, she grabbed the handle and turned, the lock clicked and she pushed it open, the look of disgust on her face deepening when the foul stench drifted out into the narrow opening.
Marnie felt her heart quicken as she stepped into the cellar and saw the stained, single bed pushed up against the far wall, she glanced into the far corner, instantly realising that the stench was coming from the small chemical toilet. The rest of the cellar was bare, at some stage the plaster walls had been whitewashed, but the paint had turned grey making the space look drab and careworn.
Moving deeper into the room she took in the scrunched-up takeaway bags littering the dusty, cement floor, the single bulb hanging from the low ceiling, cobwebs leading from the flex and back to the beamed roof.
A soiled duvet lay at the side of the bed, grimy pillow next to it, placing the back of her hand on the pillow, feeling the dampness, she scowled before turning and looking back towards the door, her anger building. She had no doubt that Rowan Hall had been held captive in this stinking room and Marnie also suspected that she had been moved recently but the question was where had she been moved to and where was Phelps?
When she heard the sound of a footfall on the stairs she snapped her head up, her body tensing as the shadow bled into the room.
By habit, she grabbed the end of her ponytail and gave the end a sharp tug and then she was striding forwards, her heart picking up speed as the adrenaline kicked in.
When the man appeared in the doorway she stopped in shocked surprise. It was the man in the photo, Tom Conway, and yet it wasn’t, his face was thinner, his cheeks shaded with dark bristle, the smile replaced by a look of smouldering anger. The two of them stared at one another, the tension mounting and then Conway moved slightly to the right, his gaze sweeping around the room, the fury rising in his eyes when he saw the grotty bed and dirty cover.
‘Has Rowan been kept in this shithole?’ he asked in a voice shaking with emotion.
For a couple of seconds, Marnie was lost for words and then an image of Hamer lurched into her mind, his face obliterated, his fingers snapped back.
‘You killed Hamer, didn’t you?’
Conway glanced at her and nodded. ‘He deserved it.’
Marnie felt the sliver of fear crawl over her skin at the admission.
‘Has Phelps been keeping Rowan in this place?’ he demanded again.
‘You murdered a man yet you expect me to answer your questions?’
Conway flicked her a cold glance. ‘Hamer was nothing but a scumbag pimp, he kept a girl called Emma captive, he pretended to be her boyfriend and then sold her
for sex to anyone who had a spare tenner before handing the cash over to that bastard Rae. So yes, I killed him – but I’m not losing any sleep over it.’
‘What about Chelsea Whitlow – what was her crime?’ Marnie barked back.
Conway shrugged. ‘I’m looking for John and Rowan, I don’t give a shit about her, she—’
‘John Hall’s dead,’ Marnie interrupted and watched as Conway took a step back, his face suddenly torn with pain.
‘Dead?’ he uttered.
‘We found his body this morning, he …’
Conway strode towards her, his hands opening and closing. Marnie held her ground, her own anger rising as she readied to defend herself.
He came to a halt, three feet away, his mouth twisted in anguish. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he paused and licked his lips, ‘please?’ The last word came out as a tortured plea.
Marnie tried to imagine the man who stood in front of her cracking back Hamer’s fingers before dragging him from the car and beating him to death in the most vicious of ways. Then, turning up at Chelsea Whitlow’s house and using a blade on the woman as her husband lay unconscious and bleeding close by.
Conway looked at her, his eyes shining with tears.
Marnie sighed. ‘He was at home, we—’
‘But he can’t have been, I checked the house.’
‘What about the garage?’
She saw the look seep into his eyes, a look that spoke volumes.
‘The garage?’ he said through gritted teeth.
Marnie nodded. ‘I’m sorry but it looks as if he was attacked from behind.’
‘Do you know who did it?’
The voice of reason inside Marnie’s head tried to assert itself, Conway was a killer – he had admitted as much – and yet here she was talking to him as if she somehow felt his pain. Then she thought of her missing sister and all the years she had spent trying to discover the truth; she knew that even now she would do anything, go to any lengths to find out what had happened to her. Suddenly, she was transported back to the burning house, clinging onto Boland’s back, her right hand locked on his blood-smeared face, her finger plunging into his right eye as she screamed her fury at the filthy monster who continued to burn.
Marnie blinked to find that Conway had moved back towards the door, she took a step forward and then stopped as he pulled the knife from his pocket.
‘I don’t want to hurt you but take another step and I will,’ he said.
‘We don’t know who killed your friend, we—’
‘John’s dead and he can’t be brought back but Rowan may still be alive, if she was here then someone moved her and it was either Phelps or he knows who did it.’
‘Let us do our job,’ Marnie whispered the words but knew they would fall on deaf ears, knew that he wouldn’t stop until he found out what had happened to his goddaughter.
She stood and watched Conway turn and vanish through the door, his heavy boots slamming up the four short steps before fading down the hallway. Inside she cringed, knowing that she should go after him, though it wasn’t fear for her own safety that kept her rooted to the spot. It was the simple fact that Tom Conway was a kindred spirit, a man who cared for his friend and his daughter and was prepared to cross any line, break any rule to get to the truth.
Turning back to the bed she imagined the girl having to live in this pitiful shell of a room. No doubt her waking hours had been spent locked in fear of what the future would bring, her dreams morphing into nightmares every time sleep came to claim her.
Marnie could sympathise, wasn’t her own life spent with the spectres of the dead constantly hovering in her mind, waiting to swoop and fill her to the core with guilt and dread?
She was still standing in the middle of the room lost in the maze of terror when DCI Reese called out her name.
Marnie dragged a hand down her face as she heard footsteps above.
‘Down here!’ she shouted and waited to face the music.
59
Acton was parked on the street, the fingers of his right hand beat a tattoo on the steering wheel, the interior of the car clouded with smoke, his eyes flicking nervously from one mirror to the other. The engine purred. He checked the clock on the dash. Cheeks narrowed, he took another long pull and blew the smoke out anxiously.
‘Come on, come on,’ he hissed, as the first spots of rain hit the windscreen.
He pictured Jimmy Rae and his face soured as he thought of all the abuse he dished out on a daily basis. The snide comments, the savage tongue, not to mention his propensity for mindless violence. Things had always been bad around Jimmy but now, with Tam dead, he seemed more unstable that ever and the longer the time slipped by, the more ferocious Rae would become.
Acton checked the mirrors again then slid the window down a fraction, the smoke billowed out into the rain and he tapped the ash through the gap before taking another drag. When his phone bleeped, he flicked the cigarette onto the street and grabbed it from the dashboard. Opening the text, he nervously read it and stabbed out a reply, his hands shaking slightly, sweat clammy on his forehead.
Checking the words, he took a deep breath and pressed ‘send’ and immediately lit another cigarette before wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of a meaty hand.
He heard the distant wail of a siren and he felt his balls tighten in fear; cigarette clamped between his teeth, he slotted the car into gear and dropped the handbrake, his head tilted slightly as he listened to the siren increase.
When he saw the flash of blue in the wing mirror he let the car start to crawl forward, his right foot easing down on the gas, both hands locked on the wheel as the sound increased and the blue lights grew closer.
Acton held his breath and then sighed in relief as the car turned onto the driveway of Collier’s house. As soon as it vanished from sight he grabbed second gear and then third as the car tore away from the kerb. By the time he turned left at the end of the road his mind was flying, trying to imagine Rae’s reaction when he found out that the filth had arrived at the house and that Stevie Harrow and Paul West were still inside.
Acton tried to think through the implications, no doubt Rae would want to know why he had driven away from the house leaving the two men to fend for themselves, or more likely he would want to know why he hadn’t been the one to go into the house in the first place. Acton screwed his eyes closed for a second as he realised that Rae might explode but it was more than that, Jimmy Rae might very well smell a rat, and if that were the case then a fist in the face would be the least of his worries.
The car swerved slightly from side to side as he tried to get a grip on his galloping heart.
‘Shit,’ he hissed as he sped away down the road.
60
Marnie sat in the passenger seat watching three of the SOCO team walk into the house. Reese was behind the wheel, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together in a thin line.
‘And you have no idea how Conway got away?’ he asked, keeping his eyes facing front.
‘No,’ Marnie admitted.
The silence stretched out and then Reese grunted. ‘I just don’t get it, I’ve seen you tackle some crazy bastards and you never back down. I mean, look at Boland, he—’
‘This was different, Boland took my sister, he was a monster and besides, Conway had a knife and he told me he’d kill me if I tried to stop him.’
Reese turned, a look of disbelief on his face. ‘So, to make matters worse we have now have Conway – a man who admitted to you that he killed Hamer and tortured Whitlow’s sister – out there trying to find this Phelps character?’
Marnie kept her mouth closed, unsure if Reese was accusing her of not doing enough or whether he was simply stating a fact.
‘I assume, with Conway turning up here, he was the one who broke into Phelps’s office? And yet you got to Phelps’s house before him?’
‘It looks that way.’
‘You didn’t ask him?’
Marnie felt th
e heat in her cheeks flare. ‘Things happened fast and—’
‘Yet you found the time to tell him about Hall?’
‘I wanted to see how he would react.’
‘And?’
Marnie looked back at the windscreen as another police car pulled onto the drive, blue lights turning in the rain. ‘I don’t think he knew that Hall was dead.’
‘Yes, well, he does now which will only make the nutter more determined to find out what happened to Rowan Hall.’
‘OK, tell me what I should have done?’ Marnie fired back, anger flashing in her eyes.
‘I—’
‘Perhaps next time I’ll just wade in, considering Conway is only ex-army, trained to kill, I should be able to take him down, no problem.’
The muscles in Reese’s jaw bulged as he ground his teeth together. ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Well it sounds like it to me and you didn’t see the guy, when he admitted to killing Hamer and torturing Chelsea he didn’t bat an eye, he showed no remorse. As far as he was concerned they were legitimate targets to finding out what had happened to the Hall family.’
Reese held her gaze for a few seconds and then he snapped a nod. ‘OK, you’re right, I was out of order.’
Marnie kept her hands folded in her lap, guilt keeping her silent.
‘Right it’s no use sitting here, we need to find Phelps and we need to do it before Conway catches up with him.’
‘What about Rowan?’
Reese started to tap at the steering wheel again in aggravation. ‘Let’s hope that when we find the bastard he still has her with him.’
Marnie nodded, then her phone started to ring and she fumbled it from her pocket.
Seeing Bev Harvey’s name appear on the screen she tapped the loudspeaker button, letting Reese hear as well. ‘Yeah, Bev, what can I do for you?’
‘We’ve found another,’ Bev replied, her voice laced with shock and more than a hint of fear.
‘Another what?’ Reese barked.
‘Sorry, boss, I didn’t know you were there, we—’
Cut The Threads Page 18
