The Horsemen: A Harrison Lane Mystery (The Dr Harrison Lane Mysteries Book 2)

by Gwyn GB

  Harrison walked into a comfortable sitting-room area with a dining and kitchen space at the far end. There was a surprising amount of light, despite the closed blinds, but he wasn’t looking at the flat, he was concentrating on Tanya who looked decidedly jittery.

  ‘Has something happened?’ he asked.

  The fact she took too long to answer told him all he needed to know.

  ‘Has he done something?’

  Tanya turned away from him. Was he mistaken? Did she just not want him there? Then he saw her shoulders vibrate. He moved quickly around to face her, half turning her at the same time by placing his hands firmly on the top of her arms. She was trying to hold back tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve just had a horrible weekend. He’s really got to me and I don’t know what to do.’

  Harrison enveloped her in a hug, and they stood like that for what seemed like forever as she brought herself under control. Despite the circumstances, it felt good to hold her. She fitted perfectly in his arms and he put his cheek on her silky hair, drinking in her scent.

  ‘Sorry, you’re the first friend I’ve seen since…’

  ‘Since what?’ Harrison asked.

  She gave a huge sigh that seemed to prompt her strength to return and walked over to the breakfast bar in her kitchen. A large roof window above them gave all the light he needed to see the anniversary card and silk underwear, which both sat in evidence bags on the top.

  ‘This is a lot worse than you told me before,’ Harrison said. He realised the energy in his voice that had come from concern, sounded a little angry.

  ‘I know, it’s got worse in the last few weeks. I’d hoped he’d get bored, but—’

  ‘You should know people like this don’t get bored. They just up their fantasies believing you’re either going along with it, or they’re enjoying scaring you. You can’t ignore this and hope it will go away.’

  Tanya nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you any idea who this could be? The likelihood is that it’s someone who you’ve already had a relationship with. Only a very small minority of stalkers are complete strangers.’

  She shook her head sadly.

  ‘I honestly can’t think of anyone. I know it’s not Gary, my ex from last year. He’s happily in another relationship and we still talk occasionally. We’re friendly.’

  ‘A neighbour?’ Harrison asked, watching her face closely.

  Tanya thought hard.

  ‘I don’t think so, but I just don’t know.’ Her face crumpled again, and she turned away from him.

  ‘OK, the only way we’re going to stop this is to identify him. Once we know who it is we can use the law and any other means we have, to get him to stop. He’s no right to do this to you and make you feel this way.’

  ‘I know and I feel so weak, but I’m paranoid that he can see into my flat somehow. I even tried to cover over the roof window yesterday, but I couldn’t reach it.’

  Harrison looked up. He could see nothing but sky through the big glass square above their heads. He couldn’t even see how someone in the house above would be able to see in. The kitchen roof light wasn’t a threat.

  At the far end of the flat there were sliding patio doors into a tiny, paved garden. Harrison looked out, searching for any potential vantage points for someone to be able to peer in. Then he unlocked the doors and went outside.

  ‘Who lives upstairs?’ he asked. ‘And on either side? Do you know them? Sit down and draw a diagram of everyone you know in the street, like a map. That way we can isolate any potentials or any residents you don’t already know.’

  Tanya nodded and set to it straight away. Instantly, she felt better. Harrison was helping her to regain control. This man was not going to beat her and make her scared in her own home.

  Harrison went to the front of the flat now, street side. He opened the blinds, looking again at the potential eyeline and vantage points for someone to look in. He turned a lamp on in the sitting-room and put the TV on, then he rolled the blinds up fully and went outside. He stood in various places on the street outside. What he couldn’t do was see what those on higher floors could see, but he had a good idea. Even with a height advantage, the position of the flat windows below street level afforded virtually no view of Tanya’s flat. In fact, from what he could see, there was no position which would give a satisfying watching experience. The viewer might catch tiny glimpses, but certainly any voyeur wouldn’t find it stimulating and satisfying.

  Harrison looked at the blank windows up and down the street. Blind eyes stared back at him. Was there a predator behind one of them? Did they watch Tanya arriving and leaving her flat? Or was it someone else, perhaps at work, who is with her during the day and follows her home? There were certainly vantage points where they could hide in shadows and watch her house.

  He returned to Tanya’s flat, a thousand thoughts rushing through his head.

  ‘Do you mind if I look in the bathroom and bedroom?’ he asked.

  Tanya looked up from what she was writing and shook her head. ‘No, go ahead. Look at whatever you need to.’

  The bathroom was small and windowless, definitely not a weak point. He pushed her bedroom door open and immediately felt like he was invading her privacy. It was a pretty room, feminine but practical, which fitted with her personality. It smelt of her perfume, and for a few moments, Harrison was distracted from what he should be doing. He gave himself a mental slap and focused on the one window in the room. It looked out onto a high wall, the retaining wall for the ground floor garden. There was no possibility of someone peeping in here. He crossed to the window to double check there was no hidden technology and cameras. There wasn’t. He left quickly, mindful of not wanting to make her feel more vulnerable than she was already feeling.

  When he got back to the kitchen, she was boiling the kettle while staring at the diagram and list of names she’d produced.

  ‘Have you had any workmen in here in the last year?’ he asked her.

  She thought for a moment and then shook her head.

  ‘No. Not for ages.’

  ‘And you own the flat? There’s no landlord with access?’

  ‘I do and no. Nobody else has a key apart from my parents.’

  That made him worry less that somebody could have come in and put hidden cameras in the flat. It was still a possibility, but he’d deal with that later.

  ‘I think that’s everyone I can think of,’ she said to him as he approached.

  ‘OK. I’ll take a look through. But you need to report this, get those properly logged as evidence.’ He nodded at the card and underwear.

  ‘What kind of person is he?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is there a type of person who does this?’

  ‘There’s not one type,’ said Harrison. ‘I can’t tell yet who we’re dealing with because I need to know if it’s someone who has an existing relationship with you, no matter how brief, or admires you from afar. There are many different motivations behind stalkers. I am concerned that he seems to be escalating his contact with you.’

  Tanya nodded. ‘I know, me too. I won’t let him win, though. He’s unnerved me this weekend, but I won’t let him get to me like this again.’

  Harrison smiled weakly at her. He hadn’t been totally honest, just the items the stalker had already sent to Tanya had given him a good idea of what kind of person they were dealing with, but if he’d told her the full truth, that would have scared her even more.

  11

  Harrison had reluctantly left Tanya alone. He’d not wanted to offer to stay because that seemed presumptuous, and he hadn’t asked if she’d wanted to come home with him for the same reasons. Besides, he knew what she’d say to that one. Tanya was a strong woman who wouldn’t want to be chased out of her home. He did make her promise to get a new mobile phone asap and if she had any concerns to call him immediately. When he left, though, it was with a sense of unease. She’d promised to get the card and underwear into the lab and repor
t what was going on, but he too didn’t hold out too much hope of them throwing a light on their sender.

  He didn’t sleep well. It wasn’t wild horses that chased through his dreams, but dark shadows that were just out of reach. By the time he woke up, he’d decided what he was going to do about the stalker, although he wouldn’t share his plan with Tanya just yet.

  There’d been no more communications from DS James or anyone else in Cambridge, and so he’d gone into his office to see what new cases needed his help. Harrison’s work bolt-hole was in the basement of New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police headquarters. The building was actually on Victoria Embankment, but still carried the historic name of the original headquarters, which once had its public entrance on Great Scotland Yard.

  Harrison’s office wasn’t like most other people’s workspaces. The average office was a sterile characterless place in which to sit and get on with your job. His served the same function, but in a more distinctive way. As the lights flickered on, he was met by a wall of occult artefacts, voodoo dolls, staring empty-socketed death masks, Ouija boards, and animal skulls, jammed in between ancient books on the dark arts, folklore, and every religion you could think of, plus more. On the left was a neat desk with a computer screen and pinboard, to the right another desk with two screens and piles of clutter, most of it junk food packets and soft drinks. Ryan, his technical assistant, would be arriving soon.

  What Harrison did immediately notice was the mug sat on his own desk. It still carried the remains of last week’s herbal tea. Ryan’s bin was also more than half filled. He sighed. This week’s cleaner had obviously been one of the more superstitious in the workforce. It was potluck each morning to find out if they’d been brave enough to venture into the office, or had instead refused to cross the threshold, signing the cross and praying for deliverance. He couldn’t be angry. He understood the strength of faith and beliefs more than anyone, but it was an irritation.

  Most of the artefacts were items he’d collected from cases over the years. All of them solved, all of them proven to be the controlling nature of evil human behaviour and not some dark force. He’d tried to talk to the cleaners once, explained the nature and background to his mementos, but the turnover of staff, and the dark, lonely basement, had proved to be a worthy opponent and he’d given up. This had been the first time for a while that the cleaning hadn’t been done.

  What Harrison didn’t know was that his office had become the initiation rite for all new cleaning team members. The rest of the staff would keep quiet and let the unsuspecting newbie go into the office, then watch their reaction. It had slightly backfired last night as it had taken the supervisor half an hour to calm down his Nigerian born new recruit, who’d walked in without putting the lights on and come face to face with a particularly evil looking voodoo doll in the semi-darkness.

  On Harrison’s desk was a printout of a dark watercolour in what looked like an old notebook. He didn’t need to read the note that came with it to know where it was. It showed what looked like a hill in the country. At the top of the hill were two tall trees, and in the distance, past miles of fields and pathways, was the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. This was a view from Nunhead Hill, which was now the site of Nunhead Cemetery. Harrison would also bet that at least one of the tall oak trees pictured was the one he had stood under recently. The one that sheltered his nightmares, the dark secret of a murder he’d witnessed as a child.

  Ryan had scribbled him a note, Found this. Didn’t have GPS in those days but reckon it’s just across from the location you gave me. If you were standing on the top of the hill where the trees are, that would give you the same eyeline to St Paul’s. It’s by JMW Turner 1796-97. Just over forty years before the cemetery was built there.

  Harrison sat down. It didn’t give him any more clues as to why that location should have been used for a Satanic ritual, but hills overlooking, and away from cities, were often the sites of witch hangings and the like. Ryan had been searching for a while and found nothing. Seeing as the Internet didn’t exist back then, it was hard having to find scant physical records, and that was if it had even been official. While Janet Horne had been the last person in the UK to be executed legally for witchcraft in 1727, she certainly wasn’t the last to die because of it. Harrison knew that his best bet was going to be to investigate the most recent murder, that of an unknown woman in 1993. She’d been stabbed and killed in some kind of Satanic ritual. There had been plenty of witnesses, Harrison knew that because he and his mother had been two of them. After that, his mother had taken them out of the country to America, only to return years later to be murdered herself.

  Ryan was trying to find out if there were any other witnesses, but so far, they all seemed to have disappeared into the ether, like spirits in the graveyard. It was another fleck of a clue, but one which wouldn’t advance his hunt for his mother’s killers. He stuck the Turner painting on his pinboard, next to the newspaper cutting about the Nunhead murder, and the photograph of three people, two women flanking a man with a black cloak. One of the women was a pretty blond, his mother, gazing adoringly at the man. The other was a hard-faced woman staring straight at the camera. He knew the pair were out there, they’d taken the trouble of becoming reacquainted with him recently. He just had to find them and bring them to justice, but for that, he might need some help.

  ‘Here he is. Merlin’s back in the building.’ DS Jack Salter’s cheeky smiling face was the one Harrison had come to see. He was sitting in the middle of the Major Investigation Team’s incident room on the second floor of Lewisham Police Station. Busy detectives and their support staff occupied half the other desks around him. The rest were empty, their occupants out interviewing and visiting crime scenes. Just a normal day. Harrison’s arrival always caused a little stir of interest, several of the women’s eyes were drawn away from their computer screens to appraise him, and those who hadn’t worked with him before, but heard about his reputation, looked to see the man in the flesh. There’d been a few nods of hello from those who’d been on Operation Genesis with him. Respect was the definite vibe in the room, but those who knew him also understood that stopping for a chat wasn’t his thing.

  ‘Jack,’ was all Harrison replied, nodding. He didn’t take offence at the jibes; he knew it was Jack’s way.

  Jack wasn’t a small build. Even in his thirties, he carried on playing rugby and was fit, standing at six foot one, but when Harrison perched on the edge of his desk, he managed to make him somehow look average. Jack looked a lot better than the last time he’d seen him. Then his hands had been bandaged from the cuts and burns they’d received while trying to rescue a kidnapped boy. He was still looking tired, though. ‘How’s Marie?’ he asked, and watched as the smile weakened and the twinkle left Jack’s eyes.

  ‘Fine. Daniel’s sleeping five hours a night now, so we’re getting some more sleep. A couple of whiskies in his milk every night has been working a treat.’

  Typical of Jack, always hated being too serious for long. Harrison knew how devoted he was to his family, and how he also found it hard to talk about his wife’s postnatal depression. It had been a huge worry and taken its toll on them all. Harrison didn’t push the subject, a busy incident room wasn’t the best place for a private conversation, but he’d seen Jack’s eyes wander to the small photograph of Marie and Daniel that was stuck to his screen and knew that things were definitely not yet ‘fine’.

  ‘Good weekend?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Cambridgeshire asked for some assistance on a case.’

  ‘You get around a bit now. Whereabouts? Marie’s parents live to the east of Cambridge.’

  ‘Around Newmarket. Victim was a jockey.’

  ‘That’s just down the road from them. Not Paul Lester, was it? Saw that on the news this morning. Hadn’t realised there’d been any funny business with it.’

  Funny business was Jack’s way of meaning a ritualistic crime. The fact it hadn’t been reported as such was good news f
or the investigating team, and obviously they’d confirmed the victim’s ID too. Things were progressing.

  DCI Sandra Barker interrupted their conversation as she came out of her office and spotted Harrison in among her team.

  ‘Harrison!’ she exclaimed with a big smile on her face. ‘I hope you were coming to say hello to me?’

  Harrison smiled. One of his rare, full face smiles that not only curved his mouth, but lit up his eyes and wrapped the recipient in warmth. Sandra Barker was immune to his manly charms, quite content with her husband, too tired to have an affair, and anyway, too old for Harrison; but she could fully appreciate the attraction. Theirs was more of a mother/son relationship. She liked him, they’d been working together for a few years now and had gradually built a close bond. Above all, she knew she could trust him. At first, Sandra had been one of only a handful of senior officers to try out the maverick ‘witch hunter’ in the new Ritualistic Behavioural Crime unit. As soon as she’d witnessed him on a case, and most importantly the impact he had on results, using his services had become a no brainer. She’d helped him too, giving advice on the way things worked at the Met, so his career had flourished and not ended in drama. Now his reputation had spread, not just through the Met, but across the UK forces.

  ‘I’ve had Leo Fawcett from the National Crime Agency, on the phone about you,’ she said to him.

  Harrison didn’t register anything on his face. He wasn’t a man easily impressed or stressed.

  ‘They’re wondering why you’re just working under the Met badge, he’s after you for nationwide support.’

  Harrison nodded. ‘I already help out where I can,’ he said.

  ‘I know, but it’s quite possible that the more you get pulled out of London, the more questions will get asked about budget here. Could give you the chance to get out the city though, we know how much you love the lifestyle!’ Sandra smiled at him knowing full well he’d understand she was being sarcastic, ‘Just so you’re aware. They might approach you direct soon.’