by Gwyn GB
Harrison nodded.
‘Don’t forget us in Lewisham,’ Jack added. He might have started off as a complete sceptic about Harrison’s reputation, but after Operation Genesis, he knew it was well deserved. He’d even come to like Harrison Lane. The guy had virtually carried him out of a burning building to safety and went above and beyond to find the missing boy. In Jack’s books, he was genuine, a good bloke.
‘I’ve been trying to persuade DI Salter here to have a break for a week or so, spend some time away with Marie and Daniel,’ DCI Barker said pointedly to Jack. She’d been worried about him and the toll that Marie’s mental health was having on Jack’s.
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ Harrison replied. ‘Different surroundings are a good way to reset the brain. For Marie, depression makes it more difficult to alter behaviours, she’s not got the motivation. She needs support to make the changes, and that can come from those around her and the environment. She would also benefit from spending more time outdoors in a natural setting. Nature is good for helping you reconnect, and you’re more likely to get that out of London.’
‘OK, doc,’ Jack replied, slightly sarcastically, but there was no malevolence in his tone.
Harrison raised his eyebrows at him, and Jack realised he didn’t know if he was joking or not.
‘Thanks for the advice, I’ll see if I can persuade Marie to come away with me for a long weekend. It’s not been easy persuading her to leave the house to go to the supermarket lately, let alone get out of town.’
‘Try with somewhere she’s familiar with,’ Harrison advised.
‘Well, I’d better get back to work,’ DCI Barker said. ‘I’m currently the queen of multi-tasking. Got two cases about to hit the courts, two ongoing, and another that Interpol is helping us with. I feel like a circus juggler.’
‘You know that there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.’ Harrison turned to Sandra now. ‘You physically can’t do more than one thing at once. Your brain isn’t capable of it because it can only process one set of information at a time. It just has to switch its attention. It’s not an effective way to work because you’re taking up brain power to switch and refocus. You’re better off focusing on one thing at once. It’s more efficient and less tiring.’
Sandra wasn’t sure how to respond.
‘OK, thanks, Harrison. I’ll bear that in mind. Good to see you and I’d better get back to focusing on one of my cases.’ She smiled and headed back to her office, where she promptly rewarded herself with a chocolate for having defied biology and psychiatry and managed to multi-task for most of her career.
‘So, what brings you to Lewisham?’ Jack asked Harrison.
‘Actually, I have a couple of favours to ask,’ Harrison replied.
That hadn’t been something Jack expected.
12
Harrison returned to his bolt-hole, where Ryan was busy checking out Tanya’s neighbours and the rest of the list she’d compiled.
‘Anything flagging up?’ Harrison asked him.
Ryan shook his head.
‘A couple of random eccentrics, one guy who has one of the world’s largest collections of airline sick bags, although believe it or not, it’s not the largest. He’s got just over four thousand! Guinness Book of Records said the largest collection is over six thousand. What possesses someone to collect barf bags? What can you possibly get out of having thousands of them? Apart from a puking fetish, that seems to be his only vice. He works for London Transport.’
‘Could be how he gets around while stalking?’
‘Maybe, but there’s nothing to suggest he’s our man. The only other eccentric is a woman who has had all her pet cats stuffed. She’s up to about a dozen now, and she has them all in her sitting-room. How freaky must that be, walking into a room with a dozen glass-eyed dead cats all staring at you? Most of the rest of them round there are young professionals, very few of the flats are single occupancy.’
‘And the offices across the road?’ Harrison asked.
‘Just working on those now. Proving slightly tougher, but again, no red flags yet although if he’s a first-time stalker, there might be nothing unusual to flag up.’
Harrison sighed, but had already suspected it wasn’t going to be simple. Jack had also not come up with anything for that neighbourhood. For the first of Harrison’s requested favours, he’d run the street through the registered sex offenders list. If it was a neighbour who was stalking Tanya, they didn’t have a record. The field was still open. Too far open for his liking. Time for Plan B.
First things first. He checked his emails. There was one from DI Chowdhury, who’d made some arrests after he’d helped her with a sickening case of modern slavery using Brazilian Jurema and Macumba cult practices. They had a trial date, and she was warning him they’d need him in court to testify. She also asked for any book recommendations so that she could read up on the religion. Harrison enquired after the young woman they’d found alive and sent her a couple of book suggestions.
He’d just managed to get through his email backlog when one popped into his inbox from DCI Whittaker in Cambridgeshire. It was the pathologist’s report. Harrison opened the document and read how Paul Lester had met his death. It gave him even more reason to think they were missing something. Paul’s neck showed signs of prior manual strangulation. Somebody had tried to choke him to death with their hands. It hadn’t been what killed him, that had been the hangman’s noose, but it would have been sufficient to have incapacitated him. As Harrison suspected, they cut his heart out just after death.
The DCI told him that the barn was a smorgasbord of fingerprints and DNA, and they were trying to track down who might have been there over the past weeks. Craig Matlock wasn’t being overly forthcoming and so they were keeping him in custody for as long as they were allowed. The Horsemen were their prime suspects after various bizarre ritual items had been found. One was a stick which DCI Whittaker attached a photograph of in the email. It was a cane, but on the top was a pair of horns, and on the bottom, what looked to be the hoof from a goat. Another photograph was of a horse's skull, placed in a cavity within the barn. None of these items surprised Harrison. He wrote back to tell the DCI that the stick was almost certainly ceremonial, that they would have used it in meetings to swear their oaths, possibly also as an object to hold during meetings to show that the person with it, was the one who should be speaking within the circle. The horse skull was quite common in barns of that age, often buried within walls or roof spaces, or under floors, to protect the building from evil spirits. Cats and shoes were often found in the walls of houses for the same reason. Harrison also flagged up the pathologist’s report and suggested that two people could have been involved, although only one of them went with Paul to the Fen. He knew this would strengthen the DCI’s belief that it was the Horsemen who were behind the killing, but there was something not quite straightforward with the case. He’d need to speak to Craig before he could make any further judgements. He asked the DCI if he was going to need his further advice and if he wanted him to be present for interviews. Harrison didn’t like to leave a case when it was clearly nowhere near to being solved. He was sure the barn would hold further clues, as long as you knew what you were looking for.
‘You want anything from the canteen boss?’ Ryan asked him, breaking through his thoughts.
‘No thanks, Ryan,’ he replied.
‘Of course, it’s Monday, one of your fasting days. I’m just going to grab a hot chocolate.’
‘I’ll probably be gone before you get back, so take your key.’
‘Always have it on me.’ Ryan smiled at his boss. He knew Harrison well enough to know that he could be there one moment and gone the next.
Harrison completed the online transaction he had opened and shut down his computer. Time for Tanya Plan B.
It had taken him a while to find exactly the right vehicle. Harrison needed something that afforded as much of an all-round view as possible, but also h
ad tinted windows. He wanted to look out; he didn’t want anyone seeing in. Tanya said she felt like the man was watching her when she returned home. If she was right, Harrison intended to make sure he saw exactly who it was. He left his Harley at home and took the rented van to Tanya’s street. He’d needed to drive around for a while before the ideal parking space became available. The staff in the little offices opposite were leaving for the day, and he managed to bag a spot before another resident came home.
Watching down the street both ways and keeping his eyes on the windows, as well as street level, was not going to be easy on his own. Harrison borrowed three surveillance cameras from work and set them up to watch the street from various angles. That way, he could watch them after and make sure he hadn’t missed something. Or, if he was lucky, and the stalker showed his face, they’d have him on camera.
Harrison had purposely not told Tanya he was going to be there. If she knew, then she might give him away accidentally. Even the subtlest difference in her behaviour could alert the man that something was going on. Harrison had dressed for speed. He’d left his bike leathers at home and had on a pair of joggers with trainers and a hoody. He wasn’t keen on being identified, either. This was a long way from being official police business and if word got back to the Met, he knew it wouldn’t look good for him. It was a risk he was prepared to take, though. He would not sit by and let Tanya become scared to live her life. Worst still, he feared this man was building up to launch some kind of attack on her. He was escalating, and the gifts were becoming sexual. This wasn’t an innocent crush.
At just before 6 p.m., Tanya turned the corner of the road and started walking towards her flat. She’d told Harrison that she took the Tube so he’d been expecting her to come from that direction. Just the way she walked made his blood boil. She was clearly anxious. Her gait was stiff and precise. Her eyes kept shifting from side to side and all around. Whoever was doing this to her had to be stopped.
Although Harrison wanted to watch Tanya, he had to tear his eyes away from her and look around the street. What curtains moved? What shadows appeared? Was someone watching from one of the alleyways down between the offices?
He watched. Tanya walked down the steps to her flat, but she hesitated before putting the key in the lock and going in. From Harrison’s street level vantage point, he couldn’t see what she’d bent her head to look at, but she paused, gave a quick look around and plunged the key into the door without bending down to whatever the object was. Harrison wondered if there had been another delivery. If there had, then there was a very strong chance the man was watching to see her reaction. He saw the lights go on through the chinks in the blind. He scanned the street. There was nobody else in sight. No curtains twitched, no glint of a camera lens in the light, no figures following her down the street. Perhaps he wasn’t here tonight, after all.
Tanya’s door opened again and her shape, silhouetted by the light behind her, appeared. She made it obvious that she had gloves on, and in her hand was an evidence bag. She bent down and scooped something into the bag before sealing it. Tanya stood there defiantly, a clear message to whoever might have sent the package that she wasn’t intimidated, and she was going to take the item in for examination and report it.
Harrison gave a smile to himself, she was a tough woman, but he had to focus on the street and not on admiring her. The man had to be there somewhere, watching. He’d want to see the effect his gift had on its target.
Harrison still saw nothing.
Tanya dropped the gift onto the floor of her hall and shut the door on the street. The show was over. Where was the VIP audience of one?
Then he saw it. Only a tiny movement, but Harrison was out of the van and heading straight for the alleyway opposite Tanya’s flat within seconds.
13
Harrison hurtled down the street to the entrance of the alleyway where he’d seen a shadow withdraw. He arrived just in time to see someone disappear from the other end of the dark alley and turn left. The passageway was narrow, so running full pelt down it when you were Harrison’s bulk, took some precision. He banged his elbow as he reached the end and burst back into the light, where he found himself on a dirt path that ran the full length of the street. There were the small offices and houses on one side and a thin strip of waste ground on the other.
Harrison saw the man in front of him stop and turn to look at what the noise was behind him. There was a moment’s hesitation as six foot two of muscle started running straight at him. The moment was so brief, Harrison almost missed it, as a mask of calm settled on the man’s features. He made no move to run, just stepped back from the path.
Harrison had literally three seconds in which to make a decision. He could confront the man and risk sending him underground and perhaps making him more dangerous, or he could play it smart. At the moment, the man had no idea if Harrison was coming for him, but he was prepared to bluff it. A thin, less than six-foot man with thinning black hair and a beak of a nose, like some weird crow-like bird, was standing his ground as a six-foot two threat came at him full pelt. That took some courage. Or it took the unemotional bluffing capabilities of a sociopath. Harrison’s psychology training kicked in and overrode his primitive desire to just shove him up against the wall and thump him.
‘Do you know how I get to the Tube from here? I’m late, going to miss my train at Waterloo. Map said this was a short cut?’ Harrison held up his phone and peered at it like he was viewing a map.
The man looked at him impassively.
‘Turn right at the end,’ he said. It was a Scottish accent carried by a thin and reedy voice.
‘Cheers,’ Harrison replied, and ran on past him. He had what he needed.
Harrison followed the instructions and as soon as he could, dived into a café along the street and waited to see if the man walked past. He did. Harrison watched as calmly and purposefully he strode past, head bobbing forward with each step. Back straight. Dead eyes fixed forward. The man headed down the steps that led to the Tube station.
Harrison could be wrong. The man might just have been walking down the alley from one of the offices, heading towards the Underground, but he didn’t think so. There was something cold and unnerving about the passive face which now stared back at him from his mobile phone. Harrison hoped the guy hadn’t clocked him taking his photograph when he’d been pretending to look at the map. It was possible that he’d been watching over the weekend and had seen him come to Tanya’s flat. If he had, then he was even more of a cool customer than he thought.
What he did now know for sure was that this wasn’t some love-struck groupie desperate to win Tanya’s affections. This man was cold and calculating. There was no passion to what he did, just emotional and mental torture. What was he capable of? Most importantly, who was he?
Harrison retraced his steps, looking at the ground in the alleyway for signs that the man had been there watching. He found a patch of ground that was devoid of any rubbish or dirt. Somebody had been standing there for quite some time, and their feet had gradually cleared the debris from the spot. He’d noticed a small patch of green on the upper arm of the man’s coat, and the wall of the alley was layered in a thin coating of lichen. There were several small patches where the lichen had been brushed from the wall. Someone had lent against it, and not just once or twice.
Harrison was convinced he was their man. Question was, did Tanya know him? Could she identify him? There was only one way of finding that out.
He could hear music playing in the flat when he rang Tanya’s doorbell. Loud, upbeat pop. Clearly a distraction technique to get her into a positive mood after her unnerving return home. It was immediately turned off and there was a silence after he’d rung. He could imagine her rushing over to the CCTV feed and looking to see who it was at her door. Moments later it was opened.
‘Harrison.’ Tanya smiled at him. ‘You’re making a habit of surprising me.’
Immediately, he felt guilty.
&nbs
p; ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not stepping into the flat. ‘I just wanted to show you something it won’t take a moment.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m so pleased you’re here. Come in.’ Tanya waved him in and did her usual quick check of the street as she closed the door behind him. He glanced at the small, flat box that was on the floor of the hall inside the evidence bag. There was no identifying branding on it. It wouldn’t be flowers then. There was a certain type of company that didn’t brand their boxes so as not to embarrass recipients. It was clear Tanya had no intention of opening it in her home.
‘I may have a photograph of the man who is watching you, but you must understand that I’m not 100 percent sure that it’s him.’ Even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t true. Talking to him, watching him walk past, checking out the alley, all of it had convinced him he was right and that man was Tanya’s stalker.
‘How did you get it?’ Tanya started.
‘I was parked outside in a van when you came home,’ Harrison said, realising as he said it that it sounded like he was being a stalker.
Tanya’s face turned into a frown.
‘Outside?’
‘Yes. I want you to know who’s doing this. If we can identify him, then we can deal with him.’
She took a few steps away from Harrison and sat down on the sofa.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘If I’d told you, you might have given me away. I needed you to be acting exactly as you usually would.’
‘I was the bait,’ she said quietly.
‘No,’ he replied forcefully this time. ‘I was there to protect you. I want to help. I’m concerned that this man might become dangerous.’
Tanya looked up at his face and he saw the fear in her eyes and instantly felt guilty for putting it there. Then he checked himself. It wasn’t him doing this to her, it was the man. He took his phone from his pocket and found the photograph.
