[DC Laura McGanity 05 ]Cold Kill

by Neil White

  ‘Maybe she won’t want you that close,’ Laura said. ‘Be there, as a friend. Forget about how you were. That’s probably all she wants.’

  Joe nodded. ‘I’ve called her parents, but they’re on holiday, so it’s just me until they get a flight. She needs them though. It’s time she stopped being a cop for a while and went back to being someone’s daughter.’

  Laura hugged Joe again, but he pulled away sooner this time. He seemed more determined than before. ‘What about you?’ he said.

  Laura looked through the gap in the curtain and looked at Jack. ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

  He was in his chair in the living room, his hands gripping the arms. His clothes were covered in dust and he was sweating, the exertion of his dash from the factory. He had left the van behind and escaped on foot, running through alleys. Now he was back, the house was silent but he was wincing from the noise. Laughs. Shouts. Screams.

  He closed his eyes. He thought of Doctor Barker again, but the memory he had wasn’t from the day before, but more than twenty years earlier. It was the doctor’s voice, friendly, caring, but it hadn’t changed anything. Then there were faces through the years. First girls, then women. He hadn’t hurt all of them. Some he had just followed and then fantasised about, and those were the special ones, the ones that hadn’t disappointed.

  He was still aroused, unfulfilled from the attack before. He’d heard the sirens and known that he had to get away. But he also knew he’d only delayed the inevitable. They would come for him.

  His fingers dug into the fabric. He thought of his mother. He had heard her, had sat on the landing, listened as she argued with his adoptive parents. He’d always felt that there was something missing from his life, and as he listened, he had wanted to go down, to see her, to let her see him. But he had been scared, not wanting to meet her in case she didn’t like what she saw. He had stood up, ready to go down, when he heard the final shout from her, and then the back door slammed.

  That’s when he’d first heard them, the noises. It was just whispers then, so quiet that he could hardly hear them, and so he had to concentrate hard to work out what they were saying.

  He heard footsteps. At first he thought they were rumbles in his head, but as he looked to the window he saw that it was a real noise, not the ones he heard most of the time. They were marching up the garden path.

  He stared ahead. He had been expecting them ever since he had failed. He wouldn’t do anything to stop them. The door was unlocked. They could get him. He was ready.

  The door banged against the wall as they burst in. He could hear mocking laughter, but as he looked up, their faces were full of menace. No one was laughing.

  He didn’t say anything as they grabbed his arms and pulled him towards the door. It was his time.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Jack went for a drive.

  Laura was at home trying to revive herself after the horrors of the day’s events. Jack felt an intense need to protect her, to be with her, but he didn’t want to suffocate her. She said she needed her space to process what had happened, and had told Jack to go out and keep up with the investigation. She was even more determined to catch the killer now.

  He didn’t know where to go at first. Joe was still at the hospital with Rachel, and so he just drove the country roads, enjoying the echo of the engine as he went along hedgerow lanes and the cool night breeze. But all the roads around Turners Fold seemed to head towards Blackley, the countryside spoiled eventually by the orange strips of street lighting that rolled down the seven hills of the town. The Whitcroft estate was on the fringes of Blackley, and Jack found himself driving towards it.

  The estate seemed quiet, although the aroma of barbecues drifted in the warm night air, the laughs and chatter loud in the darkness. He thought he heard a bottle smash somewhere, and then there was a shout. A balmy Saturday night would bring the drinkers onto the streets, provide Dolby with the kind of story he wanted, even if it was only a few shots of teenagers sharing alcopops.

  A couple of circuits didn’t reveal much, and so he cut onto the side streets, hoping to catch people looking like they were up to no good. Even the side streets were quiet though, and it didn’t look like Dolby was going to get much to write about. He was about to head away from the estate when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jack? Is that Jack?’

  He recognised the voice straight away. It was Emma. She was slurring more than before, but there was something else there too. Her voice was higher, more frantic.

  ‘Emma, it’s me. Are you okay?’

  ‘They’ve taken him,’ she said, and then she started to sob.

  ‘Who have they taken?’

  ‘Simon. They’ve taken Simon.’

  Jack gave a sigh of relief and then smiled to himself. They had him. It was over.

  ‘It’s okay, Emma, everything will be all right. Let the police do their job.’

  ‘It wasn’t the police,’ she said. ‘It was Don. I saw him.’ Her words came out thick with tears.

  He pulled up to the kerb. ‘Calm down. Talk to me. What do you mean?’

  Jack listened as Emma poured out the story between deep breaths.

  ‘I went to Simon’s house,’ she said. ‘I know where he lives. He doesn’t know that, but I saw his van one day, just at the side of his house. I waited outside and I saw him. So after you’d gone, I thought some more about what had happened, and I just needed someone to talk to. I went to his house, and I saw them, Don and two of his men, pulling him to a car.’

  She started to cry again.

  ‘Why are they taking him, Jack? Did you tell Don what I said? Is that why?’

  His mind raced with the implications. If they had taken PC Abbott, what if he wasn’t the killer? ‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

  He tried calling Laura, but there was no reply.

  ‘Shit!’ he said, his tyres screeching as he set off.

  Laura sat on the side of the bath as the water filled the tub behind her, wincing as she took off her clothes, the stretching and moving aggravating her aches and bruises. She just needed to get herself clean, to somehow wash off the events of the day. She heard her phone ring but left it. She wanted to empty her mind so that she could recall her attacker.

  She caught herself in the mirror as her clothes slipped to the floor, and she stepped forward to examine her bruises. There was a large one on her shoulder, and her elbow was grazed.

  As she slid into the water, some of her tension slipped away. The bubbles gathered around her neck as she sank deeper into the water, the lavender scents relaxing her, and she closed her eyes. Suddenly the light and calmness of the bathroom was replaced by the darkness of the factory. The warmth of the water and the scent of the bubbles made her feel like she was floating, and she was able to take herself back to the deserted building, to the echoes and the dust.

  Laura tried to recall her first impression of him, her glimpse through the gloom as he rose up. He was tall. That had been her first thought. And slim. No, it was more than slim. Skinny, so that he seemed to stoop, uncomfortable with his size. He wasn’t a big man. Just a tall one.

  She thought of him as he had stood over Rachel. That distracted her for a moment as she thought of what he had done to her. She concentrated on getting rid of those images. She had to think about him, not Rachel. She thought at the time that she hadn’t been able to see his face, that he was always in shadow, but as she thought some more, there was something. It was the way he cocked his head, like a bird, curious, as he watched her come towards him. He never lost his nerve. He just waited for her to get close, so that he could get her with the Taser. Laura knew that she had to get within fifteen feet for the Taser to be effective, and so he had been patient. For Laura, that made him dangerous.

  She tried to think of how he seemed when he had leaned over her. Laura’s body hadn’t been working, but her senses were, and she remembered ther
e was a smell, and with her eyes closed, it came back to her. It was something damp and musty. And cigarettes. But not filtered cigarettes. No, it was the rich, cloying smell of roll-up cigarettes.

  Laura thought of him as he leaned over her, her body incapable of reacting, his hands long and thin. Then she thought of the way he looked again, his head cocked. And something about that niggled her. It seemed familiar, she had definitely seen it before, but she couldn’t be sure where.

  He was a police officer, that’s where all the clues pointed. The Taser gun. The handcuffs. Was he killing people when he was on duty, using his uniform to lull these women into a false sense of security? They hadn’t found Simon Abbott as he wasn’t on duty and wasn’t at home, but it wouldn’t take long, she was sure of that. But Shane was dead, so they thought, and so was Simon Abbott just exacting some revenge for a friend?

  But it might not be Abbott. She tried to think of all the officers who passed through the station. Was there anyone that tall who struck her as being too quiet, maybe too attentive towards her? But she knew that that line of thinking wouldn’t lead her anywhere, because murderers often appeared to be the most ordinary people in the world. The nice man from down the street, or the one who helped out with church on Sunday.

  Then she thought of something. She remembered the van. It had been behind her when she was jogging home, which meant that the killer knew where she lived. She sat up straight in the bath, goosebumps on her arms. He could come to her home. She was naked, vulnerable. Why had she told Jack to go out?

  Laura stepped quickly out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her body. She needed to get away from the house.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Emma was sitting on her doorstep when Jack got there, her head against the door frame, her eyes almost closed. There was a glass in front of her, half-filled with cider. Her eyes opened slowly when Jack got closer.

  ‘You’re back,’ she said, and her hand moved unsteadily towards the glass.

  He kneeled down in front of her and moved her drink away.

  ‘What did you see?’ he said urgently.

  She went as if to grab the glass, but Jack held it further away, so that she slumped backwards against the door frame. She took a few deep breaths, and Jack thought she was going to be sick, but eventually she said, ‘I told you, Don took him.’

  ‘When was this?’

  She shrugged, her movements uncoordinated. ‘I came home, and then I rang you. Thirty minutes before. Maybe.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Don?’

  Her look darkened at that, her face seemed to gain a bit more focus. ‘Do you think I don’t know Don Roberts when I see him? He was dragging Simon to the car. Two men were holding his arms.’

  ‘Do you know where they were taking him?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I just watched.’

  Jack stood up, frustrated. He was about to leave Emma when she added, ‘Don’s got something in town.’

  ‘What do you mean, something?’

  ‘Like a workshop.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Emma wiped her nose with her hand and beckoned for him to hand the glass over. She drank some greedily when he gave it to her, and then said, ‘I make it my business to know about him. I wanted to burn the fucking place down. But what’s the point?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  Emma gave him vague details, her memory blurred by drink, and then he ran back to his car, leaving Emma on her doorstep, with an almost empty glass of cider for company.

  Laura ran into the police station, banging the door against the wall. She was wincing from her bruises, the cuts on her knee bleeding again, making small stains on her trousers, but she tried to rush through, to get to the top floor. She avoided the lift, despite her sense of urgency, and climbed the three flights of stairs instead. When she reached the top, she grimaced and took a moment to catch her breath, before hobbling along to the CCTV room.

  The operator barely moved a muscle as she walked in. He was drinking coffee and eating a sandwich from a small plastic box he had brought in from home.

  ‘Do you remember the footage I asked you to look at yesterday, of the man who came to the police station?’ she said, still panting a little.

  He shrugged. ‘Yeah, why?’ he said, his mouth full of bread.

  ‘Have you still got it?’

  He nodded. ‘You asked me to save it for you, so I did,’ he said, putting his food down. He sighed as he rummaged under some papers on one side of his desk and found a disc. ‘Here it is.’

  Laura went to a computer terminal at the end of the screens and inserted it. The software seemed to take an age to load, and she was about to turn around to get some help when familiar images jumped onto the screen, the view from the camera that overlooked the reception area.

  She was impatient as she scrolled quickly through the footage, the washed-out outlines like flashes as she went through it, and then she stopped when she saw him, the slow nervous shuffle of Rupert Barker fast-forwarded into a rush. She took the footage back and pressed play, and then watched carefully, looking for something she had missed from her last viewing.

  The camera looked towards the large exit doors and the row of seats opposite the glass kiosks. The chairs were in front of a window, but it was hard to see what was in the car park because there was a van parked there, a white Transit with the police crest on the side.

  Rupert looked hesitant and nervous, she thought, his hand stroking his cheek, and at one point it seemed like he was about to turn around and leave. But she told herself to ignore Rupert Barker. She knew already what he was thinking about when he came to the station. Shane Grix, the file he had uncovered. It was the people at the station she was interested in now.

  Laura watched as Rupert looked along the row of seats. There weren’t many people in the station, just a bored-looking teenager in the obligatory tracksuit and a solicitor preening herself at the end of the row. Rupert sat down and fidgeted. Two police officers went through the reception area, their belts heavy with equipment, and Laura looked closely to see whether either of them glanced Rupert’s way. Neither did.

  Then Rupert walked off camera. That must have been when he spoke to the counter assistant.

  There was a delay before Rupert appeared back on screen, when he sat down on one of the seats, his head forward, his hands clasped together, looking towards the floor, his feet tapping on the ground.

  Another police officer marched in through the doors, just moving out of the way to let two female officers out, closely followed by a police driver, who was dragging a trolley of bags to the exit.

  Laura straightened, frustrated, and looked away for a moment, sure that the answer must lie somewhere else, glancing back at the CCTV operator, ready to ask him to tee up the external footage. Then she saw something. She looked back at the screen and watched Rupert again, who was still sitting down, looking nervous. There were no more police officers, and the driver was just banging through the doors with his trolley.

  She went to scratch her head, but then remembered the stitches and pulled her hand away. She had seen something, she knew it.

  She leaned forward to take the footage back again, but then she stopped. It was the driver who drew her attention. He was tall and skinny, the sharpness of his shoulder blades visible through his thin blue jacket. He was standing by his van, visible through the window behind Rupert, not moving. But it was the way he held his head, cocked to one side, like a bird listening out, that made her heart beat faster.

  Laura felt a shiver of recognition and cold goosebumps prickled the back of her neck. Her mouth went dry and she felt light-headed as she thought back to the person who had stood over Rachel. She swallowed hard and tried to focus on the screen, ignoring what had happened earlier. Her hand went to the mouse and it felt slick under her hand as she dragged the footage back to where the driver first came into view.

  Laura watched as he seemed to slink in, just the top of his head visible at
first, a bald patch spreading on the crown of his head, hair light, and his head forward, so that his shoulders were hunched, one arm down to pull the trolley loaded with blue bags, ready for delivery to the prosecution in their office on the other side of Blackley. Then it was there. The glance over to Rupert and a stutter in his walk, just for a moment, barely noticeable, but that falter was what she had seen before. He kept on going though, but he seemed quicker as he went, banging through the doors with his trolley.

  Then Laura watched him as he paused by the van, his head cocked, making no effort to load it.

  Her eyes went back to Rupert, who was now looking up, towards the doors that Laura had headed for when she had got the message about him. Rupert hadn’t noticed the driver, and Laura saw the final nervous look on Rupert’s face as he turned and walked quickly out of the station, rushing past the van, the driver looking down, his arms by his side. As Rupert went out of shot, the driver looked up, and he seemed to be watching in the direction Rupert had just gone.

  Laura jabbed the eject button and almost shouted at the computer as it took an age for the drawer to open. Then she grabbed it and hobbled towards the door, going to the balcony to look out into the atrium. She was seeing if there was someone there she knew, or even the driver himself, but as she looked down, she saw only empty tables, the metal shutter on the canteen fastened down.

  She headed for the stairs, taking two at a time, despite the complaints from her knee, and went towards the Incident Room, bursting through the door.

  Carson was there, in conversation with the other detectives, their expressions pained, and Laura knew that they were talking about Rachel, how the case had come too close to the team.