by Andrew Lowe
‘Still going. Nothing. Sally mentioned that Dawson might have changed his name.’
‘It’s likely. Andrew said that he wanted to “start again”.’
‘A rebirth?’
Sawyer reclined on the sofa. The urge to sleep swept over him, and he sat back upright. ‘I tried to track deed poll records on a previous case, find out someone’s old name from the post-deed poll change. Impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s no obligation to announce the name-change. Even if you’re researching, say, when a person changed their name, you only find a trail of records in their original name and another trail starting from their new name. There’s usually no single document that links the two. We could send someone to the National Archives in Kew to search the indexes. Focus on the likely dates he might have registered the name change. We might get lucky and the index will include a note that refers to the new name, but it’s not guaranteed.’
‘And it will take a lot of hunting through documents?’
Sawyer crunched into the toast. It tasted metallic, alien. ‘It will. You can’t search the indexes online. Get a researcher down to London. Or send Moran.’
‘Are you trying to get him to hate you?’
‘Okay. Send Walker.’
‘He’s on decent terms with Jamie Ingram. I’d rather have him covering there. And you know how he’s been pushing to be at the pointy end.’
Sawyer blinked away another tug of sleep. ‘Just get someone, anyone, to do the digging. If we can find his current name, we can start to eliminate, narrow down his location, and hopefully pick him up bloodlessly.’ He paused, grasping for his next words.
Shepherd cut in. ‘Rest up. Keating told me he wanted me to take on the bulk of the work while you recover.’
Sawyer’s eyes drooped again. ‘So get on with it.’
50
‘You look tired, Jake.’
He kept his eyes on the carpeted floor. ‘Had a busy week.’
Alex leaned forward. ‘How’s your sleep?’
Sawyer reached for the plate of biscuits on the side table. Teatime assortment. Bright colours. Foil wraps. Chocolate coating. Icing. He took a dark chocolate digestive. ‘My sleep is interesting. I had a dream about the murder. The first lucid dream. I knew what it was. I knew what was happening. I tried to help. I tried to—’
‘Stop it?’
‘Yes. Usually, I’m just watching. Powerless.’
Alex nodded. She was wearing a bottle-green shawl with buttons down one arm. Cape-like. No notepad this time. ‘And how are you doing with the fear? Are you still chasing it? Any luck?’
‘Plenty of scary situations. No fear.’
Alex slipped on a pair of silver-framed glasses. ‘When you say, “no fear”, I wonder if you really mean “no feeling”.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Are you concerned about your choices? The distractions you’re seeking?’
He crunched into the biscuit. ‘Not really. But everyone else seems to be.’
She picked up a book from her side table. ‘How are you getting on with women?’
‘Again? This?’
‘Where else can you examine it safely? Isn’t that what you’re here for?’
He sighed. ‘I’ve got my eye on someone, yes. Is that normal?’
‘We’re told not to say “normal” now.’
‘Neurotypical?’
‘Yes. And I suppose it is.’ She held up the book: a copy of The Gift Of Fear. ‘I’ve been re-reading this. There’s a part where he talks about stalking. Unwanted attention.’
‘I fancy someone. I’m pursuing them. That’s neurotypical, right? Sexual attraction. Stalking is about control.’
Alex smiled and turned to a marked page. She read out loud. ‘Young women should know this. Persistence only proves persistence. It does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special. It means he is troubled.’
He stared at her, silent.
‘I also read an astute quote the other day. Somewhere online. It said that the problem is never the problem. It’s the response to the problem that’s almost always the real problem.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘I like that. Very Stoic. Did you buy these biscuits especially for me? For the “frozen” inner child?’
‘This woman you have your eye on. Does she remind you of your mother?’
‘In some ways.’
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
‘Seeking distraction and drama. It isn’t helping. What you need to do is to turn and face yourself. Know yourself as an adult. Like I said, I think you are frozen, and I want to start the process of thawing. The thing I talked about last time. Reliving. You’ve already taken me through what happened on the day of your mother’s murder. We’re now going to go one step further.’ She pulled out a small digital recorder. ‘We’re going to record you, walking through it, step by step.’
‘Hypnosis?’
‘No. That’s not the aim. But it’s along the same lines. You’re going to take me through it in the first-person present. Immerse yourself in the reality of the moment. Lots of sensory detail. “I’m walking down the lane”, “I can see this”, “I can feel this”, “I can smell this”.
Sawyer reached into his pocket and squeezed the button on his phone, turning it off. ‘Why?’
‘Because, in your mind, it’s all chaos. Horror. Confusion. Your brain can’t process it.’
He sat forward. ‘Jung said, “In all chaos there is a cosmos”.’
Alex smiled. ‘“In all disorder, a secret order.” That’s what we’re going to do. Clear away the chaos. Find the order. The first stage is to turn the event into something your brain can cope with. A clear, linear story. A narrative. You’re currently processing the murder as a six-year-old. The goal is to get it clear in your mind and then reframe it as something you can reprocess as an adult. Once we have that, then we can pack it away.’
‘And all shall be well.’
She squinted at him. ‘It can’t just be forgotten. At the moment, your mother’s murder is a horrendous mix of professional and personal. We have to get it to a place where you can “solve” it as a case, without the trauma and confusion of the personal dimension. If it gets too stressful, we can come back to safety at any time, get re-grounded.’
It took Sawyer half an hour to recount his story into Alex’s recorder. As he spoke, the daylight dimmed outside her window, and it was close to dusk by the time he had finished. He kept his voice soft and calm, but always on the edge of emotion. All the while, Alex sat there in absolute silence, never prompting.
When he reached the end, and had stayed silent for a while, Alex leaned over and switched off the recorder. ‘Thank you, Jake. Now we have something we can really work with. I want you to take it away and listen to it. At least two times before our next session. Which moments are the hot spots, the most distressing moments? The points where you feel the most intensely? Remember, we’re looking to reframe those parts. That was then, when you were a child. This is now. You’re an adult. It’s only when you see this story from an adult perspective that we can move on to the final stage. Then you’ll still carry it inside you, as a painful memory, but it will no longer be something which makes it impossible to live a normal life, in the here and now.’
Sawyer took the recorder and stood up. ‘Final stage?’
She nodded. ‘That’s when we go there in person. To the lane. To the place where it happened.’
Outside, he climbed into the Mini and switched his phone back on. His heart raced; he could feel the pounding against his shirt. The images fluttered: his brother’s body, his mother’s hand, the raised hammer. But, despite Alex’s logic, he wasn’t interested in fixing his own mind. He just hoped the reliving would unlock more detail, give him some sight of the man behind the balaclava.
He checked his phone. Several missed calls from Walker.
He called the number.
�
��Sir?’ Walker sounded frantic. ‘Are you there? Sorry. Here? Are you on your way?’
Sawyer started the engine. ‘Are you with Jamie Ingram?’
Commotion in the background. Walker speaking to someone. ‘Hello? Yes. I mean, no. I’m at Jamie Ingram’s place, yes.’
‘I’m about fifteen minutes away. What’s up?’
‘I couldn’t reach DS Shepherd at the safe house. He just called. Said he can be here in half an hour.’
Sawyer’s phone buzzed. Probably Shepherd.
He pulled the car away and turned on the lights. He shouldered the phone. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s Ingram. We’ve been running together. Up in the woods behind the house. Mornings and evenings, around this time. He was complaining yesterday about how I was slowing him down. I went to the toilet. Just for a couple of minutes. He’s gone, sir. By himself.’
Sawyer squeezed the accelerator. His leg flashed with pain. ‘Where are the OP guys?’
‘One is here with me. The other is looking for Ingram. I followed the route for a while, but it’s getting dark. He could have gone anywhere.’
51
Jamie Ingram dropped his head and drove forward, bull-like, into the trees. It felt good to finally open the taps and push himself. The police guy was a casual runner: 5K twice a week. He was always off the pace: panting after 2K, suffering at 4. If the big, bad murderer had jumped out of a tree, he would hardly have been in any state to fight him off. If anything, the roles would be reversed: Jamie would be the one doing the protection.
He caught the trail by the ridge that sloped down towards the Primary School on Alport Lane. It was mulchy underfoot, and as the trees became too dense and low-hanging for comfortable running, he veered back onto the usual route: a circular track through open forest that would have him back in Youlgreave in fifteen minutes.
Jamie looked up through the spindly canopy. The sky was almost covered now, close to black. The race was on. He would need to really fly to be home by nightfall.
He squinted through the gloom, his attention caught by a blot of colour up ahead. As he got closer, he saw a figure in a yellow high-viz vest sprawled face down across a clump of fallen leaves, just off the track.
He slowed. The figure was short and slight. Male. He wore black tracksuit bottoms and bright red Nike trainers. All the gear looked new.
Lightweight. Probably his first run. Over-reached himself.
‘You okay there?’
As Jamie approached, the figure rose onto all-fours, head down. He moaned and turned his head slightly. He was a young guy in his late twenties. Jamie suppressed a laugh at the man’s yellow head sweatband, also new-looking.
‘Probably low blood sugar,’ said Jamie, holding out his hand. ‘Let’s get you up. Classic rookie mistake. You should start with short runs, mixed with periods of walking.’
The man stumbled to his feet and turned towards Jamie. He held up a red-and-black can, only slightly larger than his hand. A fine white spray billowed into Jamie’s eyes. He cried out in surprise and twisted away. But the man followed his movement and kept spraying, keeping his aim on Jamie’s eyes and nose. Jamie clamped his eyes shut and rubbed at his face, swiping away the liquid.
He tried to blink, to coax his eyes open. But his eyelids were in spasm, and hot liquid streamed down his cheeks. He dropped to one knee, roaring in agony. His eyes and face blazed with a paralysing heat, like instant sunburn. His nose streamed and he shook his head, shedding tears and snot.
The spraying stopped, and Jamie ducked his head away, terrified of another burst. The burning intensified, and he covered his eyes with both hands, protecting them from further spray while trying to force his eyelids open with his thumbs.
He jerked forward, and had to steady himself with a hand to the damp earth. He hit his head on something hard. He toppled, face first into a mound of brittle leaves.
52
‘How long has he been gone?’
Walker closed his eyes. He was trembling, struggling to keep his breathing steady. ‘Almost an hour now.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Sawyer turned to the Observation Point officer: a hefty man with receding hair and a high forehead, gleaming with sweat. ‘Where’s the other guy? Has he seen anything? Heard anything?’
The man lifted his walkie talkie. ‘Just checked in. Nothing.’
‘Call him back here. I want both of you on the house. DS Shepherd will be here soon.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Walker. ‘I didn’t know. He knew we were there, said he didn’t mind. I thought he was getting used to it all. He must have gone out of the back door.’
‘How long are his evening runs?’
‘Half an hour. Sometimes forty minutes. His early ones are longer.’
Sawyer thought for a second. ‘Show me the usual route.’
Walker led the way, up to the end of the road and out to a wide field which rose away from the houses and blended to dense woodland. ‘There’s a path here. The trees thin out a bit. He walks onto the main track and follows it through the woods. There’s a steep bit that probably gets you through to the main road over the ridge. We usually veer off, though. Circle the fields, end up at the road on this side. Then it’s a five-minute walk back to Ingram’s.’
Sawyer pushed forward, up into the trees. He tried to favour his good leg, but the ground was soft and uneven, and he stumbled over loose branches, wincing through the pain as he corrected himself.
‘Are you okay, sir? What happened? Shepherd wouldn’t say. One of the others said you’d been shot.’
Sawyer stopped to rest. ‘Let’s get through this and I’ll tell you the whole gory story.’ It was dark now, and he turned on his phone light.
Walker did likewise. ‘I’ve never been shot.’ He sounded regretful.
‘I don’t recommend it.’
They found the base of the walking track and climbed up, joining a more open route that ran parallel to the ridge. It was heavy going for Sawyer, and he struggled to hide his discomfort.
‘We should split up,’ said Walker.
‘No, we should not.’
Walker looked at his phone. ‘Decent service here. You could take the ridge. I could follow his typical running route. We can meet up further into the woods.’
‘We could do that,’ said Sawyer. ‘But we’re not going to.’ His voice wavered. The pain was impossible to ignore now. ‘Let’s stick together. Get higher up. Hopefully, the lights from the road will give us—’
A shout, off in the distance, deeper into the woods. Male.
Walker turned to Sawyer. ‘That’s Jamie!’ He sprang forward, stopped, turned again. ‘Sir?’
‘Wait! I’m okay. I can speed up once the ground levels off.’
Walker’s eyes widened. ‘We can’t wait. We’ve got to go. Stay on the main trail and catch me up.’
‘Walker! Stay here! You don’t know—’
But he was sprinting away, his phone light bobbing like a firefly. ‘He needs help now! Catch me up, sir.’
Sawyer sucked in a deep breath and drove himself forward, after Walker. Each right step rewarded him with a jagged flex of pain. He had to stop several times before he reached the level section of walking track where the trees thickened. No sign of Walker.
He hobbled on, keeping his phone light trained on the ground ahead. He was in so much pain now, he could barely put pressure on his right leg. Instead, he hopped forward on the left, scraping the right along the loamy ground, kicking away the undergrowth.
The ground inclined, and he stopped to listen. Traffic rumble, rising up from Alport Lane, over the ridge.
Footsteps. Crunching. Moving away, somewhere ahead and off to the right.
And something else. Spluttering. Coughing.
He pushed on, through retreating branches, into a broader stretch of track.
He called out, to the body lying prone in the middle of the path. It was Walker, clutching and clawing at his neck. He gazed up at Sawyer, hi
s wide eyes drowned in tears, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.
Jamie Ingram’s body lay off to the side, further into the trees. He lay face down, perfectly still. Ankles cuffed. Wrists cuffed behind his back.
Walker thrashed his legs above the ground, running in mid-air. Sawyer called up his phone number-pad and dialled 999. He crouched by Walker and reached out for his hand, lifting it away from the wound in his throat. The hand was warm with his blood.
He thought of his mother’s palm. The blood, beaded on the tips of the short grass. Smeared and splashed across the leaves and soil.
Walker pulled his hand away, pressed it onto the wound.
Sawyer gave Ingram’s address to the emergency dispatcher, along with directions from there along the trail. He ran through the details quickly and clearly, gripping Walker’s wrist, maintaining connection. There was so much blood, too much blood, cascading down Walker’s neck, pooling around his shoulders. It slurped in and out of the cavity in his neck as he tried to breathe.
Sawyer hung up and lay his phone on the ground, light shining upward. He shrugged away his jacket and tore off his shirt, twisting it into a long rope of fabric. He lifted Walker’s head and wrapped the shirt around his neck. He applied pressure to the area around the cut: plugging the gap, stemming the bleeding.
‘Try to breathe slow, Matt. I know you’re scared, but try to slow your breathing. I’m here. I’m doing what I can. I’m doing the right thing.’
Walker’s eyes bulged with the effort of calming himself. He ground his legs into the dirt.
Sawyer rested a hand on Walker’s forehead and leaned in close. ‘Take yourself away somewhere, Matt. In your mind. Somewhere happy. Go there. Go away from this.’ The eyes stared up, the gaze drifting away. ‘Look at me. Focus on me and take yourself there. I’m with you. I’ll go with you. Away from the pain. You’re over the worst now. The shock and the panic. Help will be here in a few minutes. We’ve just got to keep you calm. They’ll put you together again. Then we can have words about you running off by yourself.’
