by Wes Markin
Gardner handed him another bagged-up white suit – the one he was wearing was wet with snow. He took it off and checked the top button of his polo shirt was done up ― an unbreakable habit he had developed at crime scenes to stop the cold getting to his neck.
After removing the white suit from the bag, he negotiated his way into it in the same way he did every time, without any grace. Gardner smiled. She’d already torn off her last one and put on her new one as easily as if it had been a pair of socks. They both slipped on latex gloves and disposable overshoes, and paced past the SOCOs into the room.
The windows were open, and the curtains billowed; Yorke felt the cold bite. Wielding a camera, ‘The Elf’, Lance Reynolds, the Scientific Support Officer managing the SOCOS, darted round the scene, snapping shots from different angles. Yorke frowned when he danced to the foot of the bed, dropped to his knees, took three quick photos, before springing back to his feet like a gymnast. He’d heard Jake quipping once that the only cameramen that enjoyed their job as much as Lance Reynolds worked on porn sets.
Trying to avoid broken glass, but hearing the occasional piece crunch underfoot, Yorke edged further towards the end of the unmade bed, so that he could see the body properly. He stepped over a smashed picture of the famous stones at Avebury and a shattered bottle of perfume.
Through an open door, he saw a tall SOCO negotiating his wiry frame around the bathroom. The next burst of wind was shrill and made him flinch. He looked at Gardner beside him and noticed that she was shivering.
Divisional Surgeon Dr Patricia Wileman was hunched over the body. She looked up at him, but offered no readable facial expression; then, she looked back down at the corpse. After she shuffled to the side, Yorke saw Phil Holmes and his eyes widened. An earlobe, a left nostril and a cheek had been mauled. His neck was covered in bite marks.
Like a snake, Reynolds darted in. The camera flashed venomously.
The mauling wasn’t the cause of Phil’s death. A bullet hole sat in the centre of his forehead. The floor behind him was covered in blood and grey matter.
Patricia also pointed out a bloody stab wound on his left side. Yorke knelt down for a closer look and Patricia said, ‘He’s also had sex recently.’
‘Lacey Ray, his second cousin,’ Yorke said.
‘Too soon to confirm that,’ Patricia said.
‘I wasn’t asking.’ He stood up, looked back at the open window, pointed and glanced at Gardner. ‘Her escape route.’
‘Probably. The hotel staff didn’t see her leave,’ Lance Reynolds said, coming up alongside him; his overused camera dangled down around his neck.
‘Lacey Ray didn’t strike me as someone who let things get out of control,’ Yorke said, looking around at the smashed-up room, before looking down at Phil again. He’d been an imposing man.
He surveyed the scene again and saw a SOCO fiddling with a remote control, taking a sample from it, and bagging it.
How had Lacey pulled this off?
‘She executed him,’ Patricia said.
Topham came up alongside Yorke. ‘The place is in too much of a mess for it to be a simple execution.’
‘You got here quick,’ Yorke said.
‘Someone was kind enough to grit the roads.’
‘I still think it’s an execution,’ Patricia said, pointing at the gunshot wound on his head, ‘Point blank. She had complete control of him.’
‘Unbelievable,’ Reynolds said.
‘Why’s it unbelievable?’ Gardner said. ‘We women can be just as resourceful as you men.’
‘I wouldn’t compare us to Lacey Ray,’ Patricia said, pointing at the crater on Phil’s cheek. ‘She’s a wild animal.’
‘Maybe she found out what he was up to with her family,’ Gardner said. ‘That could help explain why she was so savage.’
‘I’ve found this ditched in the clothes basket,’ the wiry SOCO said, emerging from the bathroom with another officer who was holding up a plastic bag. ‘Handcuffs, secateurs, rope, a gag, a surgical scalpel and a bloody penknife. All wiped clean of fingerprints.’
‘She was into kinky stuff,’ Topham said.
‘Or torture,’ Gardner said, flashing him a disapproving look.
‘She planned all this. She was going to torture him first, but something went wrong. The state of the room shows a struggle. She was forced to change her MO, use the penknife and her teeth to get control of him, and shoot him before he could fight back, which in a way, still makes it an execution.’ Yorke said, looking at Patricia.
‘We have to find her, and quick, she may have found out where he was keeping her family,’ Gardner said. ‘She checked in under the alias Laura Bryce, so I’ll contact Price and release that name to the press too. What do you think her next move could be?’
‘Who knows? But if she’s capable of this, we need to warn Jake immediately, just in case he bumps into her again,’ Yorke said.
As they walked towards the exit, Topham turned to Yorke and said, ‘Do you think Paul and his family are still alive?’
‘I don’t know, but we can’t give up hope. Maybe he came here to kidnap Lacey, the last one; get them all together before he does whatever he’s planning to do.’ He turned around and looked at the body again, it looked helpless and pathetic. ‘Only this time, he met his match.’
Lacey couldn’t stop fidgeting in the back of the taxi, and had shuffled from window to window several times. The driver hadn’t seemed to notice and was happily engrossed in a medley of pop music.
Killing had never felt this good before. Nowhere near. So much risk and unpredictability. Phil had been her relative! And planning to kill her! She wasn’t used to the absence of patterns, but she could get used to it. The adrenaline high was to die for.
She flicked the tip of her tongue over her top-front teeth, and tasted blood; the metallic taste of victory. Then, again with her tongue, she prodded at a tiny piece of his flesh which had wormed itself between two of her teeth; a souvenir that would last until she brushed and flossed.
So, why the fidgeting?
Maybe, because it was during times like this, one could get lonely. After all, she was heading to a hotel in Amesbury to hide out – no sharing of this experience with anyone, no opportunity to relive it, keep it fresh.
And tomorrow, she was busy with her new passport, a change of appearance, and a new identity; tonight’s wonderful experiences would have to be pushed far to the back of her mind.
Unless I―
No, it was out of the question. Ridiculous. An unnecessary risk.
She looked down at the pay-as-you-go phone in her hand which she’d acquired in case of emergencies. Later, it would be relegated to the bin so no one could use it to trace her. So where was the harm? Could she use it to sustain excitement just a little bit longer, before retiring to the isolation of Amesbury?
She phoned Jake, but didn’t speak immediately. Let the insolent worm figure out who was calling.
‘Hello? ... hello? Sheila? I can’t hear you. I’m at home already, waiting for you. I’ll phone you back―’
‘Hello, Jake.’
‘Lacey?’
‘Yes – you sound surprised. Why? We’ve been through a lot together recently, I felt it would be fitting for us to talk one last time.’
‘Where are you?’
Lacey snorted. ‘Come on Jake – give me some credit.’
‘You’re in danger―’
‘I’m not an idiot.’ She smiled. ‘For someone who knows me, and knows me intimately, you are being rather dim.’
‘Your funeral. The man you have been seeing, Phil Holmes, has taken all of your family, and he may come for you too.’
You know who it is then? But do you know he’s dead? It doesn’t sound like you do ...
‘Don’t pretend you care,’ Lacey said. ‘I tried to ruin your marriage earlier. Right now, I expect you’d love to see me dead.’
‘Nonsense.’
You’re doing very well to stay calm
, Jakey, but then I guess that is your job. To try and guide me into the safe arms of the police.
‘How is Sheila?’
‘Fine.’
‘You’re meeting her now.’
‘That’s really none of your business.’
She felt a twinge of frustration – she had wanted the consequences of her earlier actions to be more hideous for him.
‘If you tell me where you are, I will send someone to help you.’
‘I’m leaving now, Jake.’
‘Where to?’
‘Your behaviour was despicable, you know. You brought it on yourself. Talking to me like dirt when you took me to the station.’
‘I have no idea what you are talking―’
‘You referred to me as someone without feelings, “emotionally stunted” I think you said. You treated me as if I didn’t matter. Told me I degraded myself.’ She paused to take a deep breath.
‘Lacey―’
‘Do you remember when we were young? When we used to hang out at that old churchyard together, where you slipped off that gravestone and cut your head ... where we experimented with each other?’
‘Another time, another life, for me, and for you.’
‘What I did to you today was merely a taste of what I could do, so no matter what happens, you will always know, who is really in control.’
‘You made a hash of today. If anything, you’ve made our marriage stronger.’
She felt a rush of anger. ‘Is that what you reckon? Sheila will remember what she saw on that movie for the rest of her life.’
‘What, two young people having sex? She’s mature enough to get over that pretty quickly.’
‘It was more than two young people; it was intimate, passionate and it burned. She will know that those two people will always have something between them.’
‘Do you describe your encounter with your tricks, the dregs of society, as intimate too?’
‘Careful, Jake.’ She felt sweat crawling out of her palm onto the phone.
‘Of what Lacey? You’re wanted by the police.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m sure you know already. Switch on the news, Lacey. You’ve chosen your life, I’ve chosen mine, and this really is where our paths divide.’
‘I will decide when our paths divide.’
‘You’ve lost. Accept it, and I’ll see you at the station when we find you.’
The phone went dead.
She took a deep breath and slipped her phone back into her pocket. She then stared out over a desolate white field. Skeletal trees seemed to be reaching their arms up and around the distant cathedral spire.
Control yourself ...
She took another deep breath; tried to take herself somewhere far from here to find calmness―
There was a screech of brakes and she bounced forward then back. The driver shouted, ‘Idiot’.
She gritted her teeth, leaned forward, tapped hard on the window and said, ‘Turn around. Now.’
Jake should have been a salesman, he’d have made himself a fortune. During the last ten minutes, not only had he managed to convince Sheila to stop threatening to leave their house, but he’d even managed to keep her voice down to a civilised volume.
Admittedly, she still looked at him as if he was something on the butcher’s floor rather than her husband, but there was no denying his progress.
Around him, the living room suddenly felt very alien to him. As if someone else lived there, and he’d intruded. Just nerves, he thought. Time to put everything right.
His plan tonight had been simple. Keep staring. Don’t look away. Not once. To do so would be to admit guilt. Tonight, was all about being assertive, and clear. He had never had any feelings for Lacey Ray, not when he was younger, not now and not ever.
She made eye contact with him; another small victory. ‘My mother wants to talk to you.’
Jake’s mouthful of tea went down awkwardly. Sheila’s mother knew how to truly hurt a man; a traffic warden, a Sainsbury’s queue dodger and a lecherous drunk in her local would all testify to that. ‘You told her about the film?’
‘What did you expect?’
‘To see out the year,’ he said, immediately regretting his sudden shift from remorsefulness to sarcasm.
‘So who else am I supposed to talk to? We haven’t slept together in over a month, we are falling out on a daily basis, and now an ex-girlfriend turns up with an X-rated video which could be all over the internet as far as I know.’
‘It’s not. And it means nothing. It was over ten years ago – I was very young.’
‘It makes no difference to me when it was.’
Well, it clearly would do if it had been last week, Jake thought, biting his tongue.
His phone vibrated. It was Topham.
Sod him. He hit the button on the top of the phone to send him straight to voicemail.
‘Add to the fact that you’re a policeman and regularly putting yourself in danger,’ Sheila said.
‘We’ve been through this – Salisbury is not the Bronx.’
‘But, it’s not just the danger. It’s the time. Ever since you become a sergeant―’
‘I know, which is why we’re here, isn’t it? To discuss whether I should carry on.’ He sighed as his phone vibrated again.
After sending Yorke to voicemail too, he noticed the living room curtains glow as someone pulled up directly outside their house.
Staring up at the flickering lightbulb which kept the barn lit, feeling as trapped as one of the hypnotised flies buzzing around it, Paul hugged his mother until his arms started to burn. She had started to sleep again; the drugs she had been given must have been powerful.
It had been a while since the doors of the enclosure had last shook. He could still hear his trembling breath, and heavy heartbeat, but at least the sickening sense of panic had eased a little. Seizing this rare moment of calm, he slipped his sleeping mother off his lap, rose and moved quietly around the corrugated-metal barn, looking for an exit, or a weapon of some kind. Nothing. He tried the main door, but the padlock held firm.
No way out. His father was dead. Lewis had him and his mother. Desperate to disappear and wake up somewhere safe and warm with his family, he slipped to the floor and buried his head in his hands.
Minutes later, he wiped snot from his face, and stared at the enclosure again.
Be strong.
Fighting against nausea, and fear, he crawled towards the concrete enclosure. He touched its dusty side and poked his fingers in the tiny holes where a ladder must have been removed.
With his ear to the door of the enclosure, he listened to the bloodthirsty creatures’ rasping breaths. There was something else too. He pressed his ear harder against the door ... ticking ... he bit into his fingers to stop himself gasping; then, with his heart threatening to burst from his chest, he scurried away back to his mother.
‘Mum, I’m scared and ...’ He stopped himself.
Not wanting to tell her there was a timer that he couldn’t see and that he didn’t know how long they had left, he instead cried into her hair.
Back outside in the carpark, after being circled and bated by journalists, Yorke managed to get in his car and try Jake for the fifth time; again, he was sent through to voicemail. He pounded his steering wheel.
Lacey Ray was rabid; you only had to take one look at the wounds on Phil Holmes’ face to know that.
He tried Sheila on the off-chance that Jake was with her, but was met with another recorded response.
Jake, Sheila, answer your fucking phones!
Deciding to head to their house, he chucked the phone onto the passenger seat and started his engine. When his phone rang, he lunged for it.
‘Shit!’ The number was neither Jake’s or Sheila’s. ‘Yep?’
‘It’s Louise, we’ve got a match on the mud.’
Yorke’s hand was shaking so much, he could barely keep the phone to his ear.
‘Animal droppings, seed
s, pollen count all seem to confirm that the mud in the toilet came from the Morris pig farm, registered to Stella Morris―’
‘The address?’ Yorke said, driving for the exit.
Déjà vu.
On the way to another pig farm. And just like the last two times, he had no idea what he was going to find there. Last time, it’d ended with a dead man hanging from a hook; the time before, it’d ended with him pinning Harry to the floor metres from his dead wife.
He pushed the Lexus as hard as he could.
For some reason, he thought of his older sister, and remembered his promise to himself to find her killer.
Promises, promises ...
He took a corner hard. He took a deep breath.
I hope to God Paul and Sarah are still alive.
As he journeyed further north into Devizes, at a speed far too dangerous for current weather conditions, Yorke phoned Topham to let him know where he’d gone. He’d already tried twice, but reception kept dropping out on him.
‘Shit, now you tell me?’ Topham said.
‘I was already driving and the reception was playing up.’
He gave Topham the address, but they were at least ten minutes behind him; the way he was driving, probably fifteen. The car bumped suddenly. If he hadn’t been so used to these roads, he may have convinced himself it was a pothole; instead, he acknowledged that he had just scrambled another poor animal.
The Sat Nav refused to take Yorke all the way to the Morris Pig Farm. Maybe it knew something that he didn’t. He pulled over to ask directions from a middle-aged farmer out walking his sheepdogs despite heavy snowfall.
