Senseless

by Ed James

  Steph swung round, shining the beam straight into his face, then back at two of her guys. ‘Robert, Dennis, need you to circle round the back.’

  And off they went, leaving her and another female officer.

  Steph waited for them, hands on hips, looking up at the sky. ‘I always wondered what David Bowie meant about serious moonlight, but that looks pretty serious to me.’

  She was right. The full moon was partially obscured by a thin patch of clouds, lit up from behind.

  ‘Any sign of him?’

  ‘Nope.’ Steph walked up to the house. ‘Looks like it cost a pretty penny. You sure this is right?’

  ‘He built it himself. The only expensive bit will be the land.’ Corcoran stopped by the front door and shone his torch inside the nearest room. A kitchen, well equipped but no signs of life. The floor was bare: no tables and chairs, just boxes. On the other side of the door was a bare living room, empty and cold. ‘No sign of anyone inside. You okay to lead?’

  ‘It is my job, after all.’ Steph knocked on the door.

  No answer. No sounds of anyone rushing to answer, but no sounds of someone hiding either, no creaking floorboards or shutting doors.

  ‘Hit it, Jess.’

  The uniform walked up to the door and braced herself, ready to launch shoulder first.

  Forty-nine

  [Palmer, 21:46]

  The house lights flashed on inside.

  Palmer made to step over the discarded door, glowing blue under the house lights.

  Corcoran put a hand out to stop her. ‘Let them do their job.’

  ‘Aidan, I need to see inside.’

  ‘And you will. Just let them do their jobs.’

  ‘I’m . . .’ He was right, of course. Palmer took in their immediate vicinity. Remote and wild. Over the nearby hills, Princes Risborough lit up the sections of the night sky not glowing in moonlight. No obvious places where he could hide Dawn.

  Crashing came from inside as Steph’s team rooted around inside the house, their torches swapped for side lamps and overhead lights. No sign of anyone, so Steph beckoned them in.

  ‘Careful, okay?’ Corcoran went in first. It still had that new-house smell: fresh carpets, glue, paint.

  Steph joined them in the hallway, blowing out her cheeks. ‘We’ll do a sweep upstairs, but nobody’s down here.’

  Palmer met her eye. ‘Search for hidden doors.’

  ‘This isn’t a haunted house . . .’ Steph shook her head but followed one of her team up the carpeted staircase.

  Palmer went into the living room, just an empty space waiting to start living. Plush carpets, unmarked by furniture and unworn. The window took in all three cars and looked back right down the hill to the main road.

  If he’d been here, maybe he’d seen their approach and fled. But they had people out the back and he’d have to carry Dawn. Assuming he hadn’t left her somewhere.

  A second door led off the side, wooden floorboards leading into what would be a dining room if there was any furniture. Another door connected with the kitchen at the other side. Patio doors looked across bare earth at the back to a slight dip, then three low hilltops, their covering trees cast in moonlight and swaying in the wind. A long garden led up to a stone wall.

  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  Palmer tried the patio doors. Locked. She grabbed Corcoran’s torch and examined the glass.

  ‘You got something there?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Palmer squatted down to examine the door. It looked workshop perfect, a sheet of plastic still attached to the glass. ‘No fingerprints or marks of any kind.’ She looked up at him. ‘I haven’t seen any signs that anyone’s even been in this room before us.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Corcoran opened the kitchen door and left her alone. Strong lights cast a second-hand glow across the perfect floorboards, drowning out the room’s subtle glow.

  Palmer stood up tall and tried to process everything. Just a sterile house. No psychopaths hiding in the cupboards, no victims tied up in the spare bedroom. But if he had built it himself, then maybe there was a trapdoor somewhere, leading down into a hidden room in the foundations. And if that was the case, why would he use the old POW camp?

  Footsteps thundered down the stairs, the echoes amplified by the bare walls and floors.

  Steph walked through to the kitchen to meet Corcoran. ‘Nothing up there. No secret panels or trapdoors. And believe me, we’ve looked.’

  Palmer followed her in. Shiny and showroom perfect, white and grey. All of John Mitchell’s possessions were piled up against one wall, a life in a few cardboard boxes.

  Corcoran was rooting around in empty cupboards. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘No, he’s hiding under the bed.’ Steph rested her hands on her hips. ‘Except there isn’t even a bed.’

  ‘Has he been living here?’

  ‘There’s an inflatable mattress in the master bedroom. Towel on the en suite radiator. Bone dry.’

  Palmer spotted just one box that looked opened, the torn tape almost hidden by the other boxes. She shifted them aside, lighter than they looked, and eased it out. Inside, some towels on the top, then a layer of folded clothes. He had been here. Right at the bottom was a set of old photograph wallets from various print bureaus, bound together by rubber bands.

  She took them out and pried off the bands. The first packet was tattered and frayed at the edges. Printed by Boots, with the shop address on a sticker, an illegible home address scrawled in blue biro.

  Inside, photographs of a young man at a party, his dark hair yanked back in a severe ponytail. Denim jeans and jacket, covered in Iron Maiden and Metallica patches. Terry Beane, looking much older than the sole photo David Crossley had provided, though the dates were a year apart. Two other men were visible through the fug of smoke, their drunk faces and eyes glowing red in the harsh light.

  She flicked through the rest. It looked like a roll of film had been taken in one night, documenting a party in the early nineties judging by the Pearl Jam and Nirvana T-shirts. Most focused on the man as he drank and smoked drugs. Then later, topless with his ponytail out so he could mosh, his hair splaying wide as he banged his head. Several shots of people talking, but Terry stood to the side, withdrawn from the group. He only came alive with his music.

  A string of arty black-and-white photos showed him at a cliffside, unclear where it was, with Terry staring down into the brine.

  Near the end of the packet, another shot of him dancing, reaching out a hand to the person behind the camera. A woman’s bare arm, weighed down by wristbands. Hayley Mitchell, presumably.

  Palmer put them away and got out the next packet. Photos of Terry and Hayley out and about, some more in the same room the party had been in, then a series outside a country cottage. Even though they should be young, free and happy, they seemed to be withdrawn from their friends, lost in their own world. They both smiled in one photo, seemingly drunk.

  She set that packet back in the box. ‘This is our John, that’s for sure.’

  Corcoran was by the slim wine-rack spacer unit, the criss-cross grid waiting for bottles. ‘So where the hell is he?’

  ‘Good question.’ Palmer flicked through another packet of photos, more recent than the other shots.

  Baby photos: an exhausted mother and a distracted father. Hayley looked young, barely sixteen even though she was over twenty. Some photos in hospital, then back home posing with their baby. Terry’s happiness at his son didn’t seem to spread to his eyes, betraying a fear and anxiety. Later, the stresses and strains started appearing on their faces, even as they hugged the kid. Would only be days or weeks before John Mitchell was put into care.

  Did he remember? Was there some level of trauma he soaked up as a baby, with two warring parents, his mother still a child herself, his father way out of his depth? Both lost and empty, the only solace found in alcohol rather than family. Neither had the tools to cope with life.

  Or perhaps John was scarred by his sub
sequent ordeals? Shunted from foster family to foster family. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t cope with him.

  Either way, he seemed to blame his tough start in life on the mental strains his father had suffered down in that bunker, where his fractured psyche finally broke and shattered. Unable to look after the child he had with another child, unable to commit.

  ‘You getting anywhere, Marie?’

  Palmer looked over at Corcoran. ‘Not really.’ She put the photos back in the box. ‘It’s possible he has another cell for Dawn.’

  ‘Which is why we’re going to check the garage.’

  ‘Okay, yes. Good idea.’ She shivered. ‘That’s like—’

  ‘—Ross Murray’s cages under his garage.’ Corcoran led her through the house, back out onto the drive and its crunching pebbles.

  A stand-alone garage sat in darkness to the side, the house’s lights not quite stretching that far over. Steph’s other two uniforms were making a mess of using her bolt-cutter to get inside. She snatched it off them and snapped the padlock in half herself.

  Just a concrete floor, pristine if rough. No tyre tracks or footsteps, no obvious signs anyone had been in here since it was poured.

  Palmer looked for any way down into a hidden underground room. Nothing. ‘We’re screwed, aren’t we?’

  Corcoran looked round at her, eyes narrow. ‘It’s not . . .’

  ‘Where is he, Aidan? And where’s Dawn?’

  ‘The mattress, the towel. We know he’s been here. He’s got to be nearby. Right?’

  ‘Not so sure.’ Palmer stood in the cold and dark, shivering. ‘But he isn’t here, Aidan. We’ve lost his trail. He’s not been here in hours, maybe days. He could be anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t like giving up.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ She looked back at the house, a thought floating around in her head, rattling around like a marble in a maze. ‘Aidan, I think I’ve got a hunch.’

  Fifty

  [Corcoran, 21:57]

  Corcoran drove, wedged between squad cars, blaring sirens hurting his ears, but curtailing his speed. He looked over at Palmer, strobing lights covering her face. ‘Thought you didn’t believe in hunches?’

  She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Keep focused on the road, please. But, in lieu of any other leads, this might—’

  ‘Terry Beane died years ago. There’s no chance John Mitchell still owns that cottage.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no chance . . .’

  His phone rang. The dashboard read Sortwell calling . . .

  Corcoran hit the accept call button on the wheel controls. ‘Pete, you got anything?’

  ‘Something, maybe, but not sure what it means. Turns out that property is owned by a John Mitchell.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Inherited it in September 2010.’

  Corcoran played it through as they weaved around a slow-moving tractor. John inherited a house from Terry when he died. Meaning a connection at his death. ‘Can you check the previous purchases?’

  ‘Let me see.’ Typing sounds clattered out of the speakers. ‘Okay. In 1989, a John Terence Beane inherited it from . . . What the hell?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘He inherited it from himself. John Terence Beane.’

  ‘Right. That’s fifth getting it from fourth.’

  ‘With you now. Looks like fourth died in a car crash. And I’ve got a divorce settlement in 1984. He got the house, she got the pension.’

  So much tragedy in one family.

  Up ahead, Steph indicated left down a winding lane cut between two fields.

  ‘Okay, Pete, cheers. Better go.’ Corcoran killed the call.

  ‘So Terry got the house when his dad died.’ Palmer was nodding. ‘That divorce tallies with what David and Sally told us, how Terry came to their school late. Some kids settle, Terry clearly didn’t. A messy divorce shattered his confidence.’

  ‘Sounds like it.’ Corcoran slowed as they approached a house, Steph’s headlights illuminating a crumbling cottage surrounded by an out of control woodland. ‘I don’t know if he’s here, but I need you to take care.’

  ‘I don’t plan on doing anything different.’

  Corcoran got out and checked his baton was ready. He snapped it out and swiped it through the air.

  Steph nodded at him, then at her sidekick.

  Corcoran followed them in silence, stepping slowly across mossed-up flagstones to the quaint cottage door.

  Steph’s torch flashed across the front of the house. Looked as empty as John’s house.

  Corcoran felt a rage in the pit of his stomach. Another swell of hope dashed. He thought through the options, struggling for anything that could lead them to Dawn Crossley being alive. Sod it. The door was old wood, splintered and damaged.

  Here goes nothing.

  He stepped back, then pushed his shoulder against the cracked paint, driving through the wood. It toppled in, crashing against the wall.

  Corcoran stepped into the hallway, baton out and raised high. The place reeked of mildew and mould. Three doors led off. He pointed at Steph and the first door, her mate the second, then took the third himself.

  A farmhouse kitchen, with Shaker-style cabinets. Half-empty whisky bottles covered the small table in the middle. Just one chair. The home of a lonely man, desperate and ready to die. A back door, locked and no sign of a key.

  Back in the hallway he almost bumped into Steph’s colleague. All she’d found in her room was a folded-up rug. Corcoran peered past her into a bedroom. An old-fashioned bed, with a wrought-iron frame and a patterned quilt instead of a duvet. A fireplace on the wall. Shuttered windows for a shuttered life.

  Steph’s room was clearly where Terry’s topless head-banging had taken place. More shutters, but a sofa in front of a portable telly. Steph was sifting through a tall wardrobe, filled with old clothes. A wide desk sat against the back wall, mounted with a vintage typewriter and piled high with neat pages.

  Corcoran checked the title page. The Darkness Within by Chuck Shepherd. A pseudonym? He slipped some gloves on and flicked through the pages. Looked like a novel, and a stream of consciousness too. One for Palmer.

  Corcoran opened the only door. A bathroom: the most modern room in the house, but that wasn’t saying much. An avocado suite with a bidet and shower hose running off the taps. ‘Nobody here, anyway.’

  Steph nodded. ‘It’s not like it’s been empty for years, either. Rented out until three months ago.’

  Corcoran felt himself shiver. ‘Get a team in and go through everything. Same as the other house. And speak to the neighbours in both places. Should be farms and cottages in the vicinity. I want to find out who’s been here and when.’

  ‘On it.’ Steph tapped her Airwave and spoke in a quiet voice.

  Corcoran left her to it, savouring the cold night air as he walked back to the car.

  No sign of Palmer.

  Shit.

  He jogged on, getting a stab in his hip. She was crouched by his car, waving her phone near the ground like that was normal.

  ‘Christ, Marie, you scared me half to death.’

  She looked up, frowning. ‘Mm?’

  ‘I worried he’d taken you.’

  ‘I got bored sitting in your car.’ She pointed at the damp earth. ‘I spotted some fresh-looking tyre tracks.’

  ‘What?’ Corcoran clicked on his stronger torch and traced the trail through the field neighbouring the cottage, over to some woodland. He got out his Airwave and dialled Steph’s badge number. Engaged. He let it ring but she bounced him. He tried again and got her. ‘Steph, we’ve got a trail into the woods. Stay there and secure the house.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing.’ Corcoran was already walking, keeping to the side of the track. ‘Just wanted you to know where we were heading. I’ll call you if we need backup. Over.’ He ended the call and continued into the forest, the trees opening out and letting them in. He had his baton pr
imed and ready, with his torch shining ahead.

  The beam caught something metal. He jogged over. A Ford Mondeo, with chunky off-road tyres.

  Palmer’s eyes were white with fear. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Corcoran spotted footprints leading away. Just one set. Short and wide steps, though, like he wasn’t walking at pace, but . . . Shit, carrying something. He set off again, slow and steady, and tried Steph again. ‘Get over here.’

  ‘Just be a minute.’

  Up ahead, the wood had almost swallowed up a building, brick and low-slung. Maybe a shepherd’s hut or an old dairy. Looked sound though, with an intact roof and solid door.

  Corcoran gripped his baton tight and nudged the door open. Looked empty, just a straw-covered floor. He stepped back and tried Steph again. Got her this time. ‘Dead end, by the looks of it. We’ll head back.’

  ‘Okay.’ Click and she was gone.

  ‘Aidan, are you sure? Those footprints look—’

  ‘—like he’d been carrying someone. I know.’ Corcoran scratched at his stubble. ‘There’s no easy way past here, the wood’s thick as hell.’

  ‘Come on.’ Palmer led inside and started kicking at the straw. ‘There’s got to be something.’

  Corcoran scanned his torch across the floor. It all looked level. Except. Over there, in the middle of the back wall, it was all bunched up. ‘Now, wait, okay?’ He took it slow as he crossed over. Beside the rucked-up straw, a wooden hatch lay in the floor, with a single metal handle. Corcoran reached for his Airwave.

  Someone screamed, ‘HELP!’

  Palmer stepped back and let Corcoran rest the hatch against the heaped-up straw. A weak light source down there, probably a battery-powered lantern.

  And Dawn lay on the floor, eyes open wide, screaming for help. Distressed, exhausted and terrified.

  ‘Stay there.’ Corcoran stepped onto the ladder, reassuringly solid, but the light barely reached down there. ‘I mean it.’ He eased himself down, one step at a time, until his foot touched the bottom. The light didn’t reach into the corners and the room seemed bigger than the space upstairs, certainly a lot wider. He took one look at Dawn, then back up at Palmer. ‘Need you to check her.’