The Nightmare Place (11 page)

Sixteen

I surprised myself that night by not having the nightmare, but then I hardly slept. My thoughts were occupied by the woman I’d seen on my way out of the Packhorse. After backup had arrived, I’d gone back inside with them, ostensibly to assist with Drew MacKenzie’s arrest but also to look around for her. The place had emptied somewhat by then, as the regulars had known the police were on their way and many had decided to clear out. Whoever the woman was, she had disappeared with them.

I know you.

Except I didn’t – or at least I didn’t know how, or where from. She had been considerably older than me, I was sure, but I couldn’t think of anyone I might have known growing up who even remotely fitted her description. Casting my mind back over previous cases, she didn’t obviously figure in any of them. The scar had been hideous, but presumably she hadn’t had it when I’d known her, or else I’d remember her more easily. On balance, she was a stranger to me. At the same time, she was utterly familiar, and something about that made me feel incredibly uneasy.

I was still thinking about her as I arrived at the department the next day, wondering not entirely half-heartedly if there was a simple way to trace her. Distracted, I almost walked straight into Vicky, a young sergeant based on our team.

‘Zoe,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a live one in suite four.’

‘A what in what?’

‘This young woman.’ Vicky nodded to the closed door beside us. ‘She came in about an hour ago, says she’s got vital information about the case.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Oh, superb. That means we can all go home.’

‘Ha ha, yes. I know what you mean. But she’s pretty insistent. Seems quite scared too, to be honest.’

‘Of what?’

‘Our boy.’ Vicky nodded at the door again. ‘Jane Webster, her name is. She says he’s been calling her.’

‘Right.’

I closed the door to the interview room behind me, perhaps a little too aggressively. The woman sitting there looked at me hesitantly. From her body language, you’d have imagined that she’d been caught shoplifting and dragged in here for questioning, rather than coming in of her own accord.

I sat down across the table from her. She was probably in her mid-twenties, but still resembled a little girl more than a proper grown-up: small and slight, with astonishingly pale skin. Looking at her, I imagined a child who had been forbidden from playing outside, where she might pick up even the mildest of tans or bruises.

‘It’s Jane, isn’t it? What can I do for you, Jane?’

‘It’s about the case that’s been in the news,’ she said. ‘The women who have been attacked.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s why you’ve been directed to me.’
That’s why I’ve been dragged in here
. ‘I’m actually the lead officer on the investigation.’

The tone of my voice caused her to flinch slightly, and she rubbed her hands together anxiously. For a moment, she didn’t reply, and I looked at her carefully. Her white cotton blouse was undone just enough to reveal a small silver cross hanging on a chain, and her blonde hair was pulled back into an approximation of a ponytail, with lock-pick ridges of split ends poking up. The glasses she wore were very large and very circular. All in all, she reminded me of the unkempt girl in one of those high-school brat-pack movies: the one who gets a makeover two-thirds in and ends up looking pretty.

‘Sorry,’ she said finally. ‘Of course you are. It’s just difficult to explain. I don’t know where to start.’

‘Me neither. Let’s try, though.’

‘I’m not sure if I should be here really.’

I feel the same way
.

Under other circumstances, I would probably have said it out loud, but despite my impatience, there was a fragility to Jane Webster that kept the reply private. She seemed so timid, with her knees pressed together and her shoulders slightly hunched, as though she had real trouble looking at the world. And although she didn’t remotely resemble our creeper’s usual choice of target, I didn’t want to scare her off, not if she knew something important. We needed something important. We needed it months ago.

‘Can you try to explain, please?’ I said. ‘It’s something about a phone call, isn’t it? That’s what I was told.’

She nodded. ‘I had a call. I think it might have been him. The man who’s been doing all those things.’

‘Right. That seems pretty unlikely to me.’ None of the other victims had reported any contact prior to the attacks. He stalked his targets, certainly, but they’d never been made aware of it before. ‘You mean a threat of some kind?’

‘Oh, no. I’m not explaining this very well. I work on a helpline – I volunteer. Mayday?’

She said it as though she expected me to have heard of it.

‘I have no idea what that is.’

‘It’s a local organisation. A confidential service. We offer support, that sort of thing – just listening, basically. People can call us up and talk to us, when they’re feeling lonely or depressed.’

‘Okay.’

With every faltering word, my impatience was growing. Now, I imagined a tiny room full of meek do-gooders like Jane. Probably eating lentils out of plastic pots.

Hear her out, at least.

‘We get all sorts of calls,’ Jane said.

‘Depressed, miserable people …’

‘Sometimes. That’s what it’s there for, anyway. But a couple of nights ago, I had a phone call from … well, I think it’s this man. No, I’m sure it is.’

‘He called your helpline?’

‘Yes.’

‘And threatened you there?’

‘No, no. He wanted to talk.’

The penny finally dropped. I felt myself groaning inside.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘When any case becomes as high profile as this, you always get idiots crawling out of the woodwork. It’s
highly
unlikely that the man who called you was the offender. Far more likely that it was just some crackpot. We get them all the time here.’

And Jesus, didn’t we just. False confessions from outright lunatics; twisted phone calls from oddballs craving attention; useless tip-offs from busybodies who’d added two and two and somehow come up with rapist. Of course, we rely on information from the public, but find me a single detective who doesn’t face dredging through it with all the enthusiasm of a plumber approaching a drain, and I’ll show you a detective with a news camera trained on them.

‘I know,’ Jane said. ‘I can imagine you do. We do as well. Most of the calls we get are sex calls. But this was different. I didn’t want to believe it either. Not the first time, anyway.’

‘There’s been more than one call?’

‘Yes. Two, so far. The second was last night. The first one
felt
genuine, but Richard – my boss there – he said pretty much the same as you. That it was probably just some weirdo. A lot of sick men use us as an outlet.’

I leaned back, considering her. From her manner alone, I could tell she wasn’t lying to me. That she
had
received these two calls, and that the man on the other end of the line had really managed to convince her he was responsible for the attacks. Of course that didn’t mean it actually
was
him. Still, I felt some sympathy for her. It must have been unpleasant enough regardless.

‘What was it that convinced you?’

‘The second call.’ She said this immediately, more definite now. ‘After the first one, I told myself it hadn’t been real. It was shocking while it was happening – while he was talking – and it was shocking afterwards too. But then I spoke to Richard and started to doubt myself. It began to feel a bit unreal. So I told myself that it couldn’t have been him, however genuine it felt at the time …’

She trailed off and shrugged helplessly. She actually looked apologetic, as though she’d been sitting on a crucial piece of evidence all this time.

I prompted her.

‘But then the second call …?’

‘It gave me the exact same feeling. And this time, I was sure he was telling me the truth. There was an atmosphere on the line.’

An atmosphere
, I thought. God help us.

‘What did he say?’

‘He was relieved to get through to me. I think he must have tried a few times before he did. And then it was just like the first call. He wanted to talk about the crimes. About what he’d done. Reliving it, I suppose.’

‘Like one of those sex calls?’

‘No, no. Because he wasn’t enjoying it. You can usually tell. But he was crying. It was like he was
unburdening
himself of it. As though he was upset about what he’d done, and talking to me was a way of making himself feel better.’

‘Like a confession to a priest or something?’

‘Yes.’ Jane nodded emphatically. ‘Yes,
exactly that
. Because the calls are anonymous, you see. We guarantee confidentiality. So he knew he could talk to me without getting into trouble.’

‘And yet.’ I picked up a pen and twiddled it. ‘Here you are.’

Her pale skin gained a flush of colour at that, and she looked down at her lap, embarrassed. I decided not to press it. Presumably she and her colleagues took their vow of silence seriously. Putting myself in her position, I realised that it must have been a tough decision to come here today and report this – a breach of confidence that she might very well get in trouble for. Well, she didn’t need to worry about that, at least. I could pretty much guarantee the confidentiality of this conversation.

Follow it through anyway.

‘I’m guessing you don’t have this individual’s phone number to hand?’

‘No. We don’t see the numbers.’

‘Someone does?’

‘I don’t know for sure. But you’re the police. You can trace it, can’t you? You could force them to reveal it. If you had to, I mean.’

‘I imagine that would take a court order. But I don’t think it’s going to come to that, Jane. And I really don’t want to get you in trouble for no reason. Like I said, we receive a lot of calls like that too …’

I trailed off, because she seemed to be sinking into herself as I was talking: slumping down further in her chair. She thought she was doing the right thing, coming in here, at real personal expense, and I was just dismissing her.

‘All right.’ I sighed. ‘What about the
content
of the calls? Let’s see if there’s anything there. What did he talk about?’

‘He talked about what he did. Described it.’

‘Tell me.’

Jane took a deep breath and began. The more she spoke, the more certain I felt. The information she was giving – that had been given to her – was nothing exceptional or revealing. There were no details that hadn’t been in the papers or on television, no special inside knowledge that couldn’t have been picked up from the news and that would indicate he knew more than he should.

He was a crank.

Of course
he was. Serious offenders don’t suddenly get an attack of conscience and confess everything to strangers – and certainly not
this
offender. The violence accompanying the attacks had escalated steadily, and he had become much better at what he was doing. Even if he’d panicked after Sally Vickers, that wouldn’t have lasted. He wouldn’t be feeling the slightest hint of regret for his actions, or crying down the phone. He
hated
these women.

‘He said he killed the last one,’ Jane finished. The memory of the conversation was clearly distressing her. ‘He said he raped her and beat her, just like the others, but this time he decided not to stop. He was crying when he was telling me.’

‘Sick bastard,’ I said. ‘Look, I know it’s upsetting. I’ve had people confess the most awful things to me, and it’s never pleasant to hear, and sometimes you’re shaken afterwards.’ That wasn’t true; most of the time I was just pissed off at them. But I wanted to make her feel a bit better about herself. ‘In this case, I want you to know, I highly doubt that this is the individual responsible for these crimes.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ I leaned forward. ‘And listen. You did the right thing coming in and reporting it. I can imagine it was a tough decision, but you’re not going to get in trouble for it. You’ve done everything you can. But there’s nothing in what you’ve told me that he couldn’t have got off the news. There’s nothing that hasn’t been reported. I’ll keep a note of it, but we’re so stretched at the moment.’

Jane nodded slowly. She still looked miserable, but I thought I detected a hint of relief there now as well. She seemed lighter somehow.
Unburdened
. As though what the man had said was a physical weight he’d passed to her, something heavy that had become increasingly uncomfortable to carry. By coming to see me, she’d effectively passed it on.
Here: you deal with it
. And I had.

‘Is that it, then?’ she said. ‘Are we finished?’

‘We are.’

She stood up.

‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

‘That somebody would do that. Phone up
pretending
.’

I pictured Sally Vickers’ body, seeing it vividly in my head. The man who had done that was a monster, but there was something similarly despicable about the kind of man who would phone up
pretending
he had. The same pool of misogyny, just more towards the shallow end.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If it was up to me, he’d be hung up by the balls too.’

That made her smile: a small, secret little thing that was quite nice to see, but one that she put away quickly. I have no patience with mice, but I felt for her anyway. How dangerous she seemed to find it, interacting with another human being. Imagine going through your life like that.

‘That’s exactly how Rachel feels,’ she said. ‘Rachel’s a friend of mine who volunteers there too. She doesn’t have a lot of time for the sex callers.’

‘She sounds spot on to me.’

‘Why would someone do something like that?’ Jane moved over to the door of the interview room. Standing up, she looked even smaller than when she’d been seated. ‘It’s the way he talked about it. I keep seeing it in my head.’