Hurt (The Hurt Series) (22 page)

The cigarettes remained un-smoked, and the Jack Daniels un-touched.

Six years later Ray had published four novels and was doing very well for himself. However, he would have given it all up in a heartbeat to get back those years with Vicky.

‘So many nights I wished something bad would happen to Sam so I would get Vicky for myself,’ he whispered. ‘Guess I got my wish, huh?’

Jessop opened her mouth to rebut, but Ray disappeared back into the room.

Fishing her phone back out, she dialled Mason. Greeted him with a sharp, ‘Anything?’

‘Two eye witnesses who say they saw a man dressed in jeans, dark zipped jacket, baseball cap and sunglasses leaving the street around eight o’clock.’

‘And no one saw him arriving, right?’

‘Sorry, boss. How’s Vicky?’

Jessop rubbed her eyes, behind which a gnawing headache festered. ’The same. You checked the garden?’

‘It’s a small courtyard boxed in by a six foot fence. No cover to hide and reccy. Beyond that, we’re back onto the main road. Thing is, both Vicky and Sam’s bedrooms are at the front of the house, so I reckon he hid somewhere opposite.

‘Any neighbouring houses vacant?’

‘Nope, but there’s an old camper van parked in the drive of a neighbour across the street two doors up. No signs of it being broken into, so I crawled beneath. Got a pretty good view of Sam’s house from there.’

‘Any indication he was there?’

‘Found an oil stained ball of kitchen towel.’

‘The van leaking?’

‘Yeah, all over my goddamn suit.’

‘Get the tissue to Knowles, anyway.’

‘He’s got it.’

‘And keep combing that fucking house. Every damn room.’ She hung up, took several measured breaths. Stepped back into the room, where Ray was knelt beside the bed, head bowed and hands clasped back around his little angel’s hand. Samantha had robbed him of the chance to
be
there for her through adolescence, and now he was not going to let her go.

‘I’m putting the kettle on,’ she whispered. ‘You want a tea?’

Ray shook his head. ‘No. Thank you.’

She turned to leave. Stopped cold as a small, hoarse voice asked, ‘Could I have some water, please?’

Chapter
Fifty-five

Along with the glass of water Vicky had requested, Jessop made her a sweet tea, which, when combined with the massive hug Chloe had greeted her with, had put a tint of colour back into Vicky’s cheeks.

She sat on the bed and sidled up to the girl. Snaked an arm around her narrow shoulders and pulled her close. ‘I want you to listen to me, sweetie. You are under no pressure to talk about any of this until you are absolutely ready. Do you understand?’

Vicky nodded, releasing a strand of her red hair that stuck to her damp cheek. Jessop brushed it away with a mother’s seasoned touch. ‘Good.’

‘But I want to talk about it now,’ Vicky whispered.

‘You really don’t have to, sweetie. You’re still - ’

‘I know, Cathy. But I need to.’

Ray looked to her with eyes heavy with regret. The look told her the blame was gone, and that he was sorry for treating her with such contempt. She understood and nodded so.

‘I’ll get my camcorder camera,’ he said.

The first noise to disturb Vicky from her sleep came at 6.43am according to her alarm clock. Assuming it was her mum fixing breakfast, and with another seventeen minutes before her alarm was set to go off, she closed her heavy eyes again. A moment later she was awakened again by a loud thump and what sounded like muffled screams.

Fear gripped her at the thought of her mum hurting herself, and so she’d leapt out of bed and raced from her room, calling for her mum. She was half way down the stairs when the piercing scream from the kitchen froze her nerves to the point of paralysis. But instinct took over, and a second later she was barrelling into the kitchen.

What she saw next would be seared into her memory for the rest of her life.

Her mother, writhing on the floor, her bare legs kicking and slipping in a pool of crimson. Vicky could not establish the liquid’s source, and in a surreal moment wondered if maybe her mother had dropped a jar of pasta sauce and was playing some sort of sick joke on her. But that’s when she saw her face and the twisted expression on it, and heard her yell for Vicky to get out of the house. She was going to do no such thing, though. The cold blade against her throat and the arm tight around her neck made sure of that.

She thought she was going to die, right there, right then. She thought the last thing she would ever see would be her beloved mum flapping around on the kitchen floor in a pool of bolognaise sauce. These were the things that ran through her confused and terrified mind until the voice in her ear whispered, ‘Watch.’

Watch what? she’d thought. And then the voice spoke again.

‘Love your suffering. Do not resist it. It’s your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.’

The words carried no emotion, spoken almost lethargically. It was at that point she’d closed her eyes and prayed whoever held her from behind could not see her do so. She could not watch. She did not want to love her suffering, because doing so would mean her mum bleeding to death before her meant nothing, and that was not true. Her mum meant everything to her.

Vicky’s final thought before her sanity snapped was: I wish it were me lying there instead of mum.

Jessop
hated herself for pushing Vicky, but time was their worst enemy when it came to interviewing witnesses. Time devoured memory, and with it, crucial details. ‘Did you see him?’ she asked, passing Vicky a fresh glass of water. ‘Maybe when he was leaving?’

Vicky took the glass and rested it in her lap. ‘No. I had my eyes closed.’

‘Did you recognise the voice?’

‘No.’

‘Did you or your mum lose your house keys recently?’

Vicky’s knuckles turned white around the glass. ‘I didn’t. Not sure about mum.’ Jessop sensed she hadn’t much time with the girl, and also sensed Ray’s unease from behind her. ‘Were you in last night?’

Vicky shook her head. ‘Thursday nights is quiz night down the Rose. I got in around eleven as usual.’

‘What about your mum?’

‘Plays cards at Kate’s house Thursday nights.’

‘Is Kate a neighbour?’

‘No. A friend.’

Jessop asked for Kate’s full name and address then asked, ‘What time did your mum normally go out and get back?’

Vicky continued to stare into the rippling water. ‘She’d leave around six and would normally get in about midnight.’

This gave the killer roughly the same time window to sneak into the house under the cover of darkness he’d had with Paul and Stewart, Jessop thought. She asked Vicky if she’d noticed any strangers or unfamiliar cars in her neighbourhood recently, and received a negative answer. She was about to ask about her and her mother’s lives and daily routines when she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Ray shaking his head. When she turned back to Vicky, the water from her glass was slopping over the rim onto her lap. Vicky didn’t appear to notice, and Jessop conceded they were done for now.

‘You did good,’ she said to the exhausted looking girl. Jessop moved to her and kissed her gently on the head. ‘I’ve got a team bringing your stuff over tomorrow.’

‘Cathy?’

‘Yes, sweetie?’

‘I want you to catch him. That’s all I ask.’

‘We will,’ she said as her mobile rang. ‘I promise.’

She met Vicky’s eyes and shivered from what she saw haunting the darkness behind the moist, green irises.

‘Yeah, and mum made me a promise we’ll go back to Vegas next year.’

With a lump in her throat, Jessop excused herself and left the room. Answered her phone and was pleased to hear Knowles’ kindly voice.

‘How’s Vicky?’

‘Better. She’s just given a statement.’

‘That’s good. Want to hear something else that’s good?’

‘Always.’

‘Found a print on that sheet of kitchen towel Scott found.’

Her skin prickled ‘And?’

‘Stewart Nichols sound familiar?’

Chapter
Fifty-six

‘Stewart hasn’t left his sister’s house since the attack,’ Mason said.

‘She can vouch for that?’ Jessop asked into the phone.

‘Yep. She hasn’t let him out of her sight.’

Of course, she hadn’t for one minute thought Stewart Nichols was their man, but she couldn’t ignore the possibility.

She glanced to the ceiling of her home office as from above she heard the familiar creak of the floorboards in the bathroom, followed by the toilet flush. A shiver ran up her spine as she pictured Ray leant over the toilet pissing blood before wiping the bowl clean of all evidence of his illness.

The image brought a tear to her eye and made her both nauseous and angry. Yet simmering behind these emotions something sparked in her recollect.

Clicking on the Paul Bromley file, she asked Mason, ‘Why do you think he broke the toilet roll seal at Paul and Stewart’s house? I mean, why not just bring a piece of tissue with him?’

A short pause before, ‘Probably hadn’t considered the possibility of a fresh roll on the holder.’

‘He’d planned for every other goddamn eventuality. So why risk doing that knowing there was a chance we’d detect it and figure out his MO?’

‘But you’d figured that out before, though,’ Mason answered.

‘Yeah, but I couldn’t
prove
it until then. Taking the toilet paper was an unnecessary risk,’ she whispered more to herself than to the phone. ‘So why take it?’

No sooner had the words left her lips then she was accessing her PC and the crime scene pictures Knowles had taken at Paul and Stewart’s house, scrawling through until she came to the kitchen. ‘Shit’

‘What?’

With her worst fears confirmed, Jessop slumped back in her chair and shut her eyes.
Look too hard and sometimes we miss what we seek.

‘Boss?’ came Mason’s voice. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The kitchen roll.’

‘Come again?’

‘Why didn’t he use the kitchen roll?’ She opened her eyes and stared at the picture. Perched on a wooden stand, directly opposite the side door into the kitchen by which the killer had made his entrance, was a skinny roll of white kitchen paper, its end hanging loose. Even in the dark the most unobservant of intruders could not fail to miss its stark contrast against the room’s black splash back tiles. ‘He could have easily used a piece of kitchen roll without anyone knowing,’ she said. ‘That way my theory would remain just that, a theory. His MO would be safe, and we’d be back to square one.’

‘So what’re you saying? He took the toilet tissue on purpose? Why?’

‘The same reason he also took the sheet of kitchen towel from Paula and Stewart’s house and left it beneath the camper van for us to find. It’s a warning. Somehow he knew I’d figured out his MO, and he wanted to let me know he knew.’

She hung up. Stared at the kitchen roll on the screen before her. Such an innocuous object, yet its significance was far from innocent.

Chapter
Fifty-seven

She needed a drink, something to take the edge off the day. Turned out Ray had the same idea, as on entering the kitchen she found him lent against the freezer entranced by the tumbler of brandy in his hand. Only then did she realise that this last week he had taken to wearing baggy sweatshirts and was growing his goatee beard up into a full beard. Also, that he’d not worn his hair up into the ponytail as much as he usually did, choosing instead to let it hang lank and loose around his face. Seeing more than her fair share of E-FIT composites, she knew these were optical tricks to distort the narrowness of a face. In Ray’s case, they were a disguise to hide his weight loss.

‘How’s Vicky?’ she asked.

‘Comfortable.’

She motioned to the brandy. ‘Got one of those for me?’

Ray poured a large measure of brandy into a glass and handed it to her. Knocked back his drink without a flinch and poured himself another large shot.

Jessop said, ‘She did well. She’s strong.’

‘Do you think this has anything to do with you?’

Jessop startled at the directness of the question. ‘No. I do not.’

Ray fixed her with hard eyes. ‘So you honestly think it’s just a coincidence this fucker targeted the step daughter of the detective in charge of catching him?’

‘Getting personal doesn’t fit his profile. And from what we’ve learned about him so far -’

‘Which isn’t fucking much. Is it?’

She knocked back the brandy, its heat failing to warm her insides. Ray was justifiably angry and upset, and had every right to vent his angst on her. Just as she braced herself for the imminent tirade, she saw the glass drop from Ray’s hand and smash on the floor. Ray doubled over and clasped his stomach as if someone had just kicked him.

‘Ray…’

‘I’m okay.’

‘I’m calling the doctor.’ She reached for the phone, began punching numbers.

From nowhere, Ray’s hand slapped the phone from her hand. ‘No.’

‘Ray, for God’s sake - ’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘Only until the next time.’

‘That’ll pass too.’ Ray straightened, sucked in a deep breath. She reached for him, but her hand was ignored. ‘I said I’m okay.’

‘No. You’re far from fucking okay.’

‘I’ll deal with it.’

‘No, w
e’ll
deal with it.’

Ray pulled up a chair and slumped down. ‘I think you’re gonna regret saying that after you hear what I have to say.’

Chapter
Fifty-eight

‘Excuse me?’ Jessop gasped.

‘I’m postponing the treatment. ’Ray sipped the water he’d just drawn. ‘Vicky’s just lost one parent. How do you think she’ll react when she learns she may lose another?’

Incredulous of what she was hearing, Jessop paced the kitchen.

‘She needs me, Catherine. Now more than ever.’

‘Fat lot of good you’ll be to her dead. I mean, do you actually know what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. And I know it’s the right thing to do.’

‘For who?’

‘Vicky.’

‘Yeah, she’ll be over the moon when you’re dead in a couple of months because you wanted to spare her feelings. How the hell do you think
that
will affect her?’ Shaking with anger, she slopped some brandy into the glass, downed it in one. ‘So what’s the plan? Wait until Vicky is over her grief before starting the treatment, is that it?’