Hurt (The Hurt Series) (26 page)

11.56pm.

Four minutes to midnight. Four minutes to wait for the call about today’s victim. That was why the team had all chosen to stay late. When the call came, they would all be expecting it, and could rally themselves quicker than ever.

You know,’ Davies said from behind the glowing blue screen. ‘Just because we don’t get the call today doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed today. Maybe no one’s found the victim yet, and he instructed the loved one not to call just to fuck with our head’s again.’

‘Or maybe today messed up his plans.’ Mason flicked his eyes Jessop’s way.

She couldn’t help but think about their little chat the other day about Mason aspiring to be like her. Now, as she was then, she was grateful for his vote of confidence. Yet picturing the bastard waving at her on the camera, she didn’t think it was deserved.

As Mike Knowles had said, this bastard did nothing without a reason. And for whatever reason he chose not to kill again today, she was certain it had nothing to do with her intervention.

Brooke said, ‘Let’s not forget what’s really important here. No one else died today.’

Everyone in the room knew that to be true, although Jessop couldn’t help but feel as if they all wanted it not to be, so they could take a crack at a fresh scene.

As if that would help, she thought wearily.

The silence in the room resumed as all eyes turned to the clock.

Chapter
Sixty-seven

Saturday, November 4
^th

12.10am.

‘That’s it people,’ Jessop announced. ‘We’re done here. Let’s go home.’

Chapter
Sixty-eight

Half an hour later Jessop shrugged on her coat and left her office. Noticed a blue hue radiating from the war room, and saw Davies with his head still in his laptop.

She felt like telling him to go home, but knew the command would be wasted. It was because of coppers like Davies that they would eventually catch the killer. For he, like herself and the rest of her team, along with Ray and the killer, were all prisoners of their commitment to their work.

From her pocket her mobile pinged, informing of a text message. She’d texted Ray earlier to say she was working late, and had yet to receive a reply. She couldn’t imagine he’d still be up now, which meant it must be Chloe.

Her stomach flipped with the daunting prospect of news about how Ray had taken a turn for the worse. She reached for the phone, heart suddenly beating fast.

Was this how it would be from now on, with her fearing for the worse every time she received a goddamn text message?

Accessing the service, neither Ray nor Chloe’s name flashed on the screen. The relief didn’t last long as she eyed the mobile number. With no name assigned to the number, that meant whoever had sent the message was not on her list of contacts, and therefore, not privy to her mobile number.

Prickly with apprehension, she opened the message and read the contents, quickly surmising the sender must have the wrong number. She was about to close the phone when something scratched the back of her mind and opened a hole in her recollect.

She’d heard the four typed words spoken aloud recently. But where, and by whom?

She spoke the words aloud: ‘Same shit, different day.’ It wasn’t a phrase she had used, and neither was it original. Yet it resonated somewhere deep in her subconscious.

She paced her office, the message on the phone illuminating her palm but not her recollect. She looked at Davies hunched over the laptop, one hand on the mouse, the other hand holding a sausage roll from which he had yet to take a bite.

‘Oh Christ.’

Ten minutes later Davies’ sausage roll still remained intact. His appetite had been quenched not by food, but by the urgent task Jessop had asked of him.

‘Got it,’ he announced. ‘Angela Hardy. Eight Rosemount Avenue.’

She put the name to the face of the disgruntled girl she had sat next to on the high street bench earlier before chasing the killer through town. The girl who was picking at a sausage roll and texting, and had expressed the miserable day she was having to Jessop in four acidic words:
‘Same shit different day.’

For Jessop, never had a turn of phrase felt so apt.

Chapter
Sixty-nine

The answer to Mason’s first question of why hadn’t the killer, the spared loved one, or a neighbour reported the murder became apparent as soon as they arrived at Angela Hardy’s bungalow.

‘Shit,’ Brooke groaned.

‘Stay focused,’ Jessop instructed, regarding the wheelchair access ramp leading to the front door.

The battering ram splintered the door frame. The second hit pushed the door in. Mason finished the job by stepping on the door as he entered the bungalow.

The entrance hall was free of furniture and uncluttered. The walls were painted warm terracotta, and laminate flooring continued through to the living room on Jessop’s left. Up ahead the hall forked either side of a sizeable kitchen.

From the door to the right of the kitchen could be heard muffled sobs.

Mason led the way, easing open the door to the bedroom. Hesitated.

Jessop snuck past him, saw what had caused her usually unflappable DI to falter.

In his late teens, the man dressed in pressed sky blue pyjamas was sat in a wheelchair with his wrists bound to the arm rests by two belts. He had a balding pallet and carried some excess weight around his neck and midriff. His red cheeks were puffy and tear streaked as he sobbed and moaned. He was not gagged, and Jessop wondered why he hadn’t called for help.

Brooke stepped into the room, crouched beside the distraught man. ‘I’ve got it.’

Stomach knotted, Jessop left the room, strode across the hall to the second bedroom. Opened the door to a room painted magnolia with wooden slat blinds and a standalone wooden wardrobe.

In the centre of the room, upon the chocolate coloured duvet on the double bed, lay the girl she had conversed with briefly on the high street bench.

Angela Hardy was naked and spread eagled, yet her modesty was spared by the sheet of blood, which had bled from the ragged tear in her chest. The shape and direction of the spillage suggested the fatal wound to her heart had been inflicted whilst Angela was lying down. The weapon, a bloodied, serrated-edged kitchen knife, lay upon Angela’s bedside table next to a Janet Evanovich novel and Angela’s mobile phone.

‘Didn’t even bother to hide the weapon,’ Mason said.

She nodded. ‘No need to now. He knows we’re onto him.’

Mason eyed Angela’s mobile phone on which the killer had texted Jessop. She clocked his concerned expression and knew what he was thinking.

Because she was thinking the same.

She left the room, returned to Brooke in the next bedroom with the man still moaning and crying.

‘He’s mute,’ Brooke said.

Jessop noticed the cup of pens and pencils on the bedside table.

Brooke handed her an A5 pad of lined paper. ‘He had this in his lap.’

Stomach churning, she took the pad, read what was written on the cover in green marker pen: William’s book. She flipped over the page and read what was written in red pencil on the pad’s top page: To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’

She looked at the wheelchair, wondered what affliction had befallen William to warrant it. Struggled to comprehend the hell William must have endured this last hour. Yet the killer hadn’t
made
him watch Angela’s death.

Why?

She turned to Brooke, whose damp eyes vocalised what she was thinking: Hadn’t William suffered enough?

Stepping out of the room, she stalked down the hall and kicked the beaten door aside. She ignored the looks from the two uniformed officers standing guard, and blanked the greetings from the CSI team who had just arrived.

She leant against her car, lit a cigarette, and thought about the look Mason had shot her in the bedroom when they’d seen Angela’s mobile next to the knife.

The bastard had her mobile number.

And that was no bluff.

Chapter
Seventy

The Undertaker agreed with her, and no sooner had the conversation ended then Jessop was back on the phone and dialling Ray, praying he answered.

After six agonisingly long rings Ray answered with a weary, ‘What’s up?’

‘We’ve got a problem.’

‘No shit we have.’

Through gritted teeth she said, ‘Listen to me.’

Ray listened, not once interrupting. When after she’d finished he did speak, his tone was as serious as she’d ever heard it. ‘Tell me what to do.’

She did, and a moment later Chloe was on the line.

‘It’s just temporary,’ Jessop reassured her after explaining what was going to happen.

‘What? Days, weeks, months?’

‘I’m not sure, sweetie, but we’re very close to catching him.’

‘Yeah, sounds it.’

Jessop gripped the steering wheel tight, noticed out of the corner of her eye the coroner wheeling Angela’s body down William’s wheelchair ramp. ‘Grow up, Chloe. This is happening. I’d rather it wasn’t, but it is, so we have to deal with it.’

‘Shit.’

‘The witness protection unit will go through everything with you when they pick you up. They’ll arrange a secure line of communication between us as soon as you’re settled in the safe house, okay?’ She slid down in the car seat, hating herself for putting her family through this. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetie.’

A pause, when she thought her daughter had hung up. Then, ‘Do you really think he’s after us?’

‘I have to assume so.’ Jessop thought she heard a sniff on the end of the line. The last thing she needed was to picture her daughter crying. ‘Listen to me. This is gonna happen really fast, so I need you and Vicky to start packing now, and only essentials, understand?’

Another pause. ‘Okay?’

‘I love you and I promise we’ll talk soon, but you gotta hustle and I need to have another quick word with Ray.’ Before she had time to dwell, Ray was back on the line and asking if she was okay.

‘I’ve been better. You?’

‘Top of the world.’

He wasn’t, of course, but she’d resigned herself to never hearing him admit it. ‘Listen, I’m obligated to tell the unit about your condition.’

‘Understood.’

‘Don’t be a hero, Ray, I mean it. These guys know what they’re doing. They’ll be able to get you help and medication without jeopardising yours and the girls’ safety.’

‘Okay.’

She squeezed her eyes shut against the warm swell of tears. ‘Look, you better get packing.’

‘Already done, honey. I’m wearing all I need.’

Against every emotion she felt, a laugh escaped her lips as she pictured Ray in his boxer shorts and t-shirt climbing into the back of the unit’s van. ‘Do me a favour?’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after her.’

Her
throat closed tight. There was no one in the world she trusted more with her daughter’s life. She knew without any doubt if it came down to it, Ray would willingly give his life to save Chloe’s, even if he wasn’t dying. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘You will be if the digs we’re going to aint got broadband and Sky plus. Reckon I’d rather have a crazed killer on my arse than two disgruntled two teenage girls.’

She knew the safe house her family was being taken to. It was a refurbished farmhouse twenty miles out of the city on the outskirts of a sleepy village, whose residents were oblivious to the danger they would face if ever they decided to welcome their new neighbours with homemade cakes and preserves. Usually the house was reserved for witnesses in high profile cases against people with the money and means to ensure the witness never made it to court. Jessop had been there only the once to talk to such a witness. He had survived.

‘I love you, Ray.’

‘Enough to still be my wife?’

‘That may have to wait a while.’

‘All the time in the world, sexy.’

If only that were true, she thought, hanging up before her voice cracked.

Chapter
Seventy-one

Back in the war room Jessop watched as Davies fast forwarded the CCTV footage to the point where she approached the bench on which sat Angela Hardy. All around her the world went about its business: men, women, children, couples, hustling and bustling, paying no attention to the two women on the bench.

Except one.

One among them had gotten close enough to hear the words exchanged between the two women at the precise time they had been spoken.

She studied the footage until…‘Stop.’

Davies froze the film just as Angela turned her head towards Jessop and uttered the four words the killer had picked up on.

Jessop mouthed the words to herself and scrutinised the people close enough to the bench to be able to hear them. Angela had hardly shouted the words from the roof tops. They had been carried quietly on a weary exhalation which even she had struggled to hear.

Scrutinising the frozen image, she picked out a young mother pushing a pushchair five yards from the bench. Two elderly black women walking arm in arm ten yards from the bench. No lean, six foot men in their late twenties. And no one wearing a grey hoody.

‘I’m beginning to believe this guy really is a ghost,’ Davies mumbled, zooming in and around the bench. ‘Still can’t figure out why he texted you knowing we’d be straight onto the footage and looking for him hovering around you?’

Jessop slumped back in her chair, rubbed her stinging eyes. ‘Because he knew we wouldn’t find him. It’s all part of the game.’

‘Well he’s bloody good at it.’ Davies took a sip from a can of Red Bull. ‘Of course, he may have bugged the bench. Anyone could pick up covert listening devices on the internet these days. But even if he had, how could he be sure you’d eventually sit there next to his latest victim?’

Jessop tensed. Had he already targeted Angela after seeing her previously in town with William? If so, what were the chances of her sitting next to Angela on the day he’d planned to kill her?

Zero.

Her gorge rose.