Hurt (The Hurt Series) (32 page)

The two storey building across the road finished three stories below her floor. No chance of Chambers taking a shot at her from there. However, look further, across the building, over the Magistrates Court, passed the small park with the bandstand, and in the distance about a kilometre away, standing twenty floors high, loomed a newly erected green-tinted glass office block with space to let.

It was this building to which she angled the shaving mirror. Watched and waited. Waited and watched. Alert for that tiny glint of light reflecting from the magnified lens he was no doubt watching her room through. It would come, she was sure of it. But for now the image had not changed since the last time she’d performed this part of the ritual. No movement behind the tinted windows.

Her room was eleven feet long, sometimes ten. Using this info, and coupling it with her extensive knowledge of the city, yesterday she’d guesstimated the distance between her hotel and the office block at exactly 1,136 metres. Chambers had shot a man at a range of 1,800 metres. For a man with such deadly accuracy, he could plant a bullet up her crack blindfolded from the green office block, and she probably wouldn’t even notice until she took a piss.

Yet now his MO had changed. Now he favoured getting up close and personal. However, he still had to scope out his target and learn their routine.

‘Observation, too. Your boy’s highly adept at memorising places and objects from a distance in a short space of time. Handy if you’re scoping out a potential victim’s house.’

Or a target’s hotel room.

And the only place he could do that was from the building reflected in the little mirror. Sure she’d kept her curtains closed, but what with thermal imaging technology he would know exactly what she was doing.

But not anymore. Not since she’d had the idea to crawl around the room instead of walking. Such a simple solution she’d almost kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier.

She scrutinised the reflection, moving the mirror back and forth along the width of the building. She thought about Chloe and Ray and Vicky, and wondered if they were taking such precautions.

They may hate her after learning she hadn’t left the room, and that her contribution to the investigation consisted solely of drinking and smoking and alienating her colleagues, but at least they were all alive.

And
that, she considered, was a job well done.

With her left hand, she swapped the mirror for the vodka, the vodka for a cigarette, all the while with the Webley firmly in her right hand. The gun felt right there, as if it belonged. She couldn’t recall a time when it was not there, and couldn’t imagine a future with it not being there.

Chapter
Eighty-nine

Sunday, December 17
^th

Only when she was jarred awake by a noise from the next room did she realise she’d fallen asleep. On the laptop screen on the floor beside her she watched Alistair entering the room with more vodka disguised in the water bottle.

Had she placed an order?

She didn’t remember doing so.

And the hotel knew better than to send anyone to the room without her specific consent. Yet here was Alistair, tray in hand, just a thin wall away from where she sat alongside a near full bottle of vodka.

Why?

Only then did she notice the date in the bottom corner of the screen, and remembered The Undertaker’s warning of her security detail being dropped yesterday.

‘Shit.’

She pushed herself up to her bare feet. Wobbled as her weakened legs struggled to take the strain. Heart thumping, she edged along the wall to the integral door. Wrapped both hands tightly around the gun’s butt, and took a deep breath.

Don’t think, just act.

She shouldered the door open and aimed the gun directly between Corporal Philip Chambers’ wide eyes.

‘Hands on your head! Do it now!’

Dressed in the hotel’s uniform of burgundy waistcoat and bowtie, white shirt and black trousers, Chambers froze in the centre of the room.

‘I said hands on your head! And get down on your goddamn knees.’

Chambers complied, his scarred face calm and unreadable.

Adrenaline pumping, she stepped into the room, her senses heightened, acutely aware of her prisoner’s skills. ‘Yeah, that’s right. I gotcha. Jeez, and I thought you boys were meant to be patient. What, couldn’t wait, huh? The minute my security detail left you just had to make your move, that it?’

Her prisoner did not respond, just knelt in silence with his hands clasped tight behind his head.

‘What’s up? No chilling little speech for me? No lessons about pain and understanding? About not being able to live without death − all that shit?’ She closed in on her prisoner, but not within reaching distance. She thought about what Mason had said about her being too drunk to catch Chambers, and looked forward to hearing his apology when she showed him the recording of her apprehension.

‘So what’s the plan, Phil? Were you gonna hide out in here like you were trained to do? Beats the hell out of some shit-hole in Afghanistan, don’t it?’ She circled her prisoner. You think you could have hid here without me finding you? Christ, you couldn’t even enter the room without me seeing you! Yeah, that’s right. I’m the real thing. I aint no mute cripple or teenage girl or eight-year-old kid. I’m a goddamn Detective Chief Inspector. Did you ever consider that? Huh?’

She stopped behind her prisoner, aiming the gun at the back of his head, at his brown wig,
her
moist finger poised on the trigger.

‘So, how were you gonna off me? The gut, like Darren Spencer? Wrists, like Tanya? Stabbed through the heart like Angela? Or maybe slice my femoral arteries like you did Samantha?’ Her aim was steady, the gun’s muzzle just inches from Chambers’ scalp. ‘You’re pathetic. What, just because you had a bad time fighting in that bullshit war you think you’ve got the right to play God back over here with innocent peoples’ lives? You’re worse than the fucking Taliban. At least they have a legitimate belief. All you have is self pity. Boo-fucking-hoo. So your friend died in your arms. I got news for you, soldier: It’s a fucking war! You don’t go over there to play football and get pissed with your mates. You go to shoot and be shot at. You go over there to protect the very people you came back here and slaughtered.’

The gun met resistance against the back of her prisoner’s head. ‘Don’t you see the irony? Because I do. I see it clear as day, because you’re here to kill me. Thing is, though, there’s no one here to watch. What, did you figure the family was here, too? You disappoint me, soldier. I really did think you were smarter than that. Pity really. Sort of takes away the satisfaction of blowing your head off knowing you’re just as dumb as the rest of them.’

She took a step back and steadied her arm. ‘Nevertheless, I’m still gonna enjoy this. Shame you haven’t got anyone who gives a shit about you here to watch. Then again, Hannah and little Beth would probably take it in turns pulling the trigger themselves, right?’

She squeezed the trigger, once, twice, three times, four times. The noise was deafening, the gun’s recoil wracking her arm and shoulder and jarring her teeth. She closed her eyes and squeezed out bullet after bullet, unloading on every sick psycho she had ever put away, each of whom appearing to morph into a blurry mix of Malcolm Hoyte, Vincent Dodd, and Philip Chambers.

The satisfaction was all consuming and tingled every nerve in her body like the biggest, most intense orgasm. Her knees liquefied, and no sooner was the gun empty then she was on the floor next to the body of her prisoner, who was curled into a tight ball with his arms clasped to his head and sobbing into his elbows.

She reached across. But it was not Chamber’s hitching shoulder she touched. It was Alistair’s.

And then she laughed. But to those who could hear and see her, she was crying.

Chapter
Ninety

Friday, December 22
^nd

The room was small and white with no windows to the outside, just a metal grate screwed across the small window in the only door in and out of the room. In the centre of the room was a metal table with two chairs either side. All were screwed to the floor. Immovable, even by the room’s most psychotic visitors.

The light was strong and piercing, reflecting off the clinical white surfaces and hurting her aching eyes. She’d been in this room before, of course. Many times. It was located in the city hospital’s psychiatric wing, and was where many of the city’s more unstable criminals would come for an initial psychological assessment.

Yes, she’d been in this room, and had sat next to the two men sitting opposite her at one time or another.

Next
to, but never
across
from them.

Wearing a black overcoat over his black suit, The Undertaker asked, ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Weak.’ The word scratched her parched throat. She reached for the plastic cup of water and noticed the purple bruising on her forearms.

‘They’ve been feeding you intravenously,’ Mason said, noting her confused expression. ‘It was the only way. You’ve been non-responsive since we brought you in.’

She nodded. Her head felt as if it were packed with wet sand and glass. ‘How long?’

‘Five days.’

Jessop closed her eyes. Saw Alistair Waters’ petrified face on the carpet next to her.

‘Alistair Waters is not pressing charges,’ The Undertaker said. ‘You’re very lucky, Catherine.’

Mason said, ‘The kid was shaken up pretty badly, as I’m sure you can understand.’ Mason crossed his arms, a defensive gesture she’d rarely seen against her. ‘Turns out he had a bit of a soft spot for you. Felt sorry for you.’

She winced inwardly.

‘The hotel’s keeping this under wraps,’ The Undertaker said. ‘As far as any of the residents or press are concerned, there were a bunch of teenagers in the room partying and letting off fireworks.’

Jessop stared at the tiny puncture marks in her arm. Her hands trembled on the table top. Both her colleagues saw this but chose not to comment. She wondered if she would ever be able to look them in the eyes again.

The Undertaker slid a thin paper folder across the table to within touching distance of her fingertips. Printed on the cover was the word CLASSIFIED. ‘Full debrief of what happened that day. I suggest you read it…Carefully.’

She regarded the file warily as if it were dipped in poison. She had little recollection of that day, and what she did recall felt like razor sharp shards from a nightmare puncturing her brain. She felt no desire or compulsion to have the missing pieces filled in for her. As far as she was concerned, the less she recalled about the events that day the better.

‘There’s something else you should know.’

She noted the sombre undercurrent to The Undertaker’s voice, yet still she failed to summon the dignity or strength to look up from beyond her veil of shame and hair.

‘
Ray’s dead.’

Her fingertips twitched. ‘Chambers?’

Mason shook his head. ‘He’s still out there.’

‘It was cancer,’ The Undertaker said.

‘When?’

‘Two days ago. I’m sorry’

Beneath her thin gown Jessop’s flesh chilled and her stomach clenched. ‘How’re the girls?’

‘Coping. Funeral is tomorrow.’

‘Can I attend?’

‘Yes. Scott and Brooke will accompany you.’

‘Thank you,’ she croaked. ‘Do you think I can speak to Chloe soon?’

‘She’s waiting outside.’

Jessop reached for the water as her two colleagues stood.

‘I’ll pick you up at nine,’ Mason said. And with that, both her mentor and her prodigy left her alone. Neither gave her a second look.

She couldn’t blame them.

A moment later a girl she barely recognised entered. Her blonde hair was short and spiked, her face drawn, her features hardened. She wore a red padded coat and jeans she recognised, but from on a girl carrying several more pounds than the girl stood before her now. Yet there was no doubt who this girl was, and she wanted nothing more than to leap up and enfold her in her arms. But she couldn’t, because the girl’s arms were folded tight across her chest and her posture was rigid. There was no warmth in her eyes, and not a hint of a smile upon her tight, unpainted lips.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The question was spat with venom, the tone as hard as granite.

Jessop recoiled in her chair, her hand clasped around the plastic cup of water. ‘About what?’

‘You know damn well about what. Ray’s cancer. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Liar!’

‘Chloe − ’

‘Ray’s been dying under our fucking noses and we did nothing about it. Nothing! And all this time you could’ve saved him just by opening your mouth.’

‘But I swear, I didn’t know.’

‘His doctor seemed to think you did.’

Jessop tensed. Her stomach turned sour, and her hands shook so much the water in the cup splashed over the rim. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay, what?’

‘We were going to tell you, but then Samantha was killed. Ray didn’t want to upset Vicky after that. He wanted to postpone the treatment until she got better. I didn’t agree, I swear to you. I wanted to tell you but Ray made me promise. And then, well…’

‘And then we were sent to that fucking house in the middle of nowhere to watch Ray die without even knowing it. Whilst you - you! - were drowning in self pity and vodka and letting the man you loved die.’

Her eyes welled hot with tears. Cowering beneath her daughter’s scowl, she noticed her hands were no longer trembling on the table, but were now balled into clammy fists in her lap. ‘How is Vicky?’ she managed to ask.

Chloe leant on the table. Jessop felt the heat from her rage as her daughter spat, ‘How the fuck do you think she is? If not for me she’d be in this fucking place with you. I’m all she’s got now.’

And Chloe, she thought, was all she had now. Not that Chloe gave a shit about her now. She
hated
her mother, and understandably so. She’d done a lot of growing up over the last three months. She’d had to, looking after both the mentally fragile Vicky and her physically fragile step-father. Not easy for an eighteen-year-old; especially one whose life may be in danger, and whose mother was falling apart at the seams.