Hurt (The Hurt Series) (37 page)

‘
Because you’d lost your edge. You were too preoccupied thinking about your wedding. I mean, you didn’t even notice the fucking newspaper I left for you in that rapist Randal’s house. Unacceptable.’ Chambers shook his head. The patronising gesture riled her more than the bastard’s accusation. ‘We need friction in our lives to keep us sharp. That’s why I chose Samantha.’

She tasted blood as teeth punctured gums. Summoning every ounce of will power she could muster, she asked, ‘And Angela Hardy?’

Chambers cricked his neck, nodded. ‘I needed your best game to bring out mine. Because like it or not, in our worlds we’re only as good as our adversaries. And in my world you have to respect your adversary. That’s why I’m here. To say goodbye.’ Chambers eased up from the armchair to his feet. Jessop stepped back and gripped the gun with both hands. Maybe because she feared him, but in the flesh Chambers appeared taller than 5’ 11”.

‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’

Chambers shrugged again. ‘Out of your life.’

‘Do you really think I’m going to let you walk out of here?’

‘If you value Detective Mason’s life you will.’

She beheld this slim, young man with his scarred face and ravaged soul. He was the picture of calm, completely unnerved by the gun she pointed at him and the threats she made. She thought about what he’d said earlier about this not being the first time he’d looked down the barrel of a gun, and suddenly she felt foolish and pathetic. How must she look compared to a Taliban rebel aiming an AK47 at him with a hell of a lot more conviction in his stare than she could muster? The gun she held was not any less deadly, yet the person holding it had never taken a life before. And Chambers knew that just by looking in her frightened eyes.

He took a step toward her and the front door. ‘Your choice.’

‘So Scott is number ten on your list?’

‘Pull the trigger and find out.’ Chambers motioned to the mobile on the sofa and the live feed of Mason still gagged and tied to the bed. ‘But believe me, you won’t find him.’

Against all her instincts, and everything she had ever learned or believed in or promised herself and her girls, she found herself stepping back out of Chambers’ way. The gun did not lower, though. All the while it was pointed at his head, with the trigger tight against her finger. Just one false move on Chambers’ part and he and Mason would be dead, and she would have kept her promise to Vicky and fulfilled her obligation to all the others who had been forced to watch their loved ones die. Yet she could not help but think of Mason and the chance Chambers was offering to save his life. She knew it could all be bullshit, but what if it wasn’t? Could she really live with herself knowing she could have saved the man who had risked his career getting her the gun she now held? The same gun that could inadvertently end his life.

‘How do I know you’ll release him?’ Her throat was tight and her eyes stung hot with tears of frustration. She blinked them away, but it was all the time Chambers needed to snatch the gun from her hands and turn it on her.

‘I’m not going to release him.’ Chambers turned the gun on her and aimed it with steady accuracy between her sodden eyes. ‘For someone who works off her instincts, you should really learn to trust them more.’

Chapter
One-hundred and three

Her breath caught and her knees liquefied with fear. She slumped to the floor and awaited her fate.

Her first thought: please make it quick, for the girls’ sake.

Her second thought: please keep your word and spare the girls.

Her third thought: why has it gone so quiet? And why was her flesh pimpled?

She dared to open her eyes. Instead of staring down the black barrel of the gun, she stared out through the open front door through which Chambers had made his exit.

Confusion enveloped her. But not for long.

Heart thumping hard and fast, she pushed herself off the floor, ran to the door and slammed it shut, bolting the deadlock. The next thing she was aware of was being hugged by two crying girls. It was the most welcome feeling ever, and she held them both as tight as she could until all three of them were cried dry.

‘Is it really over?’ Chloe pleaded. ‘Is he really going to leave us alone?’

Jessop wiped her eyes, caught her breath. ‘I’m not sure, sweetie, which is why I want you both to pack some clothes as quick as you can, okay?’

‘What about Detective Mason?’ Vicky asked. ‘Is he going to be alright?’

Jessop let go of the girls and snatched the phone from the sofa. On the screen, Mason was still unconscious and bound to the bed. ‘I hope so. Now go…pack.’ Through misty eyes, she watched the girls race upstairs. She fumbled for her own phone and dialled Brooke’s number.

Brooke answered on the third ring. Jessop gave her a brief summary of events.

‘Any clue where Scott might be?’ Brooke asked. ‘Anything about the room he’s in, the bed…’

‘No. The camera’s up too close to tell. Get Davies tracing the signal and a patrol car round to Scott’s address.’ Her hands shook around the phone. She felt nauseous and weak. But more so, foolish and useless.‘Christ, how could I have been so naïve?’

‘It’s done, boss, and Scott can’t afford for us to dwell on it, so − ’

‘Muuuuum!’

The scream came from above.

She dropped the phone as Chambers’ words screamed in her head:
‘I’m not going to release him.’

If he had lied about that, what else had he lied about?

No! Not my girls!

‘Muuuum….quick!’

Had she actually
seen
Chambers leave by the front door? No. She’d been too busy cowering on the floor after being outwitted and outmaneuvered.

And now she was going to pay the price for her negligence.

She flew up the stairs and onto the landing. Saw Vicky stood outside her bedroom, wide eyed and with her hands to her mouth. The door was open, and she could see Chloe standing just inside. Neither of them appeared to be hurt.

She barged past her daughter into the room, tripped on her discarded duvet strewn across the floor. Looked to the bed and felt her heart miss a beat.

On the bed, still tied and gagged but now conscious, lay Scott Mason.

Her head spun, trying to comprehend what she was seeing and what it all meant. Once again,
Chambers’
words rang loud in her ears:
‘I’m not going to release him.’

No,
he
wasn’t.

She
was.

Chapter
One-hundred and four

An hour later, fully dressed in a grey tracksuit, white trainers, and looking as groggy as he did angry, Mason swallowed thirstily from a bottle of water. He’d explained that he was out running in the park near his apartment. The next thing he knew he was on the grass and his head was killing him. ‘The bastard ambushed me and drugged me. I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.’

Perched on the sofa next to Jessop, Brooke said, ‘So we’ve established Scott was not meant to be his tenth victim.’ She looked to Jessop. ‘Did he say why he’d targeted you?’

Jessop sipped some steaming hot coffee, thought about what Chambers had said to her about being locked in that hotel room for the last thirty-six years and needing someone to make her find some meaning to her suffering and break the shell of her understanding.
‘One of us, though, has learned from our past. The other has not. We all need a little guidance, Detective. No shame in it. And I promise you, soon you’ll thank me, just as all the others will.’
Her team did not need to know this. Her past was her past, and none of their business.

‘He told me he needed my best game to bring out his,’ she muttered. ‘Something about people like us only being as good as our adversaries.’

Beneath a frown heavier than usual, Mason gave her a knowing look. She ignored it.

Brooke said, ‘That ties in with the rest of his power plays and mind games, targeting Sam and Angela to get your attention.’

It did, Jessop thought, unable to look Brooke in the eye for fear of being caught in the little fib.

Seated beside Mason on a stool brought in from the kitchen, Davies said, ‘So we’re still one victim short.’

The room fell quiet until Brooke punctuated the silence with, ‘So what do we do?’

All eyes turned on Jessop, and with them, the familiar weight of expectation. Each of her team had worked their arses off trying to catch this bastard, and now they were faced with the very real possibility of failing in that task. Eight innocent lives taken with no justice for their families and loved ones. Vicky was counting on her to get the monster who had butchered her mother. The media and the top brass wanted reassurance and results. She could provide neither. Neither could she provide any more information on Chambers’ whereabouts or plans. She had spent the last hour scribbling down everything she could recall about their meeting, and nothing in her notes evoked any inspiration.

‘No disrespect, people, but I’m not the one you should be asking.’ She nodded to Mason sitting quietly in the armchair Chloe had slept in last night. ‘This is Scott’s investigation now, and I’ve got a couple of badly shaken girls who need to get the hell away from here for a while.’

Her face flushed from the burning stares. She was abandoning them in their hour of need, but the fact was, she was on suspension pending dismissal, and so had no authority or right to make any decisions regarding the investigation. ‘You’re welcome to work from here and to anything from the kitchen.’ She shrugged, stood up. ‘Afraid I’m all out of turkey, though. Sorry. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to check on my girls.’ She stood, walked to the hall. Glanced back and caught Davies’ attention. Motioned to him to follow her.

A minute later Davies joined her in her office. She closed the door and fished out her phone.

Asked, ‘You got Chamber’s phone?’

Sealed in a clear evidence bag, Davies pulled the mobile from his pocket. ‘What’s up?’

‘What’s that phone’s number?’

Through
the bag, Davies pressed a couple of buttons, read out a number.

Her stomach twisted as she compared the number to the sender of the cryptic text message she’d received about her scheduled visit to meet her family’s killer.

The numbers did not match.

‘I need a favour,’ she whispered. ‘Off the books.’

Davies nodded. ‘Shoot.’

‘Can you trace a phone from a number?’

‘Uh-huh.’

She read out the number. Davies jotted it down on a scrap of paper and pocketed it.

‘This is between me and you, Tom. Understood?’

Davies shot her a wink. ‘Loud and clear, boss.’

She wasn’t his boss, but now was not the time to get into that again. ‘Call me when you get something.’

She followed Davies out of the office and padded upstairs to where she could hear Chloe and Vicky rummaging through draws. Neither she or Chloe or Vicky wanted to spend a minute longer than necessary in the house Chambers had breached so easily. And so they were going to get in the car, drive to the airport, and jump on the first plane out of here.

‘Hey,’ came a voice from the stairs behind her.

Jessop turned, saw Mason hovering at the foot of the stairs. ‘I’ve told you everything,’

‘Really? No disrespect, but putting your name on his list strikes me as more than an attention grabbing exercise.’

Jessop felt warmth spread through her cheeks. ‘I only know what he told me. I really can’t help anymore.’ She met Mason’s hazy eyes, blinked first. ‘I’m sorry he took the gun, but my guess is we’ll never see it again. Probably for the best, right?’

Mason sighed, rubbed the back of his head where Chambers had struck him in the park. ‘You know The Undertaker’s gonna want a full debriefing before you go.’

She did. She also knew she couldn’t face the man whose trust she’d breached for the second time, and who she’d let down again by letting Chambers go. ‘I’ve noted down everything. Look, if it were me I’d take another look at the tenth date on his list. If I remember, it’s the anniversary of the Iran earthquake but it may have some other significance.’

‘The other dates had no link to the victims, apart from yours.’

‘Right, yet I was at number
nine
. Just seems odd he’d put me there.’ Jessop shrugged. ‘Could be worth a look.’

Mason leant against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘You really think he’ll get away with this, don’t you?’

Jessop mirrored her former colleague’s weary posture against the wall. ‘I think the only way Chambers is going to get caught is if he wants to get caught. But that doesn’t mean you should stop looking for him.’

‘Why? You have.’

‘Not my choice, Scott. Besides, maybe Chambers was right about me losing my edge.’ She graced Mason with a thin smile and found herself caught in his stare. An awkward moment ensued where neither of them blinked, just looked at one another. Thinking of the staring match Mason had won against Daniels, she blinked first, looking away from the dark, probing stare. ‘I’ll send you a postcard.’

Mason nodded, raked a hand through his thick hair.

She watched as he peeled off the wall and descended the stairs, leaving her wondering where exactly the moment had taken the man who she’d trusted with her life, and who had followed her career so intently.

Probably
best she didn’t know, she thought passing her bedroom, where the handsome, intense thirty-five-year-old Mason had been tied to the bed she and Ray had shared so many blissful nights together.

Chapter
One-hundred and five

The city was deserted, its streets as peaceful as she’d ever seen them. Not even the many ghosts she knew to reside here could disturb the tranquillity Christmas day had spawned. Yet as she drove past the building she’d spent so many years working in to keep the streets as calm as they were now, she couldn’t help but think the serenity was just an illusion. Because come tomorrow, when the sales began, and the world awoke from its festive slumber, so would the ghosts.

But this year she wouldn’t be here to greet them. This year, with the help of a traumatised war veteran, and an ambiguous text message, she was big enough to admit her ghosts had finally scared her away from the city she called home.