Panic (4 page)

Michael swept his eyes around again, and they came to rest on Father Leary's body.
Just maybe...

He stepped around the blood and crouched next to t
he priest's corpse, hoping to spot a glint of dangerous metal pinned underneath the body.

No sign.

Michael sighed in frustration. The scene made no sense at all. He shifted his gaze to the priest’s face, as though he might find the answer written in the dead man's eyes.

And his stomach lurched.

"Oh Jesus," Michael cried, stepping back quickly from the body as though it might explode at any moment, and almost slipping on Ralf's blood.

"What? What is it?" Carl almost shouted the words, panic clear in his voice.

"It’s...our murder weapon. Fucking hell."

"Huh?" Carl said, moving
closer to Michael's position.

"Where?"

Michael pointed wordlessly at the priest’s face.

Carl followed the gesture, squinting, his eyes slowly widening in horror.

The priest’s mouth was full of blood, and there, stuck in the gaps between his teeth, were strips of torn flesh and matted hair.

Carl's ongoing battle with his morning muesli finally resolved itself loudly and messily.

"He tore Ralf's throat out like a fucking dog," Michael said, his voice laced with wonder. "Killed his wife somewhere else, then brought her head here and killed Ralf. With his damn teeth."

Carl choked, and spat bile onto the
floor.

"Doesn't make any sense," h
e moaned miserably. "Father Leary? The guy wouldn't harm a fly. Fuck's sake, the guy would pray for the soul of someone who did harm a fly! How the hell does a man like that behead his own wife and rip out a man's throat? What is it? Drugs? Did he just lose his mind? He christened my neighbour’s baby a week ago! A week! Doesn't make any sense."

Carl shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, as though trying to shake off a bad dream.

The voice nagged at the corners of Michael's mind again. The scene was still wrong. It didn't make sense. He turned, and stared again at Ralf's inert body.

"So
Ralf stuck him," Carl said, his expression sour. "Self defence. Too good for the bastard. Too quick."

"No, I don't think so,
" Michael said softly. He was looking intently at Ralf's chubby hands. "Look here. Ralf's hands are clean. No blood. Not even a cut. If you're gripping a piece of that plate hard enough to stab someone, you have to cut yourself at least a little right? You have to get the other guy's blood on your hands don't you?"

Carl looked at him, my
stified.

"I don't understand," h
e said.

Michael stared at him, eyes glittering. "Someone else was here
, mate. The question is: where are they now?"

3

The coffee in the little red thermos was stale, but Michael gulped it down anyway, keen to wash the taste of bile from the back of his throat. He glanced at Carl, who was eyeing up the remaining doughnut, probably for the same reason, but obviously thought better of it.

The older man rubbed absent-mindedly at his
recently-evacuated stomach, his expression pained.

"Ever come across anything like this before
, Mike?"

Carl was a good two decades older than Michael, but the younger man had actually spent a handful of years serving on the Force in Cardiff. On matters relating to actual police work, he deferred to the younger man's experience.

Michael shook his head, and tipped the dregs of the coffee down his throat.

They were leaning up against the car, facing the café warily, like a gazelle keeping one eye on a distant dozing lion. Carl had asked Glenda to put through a call for assistance, but, as with most things in South Wales, it would take time to arrive. So they waited.
Outside
.

"No, no
thing like this, not even close," Michael said. "A few violent-ish crimes I suppose, mostly domestic stuff. But nothing like you'd get in the movies. No bodies ripped apart. No serial killers putting on a show."

He looked away from the café, gazing into the trees, his vision clouded.

"Mostly it was just the same things you get here. Drunks. Theft. Just on a bigger scale. Violence? Mostly down to kids getting hold of knives really. Any time that cropped up it was...sad, really. Kind of pathetic. Not like this at all.

"I don't know what you'd call this."

Carl nodded morosely.

Michael thought for a second. There h
ad been the one time, of course. The time he didn't like to think about. The event that popped back into his mind like an uninvited guest occasionally, and sometimes refused to leave. He focused his gaze on the gravel at his feet. Pushed the dark memories back into the gloom.

The
two men fell silent for several seconds, until Carl could bear it no more. The air felt heavy, claustrophobic. Today, the morning fog didn't appear to be going anywhere, and the thick grey morning was constricting his throat, making him feel like he was about to choke.
Got to do something
, he thought.
Anything is better than standing here thinking
.

He stood, and made his way to the boot, popping it open with a click. Inside, buried under macintoshes and flashlights, he found a roll of police tape. It had been sitting there unused for years.

He grabbed it, walked to the Cafe sign, and began to tie off one end. There was a tree opposite he could use to barricade the entrance.

Michael smiled thinly, and gestured at the empty road.

"Worried about the crowds getting in there, mate?"

Carl shook his head.

"No, it's just....keeping busy you know? Standing around waiting...feels like I'm going to lose my mind here."

He kept his eyes focused intently on his work, tying off the tape securely, and began to stretch it out across the doorway to the café.

After watching for a moment, Michael went to help.

*

The mist coiled around the crooked cobbled streets of St. Davids, settling at ground level, spreading across the city like a stain.

On the coastal road, it wreathed the work of the two police officers, silent and grim-faced, as they set about cordoning off the horrors residing in Ralf's Cafe.

On Broad Street, it filled the small, perfectly manicured garden of the Roberts house, hiding from view the small dog leashed to a garden post and muting his snarling rage at his sudden captivity.

All across the town, as the good people of
St. Davids emerged from their warm cocoons, blinking blearily and hunching against the cold, the mist roiled, pushed this way and that by the wind, but refusing to dissipate.

To the people, a foggy morning was nothing unusual, though a few remarked on how thick the fog seemed that
day, and drivers grimaced as they crawled along, barely able to see beyond their windscreens.

At 9.17am Rachel Roberts shuddered as she stepped off the toy-like two-carriage train onto the tiny strip of concrete that served as the railway station for St. Davids.

A few years in London had softened her up, clearly. She'd forgotten about the morning fog and the damn wind that whistled through the streets almost incessantly, making a mockery of all but the heaviest of coats.

Rachel released her grip on the handle of her
suitcase (trolley-style, thank God, given the weight of the thing) and fished around her pockets for her cigarettes and a lighter. Lighting up, she inhaled deeply, and allowed the hit of the nicotine to calm her down. Four hours on crowded trains with no chance to smoke had left her frazzled.

For a few moments she savoured the smoke, banishing the freezing cold to the back of her mind. This may very well be her last chance t
o have a cigarette for two days.

Rachel's
mother had no idea that her daughter had become addicted to what she called the 'foul weed' during her years at university and, for both their sakes, Rachel intended to keep it that way. As a result, trips home to visit the folks quickly became fraught affairs, as withdrawal made Rachel snappy and edgy. She'd often considered the various ways in which she might be able to slip away for a crafty smoke, but in the end had never tried.

Her mother had eyes like a CCTV camera, and in St. Davids people talked. Even if there were some plausible excuse for Rachel to disappear for ten minutes, she knew in her heart that someone would see her, and the informat
ion would find its way back to Mum. Information always did.

She dropped the cigarette stub and crushed the life out of it under the heel of her boot, casting a glance around the pitiful excuse for a station. After a couple of years spent being carried along on a tide of people in cavernous hubs like Waterloo and Euston, the homely little platform seemed prehistoric. It symbolised the town perfectly.

Like many of the young people growing up in the area, Rachel had come to view St. Davids as an enemy, oppressing her and stifling her dreams and ambitions.

Beyond hanging out with friends on street corners and in parks, trying to get hold of alcohol and failing because everyone in the damn place knew exactly who she was as well as her age, there had been little here to relieve the boredom of her teenage years.

Rachel had left home at twenty-one, as soon as her stint at university had finished, convinced that a life of excitement and riches awaited her in London. Instead her degree had secured her only a job as personal assistant to a lawyer with wandering hands and a wage that would have been more than comfortable in South Wales, but which barely kept the heating on in England's capital.

Though the proud set of her jaw as she walked along the platform suggested otherwise, s
he was returning home at twenty-five with more than a hint of tail between her legs.

A small bridge took her from the platform up and over the tracks toward the car park on the other side. Rachel started up it, surprised and grateful to find that what had once been a set of steps was now a ramp, allowing her to wheel rather than carry the heavy case. Signs of progress
, she supposed, or maybe it was just the case that even a town as forgotten and remote as St. Davids had not escaped the talons of health and safety regulations.

When she reached other side of the bridge and stepped into the little car park, Rachel pulled up in surprise and disappointment. It was empty.

On the infrequent occasions that she had returned home over the past four years her father had always been there to greet her, perched on the bonnet of the car, ready to sweep her off her feet and into a bear hug that threatened to crack ribs.

Each time it happened, she'd struggled free, embarrassed by the public display of affection, but secretly anticipation of that hug had
always made the long journey seem shorter, and his absence this time stung like a slap.

He'd taken her at her word, she supposed glumly, suddenly regretting all the times she had told him she was a grown woman now, perfectly capable of making her own way home. She remembered how the enormous grin on his face had faded with the words and felt her heart break a little.

Rachel felt suddenly unnerved at the idea that her parents might finally have adjusted to the absence of their little girl, and for the first time felt uncertainty about how her father would react to the news that her temper had once again landed her in trouble, this time at the cost of her job.

She was mentally prepared for the reaction of her mother to the news that Rachel hoped to move home for a while, ready for the scolding and
the disappointed looks. But Dad could always be relied on to fight her corner, and she was secure in the knowledge that Jim Roberts would always look out for his little girl.

Alone in the foggy, deserted car park, that knowledge suddenly did not seem at all secure.

Reaching into her jeans pocket, Rachel pulled out the tiny smart phone that had become her main link to the bustling world of the internet, intending to ring her father to ask for a lift. Jason, her younger brother, would have been an option, but she knew that he was driving down from Birmingham, and would not arrive until later. Time to swallow the pride and ask Daddy to pick her up.

No signal.

Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. Her mother had promised that technology had finally reached St. Davids, that it was possible to get a mobile phone signal anywhere in the area now, but clearly nothing had changed. Landing on the platform at St. Davids station was like landing in the 1970s.

There was nothing else for it. She'd have to walk.

Come on Rach
, she thought.
It's only a couple of miles. Get on with it, you're a grown woman now, remember?

She pulled up the collar of the fashionable (but definitely not practical as it turned out)
Vivienne Westwood
coat that was her prized possession, grimaced as the biting wind tore straight through the flimsy fabric, and trudged toward the centre of town.

In her wake, the fog rode swirling gusts of wind and writhed around the empty street like a live thing.

*

It was taking too long.

Michael frowned and glanced at his watch, not for the first time. It had been at least thirty minutes since Carl had spoken to Glenda. There had been no further communication.

Carl had insisted on using up half the roll of tape, and the entrance to Ralf's Cafe now looked like some vast spider had woven a complicated, untidy web across the trees that straddled the gravel driveway. They had worked in silence, each unwilling to discuss the horrors of the café, unable to think of anything appropriate to fill the resulting vacuum.

"Something's wrong."

It was Carl who finally broke the silence. His voice sounded strained, taut.

Michael looked at him inquisitively. He was aiming to convey casual, but he knew from Carl's expression he was failing.

"Don't give me that look, Mike. You know it as well as I do. Maybe better, given how many times I've seen you looking at your watch. Why the hell haven't we had a response? It's been, like, forty five minutes. What the fuck?"

Michael glanced at his watch again.

"Thirty five."

Carl snorted.

"Okay, thirty five. Nothing about that strikes you as odd? We didn't report a stolen bike here. Fucking hell, we reported that the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer is walking around South Wales chopping off heads and ripping out throats with his fucking teeth. Anything about that
not
sound urgent?"

"Maybe they're busy."

Another snort.

Michael stared
thoughtfully at the yards of police tape stretched across the entrance. It was overkill, yet somehow appropriate. It mirrored the chaos inside the café. It was also messy; unprofessional. It spoke volumes about their preparedness to deal with the type of crime that now confronted them. If, for some reason, they had to deal with this alone for any length of time, Michael did not fancy that he and Carl would come out of the affair with perfect records. Too many chances to make mistakes. Too little expertise.

Carl, despite his natural tendency toward pessimism, was right. Unless riots had broken out in Haverfordwest – a town only
marginally less sleepy than St. Davids itself – Michael could think of no reason why his phone hadn't been ringing immediately. They had stumbled onto the kind of crime that makes national news. The police always responded to that kind of crime hastily. It was, after all, the sort of thing that made careers.

So why was nothing happening?

The logical conclusion dawned on him almost immediately: Glenda.
Of course
. Glenda was, for the most part, good at her job, but certainly she had been known to let her attention wander. Obviously, she had not grasped the seriousness of their situation, and either hadn't made the call, or had somehow botched it.