The Siren (37 page)

‘This one’s not recording.’ He tried one of the other CCTV feeds. ‘In fact they’re all off.’

Marks leant closer. ‘Since when?’

‘Nothing for the last forty-eight hours.’

Goodhew checked for the obvious, calling up lists of files deleted in the last two days, and searching for any others created or modified during that time too. He found nothing.

‘We shouldn’t be surprised,’ Marks remarked. ‘He didn’t remain free all these years by leaving a trail of evidence.’

‘Or by getting grassed up.’ Goodhew stared down at the keyboard, and found himself thinking about something Tamsin had said. In fact it was just about the last thing she’d said
to him, but definitely the most useful:
Why would he hurt Stefan and Rachel?

FORTY-EIGHT

Kimberly lay on her back, her body straight with her ankles touching and her hands resting at her sides. She realized, as she regained consciousness, that she was in a hospital
bed. She’d arrived there by stretcher and had barely moved a muscle since. Her sleep had been heavy, so she had no idea how much time had passed. She remembered she’d been drugged and
her body still felt reluctant, tempting her to drift off again, but at least nothing seemed to hurt.

She thought of Riley, then. Had someone really told her that he was safe – or had that only been a dream too?

She wondered whether she’d now open her eyes and discover that she’d missed days rather than hours. The thought scared her for reasons she didn’t totally understand, but it
made it illogical to hide herself away in sleep any longer.

There were three other spaces on the ward but none were occupied and even the area around her own bed was devoid of any personal effects – no clothes draped over the nearby chair, the
bedside locker empty and no flowers or get well messages on top of it. She hoped the absence of the latter items meant she was still a new arrival. Someone had left a jug of water and a half-filled
clear plastic tumbler next to her bed. She took a sip but the water tasted stale and nowhere near as refreshing as the business card she suddenly spotted protruding from under the jug.

A phone rang at the nurses’ station. The voice that picked up and answered was warm but firm. ‘Miss Guyver? No, not yet.’

‘I’m awake,’ Kimberly called out. ‘Hello?’

‘Hold on.’ The nurse brought the handset into the room, but hesitated before handing it over. ‘I can just give them a message if you like?’

‘No, no,’ Kimberly began struggling up on to one elbow.

‘Careful, you’ve had quite a knock and some nasty bruising.’

Kimberly smiled ruefully. ‘I’m just finding that out.’ She made it as far as a half-sitting position, and waited while the nurse jammed an extra pillow behind her spine.
‘OK,’ she nodded, and held her hand out for the phone. ‘Who is it?’ she mouthed to the nurse first.

The nurse beamed. ‘Your boyfriend, Jay.’

There was a certain look that appeared on Goodhew’s face when his thoughts were interlacing and combining and percolating. Marks had seen it before on only a couple of
occasions, but recognized that the end product would be worth waiting for.

The first officers were arriving, so he turned away to deal with them. When he looked back across the interview room Goodhew had gone.

PC Bell came over. ‘Are you looking for Goodhew? He was at the top of the stairs when we arrived, talking on the phone and pacing around. But he said to tell you two things.’ Bell
held up two fingers and bent each back in turn. ‘Firstly he reckons there’s no chance that this is suicide and, secondly, he was going to the cemetery. Then he shot off like a rocket .
. . you know, like he does.’

Marks pursed his lips together and chose to say nothing. Even the next moment, when he received a call to say that Kimberly Guyver had absconded from her hospital bed, he had nothing else to
add.

Of course it hadn’t been Jay on the phone but the call still gave Kimberly the incentive to find a quiet moment in which to slip in and out of the adjoining ward,
successfully raiding it for clothes, cash and a mobile phone. She felt no guilt although she hated any kind of debt. But it was the need to clear a greater debt that played on her conscience, and
now made her leave the building. She guessed she could have met him on the ward, but she didn’t want nurses telling her when she was allowed a conversation, and for how long. And she
didn’t think they would have been happy to let her out of her bed to make her way along to the patients’ lounge.

She’d had her fill of official authority over the last few days. She was grateful for it, too, but it would be better when she could leave this chapter of her life behind.

It was 1 a.m. but she felt like she was finally stepping into the daylight. Her whole body ached and she was forced to walk slowly as she left Addenbrooke’s Hospital main building and
crossed to the taxi rank. She wore only the clothes she’d snatched – just jeans and a jumper, with nothing else underneath. The night air tickled her bare skin and made her shiver.

She sat in the front, next to the driver, and asked him if he minded turning up the heater. The hot air poured out immediately, leaving her feeling no better, so she put it down to exhaustion.
Then, a few minutes later, she began to wonder whether it was due to shock or her injuries. Her head began to pound, she touched her scalp and winced as, for the first time, she realized the skin
was held by a thick welt of stitches.

She was still shivering as they turned into Mill Road, and by then she realized that she was scared. She assured herself that she had nothing to fear any more, that she was there with her olive
branch, and only paving the way to a better future.

She wished she could have arranged to meet somewhere else, but where else wasn’t deserted at this time? In any case, the cemetery had never scared her before. Hadn’t it always felt
like her home ground?

She slid her hand into her front pocket to pull out a stolen twenty-pound note. Her fingers found the business card first, then she delved deeper and retrieved the money at the same time.

The card was a standard size, and blank apart from the mobile number scribbled across it in biro. She couldn’t remember how it came to be on her bedside table or if he’d given it to
her, or even if she’d seen him write it, but she’d instantly known that it came from DC Goodhew. She guessed he’d now be asleep, or too far away to come, but, for the first time
since leaving Addenbrooke’s, the shivering stopped.

He answered almost instantly, and she told him where to find her and hung up before he tried to ask her what she was doing there.

Now she was inside the graveyard, and waiting at the grave of 3192 Shoeing Smith T. Smith of the Suffolk Yeomanry. The grave was white marble and lay just a few feet from the circular footpath
at the very centre of the cemetery. On any clear night it glowed like the moon, making it easy to find. She knew, without reading the inscription, that he’d died on 30th November 1914 at the
age of 37.

In the past she had felt sadder for him than for the younger casualties, figuring that he’d been old enough to understand what he had to lose. Now she realized it wasn’t just about
age, but how much value you put on your life. The voice in her head that kept her reckless was unexpectedly still.

She tried to remind herself that there was nothing to fear, and told herself to rehearse what she needed to say. Then, behind her, she heard the heavy tread of a man approaching.

She felt her legs turn leaden and the shivering return. The last thing she would remember was the night becoming blacker and the warm trickle of blood as it spread across her scalp.

Goodhew took Marks’ car and sped away, though he doubted he could make it there in under five minutes. He radioed in immediately but the station was close to Mill Road
and he doubted there was anyone else who could get there faster.

He tried the mobile Kimberly had used to ring him, but she still didn’t reply.

When she’d first rung he’d imagined her still on a ward at Addenbrooke’s, connected up to a gadget or two, and groggy maybe from sedation. He’d listened to a few seconds
of her apologizing for bothering him,
I know I’m wasting your time
and
I know I’m safe now, but
. . . then she told him where she was going. She had a head injury, it
wasn’t even safe for her to be out of bed. He wished he could have shouted at her the moment she said she’d left the hospital; instead she hung up, never giving him enough time to tell
her he knew who she was meeting and how much danger she was in.

He drove up Mill Road and as close as possible to the cemetery entrance, then jumped out of the vehicle and ran in through the gates. He could just pick out the line of the footpath, but stayed
on the grass next to it and moved silently towards the centre circle.

There were trees and shrubs to skirt, and he was edging round what surely must be the last clump when he heard an abrupt movement. He crept to one side of the nearest tree and bent down to get a
view beyond its low-hanging branches. No one was visible from that angle, but he could pick out a small rustling sound, so he inched towards it. He was only a couple of yards from the clearing,
when it stopped. The stillness triggered him to action: he ducked under the final branches and into the open.

A fox stared back at him, its muzzle bloodied, a dead rabbit at its feet.

Goodhew realized then that there was still another clump of trees between him and where he needed to be. And from the other side came a voice, a flash of torchlight, and the first half of a
rapidly smothered scream.

Goodhew ran.

Kimberly regained consciousness. She wasn’t in the hospital now but somewhere cold and damp. The cemetery. She remembered the blood too and winced as she touched her
scalp. A clump of her hair was missing around the stitches and they were coming apart, but that didn’t bother her as much as she thought it might. It would be OK, and it would heal.

She guessed she’d passed out and wondered whether she’d missed him. She thought he’d wait for her, then she thought DC Goodhew would have come too, but there was now no sign of
either of them. The nearest headstone felt solid enough, so she gripped it and pulled herself upright. She picked out the shape of a nearby grave; Father Daniel lay there, buried in 1921. There was
an empty space on his headstone as though he hadn’t expected to remain alone. Kimberly knew this grave and that was when she realized she’d wandered away from the centre.

A moment later she spotted him, standing about thirty feet away. He wore jeans and white trainers, and he stood still for several seconds before he turned through 180 degrees, then did the same
in the opposite direction. He called out her name, his voice soft, with no anger in it. Perhaps he already knew the truth, so perhaps there would be no awkward moment before she told him. Simply
the embrace of forgiveness.

‘Kim,’ he repeated.

‘Over here,’ she responded.

He moved in her general direction. ‘Where are you?’

‘Here.’ She raised one hand, still gripping the headstone with the other.

He still hadn’t picked out her exact location, and stopped, his white trainers planted squarely. Suddenly his tone changed. ‘Are you fucking with me, Kimberly?’

She released her grip and slid down on to the grass. It wasn’t because of the swear word he used, since he swore all the time, like other people would use a noun or a verb. It was the use
of her full name that rattled her, something she’d picked up on just weeks after they’d met. He continually used nicknames or abbreviations when he spoke to you and that was fine, but
when he was talking to you and started using your full name, it meant you were in the shit.

Deep fucking shit.

Dougie Lewton only used full names before sackings or when dishing out beatings. He used them when he was angered beyond reason, and when his mind was set on wiping out anyone who dared oppose
him.

And, of all the graves in the cemetery, she was hiding behind one of the smallest. She kept totally still with her face and hands concealed behind the stone. The rest of her clothes were dark
but she knew it was just a matter of time before he found her.

Think.

Think.

Think!

‘I never killed Nick,’ she yelled. ‘Craig did it, but I didn’t know until yesterday.’

A torch flashed close to her, illuminating Father Daniel’s stone first, then swinging towards the one next to hers. The beam seemed to intensify even as it closed in. Then he was on her,
and she tried to shout out, but the scream was knocked from her lungs.

He pinned her down, his sheer bulk preventing even her hands from moving. ‘You thought you’d stabbed him to death, though, didn’t you?’

She nodded silently.

‘And Stefan and Rachel helped you dump his body. Then you didn’t even know whose kid you were pregnant with. And you had Nick’s baby, and kept Riley from us.’ He pushed
his face close to hers, his breath hot and damp as he hissed her name. ‘Kimberly, you should have died under that train.’

He glanced over his shoulder, and she instantly knew what he was planning.

‘You’ll get caught,’ she gasped.

He shook his head and a moment later hauled her to her feet, then almost immediately threw her to the ground at the foot of a tall, weathered headstone. He pressed his foot on to her chest and
began to rock the stone. She knew it wouldn’t take long for him to topple it. Fragments of stone started peppering her face, confirming the trajectory the whole monument would follow.

‘I will, you see, because I have a fucking alibi,’ he announced, as the tombstone began to visibly sway.

The next moment was a blur. The dust was stinging her eyes, making her blink. It seemed like a dark shadow had passed over her, springing from nowhere and flying in a low arc, finally
demolishing the grave and taking Dougie Lewton down too.

There was a terrible silence, then she wiped her eyes clear. And saw DC Goodhew now quietly cuffing her winded attacker.

‘Fucking useless alibi, Douglas,’ she muttered as she watched Goodhew read him his rights.