Profile k, p.28
Profile K, page 28
‘So far so good,’ she muttered.
The industrial unit was in front of her facing out onto the road, so presumably the stairs she was taking skirted around the side of that. The fact that she’d entered at basement level meant there had to be one additional flight of stairs to get her into the accommodation area of the building. Midnight turned a corner towards the detached edge of the building, so somewhere there had to be a double-back to a hallway between the two flats. In front of her was another sliding door. She put on a cheery face, mobile in hand, ready to act like a building inspector, and stepped through.
It was a lounge. Basic and tidy, if sparse, nothing out of place, but definitely a sitting room rather than a corridor.
‘Bollocks,’ Midnight said. ‘This isn’t a hallway! Which flat am I in?’
A door with a peephole was the exit into the main hallway, double-locked, needing a key to open it.
‘Curtains,’ she said. ‘There were curtains in thirty-five B.’ She raced through another doorway and found an ensuite. A further door out of the bathroom took her into a bedroom.
There was the open window through which she’d heard the first buzzer she’d pressed, and the curtains she’d seen.
‘I’m in his flat,’ she said. ‘Shit it, I’m in his frigging flat.’
The bed was made, and the flat looked normal enough, but at the far edge of the bedroom a roof ladder was down below an open hatch, two suitcases on the floor at its base. Midnight stopped in her tracks. Could Teddy be up there? Was that why he hadn’t heard the door buzzer? She tried to quieten her breathing, grateful that she hadn’t banged any doors and that her phone hadn’t rung. Her heart was beating out of her chest. She grabbed her mobile and set it to silent. Leave or look, she asked herself. There was no movement above her head, no creaking. The flat was as still as it could be. Fighting her own persistence, wishing she could just let it go, she crept to the bottom of the ladder. There was no sound at all, not even the movement of air from above her. He’s at work, she told herself. He’s paying rent and living alone, so he has a job. Stop driving yourself crazy.
She took a step back and her heel caught one of the suitcases. It toppled over with a bang and Midnight cried out. She fled to the bedroom doorway then forced herself to turn and look back. Nothing. No Teddy, no bogeyman chasing her. Absolutely nothing except a fairly tidy room and those cases.
‘Teddy’s running away!’ Midnight said. ‘He must know he’s going to get caught soon.’
She raced back into the bathroom, pulling open the cabinet above the sink. There, exactly as she been hoping for, was a comb. She couldn’t take the whole thing – he’d know straight away that someone had been in – so she pulled out a couple of stray hairs, careful to put it back where she’d found it, and closed the cabinet.
Midnight checked her mobile again. There were no missed calls. She was going to be fine. All she had to do was get out, same route she’d gone in, and make sure she left the doors as she’d found them.
‘Calm down,’ she told herself. ‘Just don’t pass out. Sixty seconds and it’ll all be over.’
Chapter 42
Jessica was starting to freak out. She knew it had only been a few minutes. In terms of distance, Midnight was just around the back of the block. There weren’t any other street entrances in or out. No one had driven or walked into the alleyway. It was fine. The staff in the fish and chip shop were laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world. A police car had even gone past, an officer raising her hand at a teenager. The kid had smiled and waved back. Community policing at its best.
‘Excuse me, love,’ a man stuck his head out of a passing van. ‘Do you know where the nearest petrol station is?’
‘No idea, sorry,’ Jessica told him.
She looked into the alleyway, terrified that someone might have sneaked through in the five seconds she was distracted, but she was panicking unnecessarily. Even so, Midnight was taking too long. Jessica pulled out her mobile to check how many minutes had passed, as a man wandered out of the chip shop, barging straight into her. The mobile went flying, hit the metal bin next to her then skittered into the road, landing just under a parked car.
‘Sorry, I didn’t see you! Here, hold this.’ He dumped a warm paper bundle in her arms and rushed over to retrieve her mobile, getting down onto his hands and knees to reach under the car.
‘I’ll get it,’ she said. ‘It was my fault. I should have been standing further away from the shop door.’
‘I think I’ve found it,’ he said. Jessica heard scraping as he pulled it back out. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid. Have you got insurance? I know a great repair shop but there’s a lot of damage.’
He stood up sheepishly and gave her the handset. The screen was completely smashed. Tiny shards of glass prevented her from tapping it, and the screen was full of pixelated lines.
‘Oh God, not now,’ she said.
‘Can I help? Use my phone if you need to make a call. Do you need a cab or something?’
‘No, but thanks, I can sort it out.’ She kept half an eye on the alleyway, feeling herself start to sweat.
‘Okay then,’ he said. ‘Well, sorry again.’
Jessica brushed the worst of the glass away and waited for him to disappear. She had no choice now but to go after Midnight and hope no one followed her to the back of the building. The man who’d obliterated her phone crossed the alleyway, stopped for a few seconds to eat a handful of chips, then took out his own mobile before turning ninety degrees and heading towards the back of the buildings.
Jessica’s jaw dropped.
‘Holy fuck, not right now,’ she said. If Midnight was doing anything stupid, which given the delay seemed entirely possible, the last thing they needed was a witness. She raced after him. ‘Excuse me!’ she called. He was walking ahead of her, turning the corner to the back of the flats. ‘Actually, I could use some help. Hello?’
He heard her, finally stopping at the base of a set of steps. There was no sign of Midnight anywhere. Jessica wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘Do you need the details of that repair shop?’
‘Yes, please,’ she replied loudly, hoping the sound would echo around the quadrant to wherever Midnight was. ‘That would be …’ Some metres away, only half-concealed, was a motorbike. Jessica didn’t know much about bikes generally, but she knew that one, with its customised paint job. That was Billy’s bike. She’d been on it enough times to know she wasn’t mistaken. The man, still munching chips, followed her eye-line to the bike.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ she said slowly, taking a few steps past him towards the bike. ‘I recognise that—’
The tip of the blade pressed through her hoodie hard enough to sink into her skin right onto a vertebra. She felt the trickle of blood before she’d even registered the pain.
‘Walk up the steps,’ he said. ‘I know you think you can scream for help, but I’ll kill you. Or worse, I’ll leave you alive but so badly injured, you’ll spend every minute of the rest of your life wishing you were dead. I don’t care if I get caught, that’s what you need to remember, Jessica. At least I’d have the memory of covering myself in your blood. There’s no way for anyone to reach you before I sever your spinal cord.’
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.
‘I’m not intending to,’ he whispered. ‘We’re long overdue a conversation. You have so much to thank me for. I’m going to hand you my keys to open the door. Not a word, not a sound.’
She did as she was told, too scared to run or fight. Too scared, even, to cry. Inside the building, he locked the door behind them, knife still pressed into her back. The blade was a fire in her flesh.
‘You really didn’t recognise me?’ Jessica didn’t answer. ‘That’s disappointing. Up the stairs, and go careful. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have already.’
‘You could just let me go,’ she said. ‘If you really don’t want to hurt me, let me leave.’
‘And miss my chance to tell you how I feel? After all these years of loving you from a distance? No, that wouldn’t be right. I’d like you to know me, Jessica. It’s time.’
She took the stairs slowly. What hurt more than the knife in her back was how easily she’d been fooled by a bag of chips. She didn’t know what she’d expected Teddy to be, but an open, apologetic man wasn’t it. Worse, it now occurred to her that he’d recognised her and simply waited until she got her phone out, orchestrating the collision to make sure she couldn’t call anyone. She and Midnight would have been better off swapping roles, which raised another question: where exactly was her partner in crime?
At the top of the stairs there was a door on either side. She had no idea if there was anyone else in the building, and much as she didn’t want the knife to slip any further inside her body, she had to make some sort of noise.
She stumbled, dropping the mobile she was still clutching back down the concrete steps as she went to her knees. Teddy reached forward to grab her, forced to move the knife from her back to the side of her neck. Jessica gave a loud cry, terrified, no acting required.
‘No one’s living in the other apartment,’ Teddy explained patiently. ‘And it’s only me in my flat. The unit downstairs has been empty for a while. But I fully appreciate that you felt you had to try that. If we could move past it now, that would be best. All I want is some time with you. I’ve waited a really long time to tell you how I feel – longer than you could possibly know – but what I’m really curious about, is why you happened to be standing near the entrance to my building today.’ He handed her his keys one more time. ‘Open up, then go and sit on the dining chair. No heroics. If you know who I am, then you’ll know why that would be a bad idea.’
Chapter 43
Everything happened at once. There was a clattering in the hallway beyond the main door out of the flat, then Jessica – her voice unmistakable – cried out. In the stillness that followed, Midnight could hear a man’s voice, low and calm, but not make out the individual words. A second later, a key was sliding into the lock and Midnight was running for the bedroom. It was far too risky to hide under the bed or in the wardrobe, so she took the loft ladder, grateful beyond belief that it didn’t creak under her weight.
The door slammed, and she could hear the man’s voice again. Jessica was crying softly as his voice rose and fell evenly. He was giving instructions, Midnight realised, as she crawled to the rear of the loft on her hands and knees. Most of it wasn’t boarded and a wrong movement would be disastrous. She figured the direction she was going would put her over the top of the bathroom. As she crawled, she could hear their conversation more clearly. Behind a pile of old rugs and discarded sections of carpet, she lay out flat, tried to stop herself shaking, and listened while she attempted to formulate a plan.
‘Hands behind your back, wrists together. Put one ankle next to each chair leg. Well done.’
‘That hurts,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s too tight.’
‘Relax. If you fight it, it’ll hurt more.’
He was fitting restraints on her, Midnight thought. She had to get a message to someone. A call wasn’t going to be possible. If Teddy realised there was someone else in the flat, Jessica would be in even more danger. All she could hope was that his feelings for Jessica would buy them enough time to get assistance.
She took out her mobile and sent a text to DI Ruskin, then forwarded the same message to Amber. Doris only ever used her landline, so there was no way of getting through to her.
S.O.S. she typed. Trapped in loft 35A Jaggard Way. Killer is Edward Hawthorne. He has a hostage, Jessica Finch. 999 HELP.
‘I’m curious, how did you find me?’ he asked. ‘I dreamed of us meeting, but I never wanted it to be like this.’
‘I was meeting a friend,’ she said. ‘That’s why I had my phone out. I was about to call him.’
‘A boyfriend?’ Teddy asked.
Midnight could hear furniture being moved around.
‘Just a friend,’ Jessica replied. Her voice was a tight little knot at the back of her throat. Midnight realised Jessica had no idea at all that she was in there. She thought she was entirely alone. Hearing Jessica’s terror was somehow worse than experiencing her own.
‘Good. You’ve had enough bad experiences with men, but you have me to thank for saving you. Did you like what I did with that rat? I took the first one from your door so you didn’t have deal with it, then when I saw him go back again … well, he got what he deserved.’
‘That was you?’ Jessica’s voice was trembling. ‘Thank you.’
Silence followed, then Jessica cried out again.
In Midnight’s imagination, Teddy was stroking her face and God only knew what else. She needed a weapon, something bigger and heavier than the screwdriver she was still clutching.
Midnight ran her hands around in the semi-dark, feeling for anything in the loft that might help, preferably a baseball or cricket bat, maybe a wrench or a hammer. She let her fingers work their way beneath and inside the roll of carpet next to her, slowly, carefully. If she knocked anything, Teddy would hear it.
The first thing she touched was plastic, a thick pouch with a seam up the side. She ran her fingers a few feet along the seam to the end, found a ziplock-style opener and pulled. The stench hit her at the same moment something flopped out onto her legs. Midnight grabbed it to push it away and found herself holding fingers.
She dropped them and slapped a hand over her mouth, pushing her nails into her cheek. The smell would have been warning enough, if only her brain had enough time to decode the message. The plastic had been holding the gases in, but now the stink of decomposition was in the air and it was unmistakable, irrespective of whether or not it was her first time in proximity to a dead body. It smelled the way she imagined the corpse would look in daylight – rotten and oozing and undone.
When she could breathe without screaming, Midnight let go of her mouth. She didn’t want to touch the body again, but there was no stopping herself. Who was it that Teddy had murdered, and why was their body hidden up here when he’d left his other victims where he’d killed them? She forced her hand back under the carpet, into the plastic sack, and took hold of the fingers again. It was time to establish priorities. The dead body was horrific, but not a threat. If she wanted to live, she was going to have to get brave fast.
‘For fuck’s sake, just do it! This is a victim. The monster’s downstairs,’ she muttered beneath her breath.
The hand belonged, unmistakably, to a man. It was large and swollen, the fingers fat and immoveable. Fighting back panicked tears and trying not to breathe through her nose, she reached further in to find he was wearing a jacket. She slid her fingers into the pocket nearest her. It was empty. Taking a deep breath she leaned across and tried the other side, finding the leather square of a wallet.
Pulling a section of carpet over her head, she risked a few seconds of light from her mobile to look at the driving licence she’d found. Just like that, the mystery of Billy’s sudden disappearance from Jessica’s life was solved. Teddy really had been paying attention to Jessica, killing off anyone who was a threat to her. But leaving Billy’s body to be found might have led the police to Jessica, and that could have put her on notice that someone was watching her. Teddy was psychotic, but he was definitely not stupid.
A phone jangled in the room below. Midnight realised she’d lost track of what Teddy had been saying to Jessica. Everything stopped as he walked across to answer the call.
‘Hello Mum,’ Teddy said. ‘I wasn’t expecting a call. Is everything all right?’
Fuck, Midnight thought. Oh holy fucking fuck.
‘Jessica? Yes, I do remember her.’
Midnight listened hard. Jessica wasn’t making any noise at all and, given that it was her one opportunity to scream for help, she could only assume he’d put a gag over her mouth.
‘She was there earlier today?’ Teddy’s voice was getting louder now. ‘Yes, sure, you can give me her mobile number. I’d like to call her.’
There was a pause.
‘Thank you. Yes, I’ll see you Sunday. Beef would be great. Mum, I can’t talk long, I’m in the middle of cooking.’
Midnight began searching frantically for anything at all that might give her an advantage. They were out of time. Even if it was a risk, she had to dial 999. She might not be able to speak, but if she let the call roll, they might be able to locate her.
As she pressed the numbers, putting her mobile on silent, she heard Teddy say, ‘Two girls? What sort of car were they in? No, it’s not a problem. I keep telling you, I’m fine now. Listen, something’s burning. See you Sunday.’
The game was up.
‘Where is she?’ Teddy shouted at Jessica. Midnight heard the rip of tape as he released Jessica’s gag. ‘Is she downstairs in a car, waiting for you?’
‘She went home,’ Jessica sobbed. ‘She was going to fetch some friends to come back with her. That’s why I was waiting on the street.’
Clever woman, Midnight thought.
‘Did you call the police?’ Teddy shouted. ‘Did you?’
Jessica paused fractionally too long.
‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘Well done. But why would she leave you here alone? If you went back to our village, it’s because someone made a connection between you and me. So what were you doing this close to my flat, just at the entrance to …’
Midnight saw something metallic glinting in the distance as she spun her mobile torchlight wildly around the loft. Metal was good. It offered at least the possibility of a weapon. She glanced at her phone, hoping against hope that Ruskin or Amber had passed on her SOS and someone was trying to triangulate her signal and get help there.
Below, she could almost hear the tick of Teddy’s brain as he tried to figure out what they’d been up to.
