DS Clarke fiddled with his ring as he listened to the transmission from inside his car. He’d parked up in the Morrison’s car park, so that he wasn’t far if anything went wrong. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t close enough, if disaster struck. After all, he’d only just been inside the station when Emily was attacked. She had been thirty seconds away. Thirty seconds too far.
“Testing, testing,” came the sweet voice of Jules. Rebecca was right — she even sounded young. He’d been surprised by just how fresh-faced she looked and couldn’t help but wonder how she coped in the police force. Perhaps she was inherently tough under her rosy exterior.
“Okay,” Clarke let out a sigh, his eyes drawn towards the darkening clouds above. “Let’s do this.”
They had a tiny camera that they had pinned on to Jules’ “school tie.” It was actually Rebecca’s old form badge that she still had in her memory box; Clarke had had no idea she was so sentimental. They’d fitted it with the tiny camera, although due to the height difference, it meant they would only see up to Monty’s chest.
They’d timed it perfectly, the idea being that Jules had been out after school and had been dumped by her high school boyfriend. She would look suitably upset and vulnerable and just happen to be hanging around on the bridge right by the front of Monty’s flat. Just in time for his walk home from work.
The microphone was fitted just under the collar of what was meant to be her school blazer. Jules, another sentimental one, it seemed, had kept her old blazer and, because of her tiny size, it still fit her. Fortunately, Jules had been to school in the city, so the uniform wasn’t out of place amongst the other real pupils hanging around.
Rebecca was placed nearby, pretending to be waiting for a bus just the other side of the road, near Morrisons. She had donned a dark wig and had her hood up, to ensure that Monty wouldn’t spot her across the road. She was pretending to watch something on her phone, while in fact live-streaming the scene back to the team. Clarke’s confidence lifted as he watched. Jules was playing the part well and had smudged some mascara under her eyes so it looked like she had been crying. She stood half slumped, as a teenager would, while appearing to furiously message on her iPhone. She even twiddled her hair between her fingers, as Clarke had noticed many an absent-minded teenage girl do.
It wasn’t long before Monty appeared, back to his usual smart attire of a suit and briefcase. He didn’t slow his pace or anything, but went to walk straight past Jules towards the block of flats. Right on cue, Jules threw her phone down in anger.
“Aargh, stupid phone!”
Monty jumped a little, clearly taken aback by the sudden tantrum from the young girl on the bridge.
Jules turned towards him, as planned. “Excuse me, sir, please. Do you live here?” She gestured towards the flats.
Monty eyed her for a moment before answering. “I do, yes.”
“Could I please come in and use your phone and your toilet? Mine’s died, and my boyfriend’s just ditched me here, and I don’t have any money to get the bus home, and it’s about to rain and all.” Jules spoke frantically. The threat of heavy rain had been a nice touch — no teenage girl liked getting caught out in the rain, ever since the invention of hair straighteners. “He cheated on me with Tiff — she’s been my best friend for, like, forever, and everyone’s known about it — they’ve all been talking about it behind my back. I just want to ring my mum and get her to pick me up. I just want to get home.” She began to cry. Clarke wondered if perhaps she was wasted in police work — this girl should have gone into acting or something. She was nailing it.
Monty took the bait and invited her in. Clarke knew he’d jump at the chance, the slimy git. At that point, they lost Rebecca’s camera feed, so he only had Jules’ tie-pin camera to rely on. The view wasn’t ideal, due to the almost comical height difference between them, but they had a good feed via the microphone — that was the main thing. Clarke leaned in closely to the portable speaker, not wanting to miss a single, crucial word.
“So, you’d like to use my phone?” It was Monty’s voice, as calm and well-spoken as ever.
“Yes, please,” said Jules. “But could I have a drink first, please? I’m so thirsty.”
“Of course.”
Clarke stayed frozen in the car as he watched the blur of movement across the camera. He barely dared to blink, for fear of missing something. The car darkened as the clouds above grew heavier, preparing for a storm.
“Wow, your place is really nice,” Jules said, an air of flirtatious admiration in her voice. “Your wife must love it.”
Monty’s voice was quiet where he was a couple of meters away from Jules in the kitchen, but Clarke just about heard his reply. “Oh, I don’t have a partner. It’s just me.”
“Oh?” The camera moved where Jules tugged at her own shirt, revealing a little more modest cleavage than before. “I find that hard to believe, a hottie like you.”
An amused guffaw came from Monty, and Clarke bet he couldn’t believe his luck. He shuddered at the thought of it.
Jules carried on. “I wish boys my age were mature like you. The boys at my school suck — they’re all just immature dickheads.”
“Well,” Monty said as he turned back around and passed Jules the glass of squash. “That’s the difference between boys and men.”
Clarke cringed as the undeniable sound of thunder rumbled in the distance. He hoped that it wouldn’t affect their feed. “Keep going, Jules,” he muttered to himself.
“Yeah, you’re right. I need to date an older man next time,” she said. The camera was blurring all over the place where she was moving around his flat, eyeing up the paintings on the wall. She stopped in front of some hardback books on the shelves in the corner. “Oh, I love books. What’s your favourite?”
Monty slowly followed her over to the bookcase. As Jules pretended to fiddle with her tie, the camera flashed upwards and Clarke caught a flash of Monty’s upper half. A devilish smile on his face.
“I like the classics,” Monty said with a new edge to his voice. “Hardy, especially. Plus, you can’t go wrong with a good old crime-thriller.”
“I can’t see any crime ones here. Where are they?”
“I just keep the classic hardbacks on display out here. The rest are in the bedroom.”
A moment’s pause, then, “Can I see?”
This was it,the moment they’d been waiting for. Despite being adamant that he never caved to his urges, Monty had already allowed someone he’d find tempting to come into his home. Now he was given the prospect of her entering his bedroom, his lair. Clarke waited with baited breath, the thunder rumbling away in the distance.
“Of course.”
Moments later, Jules was in Monty’s bedroom, and Clarke’s hairs on the back of his neck were tingling.
“You still in position outside, Reynolds?”
“Yep, I’m here in the pissing rain. Are you hearing this thunder?”
“Yeah, let’s just hope we don’t lose the audio feed.”
“Creepy bugger, isn’t he?”
A crash of lightening made them both jump. “Shit …” Clarke hated storms, always had. “Be ready, Reynolds, it could escalate quickly now.” He tuned back out and listened into Jules’ feed — they were still talking books in the bedroom.
“You know …” She’d upped her tone to extremely flirty. She reminded Clarke of when Nigella talked through her recipes, letting her voice linger on any word which could be interpreted sexually. “A mature man who knows his literature, now that’s quite a turn-on.”
Another flash of light followed by a rumble of thunder. Clarke tried to block it out as he focussed on the audio, his hands on the car door handle now, ready to run out into the storm if anything went wrong.
“There’s, um, something else you might be interested in next door then, if that’s the case.”
“Next door? Not in here?” Jules nodded her head towards the king-sized bed in the room. Clarke imagined that she might have winked at him, too, for extra emphasis.
“Next door,” Monty repeated.
The camera stayed focussed on the back of Monty’s head as they walked into the second bedroom, which evidently he used as a study. There were plenty more books on the shelves in there, and a grand oak desk in the middle of the room. Clarke grimaced as the thought crossed his mind — was Monty hoping to have his way with her on the desk?
“Get ready,” Clarke whispered through to Rebecca. His heart rate was creeping up. What if Monty had a temper he’d so far hidden from them? What if he had already hurt Jules before he and Rebecca got in? She was still young herself, in her early twenties. She was still someone’s little girl. His eyes flickered to the photo of Kacey, stuck to the inside of the sun visor in the car. He batted it shut.
“I do a lot of reading in here,” said Monty. There was something about his voice now, with an edge to it that frightened Clarke. He sounded like a man on the brink of losing control. “But not of fiction.”
“Oh?” came Jules’ voice, sounding a little less assured than before. “What sort of reading, then?”
“I’ll show you, but first …”
All of a sudden, his hand swept towards Jules’ chest, knocking the camera from under her collar.
“Shit, Jules? Jules? Are you there?” Clarke’s heartrate shot into overdrive as the feed went dark, the microphone picking up the unmistakable sounds of struggle, followed only by muffled static. Another crash of lightning illuminated the sky before the feed went completely dead.