Jack went for a drive.
Laura was at home trying to revive herself after the horrors of the day’s events. Jack felt an intense need to protect her, to be with her, but he didn’t want to suffocate her. She said she needed her space to process what had happened, and had told Jack to go out and keep up with the investigation. She was even more determined to catch the killer now.
He didn’t know where to go at first. Joe was still at the hospital with Rachel, and so he just drove the country roads, enjoying the echo of the engine as he went along hedgerow lanes and the cool night breeze. But all the roads around Turners Fold seemed to head towards Blackley, the countryside spoiled eventually by the orange strips of street lighting that rolled down the seven hills of the town. The Whitcroft estate was on the fringes of Blackley, and Jack found himself driving towards it.
The estate seemed quiet, although the aroma of barbecues drifted in the warm night air, the laughs and chatter loud in the darkness. He thought he heard a bottle smash somewhere, and then there was a shout. A balmy Saturday night would bring the drinkers onto the streets, provide Dolby with the kind of story he wanted, even if it was only a few shots of teenagers sharing alcopops.
A couple of circuits didn’t reveal much, and so he cut onto the side streets, hoping to catch people looking like they were up to no good. Even the side streets were quiet though, and it didn’t look like Dolby was going to get much to write about. He was about to head away from the estate when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket.
‘Hello?’
‘Jack? Is that Jack?’
He recognised the voice straight away. It was Emma. She was slurring more than before, but there was something else there too. Her voice was higher, more frantic.
‘Emma, it’s me. Are you okay?’
‘They’ve taken him,’ she said, and then she started to sob.
‘Who have they taken?’
‘Simon. They’ve taken Simon.’
Jack gave a sigh of relief and then smiled to himself. They had him. It was over.
‘It’s okay, Emma, everything will be all right. Let the police do their job.’
‘It wasn’t the police,’ she said. ‘It was Don. I saw him.’ Her words came out thick with tears.
He pulled up to the kerb. ‘Calm down. Talk to me. What do you mean?’
Jack listened as Emma poured out the story between deep breaths.
‘I went to Simon’s house,’ she said. ‘I know where he lives. He doesn’t know that, but I saw his van one day, just at the side of his house. I waited outside and I saw him. So after you’d gone, I thought some more about what had happened, and I just needed someone to talk to. I went to his house, and I saw them, Don and two of his men, pulling him to a car.’
She started to cry again.
‘Why are they taking him, Jack? Did you tell Don what I said? Is that why?’
His mind raced with the implications. If they had taken PC Abbott, what if he wasn’t the killer? ‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’
He tried calling Laura, but there was no reply.
‘Shit!’ he said, his tyres screeching as he set off.
Laura sat on the side of the bath as the water filled the tub behind her, wincing as she took off her clothes, the stretching and moving aggravating her aches and bruises. She just needed to get herself clean, to somehow wash off the events of the day. She heard her phone ring but left it. She wanted to empty her mind so that she could recall her attacker.
She caught herself in the mirror as her clothes slipped to the floor, and she stepped forward to examine her bruises. There was a large one on her shoulder, and her elbow was grazed.
As she slid into the water, some of her tension slipped away. The bubbles gathered around her neck as she sank deeper into the water, the lavender scents relaxing her, and she closed her eyes. Suddenly the light and calmness of the bathroom was replaced by the darkness of the factory. The warmth of the water and the scent of the bubbles made her feel like she was floating, and she was able to take herself back to the deserted building, to the echoes and the dust.
Laura tried to recall her first impression of him, her glimpse through the gloom as he rose up. He was tall. That had been her first thought. And slim. No, it was more than slim. Skinny, so that he seemed to stoop, uncomfortable with his size. He wasn’t a big man. Just a tall one.
She thought of him as he had stood over Rachel. That distracted her for a moment as she thought of what he had done to her. She concentrated on getting rid of those images. She had to think about him, not Rachel. She thought at the time that she hadn’t been able to see his face, that he was always in shadow, but as she thought some more, there was something. It was the way he cocked his head, like a bird, curious, as he watched her come towards him. He never lost his nerve. He just waited for her to get close, so that he could get her with the Taser. Laura knew that she had to get within fifteen feet for the Taser to be effective, and so he had been patient. For Laura, that made him dangerous.
She tried to think of how he seemed when he had leaned over her. Laura’s body hadn’t been working, but her senses were, and she remembered there was a smell, and with her eyes closed, it came back to her. It was something damp and musty. And cigarettes. But not filtered cigarettes. No, it was the rich, cloying smell of roll-up cigarettes.
Laura thought of him as he leaned over her, her body incapable of reacting, his hands long and thin. Then she thought of the way he looked again, his head cocked. And something about that niggled her. It seemed familiar, she had definitely seen it before, but she couldn’t be sure where.
He was a police officer, that’s where all the clues pointed. The Taser gun. The handcuffs. Was he killing people when he was on duty, using his uniform to lull these women into a false sense of security? They hadn’t found Simon Abbott as he wasn’t on duty and wasn’t at home, but it wouldn’t take long, she was sure of that. But Shane was dead, so they thought, and so was Simon Abbott just exacting some revenge for a friend?
But it might not be Abbott. She tried to think of all the officers who passed through the station. Was there anyone that tall who struck her as being too quiet, maybe too attentive towards her? But she knew that that line of thinking wouldn’t lead her anywhere, because murderers often appeared to be the most ordinary people in the world. The nice man from down the street, or the one who helped out with church on Sunday.
Then she thought of something. She remembered the van. It had been behind her when she was jogging home, which meant that the killer knew where she lived. She sat up straight in the bath, goosebumps on her arms. He could come to her home. She was naked, vulnerable. Why had she told Jack to go out?
Laura stepped quickly out of the bath, wrapping a towel around her body. She needed to get away from the house.