CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

After Jon had liaised with uniform regarding a full-scale search of Windrush, he went back to his desk to wait for Rosie to return, but instead found Kate waiting for him.

‘It’s on tonight at ten thirty. Rosie’s just rung me.’

‘Where?’ asked Jon, feeling his throat constrict.

‘Apparently that isn’t divulged until half an hour before it kicks off. I’m not sure what Rosie and Scott said to them, but although Chloe is well pissed off, her brother Luke is singing like a bird. Scott reckons he’s got the wind up about something that happened there a week or so ago, and he’s very keen to help us.’ Kate gave him a tight smile. ‘He’s told Rosie that she can use his name as a contact to get in.’

‘And she trusts him?’

‘Luke has been going for a while now. Not to every party, but quite a few of them. He is considered ‘safe’ by the organisers, not that he knows much about them.’

‘Where’s Rosie now?’ he asked.

‘She’s gone to borrow some trendy gear from her niece. She’ll be back at ten, to wait for the call.’ Kate glanced up at the wall clock.’ It’s only six o’clock. I’m off to see Toni, then I’m going home for some supper. Why don’t you and Gary get away too, just be back by a quarter to ten, okay?’

Jon agreed, although he was having very bad vibes about Rosie’s assignment. With a frustrated groan, he switched off his computer, picked up his jacket and went to find Gary.

 

Jon sat silently in his car, the key in the ignition, but the engine not turned on.

Gary had already gone home to organise himself, the boss was on her way to see Toni, and he was sitting in the staff car park desperately trying to think.

Something was bothering him, something that he couldn’t quite get his head around. This time it wasn’t visions of tunnels, although he was still getting them, it was something to do with Toni Clarkson, although for the life of him he couldn’t remember what. His overpowering and puzzling concern for Rosie was wrecking his normal rational thought patterns.

He needed to be busy to take his mind off the forthcoming night. He took out his pocket book and leafed through it. His hurried script was sometimes almost illegible, even to the hand that wrote it, but as he read the bullet points from what the girl had said in the hospital, the conversation flooded back. And so did the tiny detail that had been niggling away at the back of his brain.

“Someone was singing.”

He frowned. When the drug was taking hold of young Toni, she had recalled that one particular point vividly. He sat back and exhaled loudly. What kind of singing would have made a girl who was on the brink of succumbing to a powerful drug remember it. It had to be something unusual to make an impression in her failing memory.

With a little snort of agitation, Jon pulled out his phone and dialled his boss’s mobile number.

‘Ma’am? Sorry to ring you when you’re driving but when you speak to Toni, ask her what she meant about someone singing. She mentioned it when she told us about the man demanding to know her birth date. I know it sounds inconsequential, but I think it’s vital that we know what she heard.’

The hands-free was crackly, but Kate promised that she’d ask. ‘Shall I ring you and tell you what she says?’

‘No, ma’am. I’ll see you later, just as long as the question has been put to her.’ He thanked her and closed his phone. He particularly did not want her ringing back, because there was something he needed to do, and apart from the fact that the DCI would not approve at all, he didn’t want any interruptions. It may have nothing at all to do with it, but this was not the first time he’d heard someone mention singing.

With new determination, he started the car and headed for the marshes.

As he accelerated out onto the main road, he glanced at the clock. He had plenty of time, and his idea may not work, but if it did.., well, actually he wasn’t sure what it would mean; but it was something he wanted to know, he needed to know. Jon put his foot down and drove out of town.

 

Kate drove fast over the lonely fenland towards Harlan Marsh. The long reed-edged drove seemed endless. There was nothing coming towards her, and sometimes it felt as if she was driving on a road with no end. She slowed down a little. She’d learnt from the moment she began driving in this terrain, never to underestimate these seemingly uncomplicated roads. A change in camber, a hump-back bridge, a sudden and unexpected bend or even simple complacency could have you nose down in a deep ditch in seconds.

As she eased the car around a bend and saw Harlan Marsh town ahead of her, she was overwhelmed by tiredness. This visit really could have waited until the morning, but then she needed to get the search party out to the old sanatorium. Even so, right now she could be at home with her husband and her boys. Kate yawned and wondered how David would take the news that she would be eating and dashing off out again. Probably not too well. She needed to get this chat with young Toni out of the way, and get home as quickly as possible.

When she arrived, Neil Clarkson opened the door. His demeanour was not exactly welcoming. ‘Keep it short, DCI Reynard, my daughter is exhausted.’

She probably is, but she is alive, Kate thought to herself, and safe, unlike poor Emily. ‘Of course. Just a few minutes with her, and I’ll be out of your hair.’

‘Alone?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘It’s better that way. Youngsters don’t like their parents sharing their secrets.’

He stood back reluctantly and pointed down the long hallway. ‘Third door along the right-hand side. Knock loudly; she’s probably glued to her MP4 player.’

Toni’s room was a melee of girly-teen-things, shocking things and kid’s stuff. It seemed to Kate that she was at war with the many sides to her emerging personality; a young woman trying to be cool and ‘out there’, but still scared to let her childhood go.

Two cuddly teddy bears sat in front of a poster showing some kind of night creatures locked in a bloody, pointed-fanged embrace. Kate’s boys love Twilight, but this had a more sinister, erotic edge to it, and she was pretty sure that Neil Clarkson and his wife were not particularly happy with it adorning their daughter’s wall.

‘What’s the music?’ she asked, as Toni took out the ear pieces.

‘The All Starz,’ she looked at Kate patiently. ‘You won’t have heard of them.’

‘Oh, I didn’t put you down as an Emo.’

For a moment her eyes widened, then there was a hint of amusement but she didn’t comment on Kate’s apparently amazing knowledge of pop culture. And that was fine, because it was complete luck that she’d hit on Eddie’s favourite band. Well, this week’s favourite band. It could be anything from the Beatles or Taylor Swift, to the entire cast of ‘Glee’, where Eddie was concerned.

‘I’ve been thinking about Emily,’ said Toni slowly. ‘Did I tell you she spoke funny?’

Kate started. ‘Like a speech impediment?’

‘No, like an accent. I think she’s from Eastern Europe.’ Toni’s fingers randomly brushed the touch- screen of her MP4 player and brilliant coloured pictures flashed across it. ‘I’m not sure, but I can remember something about grandparents who wouldn’t leave their village, even though it was really gross. You know? Like bombed out?’

An immigrant! Kate puffed out her cheeks and exhaled slowly. Of course! The girl was an illegal! And that would be why they had no missing person report.

‘And her name’s not really Emily.’ Toni stared down at a photo of a moody looking youth with an oily-tanned torso and bleached teeth. ‘She said the English didn’t pronounce her real name properly, so she called herself Emily, because she liked it.’

Kate rubbed her forehead and tried to think. This was getting more difficult by the moment.

‘And that really is all I can remember.’ Toni removed the artificially beautiful boy from her screen and replaced it with the latest Pokemon character.

‘You’ve done well, Toni. I’m proud of you.’

‘Do you think she’s dead, Chief Inspector Reynard?’

The bluntness of the question made Kate shudder. ‘I’m doing my best to get to her before anything like that can happen.’

‘I think she’s dead. The men at that place..,’ Toni gave an involuntary shiver. ‘I saw their eyes. Especially one of them, the one that hurt me, he had horrible eyes.’

‘How do you mean?’ Kate asked softly.

‘Like blank. Like, yeah, he was all excited about the day that she was born and all that, but even then his eyes were still blank. Special effects for a zombie film can make that happen, but I’ve never seen a human being really look that way.’

Kate felt a distinct chill descend around them when the girl spoke about the man who had taken her, and she was sure that if Jon had been with her, he would have seen spirits, bad spirits. Kate suddenly thought about Jon’s question. She had almost forgotten to ask.

‘Toni, when we spoke to you at the hospital, you said that somebody was singing, do you recall that?’

Toni screwed her face up in concentration. ‘I’d forgotten that. It seemed so weird! I mean totally creepy. In that stinking cellar with the candles and the wine and funky music playing, this one guy starts to sing, and his voice was…’ She lifted her hands in a little gesture of amazement. ‘Like some choir boy! But better, stronger. I mean, like really powerful, like he had no control over the volume. It was kind of awesome.’

Kate frowned. It meant nothing to her, but she silently hoped that it would mean something to Jon. ‘Thanks for that, Toni. I’m going to go now. I think it’s time you got some rest, okay?’ She took a card from her bag and passed it to the girl. ‘Maybe you could write down anything else that comes to you. Anything else, no matter how small, and ring me?’

The girl took the card, and her cold fingers touched Kate’s as she did so. ‘I keep seeing her. I see her face as they dragged her away.’

She placed the card on her bedside cabinet and then slowly turned back towards Kate. Protecting her ribs with one hand, she slipped a thin arm around her and held on tightly, burying her head into Kate’s chest. ‘All because of her birthday..,’ she sobbed, ‘…if it had been different, it could have been me they took, couldn’t it?’

This was no longer the gobby little pain in the arse that had almost brought her parents to their knees. Kate stroked her hair and made soothing noises. ‘But it wasn’t you was it, sweetheart? You are safe home where you belong. Now all you need to do to help Emily is write down any new memories, anything that comes to you, okay? And then, when we find her, and we will find her, Toni, then you can put all this behind you and get on with your life.’

The girl cried for a little longer, and as Kate held her she was conscious of the shadowy figure of her father waiting anxiously outside her door. At least he had the good sense not to enter.

Kate left some ten minutes later, convinced that although Toni was safe; there was another young victim out there somewhere, waiting for them to find her. The only thing Kate wasn’t convinced about; was whether they would find her alive.

 

The river moved soundlessly towards the estuary and out into the vast area of inland sea that was the Wash. The evening was misty and the light was failing fast, even though it was not late.

Jon parked in the same place as before and walked quickly across the weed and bramble covered concrete to the old boathouse. Above him great swathes of fast moving clouds scudded across the darkening sky. The ragged length of crime scene tape still flapped around, and he shivered and pulled his thin bomber jacket closer to him. It wasn’t the wind that chilled him; it was the fact that really didn’t want to be doing this, but something told him that he had no choice.

He slipped silently into the dingy interior of the crumbling building, smelt the familiar damp and decay, and the chill increased. He moved across to exactly the same point as he had done before, and hunkered down to sit on his heels and wait.

He swallowed, gritted his teeth, and looked around nervously. He may be completely wrong about this, after all the connection that he was making was tenuous in the extreme. There was absolutely no link between Jamie Durham’s death and Shauna Kelly, or Toni or the missing girl, Emily, but there was one tiny, itty-bitty little niggle in Jon’s mind, and it had to be answered before he could rest.

With a soft sigh, he shifted off his heels and sat with his back to the wall. He wanted to know only one thing, and then he could get the hell out of this hole.

It had seemed like an eternity, but it only took around ten minutes for the watery half light that filtered in the boathouse to subtly change.

Jon watched carefully as moving shadows and flickering lights came together into a wispy, unfocussed picture.

As it cleared, Jon saw a thin figure laid huddled on the floor, moving, writhing in pain and fear.

‘Jamie? Jamie Durham,’ whispered Jon, partly to himself and partly to the dying boy. But this was only a lost memory that he was seeing, just a terrible moment in a time that had passed, and the boy would not hear him, because the policeman had never been there. Jon wished with all his heart that he had been. Things may have been different if he had.

The picture seemed to shift again, and the boy’s jerky movements had slackened. His energy was slowly slipping away, along with the life-blood that pooled around his slender body. And now he was no longer alone.

Jon stared in awe at the tall, bulky shadow of a figure that seemed to fill the door frame. As he watched, it slowly lumbered forward, and halted beside the boy’s body.

‘Help me.’

Jon drew in a shaky breath. His gift had started life as a purely visual thing. He saw pictures, scenes, images, visions. Lately, however, he had been blessed with a soundtrack to go with the spectral film shows. And he wasn’t sure that he liked it.

Right now, he didn’t like it one bit.

‘Please, sir. Help me?’ Jamie clasped hopelessly at the ragged wound in the side of his neck, trying to hold back the steady and merciless flow of blood from his young body.

Jon’s soul cried out to the man to help the boy, but he just stood there, a silent hulk in the darkness, staring down, but making no move to assist.

Then the man dropped down on one knee and leant over the child. His head got closer and closer, until Jon thought for one dreadful moment, that the shadowy form was going to kiss the lad’s forehead. Then he abruptly stood up and took a step away. He seemed to be moving back simply because he didn’t want get blood on his boots. And they were boots; big and heavy, worker’s boots with hardened toe-protectors. Old boots, scuffed leather, worn and weathered.

Jon allowed his head to drop and his eyes to close. He never gave up on his visions; he considered he was chosen to see them and should treat them as a privilege, but no way could he watch as this callous, insensitive being stood there, completely  impervious to the dying boy’s plea.

Then he half sensed, half heard, heavy footsteps, and the brute moved away. Jon looked back up and saw the figure pause briefly in the doorway and glance back before turning away and striding off. Jon hadn’t been able to make out any features, and what he had seen had to be a trick of the light, because for one fleeting second he’d seen a glimpse of the man’s eyes. Hollow, dead eyes.

With a little cry, Jon made to stand, but dropped back like a stone. If the thought of those eyes was not bad enough, what followed was worse.

As the man walked away, a voice suddenly echoed out over the marshland. It was the sound of a chorister. The music rose and fell on the evening wind, and it was the purest sound of an angel singing.

As the picture of Jamie Durham’s bloody body dimmed to a faint mist, and the sound of the sweetest song faded into the night, Jon Summerhill lurched forward, ran from the boathouse and threw up into the scraggy bushes that edged the river path.