CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

 

‘There’s someone asking for you, ma’am.’ The desk sergeant pointed to where a young woman was sitting in the foyer.

Kate was about to tell him to get someone else to deal with her, when she recognised the Hannah Montana figure of Asher Leyton’s fiancée, Lynda Cowley.

As the foyer was almost empty, Kate went over and sat next to her. ‘Miss Cowley, isn’t it?’

The girl nodded. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, DCI Reynard, but he’s disappeared.’ She unsuccessfully fought back tears. ‘Asher didn’t come home last night, and he’s not been at work today.’ She dabbed at her perfectly made-up eyes. ‘It’s not like him, he’s so thoughtful.  He’d never go off without telling me. Something has happened to him. I know it.’

Kate did a quick mental catch up. Asher Leyton had talked to the dead girl, Shauna Kelly, on more than one occasion. And he had been warned about curb-crawling. They had talked to him about Shauna’s death, and now he had gone missing. Oh boy, that has such a hinky feel to it. ‘When did you see or speak to him last?’

‘Lunchtime yesterday. He rang to say he had a late appointment, but he’d be home for supper.’ The words caught in her throat. ‘But I went to bed really late, and he never came home.’

Kate made all the right noises, calmed the girl, and promised to make some enquiries. ‘I’ll do what I can, but he’s a responsible adult, so you do understand that I can’t list him as missing?’

Lynda nodded, and after pulling herself together, left the station.

Kate walked over to the desk. ‘Danny, get one of your crews to go have a word with the old toms down on Dock Lane, would you? See what they can tell you about a man named Asher Leyton. And maybe put an alert out on him too. I’d like to have a quiet word with that young man.’ She gave the sergeant a description of Asher and made her way towards the lifts.

Like it or not, it was time to bring the Super up to speed on the flood of new developments that were threatening to drown them.

 

As evening approached another call came in.

‘Uniform may have found your second crime scene, ma’am.’ Gary’s voice was sombre. ‘It’s an old static caravan on a piece of land that is attached to the Windrush estate. The problem is they only found it because it was on fire. There are men down there and a fire chief in attendance, but there’s no way they can get an appliance out there. It’s just mud and cabbages all the way to the marsh.’

‘Who does it belong to?’

‘The land belongs to a tenant farmer called Smith, but he says the old van was there long before he took the tenancy.’

‘Was anyone in it?’

‘They don’t think so, although it’s impossible to say for sure until they can get inside. The farmer is trying to get a tractor and irrigation hose down there, but its taking time.’

Kate saw in her mind’s eye, their crime scene drifting up into a bank of grey, smoky clouds. ‘Come on, Gary. Even if it is half incinerated, we need to see this.’

‘Okay, Guv. I’ll let them know we are on our way.’

Gary drove, and all the way to Roman Creek, he had the feeling of having forgotten something important. The others talked and threw theories around, but Gary didn’t join in, fearing that things were now racing away, and he was getting left behind.

When they arrived, after trudging over the ploughed field, there was little left to see other than a charred wreck of twisted metal and warped panels.

The fire officer greeted them with a grim smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s not good, ma’am.’

‘Someone died in it?’ Kate asked.

‘No, no bodies. But I did find blood evidence, and from the assortment of paraphernalia inside, it looks like you have a particularly nasty crime scene.’ He grimaced. ‘What’s left of it.’

‘What kind of paraphernalia are we talking about?’ Jon asked the question, but none of them wanted to hear the answer.

‘Well, it’s all badly burnt, but there are the remains of leather restraints, and other leather items, like a black full-head mask and some sort of weird stuff. There are chains with ankle and wrist cuffs, all bolted to the base of the caravan. More is showing up all the time, but it’s still smouldering and it’s too dangerous to stay inside for long.’

Gary flinched. He did not want to think about a sadist with the tools of his trade in the same thought pattern as pretty young women and little girls. He swallowed hard and tried to clear his head.

‘I assume that it was started deliberately?’ asked Kate, her voice just shaky enough to give away the fact that she was thinking the same as him.

‘Oh yes. We found the remains of a LPG gas bottle with the valve open, and it was clear that an accelerant was used in the bedroom area.’

So, thought Gary, someone has done a clear-up job. Getting rid of the evidence, and covering up for either themselves or someone else. He stared at the smouldering ashes and smelt the acrid stink of burning rubber.

‘It all fits, doesn’t it?’ said Jon. ‘He takes them to the caravan, does whatever he does, then kills them.’ His lips tightened with anger. ‘And then the bastard takes the bodies over the lower marsh path, to the entrance to the tunnel, then loads them onto the trolley and wheels them down to the Children’s Ward.’

‘To sleep forever,’ whispered Gary. ‘Or so he thought.’

‘You know what I find worrying?’ said Kate quietly.

Gary knew. He felt exactly the same. ‘That the beast who did all this could be watching, as the last flame consumes his torture chamber.’

She didn’t answer, and Gary knew he was right.

They turned from the burnt out caravan, and walked back to the car. ‘I think we should go up to Windrush and get a report from uniform. We don’t need men combing the area for the second crime scene anymore, so it may be wise to get some extra manpower around the house and the tunnels. Just in case the killer does what the professor said, and returns to his lair.’

 

Kate had always loved evenings on the marsh. The dimming of the day was her favourite time. The sky never failed to present her with another unique masterpiece of breathtaking artwork, and the misty shadows that slipped across the water were mysterious and otherworldly. Even the sounds of the evening had a way of relaxing her pressured mind. Bird calls, the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth, and the wind making the tall dark reeds sway and dance to a whispery tune.

But tonight was different.

Tonight Kate never even noticed the sky. Every shadow concealed a hidden threat, and there was something dark and menacing approaching with the wind off the sea.

Jon and Gary were checking the security status with the uniformed sergeant, and Rosie and Scott were speaking to some of the foot-soldiers about the chance of Micah Lee being in the area.

Kate walked across to a low wall that edged the garden. It looked over the wetlands and out to where the marsh met the Wash. She could see dozens of lights and a plethora of police officers silhouetted against the evening sky-scape, all returning from scouring the area for the murderer’s killing ground.

She sat down on the wall, in the shadow of one of a line of huge old oak trees that formed a barrier between the garden and the marshy countryside, and wished that this awful case were over. She glanced back to where Jon and Gary were in deep conversation, and wished that she could make some sense of things. More than anything she wished they could identify Fleur.

With an irritated grunt, Kate shook her head, trying to unscramble her thoughts. And at that point her phone started to blare out some strange anthem, a ring-tone obviously added by one of her darling sons.

Marcus spoke first, feigning huge surprise at hearing her voice, and gave her a brief description of himself, just in case she’d forgotten what he looked like. He then gave his signature laugh, a funny little chortling sound, and handed her over to David, saying, ‘See, Dad, I told you she hadn’t emigrated and forgot to tell us.’

‘He’s on good form. Have you been slipping magic mushrooms into their spaghetti again?’

‘Nah, we’re clean out of mushrooms. I must have left them off my shopping list this week.’ His voice became serious. ‘I hope you’re not mad at us for ringing. The kids wanted to know that you’re alright. Is it a bad time?’

‘It’s fine. There’s no-one I’d rather have had a call from, believe me. Are you coping?’

‘Don’t I always?’ he said. ‘Everything here is running like a Swiss-made clock. We’d just like you home, then everything would be hunky-dory.’

‘No one wants to be home more than I do. But this case is a bad one.’

‘Then take care, won’t you?’

‘Don’t I always?’ Kate echoed. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

She heard the sound of a theatrical kiss being blown down the phone, followed by a chorus of imitation retching noises in the background. She smiled and began to close the phone. Murder needed little moments like that to keep you from accidentally wandering into the dark realms of even darker minds. And thinking about little moments; the next one was directly from a very dark and twisted place.

Kate had good instincts, good peripheral vision, pretty fair hand/eye co-ordination and an ability to make an instant evaluation of a situation and act accordingly. In other words, she was a copper. Without those attributes she’d have been scuppered years before. So, when she saw the slightest flash of a reflection in the picture screen of her mobile as she closed it: the reflection of something close to her shoulder, she knew that all was not well.

A second prior to that, she had noticed that Jon was some way away talking to some uniforms, and Gary was leaning on a car and speaking into his mobile. Rosie and Scott were over by the house, so she was alone. Or she should have been.

As the phone snapped shut, Kate made a sideways dive, hopefully away from whoever was closer than they should be.

And something cannoned into her with all the force of a charging rhino. If he had landed on top of her, she would have suffered crush injuries, but as it was, her swift movement had unbalanced him, and they both found themselves on the ground at the base of the wall.

Micah was first up, surprising her with his speed, and then he flung himself back at her, hands outstretched towards her throat.

She twisted away from the ferocious face and rolled onto her side. She had avoided the initial impact, but he still managed to grab and hold onto her wrist.

The grip was like molten metal searing into her flesh; a vice locked shut on her paper-thin skin.

Kate let out a cry, but it was cut off before she could muster any volume, cut off by his other iron-strong hand across her mouth.  She felt skin split and bleed as her teeth sliced into the soft flesh inside her lips and cheek.

‘You bitch! You’ve destroyed everything!’ The voice was husky with emotion and as low as an attack dog’s growl. ‘Now let’s see how your family likes being torn apart.’

Kate heard him, but as the hand that had clamped her mouth shut was now severely restricting her breathing, she was in no position to reply.

And she was going to die. Just like that.

Already she was experiencing a wave of dizziness that heralded blacking out, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her hands, beating against him, must have seemed no more bothersome than a moth in candlelight. And for the first time ever, Kate was going to miss Eddie’s evaluation. She was going to let her family down.  Eddie’s face filled her thoughts and the tears that came to her eyes had nothing to do with the fact that her throat was being crushed.

Then the grip slackened, just a little, and a little more. The blood rushing through her veins made a roaring sound in her ears, like a great tide rushing through a channel. Then the hand across her mouth began to shake and loosen, and air finally made its way down into her starved lungs.

She choked, fell away from the man, and looked up to see Gary hauling him to the ground and snapping cuffs around his wrists. And then she noticed Micah’s face, and it was mask of pain and confusion. Kate was obviously of no concern to him anymore. He was rocking backwards and forwards and moaning as if in terrible anguish.

She crawled as far away from him as she could, then sat and stared at him.

Kate knew that he was crying, and through her own pain, something inside her felt a desperate sorrow for the repugnant-looking giant who had undoubtedly wanted to kill her a few seconds before.

As far as the cuffs would allow, Micah curled up into a tight ball. A weeping, foetal monster, that dribbled, sobbed, and repeated over and over, ‘Oh no. Please, please no.’

Kate was sure that he never felt Gary lifting him up and calling for Jon to help him. Micah was on another planet. He clearly knew nothing about being frog-marched away from her, or that he was being placed into the back of a police car and driven away. And this time, Kate insisted that it would not be to Harlan Marsh Police Station.

She sat for a moment, getting her breath back, mopping at her bloody mouth with a handkerchief, and trying to understand what had just happened. He had been intent on killing her, and then when Gary got hold of him he dissolved into tears. Hardly the reaction that she would have expected?

‘Jesus! I think we know who our killer is, don’t you?’ said Jon, as he knelt beside her and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. ‘Oh Kate? I’m so sorry. I should have stayed closer when we knew he could be out there somewhere. Are you alright?’

‘My fault.’ she croaked. ‘I wandered off. I asked for that.’ She coughed, and it felt like she had hot coals in her gullet.

‘Can you stand?’ Jon gently helped her up. ‘I’ll take you to A&E.’

‘No hospital.’

‘You really should get checked over by a medic.’ His voice held real concern.

‘Since when have you ever done what you’re told?’

‘Touché! But then I only went to meet dead people, I didn’t have a lip that made me look like I’ve O-D-ed on Botox. You may need stitches in that.’

‘I don’t have time, Jon. Something about all this isn’t right. I need to get back to the CID room, and for someone to make me a very strong coffee with enough sugar in it to rot every tooth in my head.’