50/50 Killer (39 page)

30 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

6.50 A.M.

Jodie

Scott was alive!

And warm in the hospital, Jodie thought ruefully. As she walked through the woods, wrapped in a safety blanket, she felt colder than she remembered being all night. But the knowledge that he was alive was warming her just as much as the blanket.

The policeman - John, his name was - had said they could wait by the fire in the woods and be lifted out by helicopter, but she'd shaken her head. She had to get out of this place, not least because of
him
. That man just lying there. After what he'd done to Scott, Jodie was glad she'd killed him, but she couldn't look at him any longer.

She knew it had a lot to do with the way her body was shivering and trembling. Shock. It was also because she was warming up. Over the course of the night, the cold had seeped into her skin, numbing her, until there was so little feeling in her body that the sensation wasn't even pain any more. Now she was thawing: passing back up into the stage of being frozen. The hurt and discomfort were returning.

But you're alive, she told herself. And Scott is too. No matter what, you're both safe now. Stop worrying. Stop feeling guilty for what you've done. You're both alive.

Her heart didn't feel like it could handle the elation that came with those thoughts. She felt fragile as a bird. So she kept the thoughts out of her head and concentrated on walking. Each footstep, packing down the snow, gave the sound of someone leaning back in a leather chair. It was comforting. She was leaving this terrible place, one foot in front of the other.

The officer ahead was shining a torch around to all sides, but it was hardly necessary any more; the rising sun had brought the woods to still, grey life around them. In the trees, birds were singing. It was early morning, a new day.

Behind her, John was close enough to talk. Jodie found him an immensely reassuring presence. He kept saying things that she only half heard, but which nevertheless calmed her. Perhaps it was stupid, but she couldn't help imagining that the voice she'd been hearing all night had been his: full of kindness, comfort and quiet encouragment.
You will get through this. Hang on, keep yourself together. I will find you.
And he had. When he'd embraced her, she'd somehow understood that he'd been searching for her all night. In his face, she saw a man who'd been tried and tested, but who had refused to stop or give up. Now, finally, he seemed at peace with himself.

Behind her, Jodie heard an electronic crackle. She jumped.

'Mercer.'

She glanced back and realised John was speaking into the headset he was wearing.
It's okay.
The three of them kept walking.

'Mark,' she heard him say, 'calm down. He's dead. Jodie is safe; she's here with me now. We're on our way out.'

Whereas his words had washed over her before, for some reason she found herself listening to this conversation more carefully.

He paused, then said: 'No, it's definitely him. What makes--'

More silence. One foot in front of the other, they kept going. She was filled with an irrational fear. Something was wrong. They were going to make her go back to that place, when she needed to keep moving. She needed to get to Scott and tell him how sorry she was for everything ...

'We've got three independent witnesses. Whatever you're thinking, there's no--'

The officer leading the way looked back, and then stopped. Jodie's instinct to keep going was so strong that she almost bumped into him. She forced herself to stop as well, ignoring the feeling of alarm it produced.
Run!
John was a little behind them, standing still, staring at the ground, listening.

Another crackle, this time from the officer in front of her. He raised his hand to his ear, his head slightly to one side.

'Westmoreland,' he said. 'Go.'

She turned back to John. He gave her a brief smile, but his expression betrayed him. As Jodie watched, his face suddenly drained of emotion.

'Christ,' he said, closing his eyes and scratching his forehead. 'And there was another one back at his camp, as well. On the door.'

They were talking about that horrible drawing, Jodie realised. Similar to the one she'd seen painted on the inside of the van that had brought them here.

She fought the urge to start running.

Scott. I need to see Scott
.

'Sir,' Westmoreland called, 'this is important. From the men at the scene.'

John touched his earpiece. 'Mark, I'll call you back.'

He walked quickly up to them. Westmoreland still had his head on one side, listening carefully, nodding.

'They've found a note, sir. In the other building.'

'Have them read it.'

'Read it to me, please.'

Westmoreland was silent again, listening.

'"Dear Detective Sergeant Mercer,"' he began.

4 DECEMBER

29 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

6.51 A.M.

Mark

I kept searching through the files. There was
something
I was missing. There had to be, because I was sure I was right. The killer had been playing a third game with James Reardon. He had made Reardon wait out there in the woods and hold Jodie captive until dawn. It wasn't torture, but it was a sacrifice he had to make in exchange for his child's life. The 50/50 Killer might not have been able to collect love from either of them, but Reardon would still fulfil a useful purpose in the game as a whole.

But what Mercer said was also true: three independent witnesses put Reardon in the frame. Amanda Taylor's boyfriend, Colin Barnes, had identified Reardon as the man who'd assaulted him and abducted Karli; Megan Cook had seen him enter the house rented by Carl Farmer; and Scott thought he recognised him from a utility visit a month or so back. They couldn't all be lying. Together they created a web of their own, and Reardon was inescapably trapped at the centre. So I must have missed something.

I opened the transcript of the interview with Megan. If the killer had been following Reardon for a long time, he could easily have used his photograph when setting up the van licensing and the Carl Farmer nest. One of the things he would have made Reardon do would be to deliver the mask that morning and implicate himself further.

I scanned through the file.

There.

'Did you see him arrive?' I'd asked Megan.

'Yeah. I was on the phone by the front window.'

She hadn't told me who she was talking to. But I'd asked her how long Reardon had been inside the house.

'I was only on the phone for a minute, and I saw him come out, so it can't have been long.'

Only a minute. Could it have been him, the real killer? Cold-calling her for some reason, any reason: a ploy to get her over to the window for the moment when James Reardon appeared at the house? The only sighting of the 50/50 Killer, engineered to lead us in the direction of a false suspect. So that he could wait for us there, challenge us as Mercer believed, without ever being in any real danger of getting caught?

That still left Scott and Colin Barnes's testimony though. Admittedly, Scott was in pieces at the moment, so perhaps his memory couldn't entirely be trusted, but Barnes had been adamant: James Reardon had attacked him and abducted Karli. And that didn't make sense, because my theory depended on the 50/50 Killer taking the baby and blackmailing Reardon.

So either Colin Barnes was mistaken or else he was lying.

I opened the file on Karli Reardon's abduction. My heart was beating fiercely.

The transcript of Barnes's statement loaded. As it did, I considered one possible explanation. Maybe Barnes hadn't actually
seen
his attacker at all, and because of the history with Reardon had just made an assumption. A sensible one, perhaps, but not necessarily--

The file opened and I stopped thinking altogether.

There it was on the screen. I stared for a moment, unable to make sense of what I was seeing.

Something had ... It couldn't be right. That ...

My world dropped away.

And somewhere, far away in the hospital, an alarm began to sound.

4 DECEMBER

28 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN

6.52 A.M.

Scott

There was no flat any more. No comfortable settee to sit on. No Jodie, asleep in another room. His dreams had given up all pretence of dressing his memories in brighter clothes; the artifice had been stripped away. Now, as Scott slept, he was simply
there
again: back in the stone outhouse in the woods, perched on that awkward seat, cramped and tortured, with the man in the devil mask squatting down in front of him.

'You're blind to the truth.' The man held the torch under the chin of the mask, illuminating it. 'You don't love her. Not any more.'

It's a game, Scott reminded himself. The man was the devil, which meant he had lied. Jodie hadn't cheated on him. In fact, none of the things the man had told him were true. Not necessarily.

But the evidence had been right there in front of him, hadn't it? And it was true that Jodie was unhappy, so it wasn't such a stretch to imagine her cheating on him again. He did that now: pictured it in his head. Turned the image round. Jodie and Kevin. Kevin and Jodie. It made sense.

The man's voice became kinder, more soothing. 'She certainly doesn't love you.'

Scott shook his head.

He thought back on everything the man had talked to him about tonight. The painting Jodie hadn't wanted; the one-night stand with Kevin Simpson; the general unhappiness that had permeated both their lives, but especially hers, for so long now. He pictured her pacing the house, as though he'd put her in a cage. Going back and forth to the job she hated. Every morning when they woke up, it felt like a bit more of her had died. Living with him, all her lights were slowly going out, one by one.

When had he last seen her smile? He couldn't remember. And Scott loved her so much that it broke his heart he couldn't show her how much she mattered to him, how important she was. Or that he could say and do those things, but they weren't enough.

He would do anything to make things right again.

'Tell me you hate her,' the man repeated. 'The game will be over then. All this pain will end.'

He would do anything at all.

And maybe now, even if she never knew it, he could.

'No.'

The man in the devil mask looked at him, implacable.

'No?'

Scott was trembling with the cold. His skin felt dead. And there was so much pain. Perhaps because of that, he was almost delirious. It wasn't about thinking. He felt his spirit lifting, and he said it again.

'No. I love her.'

The man settled back on his heels, tilting his head slightly. Through the mask, there was the slightest hint of defeat.

'All right, then.'

And then Scott was standing outside the stone building. The man had cut the rope tying his arms to his thighs but had left him cuffed. His legs were weak, his back bowed - half broken from the cramp. The man stripped the clothes off him and threw them into the empty storeroom.

'We'll leave these here as well.'

He was talking about the pages in his hand. He laid them carefully on top of Scott's clothes, showing him each in turn.

Five Hundred Reasons Why I Love You.

Scott felt immense sorrow when he saw that. He wished more than anything that he'd been able to finish it. He hoped she would understand.

Two hundred and seventy-four reasons said: I realise everything's not perfect, least of all me, but I'm still trying because I so desperately don't want to lose you.

He started crying. 'Can I see her?'

'No.'

'Please. Please can I see her again?'

The email next, except he turned that over and left it with the small black handwriting facing up. Scott caught sight of the top line - '
Dear Detective Sergeant Mercer
' - and then the man closed the door. There was a screech of metal as he pulled the bolt across.

'Why?' Scott sobbed. 'Why are you doing this?'

The man didn't answer. Instead, he walked across to the fire and selected a burning log. Then he held the screwdriver up and pointed deeper into the woods.

'We're going this way.'

He didn't know where the man led him; it was too dark to see much, and he kept tripping. But the man used the burning wood to force him on: pushing it into his bare back, producing jabs of agony. Scott was terrified, frantic. He knew what was going to happen; the images came into his head without reason but with absolute conviction. The man was going to make him lie face down on the frozen woodland ground, and then he was going to take out his knife and put it through Scott's throat, carve it out. He could imagine his screams, suddenly reduced to gargles of panic; his blood fanning across the snow.

How would it feel, to die? To disappear from the world?

Scott pleaded with the man, but he said nothing.

They walked for about ten minutes and then the man told him to stop. He pointed the screwdriver at the base of a tree.

'Sit there.'

Scott collapsed against it, his bare legs splayed out in the snow in front of him. The cold burned them, but he was so frightened that he didn't care.

The man bound him to the tree with two sets of rope. One round his body, holding his arms in place. The other in his mouth, forcing his tongue back and holding his head up. When he'd finished, he stood in front where Scott had no option but to see him.

'You asked me why.'

The man crouched down in front of Scott and pulled the mask up over his face, resting it on the top of his head. He was only a man, Scott realised again. Apart from an awful blankness, there was nothing unusual about his face. He could have been anyone.

'I am a spirit in this shell.' The man's words had a rehearsed air to them. 'I feel nothing because I am separate from it. When I am done, this body will fall and I will float apart from it.'