A Tapping at My Door: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (The DS Nathan Cody Series) (40 page)

‘So that’s it? This is how you choose to commemorate the deaths of those football fans? With further violence, further killings?’

For a few moments Chris doesn’t answer. He raises his head. Looks at the Liver Bird as if seeking an answer from it.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘The birds are singing.’

His movement is sudden. Too fast for Cody to react. Since he got up here he has regarded the crossbow in front of him as the item to fear most, a single trigger pull being all that is required to release a bolt of terrible power, speed and deadliness.

He didn’t account for other weapons. He didn’t reckon on the knife. He didn’t imagine for one second that he’d be standing here helpless while a blade is thrust into Dobson’s neck and yanked out again, not straight out, but in a twisting, dragging motion that tears open a huge ragged wound and causes a geyser of crimson to spurt onto Webley’s face and hair.

Screaming. Yelling. Shouting. None of it making any sense, but everyone reacting with sheer emotion to the scene of devastation being played out as a man keels over and kicks and shakes and struggles vainly to staunch the life force gushing from his severed arteries.

Cody wanting to move. Webley wanting to move. Chris panning his crossbow from one to the other as he tries to keep them in check. More shouting. Cody feeling powerless and horrified and incensed and distraught, all at once.

And then the maelstrom collapses into something more stable. Cody and Webley resume their subservient status while Dobson’s thrashing diminishes to become the quivering and twitching of a body in the final stages of shutdown.

Cody lets out a long, shuddering breath, in synchrony with Dobson’s last. The situation has been taken to the next level. The time for talking is over.

He starts backing towards the door.

‘Hey!’ says Chris, his voice betraying panic. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m leaving, Chris. If you don’t let Webley go right now, I’m going to open the door and I’m going to tell the cops inside that you’ve started killing all the hostages. They won’t hold back any longer then, Chris. They’ll think they have nothing to lose. They will come for you in force.’

‘Stop! I’ll shoot.’

‘Can you hit me from there, Chris? Stop me in my tracks? Are you sure? Because even if I’m wounded I can make it through that door.’

He keeps moving. Keeps putting distance between them. Every step is a hammer blow to Chris’s carefully constructed plan.

Chris’s words tumble out. ‘Then I’ll kill her. You won’t let me do that.’

‘You give me no choice, Chris. If you want to complete your mission, if you want to put your message up there in neon lights, you have to let Webley go.’

He knows he’s playing with Webley’s life now, and it’s tearing him up inside. But the situation is spiralling out of control. He has to resort to desperate measures.

He says, ‘I’m at the door now, Chris. What’s it going to be?’

Give him no time to think. Force his hand.

He reaches behind him for the door handle.

‘Wait!’ Chris yells. ‘Okay. Okay. Get back here.’

‘Let her walk, Chris.’

Chris prods Webley in the back with the toe of his boot. ‘Get up. Start walking. Slowly.’

With great uncertainty, Webley gets to her feet, but hesitates before moving.

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ says Chris. ‘Now!’ Then he raises the crossbow and calls over to Cody: ‘Start moving, Cody. Or I shoot your girlfriend.’

Slowly, Cody and Webley walk towards each other. Cody tries to keep his attention on the killer, to be ready to act if he makes a move. But he can’t help but be pulled in by Webley’s fearful eyes as he gets closer to her.

She shakes her head, and the motion dislodges another tear.

‘Not for me, Cody,’ she says. ‘Don’t do this for me.’

He tries to dredge up something profound to utter. All that poetry he has read, all those great works of literature, and yet the best he can manage is, ‘I owed you one.’

As they pass, he puts a hand out and brushes his fingers against hers.

And then she is behind him, and the exchange is made.

‘Here,’ says Chris. ‘Down on your knees. Hands behind your head.’

Cody steps around the growing pool of blood surrounding Dobson’s unmoving form, then lowers himself onto the cold grey paving slabs. He looks across to Webley, who is now at the door. She meets his gaze in a final, lingering look, then flings open the door and disappears inside, safe at last.

And then the only hearts still beating up here are those of Cody, Chris and the pigeons.

55

Something has happened. Blunt can tell from the expression on the face of Haynes.

‘What?’ she asks. ‘What is it?’

‘A hostage has been released. DC Webley.’

Blunt wants to celebrate the moment. Wants to experience hope and optimism. It’s a good thing, she tells herself. One hostage out already. That has to be good, right? Letting Cody go up there must have been the correct decision. He’s doing a great job. Pretty soon everyone will come off that roof alive. That’s what will surely happen.

‘Sir?’ This from one of the uniformed officers watching the building through binoculars. ‘We’ve got some movement up there.’

Blunt looks up as Haynes spins away from her and lifts his own binoculars to his eyes. She can see a figure climbing over the rail at the roof’s edge, as if preparing to jump.

She says, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s your man,’ Haynes answers. ‘Cody.’

No, she thinks. What the hell is he doing? What the fuck is going on?

‘Tell your men,’ she says, ‘as soon as that bastard Davies shows his face, I want him taken out. I want that fucker shot dead.’

She doesn’t care that she isn’t running this operation. Doesn’t care whether Haynes resents her interference or not. All she cares about is getting Cody out of there alive. And right now the chances of that are starting to look pretty remote.

‘Sir. Another IC1 male getting onto the ledge.’

‘That’s our suspect,’ says Haynes.

‘Take him,’ says Blunt. ‘One of your men down here must have a clear shot now. Do something!’

‘Sir, he’s waving something. It’s . . . It’s a rope.’

‘A what?’ says Blunt.

‘A rope,’ Haynes echoes. ‘He’s holding a rope, and the other end is tied around Cody’s waist. If we bring down Davies now, we bring down both men.’

*

So here he is. Trying not to look down. Trying to hold back the dizziness. Trying to resist the wind wanting to pull him into its embrace so that it can fling him to the ground all that way below.

And he wonders whether in fact this is what he really wants. He wonders whether the reason he is following Chris’s instructions so readily is that he has already given up on life. He is to die now, but Webley is alive, and that’s all that matters. That is what is fair and just.

He risks a brief downward glance at the people-dots, and imagines that he can see the horror and anticipation on their faces. Perhaps it’s right that they are not cheated of what they now expect.

To his left, Chris holds on tightly to the rope. For good measure he has coiled it several times around his lower arm. His other hand still grasps the crossbow. He is not stupid, this man. He has thought everything through. He has left Cody no escape route.

Says Cody, ‘So you still think this is the right thing to do? This is what you want to be remembered for?’

Chris smiles serenely. He seems almost at peace up here.

‘It’s not about me. It’s about letting the world know what people like you and Dobson did, and are still doing. It’s about telling them it has to stop.’

‘You really think they’ll understand? You think they’ll be interested in that side of the story? Or do you think they’ll just put it down to a nutter who goes around killing coppers?’

‘Oh, they’ll understand. I made a video, explaining exactly what all this is about, and while we’ve been up here I’ve put it live on YouTube. I don’t trust your girlfriend to pass the message on. After all, she’s police, and we all know how much they lie, don’t we, Cody? Your lot can’t hide this one away, Cody. You can’t falsify it or pretend it didn’t happen. The world will hear the message and it will understand.’

Cody nods. ‘Okay. Then your point is made. You can stop now. Job done.’

Chris’s smile broadens. ‘Almost. One task remains.’

‘Which is?’

‘We fly. Like the birds.’

56

She runs. Faster than she has ever run in her life.

They wanted to take her down. Away from the roof. But first they needed to check her over. She was covered in blood. Dobson’s blood, but they didn’t know that.

When she got inside and collapsed, they hastened the paramedics through to check her over. She told them she was all right, but still they insisted on assessing her.

And it was while they were doing this that the thought came crashing in.

He’s going to kill Cody. Cody has given up his life for mine. He’s going to die.

She knew this with more certainty than she had ever known anything before.

Cody is going to die, she thought. Any second now.

And so when the medics had done their job and stepped away and allowed her to get up, she looked at the outstretched hands of all the uniformed officers ahead of her . . .

. . . and she chose to go back.

She did it quickly, before they could grab her and stop her. Ignoring the protests of her colleagues, she turned and she retraced her steps and she went back onto that roof. She had no idea what she would do when she got there; she knew only that she had to go back.

Which is when she saw that Cody and Chris were already on the other side of the rail separating life from certain death. Their backs were to her. They couldn’t see her.

So now she is running, straight across to them, praying she can get there before either can turn and spot her. She may have only seconds. Fractions of seconds.

I will kill him, she thinks. I have no choice. To save Cody, this man has to die.

So she runs.

This is it, this is it, this is it . . .

She doesn’t know about the rope.

*

It takes but a moment of time, but it also takes an age. So much compressed into so short a period.

It is Chris who unwittingly gives him the signal that something is wrong. It’s in the way he twists away from Cody. The way his mouth drops open and his body tightens in readiness for action.

And then Cody is aware of Webley. The last person he expected to see up here. She is flying in from left field. Entering his vision in a blur of motion that seems to be propelled from the paved roof and straight at Chris. He hears yells, both from Chris and from Webley. He starts to shout himself, but it is all happening so fast in front of him. He sees Webley’s arms stretch out in front of her, and Chris trying to dodge away from the speeding bullet into which she has turned herself. He thinks for a moment that Chris will be successful – that he will manage to evade this human missile, leaving her to soar past, jettisoning herself from the building.

But she connects.

She hits him. Hard. Chris has no chance. He goes sailing over the edge.

Cody spins. Manages to grab the rail with both hands before the rope goes taut and he is yanked backwards.

He feels like he’s been tied to two horses galloping in opposite directions. His whole upper body is suddenly stretched to breaking point. He is convinced his arms have left their sockets and that each of the vertebrae in his spine has parted company with its neighbours. The rope tightens to an impossibly tight circle around his waist and hitches on his pelvis. The pain is excruciating.

But it will not last, because his fingers are slipping. No matter how much his feet scramble on the wall for purchase, no matter how tightly Webley clutches his wrists, he cannot continue to support this weight while in this amount of pain.

When he looks down, all he sees is Chris’s face. The killer has lost the crossbow, and has both hands on the rope. He can hang there for as long as it takes. And that won’t be long now. Chris knows this, and he is smiling.

And then his head explodes.

A single shot, from the car park below. Chris loses his grip as he loses his life. And in spite of all his fine words about the birds and what they meant to him, his fall is nothing like flying. Instead, he bounces off a ledge and spins into the void. His descent has no grace, no beauty, no wondrousness, no control. It is the sad plummet of a man for whom all of those things were irretrievably lost, and the cries that well up from the onlookers below are not of mourning and sadness as they might be for a rare bird shot from the sky, but of horror and repulsion.

Grunting with the pain, Cody clambers back to safety. He slumps over the rail, next to Webley in a similar bent-over position.

‘That was a stupid thing to do,’ he tells her.

She manages to find a laugh. ‘Not as stupid as you swapping yourself for me. Why did you do that?’

‘I told you. I owed you one. You were the first person to listen to me.’

‘Guess I should have known better. I knew there was trouble brewing when I clapped eyes on you again. You were never good for my heart, Cody.’

She coughs. Spits onto the floor.

It’s bright red.

‘Megan? Megan?’

She pushes herself away from the rail then, turning to face Cody. As she does so, her legs buckle and she collapses onto the paving stones. And then Cody sees it.

The crossbow bolt. Buried deep in her chest.

After that, he doesn’t know what happens. Noises overwhelm his senses. The pounding of boot-clad feet behind him. Voices calling. Radios squawking. The vicious chopping of helicopter blades as they get nearer and nearer. His own voice crying into the wind that carries past the ears of the Liver Birds staring steadfastly across the city and its river.

57

Everyone wants a piece of him.

His superiors, his colleagues, the media – they all want to talk to Cody about exactly what happened up there.

All except Blunt. She takes one look at him and seems to understand something. As far as he knows, she is not aware of his past relationship with Webley, and she certainly has no idea he almost gave up his life for the young detective constable. And yet she seems to sense his need to be by Webley’s side.