Dead Scared (45 page)

DI JOHN CASTELL
was on Evi’s doorstep, looking down at her. Suddenly unsteady on her feet, Evi reached out and took hold of the doorframe for support.

‘I’ve afraid I’ve got bad news, Evi,’ he told her. ‘Megan died last night.’

Directly in front of me was a carousel. Like something from a Victorian funfair, the painted horses reared on poles, ready to prance their way around the ride when the music began. In the torchlight the carousel shone with gilt and its fluted red and white striped roof rose above me. To one side of the ride was a small fortune teller’s tent and a Test Your Strength machine. Further into the warehouse was another carousel. Much smaller than the first, this was designed for young children and in place of the horses were red, blue and yellow elephants, trunks held high and gleaming with painted jewels.

The edge of my torch beam caught something and I jumped round to see a hideously scary clown looking right at me. I’d opened my mouth to yell before I realized it was a painted image. With clawing hands and a face that was half wolf, half demon, this wasn’t like any clown I’d seen before. Behind it were more of the same: hideous plywood clowns that, seen quickly and in poor light, by someone high on hallucinogenic drugs, would appear very real.

Clowns were what Jessica was most afraid of. This freak show had probably been created with the sole purpose of terrifying her. As I set off again, not wanting to stay too close to those horrible images, I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d done for Nicole, Bryony, Jackie, for all the others, here in this psychological torture chamber.

And what they had planned for me.

Towards the far end of the warehouse, my torch beam picked out a narrow staircase leading up to a mezzanine level. At the top was a closed door. Ten steps up and the door wasn’t locked. This was a bad idea. I was a long way from my exit route if something happened. On the other hand, I would hear if a vehicle approached.

The room beyond was in darkness. There were four windows but blinds on each kept out the light. I had to rely on the torch.

A large television screen sat on a low glass table against the far wall and, facing it, in the middle of the floor, was a single chair. Desks ran along both sides of the room and the computer equipment on them looked state-of-the-art. On one desk sat two large objects concealed by thin plastic covers. I had a feeling I knew what they were, but wanting to be sure I stepped over and raised the first cover. Same thing beneath the second. Film cameras. Not simple hand-held video recorders, the sort most households own these days, but the kind I’d seen news teams use when making outside broadcasts. Heavy, powerful, with huge lenses.

On the small dust-covered TV table lay a single DVD. The photograph on the case was of a girl with long dark hair in some sort of cellar, bound at her wrists and ankles. It could have been the case image of any commercially made thriller. I knew it wasn’t, because I recognized the girl. The title on the case said simply
Nicole
.

Suddenly it all made sense. Unit 33 was a film studio.

Castell and Evi were in the kitchen. She had no recollection of getting there. Had John taken her arm and led her through the hallway? Possibly. Had he pulled out the chair and steadied her until she was sitting in it?

‘Megan’s dead?’ she repeated.

Castell dropped his head, ran a hand over his face. When he
looked
at her again, his face was perfectly composed. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I really can’t take it in.’

He was waiting for her to ask the inevitable questions and she had no idea what they were.

‘It’s too early to say for certain,’ he went on, after a few moments. ‘But we think she tripped at the top of the stairs. The carpet wasn’t nailed down properly, and she was wearing those ridiculous heels.’

Evi told herself not to react, to let nothing show on her face. Because Meg was tall, and she walked with a long-legged stride. In summer she wore sandals, new-age-style strappy things. Pixie-boots in winter.

She never wore heels.

Movement in the corner of my eye. The screen of one of the computers had just gone into sleep mode. Someone had been here recently and they were probably on their way back. A quick check behind the nearest window blind told me no vehicles were anywhere near.

When the screen sprang back to life, it was to reveal the frozen image of a piece of video footage. A semi-naked girl was putting make-up on, leaning over a basin towards the camera, which had to be concealed behind the mirror. Sliding the mouse along the desk, I clicked on the arrow button that would start the video.

The girl ran a brush over her lips before stepping back and fluffing up her long hair. Then she cupped one hand into her bra, to pull her breast up higher. Same thing on the other side, the way women do to give themselves a better cleavage. She pushed back her shoulders and gave her image one last glance before turning to clothes she’d laid out on the bed.

I felt sick. The video had been shot in my room. The girl was me.

I closed down my little home movie, making a mental note of its file root, then opened up Finder. Knowing where I was heading made finding the rest of the files on me a little easier. Conveniently, someone had labelled them all with my name. Laura 001 showed the episode on the green outside St John’s. This clip was nearly seven minutes long and I had to fast-forward through it. I got the gist though. Most of the time the camera had been focused on my
wet,
shivering body, even when it had been sprawled on the ground, covered in mud. 001 was bad enough. Laura 002 was worse. It was just twenty-two seconds long and showed me asleep.

It looked harmless enough at first. Except I was rigid. I lay like a corpse, flat on my back, legs straight and close together, arms by my sides. Everything still except for my head.

My face was quivering with effort. In small, jerking movements I threw my head from side to side and I knew, because in some part of the back of my mind I remembered, that I had been trying to wake up.

The window next to my bed opened and in my half dreaming, half waking, heavily sedated state I heard it. I stopped fidgeting and froze. Then I started tossing again, like a helpless cripple trying to flee, unable to move more than a fraction of an inch at a time. I could hear the whimpers coming out of my own throat as the dark figure climbed through the window and leaned over me on the bed.

As the sweat ran down between my shoulder blades, I remembered this happening. The dream when someone had been in my room, looking down at me, while I’d done everything I could to move and had been paralysed. I’d never felt more helpless in my life and now every second of that terrifying dream had turned out to be real.

The dark figure – impossible to say for certain who it was but the hair looked too short to be Thornton – took hold of the quilt and began to pull it down. I didn’t think I could watch any more and was actually reaching out to close it down when something hurled itself at the intruder. The masked figure turned in alarm, raised an arm to defend itself and then kicked out. My rescuer – Sniffy the dog, God bless her – had backed off and was out of view but I could hear her barking and growling. The intruder glanced out of the window, climbed through and vanished. The film ended.

I went back to Finder. So many familiar names: Bryony, Nicole, Jackie, Nina, Kate, Jayne, Evi, each with several files. I didn’t want to look at any of them, but there was something I had to know for certain.

I chose the file labelled
Nicole
that appeared to be the last, Nicole 010, and pressed Play. The scene had been shot at night, using some
sort
of night-vision equipment because the footage had the monochrome appearance of nocturnal wildlife footage. Nicole’s Mini convertible was parked at the side of a quiet country road. She was in the driver’s seat and appeared to be unconscious. As I watched, a tall, masked figure (this was Thornton, judging by the hair) adjusted the seat belt around her so that it was tight while another masked man checked the knot of a rope that had been tied around the nearest tree. Thornton was pushing up the sleeve on her right arm when his companion slipped the noose end of the rope over Nicole’s head. Thornton had something in his hand that looked like a syringe. He injected something into the unconscious girl and pulled her sleeve back down in place. The other turned the key in the ignition and the Mini’s engine sprang to life. Both men walked out of shot.

I had to fast forward the next part. It took Nicole maybe two minutes to wake up. Her head swayed, fell forward and raised itself again slowly a couple of times before she came round properly. Her right hand went up and felt the noose around her neck. She glanced round to see where the rope finished.

Do you know what? I actually found myself hoping she wouldn’t do it. That, at the last minute, she’d see sense, slip the noose from her neck and press her foot down hard on the pedal to get herself the hell away from those monsters.

She didn’t, of course. She sat still for several moments, then in a flurry of activity checked the mirror, released the handbrake, clutched the steering wheel and shot forward.

The camera followed her all the way, caught the severed head bouncing along the road like a lost football, and only switched off when approaching headlights warned that another vehicle was getting close.

‘And it looks as though she’d had quite a lot to drink,’ said Castell. ‘I was working last night. I usually try to keep an eye on her when I’m there, but … anyway, she broke her neck. It would have been instant. She wouldn’t have known anything.’

‘I didn’t know Meg had a drink problem,’ said Evi as Sniffy slinked over and leaned heavily against her.

Castell was nodding his head, slowly, sadly. ‘Well, they get very good at hiding it.’

‘Megan’s dead?’ said Evi, running a hand over Sniffy’s head and along her velvet-soft ears.

Castell narrowed his eyes and seemed to lean towards her. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked. ‘Would you like a drink? A glass of brandy?’

Evi shook her head. ‘I’m not supposed to drink alcohol.’

Castell’s face was all sympathy. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but you do though, don’t you? You drink quite a lot.’

‘Excuse me?’

Sniffy nudged Evi for more attention.

Castell stretched across the table, as though he were going to touch her. Evi drew her hand back. His eyes flicked down and back up again.

‘Evi, this isn’t easy for me to say, but Megan was concerned about you,’ he said. ‘Specifically, she was worried about you continuing to work in your current state of ill health. She’d written a letter to your GP, copied to the university authorities, setting out her concerns.’

Evi put an arm round Sniffy’s shoulders and pulled her a little closer. ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘Megan wouldn’t discuss me with you. That would be completely unethical.’

Castell shrugged. ‘The letter’s on her computer,’ he said. ‘I can print it off in a matter of moments.’

It took a second, for what he’d just said to sink in. ‘You can access Meg’s computer?’

Eyes narrowed. ‘What are you getting at?’

Castell had been at Cambridge fifteen years ago. Not studying medicine, but he’d known several people who had been. Castell had been dating Meg for months now, often stayed over at her house. If he could access Meg’s computer he could have seen all the files she kept on Evi. He would know everything about her. Everything that had happened to her, everything she was afraid of.

‘Can I give you some advice, Evi?’ Castell was saying.

‘Please do,’ said Evi, wondering if the fear was visible on her face.

‘Hand in your resignation today. Say you need some time to yourself for a few months. That way, the letter Meg wrote to the
authorities
can stay exactly where it is. No one need ever know.’

Don’t argue, let him think he’s won. She put her head in her hands, took a moment. ‘You’re probably right,’ she said after a few seconds. ‘Thank you.’

‘And I’d hate to have to charge you with wasting police time,’ said Castell. ‘What with the skeleton toys and the masked men in the garden and the blood in the bath and the disappearing emails. So many calls, nothing to substantiate any of them. Your credibility could be completely undermined. You’d struggle ever to work again.’

Agree to everything. She wasn’t on her own. Laura would know what to do.

‘You’re right,’ she said, forcing herself to look straight at him. ‘It’s been a very difficult few months. Thank you, John.’ She pushed her chair back and reached for her stick. She needed to signal this conversation was over. ‘And I’m truly sorry about Meg. I know how close you two were.’

Castell got up to leave.

‘Nice dog,’ he said, as he headed for the door.

I had to get out of here. Not only was watching these sick film clips threatening to send me over the edge, but there was a risk I could seriously compromise Joesbury’s investigation. I was conducting an illegal search. If it became known I’d done so, everything in this room might become inadmissible. And then Joesbury really would kill me.

I opened again the first clip of me and ran it to the point where I’d found it. Then I pressed Pause. I took one more minute to open up the list of files recently accessed and to delete the record of the ones I’d looked at. Someone who knew what they were doing would soon find evidence that I’d been on the computer, but with a bit of luck no one would have any reason to be suspicious.