Dead Scared (47 page)

‘What’re you up to?’ he said, and he sounded so normal that for a second everything that had just happened seemed unreal.

‘Been out for a run,’ I told him. ‘Just heading back now.’

‘Any chance of you coming by?’

‘You’re at home?’ I glanced at my watch. Just after one o’clock.

‘Vet’s coming out to see Shadowfax,’ he told me, and he sounded like he was stifling a yawn. ‘He’s had me up half the night. I have to be around to suck my teeth and look horrified when I’m presented with the bill. Thing is, I’ve got something for you.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘Bryony left you a note. It fell under her bed. Your nutty room-mate found it this morning when she went to the hospital to pick up some books. She asked if I could pass it on. Seemed to think I’d be likely to see you before she did.’

Bryony had left me a note. Or had she? No way of knowing. What the hell did I do?

‘To be honest,’ Nick was saying, ‘I rather jumped at the excuse to call you. It’s been a tough couple of days.’

Tell me about it. ‘I’ve got a couple of calls to make. Let me get back to you in five minutes.’

As soon as the line disconnected, I tried Joesbury again. Come on, come on. An anonymous voice told me to leave a message. I told it to have him call me immediately.

Shit, shit, shit. Well, no way was I going to Bell’s house. I wouldn’t even call him back. Evi’s then.

I’d just started the engine when a text came in. Well, speak of the devil.

Can’t talk right now, Flint. What’s up?

What was bloody up? My fingers wouldn’t move fast enough.

Snuff movies is what’s up. Unit 33, Bell Foundries Industrial Estate. Nick Bell has this number. He wants me to go to his house now. I’m heading to Evi’s instead.

I pressed Send. Waited. Had no idea how fast Joesbury could type. Quite fast, it turned out.

Bell’s kosher, Flint. Been working with us. On my way to his place myself, with the boys. Meet you there in 15.

West Wales, twenty-three years earlier

‘
ALL THE KING’S
horses and all the king’s men
.’

Iestyn realized that his young sister was in their father’s study. He pushed open the door and stepped inside. His dad was lying on the floor, face down, his sister sitting beside him. Iestyn’s first thought was that they were building something together. He opened his mouth to grunt. He’d leave quick, before he got drafted into babysitting duties
.

Then he realized his sister was sitting in a shiny pool of thick, gelatinous liquid, the colour and consistency of runny strawberry jam. Her hands were the same shade and her hair sticky with it. Her cute, pale face glanced up at him once before she went back to her task. She was in the process of rebuilding their father’s head, picking up bone fragments from where they lay on the carpet, and trying to fit them together again like a three-dimensional jigsaw. And as she worked, she sang
.

‘
Couldn’t put Humpty together again
.’

NICK’S RANGE ROVER
was parked close by the side door when I arrived ten minutes later. There was no sign of any other vehicle.

Bell’s kosher. Been working with us
.

Good God, what else was the bugger going to throw at me?

You think you’re the only undercover officer we have in town
?

Nick Bell could not be an undercover police officer. A GP was far too complicated a cover story. But covertly working with SO10, in the same way Evi was? That wasn’t impossible. So did he know who I was? Or had he been covertly investigating me while I’d been … oh, Lord, it didn’t bear thinking about.

The back door was open and a handwritten note had been stuck to it with a drawing pin.

Upstairs
, it said.

We’d almost had sex. Christ, this was going to be embarrassing.

A musical tone told me I had another text. Joesbury again.

ETA three minutes. Don’t let me catch you snogging.

It was beyond me. I was handing over to Joesbury and his ‘boys’ as soon as they got here and then I was never having anything to do with SO10 as long as I lived. I might even apply to join Traffic.

I pushed open the door and went through into the kitchen. No sign of the dogs. The room was warm but the house had an empty feel about it.

‘Hi!’ I called from halfway up the stairs. ‘It’s me.’

There was no response. Nick could be outside with the animals but the note had definitely said come upstairs. I stopped at the top. Still no sign of him. The master bedroom where I’d slept the other night was at the front of the house, behind me, as was the main spare bedroom. Both doors shut. The bathroom was to my left. Door shut.

‘Hey, gorgeous, I’m in here,’ he called.

I stepped forward, pausing on the threshold of a room I hadn’t seen before. I’d just registered that Nick was leaning over an old desk with a tin of polish in one hand and a leather bridle in the other when I heard the creak of a stair behind me. Joesbury.

I turned just as Nick straightened up and we both looked towards the door, the goofy smile freezing on my face. The man blocking our way out wasn’t Joesbury.

‘Good God,’ said Nick, over my shoulder.

I could have cut off my own arm for being stupid enough to get trapped in an upstairs room. The man in the doorway, whom I’d last seen running after a stolen van at the industrial estate, ignored me. ‘Hello, Nick,’ he said. ‘Long time no see.’

The room wasn’t brightly lit, the hallway quite dark, but even so Tom’s eyes seemed to have lost all their colour. They were like millponds at night, black and empty, and I couldn’t remember why I’d ever thought them kind. Then I was sizing up the situation, checking the room for ways out, weapons, distractions, anything. All I really had to do was to stay calm and stall them. Joesbury and the cavalry would be here any second.

‘I take it you’re Iestyn Thomas?’ I said. There were any number of hard objects I could introduce to Thomas’s head given the chance.

‘Laura, what on earth …?’ began Nick, his eyes going from me to the man in the doorway.

Then Thomas stepped into the room and any hope I’d had that he was alone was quashed. Scott Thornton was with him, his blue
eyes
gleaming at me the way they had through the ninja mask the night he’d half drowned me. And then another man appeared. This one I didn’t know, except that I’d seen him leaving Megan Prince’s house the day before.

‘John?’ Nick knew him, then, but from the tone of surprise and growing alarm in his voice it was obvious he was completely in the dark. ‘What’s going on? Has something happened?’

‘Nick knows nothing,’ I said. ‘Let him go. Or tie him up and leave him here. Either way, he’s not a threat.’

A nervous laugh that was more like a choke from Nick. ‘Laura, don’t be ridiculous. John is DI Castell. He’s a police officer. Local CID.’

John Castell, the man in charge of the suicide investigations. Oh, there weren’t words.

No, actually, there were. ‘I’m a police officer,’ I said. ‘He is a twisted, psychotic piece of shit.’

They moved forward at that. Thornton and Thomas took hold of Nick and, ignoring his increasingly alarmed protests, pulled us apart. Castell and I glared at each other and I was praying I’d have the nerve to do some serious damage before he overpowered me. Or before help arrived, and on that subject, where the hell was Joes—

‘Nick, how did you get my number?’ I asked without taking my eyes off Castell. ‘You phoned me just now on a new number. Who gave it to you?’

‘Will you lot get the fuck out of my hou—’

I’m not sure who hit Nick, I only saw him sink to the carpet, before someone else appeared on the landing outside and all I could do was stare like a halfwit.

Your nutty room-mate found it this morning when she went to the hospital to pick up some books
.

Talaith Robinson, my nutty room-mate, sidled up to Castell and wrapped herself around him like a bad smell around rotten meat.

‘Hello, Lacey,’ she said.

Bank of the River Cam, five years earlier

ARECENT SUMMER STORM
had shaken millions of leaves from the willow trees. They were floating in the still backwaters of the river, looking almost solid enough to walk on. They adorned the moored punts lining the river’s edge and covered the banks like a dappled green carpet. Already the heat was building again, making the damp earth steam
.

DI John Castell took off his jacket and slung it over one shoulder. He loosened his tie. The air was thick with sugar stealers and tiny green flying insects. Several of both clung to his shirt and his hair. He left them where they were, rather enjoying the unusual experience of being garlanded by nature
.

As he stepped beneath the canopy of one of the larger trees he felt as if he were entering an enchanted tropical forest. Here, hidden from the world by a sphere of green, a woman was waiting
.

Her dress was long and made from a light, floaty fabric that managed to cling to her curves and sway in the breeze at the same time. Her hair was long too. She was like a creature from another time. Little more than twenty years old, she was far too young for him and it just wasn’t going to have to matter
.

‘
Hey, buddy,’ said one of the two men with her, the men he’d come to meet. ‘I’d like you to meet my sister
.’