Eye Snatcher (19 page)

Right now, he seemed defeated. Like he knew there was no way out. Like he’d accepted the situation.

“You didn’t flee Jean Betts’ house because you were worried about seeing an escort that night, did you?” Brian said.

Andrew glanced up at him. Glimmer of recognition in his eyes. “I didn’t kill Sam Betts—”

“Then prove it. What are you hiding, Andrew? What are you hiding?”

Andrew opened his mouth. A tear rolled down his left cheek. “I… I… I want my lawyer.”

Brian smacked his fist against the table so hard it made Samantha jump. “We’re trying to throw you a line here, mate. In case you didn’t realise, you’re in a horrible fucking situation right now. You’re hiding something, I know you are. And maybe you did kill those kids—”

“I didn’t—”

“But there’s something you’re not telling us. And that something could be the difference between being known as a child butchering psychopath for the rest of your life, and being nothing more than a lowlife little nonce who once had a fling with a student.”

Andrew shook his head. More tears came down his cheeks.

Carter rested a hand on Brian’s arm while Andrew sobbed onto the table. Reminded him to stay calm, keep his cool, especially with Andrew currently lawyer-less, the interview not really “by the book” as such.

Brian took a deep breath. Leaned forward. “I don’t know what you did, Andrew. I don’t want to believe you murdered those children, as much as I want to arrest someone for it. I don’t want to believe anyone is capable of doing things like that. But right now, you’re telling me something happened in your past. And… and the silver Ka. The silver Ka being sighted outside Harri Johnson’s house. That… I dunno. To me, that doesn’t feel like a move a killer would make unless they want to be caught. So speak to me. Open your fucking mouth and speak to me. Or you will go down for these crimes. That’s all I can promise you.”

Andrew lifted his head. Wiped his eyes. Sniffed up and looked solely at Brian, Samantha taking the quieter, observant role in this exchange. “He… Damien Halshaw. He… I saw something. When I was with him.”

“Spare us the gory details,” Samantha said.

Andrew disregarded her. “I… I promise what Damien and I had wasn’t—wasn’t like you think. It was… it was more platonic than anything. A positive teacher-student relationship.”

Brian cringed. “Which involved you slipping your dick into—”

“It’s not what you think,” Andrew said, raising his voice.

Brian nodded. Let Andrew have his say.

Andrew leaned back and brushed his fingers through his curly hair. “He… We’d go to his place sometimes. I’d… I’d help him with his homework. Studying for his GCSEs, things like that. And he… they had this big garage in the yard. This garage where—”

Brian raised a hand. “If you’re gonna start describing a step by step walkthrough of what you did to Damien, quit it right there.”

“His dad used to store old cars in there. But I… I never saw his dad. He left years ago, something. But Damien’s mum, she could never bring herself to go in that garage. Reminded her of him too much, something like that.”

Carter shook her head and sighed. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Andrew placed his flattened palms on the table. His mouth twitched, like he was struggling to say the next words. “I… I went round once. The last… the last time I went round to Damien’s. And Damien wasn’t in. I… I saw a light in the garage. And… and I heard noises too. Like someone struggling. So I—I went through there. Went… went down to the garage. Thought maybe—maybe Damien had got stuck, something. And I opened the door to the garage and I…”

He stopped. His eyes were completely wide. Tears dripped from his cheeks onto the table.

“What did you see?” Brian asked. He realised he was leaning right across the table now, just a couple of feet from Andrew’s face. “Andrew, tell us what you saw in there.”

“I… I…”

The door rattled open. Snapped Brian out of his thoughts.

“Detective Inspector McDone, if you’d like to remove yourself from my client’s face and restart the rolling tape, that would be greatly appreciated.”

Brian kept on staring into Andrew’s eyes. The openness inside them had gone. It was like shutters had fallen over them again—shutters that hid the truth, which Brian had come so, so close to fully lifting.

“Brian.” Brian felt a hand on his arm again—Carter.

He took a deep breath. Leaned back in the chair. His heart pounded, and his arms tingled.

The lawyer stepping into the room was a tall blonde woman called Callie Harder. She wore angular glasses, a purple-tinted blazer and black trousers, and she smelled of some perfume that Brian swore Vanessa used to wear. She sat down beside Andrew West, whispered a few things to him, as he skulked back into his chair.

Brian’s body tingled with frustration. “Andrew was just telling us—”

“Andrew was telling you nothing,” Callie said. She took out a leather-bound notepad. Opened it up. “Nothing said before my entry into this interview room has any validity whatsoever. Especially not with you, Detective McDone. Not after all your hounding.”

Brian tensed his jaw. “With all due respect—”

“My client and I don’t feel comfortable with you present,” Callie said. “I’ve had a word with your superior and he’s already agreed to bring in another officer in your place.”

Brian’s whole body felt like it was burning. “You can’t—”

“I can, Brian,” Callie said. “Especially talking with your therapist. Mental struggles coming back to haunt you, from what I gather? Surely a case like this is way beyond your capabilities right now.

Brian was so tense that he felt like smacking his fist into the table again. Felt like throwing all the anger and rage inside him right in Callie’s direction.

A hand on his arm again. A hand that cooled him somewhat; calmed him.

“I’ve got this, Brian,” Carter whispered. She patted his arm. “I’ve got this.”

Brian stayed in his chair for a few moments. Stayed rooted to the spot. Stared at Andrew Wilkinson, who wasn’t making eye contact with him anymore.

And then he scraped his chair away and stormed out of the interview room.

Andrew Wilkinson hadn’t given him the answers he wanted, but he knew somewhere that might.

Damien Halshaw’s old house was a detached, grey-bricked building just outside of Whittingham.

Brian sat in his car outside it. Looked at the ivy crawling up the walls, overgrown and out of control. According to the records, this house had been unoccupied for the best part of a year. The house was technically still owned by Miranda Halshaw, but she’d moved away with her son shortly after the incident with Andrew Wilkinson. She hadn’t put the house up for rent, and it showed: she’d left it to rot. Clearly, the Halshaw family had money to waste.

Brian stepped out of the car. He’d come alone, mainly because of the way he was kicked out of the Andrew Wilkinson interview just half an hour earlier. He knew he was a stupid bugger for visiting a place like this alone, especially with what had happened when he’d been alone in the past, but lightning didn’t strike four bloody times, right?

He looked down the long country road. Listened to the sounds of birds singing, of leaves rustling against one another in the evergreen trees. The sounds of nature, nothing more. No traffic. No other houses around. Complete seclusion.

The perfect place to hide a secret.

Brian stepped up to the rusty iron front gate. There were some chains around it, but they’d been snapped. Judging by the cracks in the cobwebbed windows of the house, the graffiti sprawled across the crumbling white paint of the front door, kids got in here and hung around. With the old abandoned Hospital just around the corner—the one where Sam Betts’ body had been found—and this, Whittingham kids really had their fair share of creepy places to hang out.

Brian took another look left, another look right, and he pushed against the gate. It scraped along the algae-laden flags, another treacherous trap in Brian’s path into these grounds. Shit, he’d worn his Timberlands today too. Supposed to be walking boots, but they were slippery as shit when it came to surfaces like this. He’d have to keep his balance. Last thing he wanted to do was fall on his ass and end up in hospital after the way he’d already been embarrassed at the station earlier today.

Being careful with his steps, Brian made his way up the driveway. The grass either side of him was about knee height, but it’d stopped growing for winter now. In the distance, Brian swore he saw movement, then realised there were just rabbits and squirrels hopping about, enjoying the rare seclusion from the outside world. The smell of rich morning dew made the scene almost idyllic.

Pity about the circumstances.

Brian got halfway up the pathway. Heard another gust of wind batter the trees over the road. He looked over his shoulder—again, swore he saw movement. But no. He was being silly. There was nobody around here. The place was empty. There were no cars. No sounds. Nothing.

But there was something in the garage. Something that Andrew Wilkinson had seen when he’d been at Damien Halshaw’s house three years ago. Something that he insisted had links to what was happening to him today.

And Brian kind of believed Andrew Wilkinson’s innocence. He didn’t buy that this Eye Snatcher guy, who’d been so careful not to leave any clues or any traces during any of his three brutal murders, would suddenly just blow his cover in his car on CCTV. Sure, Andrew Wilkinson was a crook. But he wasn’t
their
crook, not right now. Not to Brian, anyway.

Brian felt his footing wobble underneath him. His legs split apart in a ball-busting position. He was just about to hit the concrete when one of his feet touched the grass, got some support. He gasped in relief, in frustration. The concrete was shiny with algae at this point. One slip, and he’d crack his head right open.

He steadied himself with a few deep breaths like his bastard singing therapist had told him and he stepped into the knee-length grass. The dampness from the grass went right through his black work trousers, squelched through a little hole in the front of his left Timberland, but anything was better than the slipperiness of the concrete. He made his way to the right, looped around to get a view on the garage. It had to be around the back of the house, or around the side. There had to be something in there.

As he waded through the tall grass, the wind completely stopping and a total silence coming over the place, he felt like that main character off Jurassic Park 2 all of a sudden. Wading through the velociraptor filled grass, the velociraptors just waiting for their moment, waiting to drag their prey down into the unknown.

Brian saw another few movements in the grass up ahead—another few twitches—but then something else caught his eye in the distance.

The garage.

It was painted white, and also had moss and ivy clawing out of control on the side. The garage door was big, thick and black. The roof looked solid, sturdy. Along the side, three little rectangular windows lined the wall, clouded through lack of cleaning.

Brian felt a knot in his stomach. He paced through the grass towards the garage. He was desperate to get there now. Andy Wilkinson had seen something here, and if he wasn’t going to speak out to the police about what it was, Brian was going to find it himself.

Or he wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t going to find a thing. Maybe Andrew Wilkinson was diverting them, or the garage was completely irrelevant to the case.

But Brian had picked up a kind of intuition during his many years as a police officer. A little sense that ignited every now and then. And right now, that sense was crying out at him, ordering him to investigate this garage.

He marched through the grass, which got taller with every step as he approached his destination. His legs were completely soaked, his left shoe squelching with water. But he was close. He was almost at the garage. He was almost there.

He stepped out of the grass. Almost slipped, forgetting how algae-covered the ground was. He held his hands out for balance. Made his way around the front of the garage. Reached down to lift the door up.

A padlock. Shiny. Silver. New.

“Fuck it,” Brian muttered. He stepped back. Looked at this garage. He was pissed that he couldn’t get inside. But was he surprised? If this place had any secrets, they wouldn’t just be there for layabout kids to come and see. The very presence of a padlock—a new-looking padlock—told Brian a lot about the garage. It told him that someone was trying to hide something in here.

His spidey senses were tingling like a bitch.

He looked over his shoulder. Looked at the thick hedges at the bottom of the yard area. Looked at the overturned wheelbarrow, bricks tumbling out of it onto the tarmac. Looked at the little wooden gate at the bottom of the yard, splinted and cracked.

He turned back around and crept down the side of the garage.

The windows were high up. Bloody high up. And he wasn’t short. They seemed designed just to let light in the garage more than anything. Brian tried to step on his tiptoes, but it was slippery down this strip of concrete too. One fall, he’d be on his ass in the tall velociraptor grass. One fall, and he’d be a call away from another ruddy trip to hospital.

He tried his best to peek through the glass anyway. His intuition was battling like mad with his common sense, and usually in situations like this, his intuition won. He got a peek into the garage. Got a little peek, just through the dusty window. Saw a cabinet. Saw what looked like a car. Saw—

“What the bloody ‘ell do you think you’re doing?”

The voice nearly made his heart blast out of his chest. He spun around. Slipped on the concrete. Tumbled onto his knees, stinging them in the process.

At the bottom of the yard, by the rickety gate, a man stood. He was bald. Had bushy eyebrows. He was wearing navy blue works overalls, which were covered with oil. So too were his hands. He looked at Brian with the look a sweet shop owner might give a kid if they caught them stealing from the counter.

“I…” Brian’s voice caught in his throat. Bloody bastard intuition, bumming him over again. “I was just—”