Follow the Leader (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Patrick took both of Suzi’s hands and dragged her through to the kitchen at the back of the house. Removing the binding he’d brought with him from his pocket, he pulled a fancy chair out from under the table and hoisted her on to it. As her head flopped forward, he tied her arms behind the chair back and one foot to each leg at the front. When satisfied she was secure, he slapped her around the face.

‘Wakey, wakey!’

Suzi lifted her chin slowly, then, seeing him in front of her, she tried to stand up. She wriggled her hands and feet. Then she screamed.

Patrick swiped his hand across her face again. ‘Please be quiet,’ he told her. ‘You don’t want to alert your neighbours, now, do you?’

‘What do you want?’ she whispered.

Patrick placed his hands on her knees, smiling when she whimpered. ‘You really don’t remember me, do you?’ Then he frowned, slowly shaking his head from side to side. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Please!’ Suzi thrashed about some more. ‘My husband will be home soon.’

‘No, he won’t be back until around ten. Isn’t that what he said as he was leaving?’

‘Wh – what?’

‘You know he’d much rather be at work than here with you, don’t you? He doesn’t want to come home to your nagging and your self-absorbed ways. He doesn’t want to be left looking after your kids while you swan off here, there and every fucking where. Does he know about your extra fun at the gym?’

‘How do you –?’ Suzi began to cry. ‘Have you been
following
me?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ Patrick stepped back. ‘I was only doing it to suss out your routine. I needed to learn your moves so I could figure out the best time to do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever I want, really. Such fun!’

‘Please, let me go. I’ll do anything, give you anything. I can –’

‘My name – it isn’t Matthew Thompson,’ he interrupted. ‘You really don’t remember me, do you?’

Suzi shook her head manically.

‘The years of torment you and your gang of friends put me through. You’ll never know the anguish of being the odd one out, will you? What did you just call me back then, when you were going out with Mickey Taylor or whoever else you were slagging it about with? The class punch bag – of course I remembered. I know because I’ve retained every fucking WORD! And you’re going to pay for what you did to me. You and Whitty and Johnno and all the gang – you’re all going to pay for it.’

Suzi began to thrash around in the chair. ‘Please, let me –’

‘We’re playing a game, you see. You started it way back in the playground when we were ten. Follow the Leader – you remember? You ran off with my homework and I chased after you, behind the sheds where I couldn’t see who was waiting for me. But you knew who was there, didn’t you? And you knew that no one could see what they’d do to me. No one would be able to stop them, unless it was too late.’

‘We were just kids! We weren’t aware of how it would affect you.’

‘Liar.’

‘I do remember. We were always on to you.’ Suzi was crying hysterically now. ‘It must have hurt you so much. I’m truly sorry!’

‘LIAR!’

‘It was just games!’ She sobbed. ‘Stupid, childish games.’

Patrick clenched his fists. ‘You think I was playing games when I rammed a knife in Mickey Taylor’s stomach two days ago?’

Tears fell from her eyes again.

‘I made sure Mickey knew who I was before I killed him too.’

‘What . . . It was . . .’ She screamed again.

Patrick moved forward and straddled her. He grabbed her chin. ‘Shut the fuck up or I will make things much, much worse.’ From his pocket, he pulled out his knife and flicked it open. As she whimpered again, he pressed the blade across her throat, barely touching her skin but enough to make her understand that the threat was real.

Suzi sobbed uncontrollably, struggling to catch her breath.

It was then he felt her body given in. He glanced down, saw a puddle forming and laughed.

‘You’ve pissed yourself, just like I used to do when I was scared. Tut tut – such a naughty girl. You’ll have to be punished for that.’

‘What do you want with me?’ she sobbed.

‘I want . . .’ He placed the knife down on the floor. Then he moved his free hand slowly down her neck, over her chest, lingering to squeeze her breast before ripping open her blouse.

‘No, please,’ she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment.

‘Open your eyes.’

‘No! Please, I’ll do anything.’ She began to wriggle again.
‘Anything you want. Please, not that.’

‘Look at me!’

She opened her eyes. He smiled: finally, he had her full
attention
. She wasn’t going to scream; she wasn’t going to
struggle
. She was going to let him do whatever he wanted because she thought that he would leave and she could then get on with her life.

Oh dear. She was in for a surprise.

He picked up the knife again, ran the blade down her chest and held the tip against her stomach.

‘I don’t want you,’ he told her. ‘I just wanted you to know that I could have you.’

He plunged the knife deep into Suzi’s stomach. Patrick heard her gasp, watched her face contort with the shock and the pain. Before it completely took her breath away, he stabbed her again. Ah, the power he felt. It was almost orgasmic as he thrust the knife in again and again.

Suzi coughed as blood filled her mouth, but now she couldn’t look at him.

Pretty soon, she had no strength to cry out. Her head dropped.

Patrick sat still while his breathing returned to normal, the sound of his heart beating in the still of the room the only thing he was aware of. He grabbed a handful of Suzi’s hair and pulled her head up. She was almost ugly close up, smoker’s lines around her mouth and dark circles under each eye, yellowing teeth, signs of her hair thinning from too much product. He bet her skin had suffered from all the crap she must have had to wear on it. It was a vicious
circle
– add more to look good but make the skin suffer so it reacted badly. And although her eyes were devoid of anything now, the light in them had probably gone out a long time ago. He wondered when she’d last had fun in her life, a real belly laugh with friends, when she wasn’t swanning around like a diva. He didn’t feel any sympathy for her.

He let her head drop again and wiped the blade of the knife clean on her bra, red smears on virginal white. She’d broken a fingernail too, he noticed; boy, she wouldn’t like that, little Miss
Perfect
.

When she was Sandra Seymour, she had been such a bitch to him at school. Always trying to get him alone and then lure him to where the other boys would be able to get him. Unseen, they’d kicked him, punched and tormented him. They didn’t care what they did as long as they weren’t caught. And then when he went home with bruises, he got more from his old man for not sticking up for himself.

But Sandra Seymour, or Suzi Porter, whatever the press would call her, was a pawn in his game, useless to him now. Already he’d started to think about his next target, move on to the next stage of his plan.

Patrick closed his eyes for a moment and remembered the first thrust of the knife. He couldn’t believe how good it had felt, how much pain had been released with every stab – his pain, her pain, their pain. There was blood all over his clothes, but he couldn’t do much about that. He’d worn black again in readiness. But he needed to wash his hands: it would take him minutes at the most.

Checking his watch, he jumped from Suzi’s lap and went over to the sink. Two down: five to go. He wouldn’t be here long now. All he needed to do afterwards was slip out the back. Of course his fingerprints would be everywhere, but no one would catch him because he wasn’t in the system.

They just wouldn’t know that yet.

Chapter Nine

Rhian checked her watch for the umpteenth time before turning her attention back to the television. She listened carefully to the evening’s news as it kept everyone up to date with the ongoing investigation of the man who had been murdered over on the canal towpath two days ago. Rhian hadn’t known of Mickey Taylor until Joe had told her about him, but she certainly knew lots about him now. Reports of his murder had been on national news bulletins since Monday and were sprawled across the front page of
The
Sentinel
again that night.

The TV reporter panned around with his hand, saying that it was a popular spot for people to be found dead, but that most of the time it was usually the canal itself that caused the death as people drowned. No one had been murdered there until yesterday. A new low for Stoke-on-Trent, Rhian surmised, although she wanted to pull the reporter up on his stupid choice of words. A spot where people went to die should never be referred to as being popular, surely?

The time on the screen said it was ten past eight. She sighed. Where the hell was Joe? He’d told her this morning that he hadn’t planned on being home late so she’d made an effort and prepared him a shepherd’s pie from scratch. She’d followed a Jamie Oliver recipe, quite proud of her effort she was too, but the last time she had looked at it, it had started to burn at the edges as the juices inside bubbled over. She was starving: she’d give him ten more minutes and then she was diving into it regardless of whether he was home or not.

Moving in with Joe had not been in Rhian’s life plan but it had been an added bonus. They’d met during a night out in Hanley. Some young bloke had been taking great pleasure feeling her up on the dance floor. Joe had marched over and stopped him with a swift punch to the ribs that had gone unnoticed by the bouncers. He’d bought her a drink and, although he was sixteen years older than her, they’d become an item more or less immediately. Within a month, Rhian had persuaded Joe to let her stay there. The relationship wasn’t everything she had hoped but it was better than living at home with her parents. Plus, after conveniently losing her crappy bar job through poor attendance, because she didn’t have to fork out board or rent every month, she had started to put her qualification as a nail technician to good use and set up a mobile service for her friends. Pretty soon, she had a few regular clients and more than enough of an emergency fund put by, if she wasn’t too stupid with it.

She flicked over the channels to catch up on
Coronation Street
. But a few minutes into the program, her mind began to wander again. Just lately, Joe had been staying at work quite a lot more than he normally did. She looked back – she reckoned for the past two months there had been a lot of late nights, weekend meetings and phone calls he didn’t want her to listen in to. Not for the first time, she wondered if he had another woman. Fuck, she’d rip her eyes out if he had and she caught them together.

Relieved when she heard his car pull into the drive, she went out to greet him. ‘Where have you been?’ she whined as she stood shivering on the doorstep. ‘I’ve something delicious in the oven and the smell of it is driving me mad.’

‘There was a problem at work.’ Joe kissed her briefly on the cheek.

She closed the door behind them, only to turn to see he’d removed his coat and was heading up the stairs.

Rhian grabbed his arm to stop him. ‘Where are you going now?’

‘I need to shower.’

‘But I’m starving. Can’t we eat first?’

‘I won’t be more than a few minutes.’

‘But . . . oh, what’s that? Is it blood?’ She pointed to a red stain on his T-shirt. ‘Are you okay?’

Joe looked down. ‘Oh, it’s fine, it’s not mine,’ he explained. ‘One of the blokes at work cut himself, the dozy bastard, and
I had to administer first aid and take him to A&E. There was
blood
everywhere
.’

He thundered up the stairs.

Rhian pouted. ‘Shall I dish the food out? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’

‘Yeah, you do that.’

The bathroom door slamming made her jump. She glared at her reflection in the hall mirror. Damn that man! He hadn’t even said she looked nice. She’d made an effort with her appearance too, wearing a simple yet flattering woollen dress that stopped slightly above her knee and showed just enough cleavage not to seem slutty. She’d put up her hair, a few loose strands sexily dropping onto her shoulders. Underneath the dress, she wore nothing but a black lacy thong she was hoping he would remove later with his teeth.

He’s home, you stupid mare; stop whinging, she chastised herself. Determined not to antagonise him by moaning, she raced through to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.

Joe’s hair was still wet when he came into the kitchen ten minutes later. From the bags under his eyes and the way his shoulders drooped, Rhian realised she’d be pushing it for the marathon sex session she’d envisaged. But, she laughed inwardly, it was more than perfect for an early night. They could curl up together afterwards and have some quality time together for a change.

‘Come and sit.’ She beckoned him over to the table. ‘It’s only shepherd’s pie. It’s a bit well done now though.’

Joe headed over to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer. ‘I’m knackered, duck. I’ll take mine on a tray. I want to catch up with the news. Anything new on Mickey Taylor?’

Rhian counted to ten as she placed the plates on trays, remembering not to slam the cutlery down. In silence, they went through to the conservatory. They spent most of their time in there since it had recently been redecorated, since Rhian had insisted on putting her mark on something. Only when Joe’s son, Jayden, came to visit was it occupied by anyone else. Te
n-year-ol
d Jayden loved the large plasma TV to play games on, and the squishy leather settees to throw himself around on when he was doing anything more energetic. Dressed in pale creams and caramels with the odd shock of bright orange, the room was warm and tranquil. But Rhian didn’t feel relaxed as she sat down next to Joe. The television was on again, she sighed – bloody conversation stopper.

‘So what was so important that you were late again this evening?’ Rhian asked.

‘Nothing more than usual. I was at the office until I came home. I had some paperwork to finish off.’

When no more words were forthcoming, Rhian decided to change tack. ‘Please be careful, babe. You know that man, that Mickey Taylor, was murdered. I’m worried the police haven’t caught his killer yet and –’

‘Don’t worry about that. It’ll be some chancer, out to rob him of his money.’

‘
The Sentinel
said that it didn’t look like robbery was the motive. I reckon –’

‘Well, I reckon you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

They finished their meal in another silence. Afterwards, Joe stayed riveted to the news as Rhian took out the trays and left them on the worktop in the kitchen. She’d clean them tomorrow.
Impatient
to get back to him, she took him another beer.

‘Were you really at work this evening?’ she asked him again.

‘I told you, I was finishing something off.’

‘
Something
?’

‘Something that pays well, that’s all you need to know.’ Joe reached a wad of notes from his pocket and handed them to her. ‘Here, treat yourself.’

Rhian grinned and sat down next to him again. How she loved being fobbed off. She could get those jeans she’d seen in Top Shop. And maybe there would be enough left over for another night out with the girls.

‘Thanks, gorgeous.’ She leaned over to plant a kiss on his lips. ‘I might go out with Laila and Shelley next week for a drink. Do you fancy coming with us?’

‘Not my style, you know that.’

‘Maybe not, but I’m fed up with staying in on my own most evenings.’ Rhian stopped counting at one hundred pounds. ‘It’s not because you’re seeing another woman, is it? Because if you are, then I’m –’

Before she could finish her sentence, Joe turned towards her, his hand on her knee. She watched it rise slowly up her thigh, inside her dress, to the side of her thong. She moaned as he slipped his fingers inside; her breathing took on a life of its own.

‘Rhian, Rhian,’ he spoke slowly. ‘What do I have to do to make you shut up?’

She threw the money to the floor and pulled him closer, running her hand through his hair as he kissed her. She knew his game, the scheming bastard. But she could play it too. Knowing just what he wanted, she reached for the buckle on his belt.

Afterwards, as Rhian lay beside him, Joe tried to control his temper. Fuck, she might be sexy and give great head but sometimes he could just lean over and punch her. He hated keeping her sweet at times. In the past, she’d been an alibi for him on several occasions but that had all been work related – nothing serious. In his line of work, you just never knew when things might need a little tweaking of the truth. Rhian would say anything for him, for the right price. She knew the score, enjoyed it too. It was what she did for him. But her constant snipes and moans about him being up to something dodgy really pissed him off at times. He wasn’t stupid, knew she was only interested in him for his money. Plus a man of his age still needed sex, so her younger, willing body was a bonus. Of course, some of the blokes that he worked with paid for it, but he would never do that. He could take his pick of women if he wanted. He had when he’d been married – until his ex-wife had found out and put a stop to it with a boot up his ass.

Rhian was like his ex-wife in some ways but in others she was completely different. Yet, even though she was sixteen years younger than him, for someone so young she knew her own head when it came to kids. She’d told him categorically that she didn’t want any – something he was certain of after she’d taken a long time to warm to his son, Jayden, even though it had annoyed him at the time. She was far too selfish to have kids. Perfect, as he didn’t want to start a family again at his time of life. Some of his friends were granddads now. Christ, that made him feel old.

And, despite what he put up with – her moods and childish tantrums, her inability to see mess around the house, her failure to cook a half-decent meal – he felt confident that she would cover for him, say anything for him. Giving her money was a way of keeping her sweet. He wouldn’t jeopardise his plans – what he
had
actually been doing that evening.

He ran his fingers through his hair, left his hand behind his head as he pushed away thoughts of what would happen to him if he was caught. The job was dodgy but it was going to pay off soon, as long as he could keep it quiet for a little bit longer. Because if his boss got wind of it, he’d be in serious bother. And no one wanted the wrath of Terry Ryder.

Allie jumped from sleep as her mobile phone burst into tune. She glanced around, disorientated for a moment until she realised s
he wa
s at home. She must have dozed off on the settee. The clock on the wall said ten forty-five. Mark, who’d clearly been asleep on the armchair, groaned.

‘
Beat Surrender
?’ He scoffed. ‘Seriously, you changed your ringtone to that?’

‘You were the one moaning about it.’ Quickly, she reached for her phone. ‘DS Shenton.’

‘This is the control room, Sarge. There’s been report of a
murder
. Female – stabbed at home. I’ve been told to radio you in.’

Allie sighed: not another domestic gone too far.

‘One more thing,’ the caller continued. ‘Forensics have found another letter.’