The Blood Detective (33 page)

In his room, his father plumped up some pillows and lay down. Next to the bed on a table was the vial. Foster climbed on to the bed; tears stung his cheeks. Helplessness. There was nothing he could do. Fear. This man had always been there.

Nothing was said. They hugged. His father told him he loved him and was proud of him. Foster, breaking down, returned the gesture.

His father edged backwards on his throne of pillows. Then he picked up the vial, turned the top and emptied seven white pills into the palm of his hand. He looked at Foster, smiled, eyes wet. Then he threw the pills into his mouth and took a hefty swig of water.

‘Now, this may hurt.’ The killer was back, his voice dragging Foster from the brink.

He started to turn the screws.

Heather’s car slammed to a halt on Bramley Road.

On the way, as they careered through the narrow, streetlit warren of Notting Dale, she had phoned through for an armed response team to assist them.

Then she turned to Nigel.

‘Foster will keep himself alive as long as possible,’

she muttered, her jaw firm.

Her faith in him appeared unshakable. Nigel was desperate to believe her. It was only a half-hour from midnight.

They jumped out, Nigel clutching an Ordnance

Survey map from 1893 and a small torch. He marched forwards, checking their position against the map, trying to work out where Pamber Street might have been. Above them the Westway, which carved through the area like a concrete river, pulsated with evening traffic. They walked along a short road leading down to an underground car park, Heather and the team following Nigel’s steps.

Nigel could see as he passed a series of five-a-side football pitches that Pamber Street was no more, one of the streets razed when the overhead motorway was built. The map told him that Pamber Street had lain north of the Westway. With his finger he traced the angle of the road and looked up at one of the characterless brick blocks of flats that studded the area. He veered towards one. In the distance he heard a van pull up at speed. He turned to see it disgorge a troop of armed response officers. More should be on their way.

‘Keep going,’ Heather gasped. ‘Find the flat.’

Nigel headed straight for a block that appeared to stand on the same patch of ground as Pamber Street.

Few of the flats were illuminated. There was the thud of footsteps on the ground as the armed team caught them up. Nigel and Heather reached the entrance and made for the stairs.

‘Where now?’ Heather asked breathlessly.

‘Number 12,’ Nigel said, bounding up the stairs.

The number of Segar Kellogg’s shop. Instinct told him his descendant would have picked a flat of the same number. They reached the second level and made their way across the corridor linking the

flats. The armed team was now alongside them. Nigel stopped outside number 12. No one said a word.

Nigel stepped back. His eyes glanced to his right, where he could see lights and vehicles descending on the area from all sides. Then they met Heather’s. Her dark eyes were wide with fear, expectation. He felt his heart beat firm and insistent against his ribcage, as if attempting to force its way out.

The team of four men took up their positions,

strapping on pairs of night-vision goggles. The flat was silent, no light from within. On the silent count of three, one officer battered the door and it fell with a sonorous thump. The others poured through shouting. Heather followed them, and Nigel’s curiosity ushered him through in her slipstream.

The men marched around the flat screaming

warnings. Nigel, his eyes not yet accustomed to the light, braced himself for the sound of a gun. Nothing came. The small living room was empty. The single bedroom, too. They burst through into the kitchen: nothing. The air was fusty, sweet-smelling. In the darkness he heard Heather’s voice.

‘Are you sure it was number 12?’ she screamed,

her tone accusatory.

‘Yes,’ he whispered hoarsely.

He was certain. He felt himself shrink visibly.

Another group of officers appeared in the doorway.

One of them flicked a light switch, lighting the room, making Nigel squint.

In the middle of the small, spartan sitting room was a large, white fridge-freezer; the only item in there save a wooden chair. Nigel and Heather looked at each other. One of the ART pulled the fridge door open. Empty but for half a carton of milk. He pulled the first drawer of the freezer open. Nothing. Then the second. Immediately he stepped back. Heather moved in, Nigel at her shoulder. He could see a bed of ice stained watery-red. On it lay a pair of hands and what appeared to be a wig, though a flap of blue-black skin betrayed its true origin.

Darbyshire’s hands, MacDougall’s scalp. They had the right place.

‘Too late,’ Heather drawled numbly.

The ringing in Foster’s ears was incessant. It drowned out everything: the voice of his potential killer, the quickening beat of his heart, even his own pathetically shallow breaths. Speaking was too much effort. The pain in his body from his many wounds had drifted away. Indeed, he could not feel his body at all. The only sensation was the ringing. Suddenly it stopped.

He felt light, ready to float free. Peace and contentment flowed through him.

Then he felt the bed beneath him once more, as

if slammed back into his body, aware immediately of the agony from his suppurating leg and shattered collarbone in particular. He opened his eyes and gasped: the pain from his ripped jaw shot through his entire body, yet he was incapable of emitting anything other than a low moan in protest.

For those few seconds he wanted to be calm

and peaceful once more, away from his wracked,

fragmented body and the smell of old cardboard.

‘Thought you’d done a Graham Ellis and jumped

the gun,’ he heard Hogg say.

The voice was nearby. What was he doing now?

Foster could sense a presence to his left.

‘Not long now,’ Hogg added. ‘Then it’ll all be

over.’

Foster had no more fight. He closed his eyes,

seeking the soothing balm of unconsciousness. There came the first stab of pain on the thumb knuckle of his right hand. A thin piercing stroke with a knife.

He knew at once what it was.

The number 1.

Nigel stumbled out of the flat, needing air, the image of the severed body parts repeating in his mind.

Policemen poured past him as he made his way down the stairs, mingling with a trail of confused residents forced grudgingly from their flats a few minutes before midnight, many in their nightclothes. Nigel did not know what to do with himself. Foster was certain to be dead; the killer had won.

He turned and glanced back at the functional brick building, ignoring the chaos around him. Two centuries ago, under a similarly brooding night sky, at the same hour, Esau Hogg had followed his father and watched him slaughter an innocent man. A few days later, within fifty yards of where Nigel now stood, Esau’s father had ushered his family to the basement beneath the shop, and butchered them.

The basement, he thought.

His eyes were attracted to a sign to one side of the block, black on white in giant lettering: ‘STORE

MORE’. A road wound down underneath the council block, ended by a black garage door. Some sort of self-storage facility. Using the torch, he checked the 1893 map, folded and bundled into his coat pocket.

Then he looked back at the block of flats. The road on the 1893 map was at a different angle from the other streets that branched off the main road. Tracing it with his finger, Pamber Street seemed to follow the contour of the road leading down to the underground storage unit. He ran towards it. Outside the entrance was a security guard.

‘Is anyone in there?’ Nigel asked, gesturing with his finger at the door.

‘No,’ the guard said. ‘There’s only me on duty.

What’s going on here?’ He gestured to the melee around the block of flats.

‘Police work.’

u

Yo

The security guard raised his eyebrows.

police?’

Nigel decided to lie. He nodded imperceptibly. ‘I need to get in there,’ he said, indicating the entrance behind the guard. ‘It’s important,’ he added.

The security guard weighed up his decision.

‘Once you’ve let me in, you need to go and find Detective Sergeant Heather Jenkins and tell her to meet me in here,’ Nigel continued with as much authority as he could muster, not wanting to give him time to think about it too much.

The gleam in Nigel’s eyes, his desperation,

appeared to sway the security guard. He turned back and unlocked the door, letting Nigel in.

‘Where’s unit 12?’

‘First floor down. Take the lift.’ He disappeared into an office for a few seconds, returning with a set of bolt cutters. ‘Only the customers have keys. You’ll need these.’

The security guard turned and left. Nigel headed down into the storage area, turning right from the brightly lit parking bay through a giant set of double doors, towards a lift.

‘Nigel!’ a voice hissed from behind. It was Heather, out of breath from exertion. She had followed him out of the flat, caught him up. ‘Where are you going?’

He told her about the family being murdered in

the cellar, and how he had re-examined the map.

She looked at him coolly. ‘I just passed the security guard. He’s adamant there’s no one in the entire complex.’

Nigel shrugged. ‘There might be something in

there that can help us.’

Heather glanced at the bolt cutters, the glimmer of a smile on her lips. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Playing the cop opens a few doors. Literally.’

Heather unholstered her radio and spoke, giving her position and asking for back-up. ‘Come on,’ she said.

The pair ran to the lift, went down a floor, alighting on a long corridor that stretched for about a hundred yards. The walls on either side were white steel, broken at regular intervals by bright yellow steel doors. The only silence was the gentle hum of the air ventilation system. Nigel walked down the hall, to a point where the doors were less tightly spaced, indicating bigger storage units. He turned and gestured to the last door on the left. No number on it.

They stopped outside, looking at each other. Still only the distant hum of circulating air.

‘It’s not locked,’ Heather said.

All the others they had passed had been.

Nigel looked at her. The bolt cutters he had were no use now, but he felt his grip tighten on the shaft.

Heather reached down and grasped the metal door handle. Slowly, without making a sound, she pushed it down and pulled. The door opened.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said simply.

There was a wall of boxes blocking the doorway

like bricks.

From beyond came a noise, the sound of something being knocked over. Followed, Nigel thought,

by a low moan.

Heather flashed him a look, eyes wide. ‘He’s in there,’ she hissed. She looked behind her, along the corridor. No sign of back-up.

Nigel looked at the wall of boxes blocking their path. Without another thought, he took a short run and pitched himself headlong. He met a box square on, felt it give on impact and the whole edifice shift.

A searing pain went through his shoulder. The top rows of boxes came down with him as he burst

through the makeshift barrier.

‘Stop! Police!’ he heard Heather scream out.

He was lying on one side and managed to look up, seeing a dark-haired man with a knife charge across the crowded room towards them. Behind him a supine figure lay almost naked on a trestle. Nigel pushed a box out of the way and jumped to his feet, intercepting the man’s path to the door and Heather.

He swung the bolt cutters back like a baseball bat and struck at the figure. They hit the man square in the chest, making him stagger backwards and drop the knife. His eyes flared with anger and he jumped straight to his feet, launching himself at Nigel. Nigel did not have time to swing the cutters once more, but used them to fend off his attacker. His face was contorted with agony, sweat streaming from his brow, teeth bared. He was doing all he could to repel the attacker, but his crash through the boxes had wrenched his shoulder and he could feel his grip on the bolt cutters giving way.

The man wrestled the cutters from his grasp. He swung them back behind his head. Nigel lifted his arms to protect himself from the impact. There was a deafening crack that echoed through the vault. He lowered his arms and saw the man on the floor, in black jeans and white T-shirt, slumped against a box.

There was a small hole in his forehead, only now beginning to gush blood. The man’s eyes were open, but he was obviously dead.

Nigel felt his legs weaken and he slumped to the floor, staring ahead, ears still ringing from the shot, cordite in his nostrils. There was a silence that seemed to last for an age before all hell broke loose.

Policemen funnelled in, guns at the ready. Nigel instinctively held his hands up to show he was not armed; he saw their anxious eyes scour the room in search of another assailant, then relax when they saw it was empty. One beckoned Nigel over towards them.

Nigel began to tread gingerly but Heather, ignoring the warnings, sprinted past him, to a corner of the room. He turned and saw the pale, lifeless figure of Foster lying on a makeshift trestle. Nigel followed her. Foster’s leg was at a grotesque angle, clearly broken. The rest of his body was covered in welts and bruises. He was absolutely still.

‘Grant?’ Heather screamed, standing over him.

‘Oh, my God! Grant!’

A steady drizzle blanketed Kensal Green Cemetery.

Suitable weather for a funeral, Nigel thought, as he gazed across the verdant churchyard. Where is everyone, he wondered? His only companion was the priest, alternating between impatiently checking his watch and anxiously looking for some clue from Nigel as to the whereabouts of the rest of the

mourners, and two pallbearers, who had disappeared behind some foliage for a smoke.