Authors: Drew Cross
‘I’m going in first; no arguments.’
Lee placed his arm across the front of me as he spoke, but if he’d thought that I was going to protest then he was wrong. Old-fashioned chivalry was more than welcome right now.
‘Okay, but if he starts stabbing make sure you hang on and keep him occupied for long enough for me to make good my escape, right?’
It felt wrong joking at a time like this, but it had the desired effect of alleviating some of the fear that held me in a tight cold grip, and I caught the quick flash of white as Lee smiled in appreciation and recognition.
‘When he makes his move we both rush him and take him down. Armed or not he’ll be hard pressed to deal with an attack from the two of us simultaneously.’
Lee’s expression settled back into seriousness. He practiced Taekwondo and Boxing in his spare time, and I’d done some Judo back in my early twenties, but neither of us was exactly a martial arts expert. In fact, based on my dismal performance when David had pushed his way into my home, I could do with some more lessons. I made a mental note that I’d get some if I walked away from this more or less intact.
‘Fine.’
I put in a silent prayer that armed response would arrive as back up some time right around now. The irony of the fact that I’d envied them the task of apprehending the Grey Man up until a few minutes ago was not entirely lost on me, but I’d relocate the finer points of my sense of humour later on when I wasn’t shaking with adrenaline.
‘Oh, and look for something to arm yourself with as soon as we’re inside, we’ll worry about reasonable and proportionate force after we finish beating him senseless.’
He tipped me a wink to say that the last part was offered at least partly in jest, but it was a good idea nevertheless, and then he nudged the door further open and swept the torchlight around inside, scanning every available corner before we entered.
I stayed up close to his back, trying to convince myself that I was not utterly terrified by this situation, trying to remind myself that I was the lead detective in a major murder enquiry and as such I wasn’t allowed to let fear cloud my judgement or get in the way of making the arrest, and forcing myself to stand fully upright. Why did I feel like a frightened little girl again then? Because usually you’re bringing them in on your own terms, fully prepared and with back up to spare. Not stumbling across them through pure dumb luck with the strong possibility that the lives of your own loved ones are at stake if you mess it all up.
I grabbed Lee’s shoulder as he took the first step through the doorway, halting him in his tracks. He stopped and looked back at me quizzically, scanning the area over my shoulder as if he expected our killer to leap out into view brandishing a bloody knife and a human head.
‘What is it?’
He dropped his eyes back down to meet my own.
‘There’s a chance that my nieces are here, and judging by all of the blood it doesn’t look good. I want you to promise me that if something goes wrong and we’re too late, or I get hurt here before I can take him down, then you’ll make him pay?’
I fixed him with an intense stare as he answered.
‘If he harms a hair on theirs or your head then I can promise you that he won’t leave here alive.’ Came the reply.
Chapter 83
As we moved along the dark hallway it became clear from the way that it flickered that the light in the window was coming from a single lit candle in the main living space. There were only two possible options on which way to go at the end of the short passageway, either through towards the candle or upstairs. Lee picked the downstairs since the light told us that somebody had been in there very recently, and I gestured that I was heading for the bedroom or rooms, I wasn’t yet sure whether there was more than one up there. He looked deeply unhappy at the prospect of us parting ways and me being left alone, but he also knew that if we didn’t split up then there was a much greater chance of him being able to slip away or creep up on us. After a moment’s pause, in which we managed to have an entire conversation in silence communicating solely by exaggerated facial expressions, he accepted the situation for what it was and handed me the torch as he moved away towards the light.
I kept my feet at the furthest edges of the stair rungs, experience had taught me that they were less likely to squeak and groan there than in the middle where most people chose to tread and the wood began to flex and stretch. I could feel how cold it was up here as soon as my feet touched down on the tiny the landing, which made me shiver, but also gave me reassurance that I wasn’t likely to open one of the two closed doors that had presented themselves to find the Grey Man inside wielding an axe. Odds were that there’d have been heat or light of some kind for him to keep warm or for him to work by. Easier to butcher bodies in the light than the dark.
I stopped at the first door and put my ear up against the wood before attempting to open it, I strained to listen, holding my breath to cut down on background noise but there were no obvious sounds coming from the other side. Gingerly I pushed down the handle, feeling and hearing the mechanism click softly and then toeing the door wide open and striking up a ridiculous approximation of a karate pose. As I suspected the room was devoid of life, and contained only a neat metal framed double bed, a large wooden wardrobe and mismatched chest of drawers.
I clicked on the small torch and swept the beam over chintzy floral soft furnishings and small stone sculptures. For a psycho he had surprisingly pleasant taste in décor.
I steadied myself and waited for my heart rate to come back down to a speed that didn’t suggest I’d just run a marathon, taking a deep breath in, holding it for a couple of seconds and then letting it go. It was an old trick I’d been taught for bringing the body back out of a stress state more quickly. Realising that time was pressing on I forced myself to tackle the second door, once again putting my ear to the timber first. This time I could hear something inside, an odd gurgling sound like water or something thicker slowly draining away down a partially blocked sink. Every hair on the back of my neck stood up and my heartbeat went back into overdrive, while I involuntarily ran a dozen horrible images through my mind about what was inside making that sound. Whatever it was, I prayed it wasn’t Lexie or Annabel, and that thought pushed aside my fear enough to drive me into action.
I stepped back away from the door and kicked out at the section just above and to the side of the handle with all of my force, feeling the surge of adrenaline as I connected and a section of the frame tore away, allowing the door to fly open unimpeded. I shone the meagre blue torchlight inside, realising immediately and with a vague spike of relief that it was a bathroom and that the noise could well have been just a blocked drain. That was when I saw the first of the blood, a handprint smear across one of the walls, more of it in spots and puddles on the lino floor and running down the tiles behind the sink. I heard the sound of Lee thundering back through the house and up the stairs to join me, startled by the crash as I’d smashed in the door, and I reached out and pulled the cord to switch on the main light. Then I saw
the woman in the bath, lying prone in an inch of her own blood with her face beaten beyond recognition. The low gurgling sound was coming from her.
Chapter 84
‘Oh God. Is she…?’
Lee arrived on the scene two seconds after I’d switched the bathroom light on, taking in the horror scene that I was still trying to process for himself.
‘No, she’s making a noise that suggests she’s still able to breathe, but it doesn’t look good does it?’
He shook his head quickly in response as I looked around for something to stem her bleeding and settled on a couple of clean white bath towels.
‘We’re going to have to try to move her out of there so we can get a proper look at where all this blood’s coming from besides her face.’
I moved around towards the lighter feet end and reached down into the tub and underneath the backs of her knees, immersing my hands and wrists in her cooling blood to achieve the feat. Lee wrapped his arms around her chest, tipping her forward so he could get around and under her arms, and getting a deep moan from her in response. That was a good sign. If she could still communicate her discomfort, and our backup arrived in record time, then she might just make it.
Thankfully she was only slightly built, because trying to manipulate a limp and badly injured person in the confined space of a bathroom, and without causing them further damage, is a recipe for disaster. The blood made her skin slippery to the touch, and more of it, both new and old, fell to the floor as we hauled her out onto one of the towels, trying hard to stay upright ourselves as the surface became a deadly skating rink.
‘There are some deep cuts on her wrists and forearms, as well as a lot of blood from the facial damage, I say we do what we can for the arms and then finish off our search. I’m taking it you didn’t find anything yet?’
I looked up at him and saw in his expression that there’d been nothing so far, before returning my attention to wrapping towels around the woman’s wounds so he wouldn’t see the pain in my expression. Judging by the grey hair and where we are, this has got to be Madeleine, the murderer’s wife. So where are the girls and where is Reimoore?
‘Nothing, but I was going to check out the garden when I heard all of the commotion. There’s some kind of old shed down among the bushes, I think, and it looks like somebody had been digging some kind of pit or grave but got disturbed.’
He made the sudden connection between my question and its subtext, and realised what he’d just said.
‘Oh shit. It could have been anything, and I got as far as having a quick look in before my attention was pulled this way. There was definitely nobody in it and I didn’t see much blood anywhere downstairs.’
We moved the old lady onto her side and arranged her in the recovery position. Without a few years in medical school and some bags of plasma we couldn’t do anything more for her at the moment anyway.
‘Let’s go check out that shed and the pit, and do me a favour and see where the hell armed response have got to. If he’d greeted us with a shotgun then we’d be two more to add to the tally by now.’
I couldn’t keep the fear and anger out of my voice, there’d been a fuck up somewhere along the line and I couldn’t decide whether that rested with me or elsewhere.
‘Agreed.’
He stood up and caught a glimpse of his reflexion in the mirror behind my head, his hands and shirt were growing stiff with blood and gore, and a broad scarlet smear ran from the middle of his forehead down to the side of his right eyebrow where he’d touched his face with a bloody hand.
‘Looking like we do at the moment, I’m betting we’re odds on to end up face down on the ground with guns aimed at our heads when they do arrive.’
He offered a wry smile, since the comment was more observation than it was joke, and the ‘gunslingers’, as they were occasionally referred to, had a reputation for drawing their weapons at the slightest sign of trouble and asking questions later. Thankfully they weren’t so quick to actually fire them.
Lee turned and stepped out of the door as I rose to follow close behind, and at that instant I heard an odd mechanical click and felt the air vibrate, just as he screamed and went down in a sudden hot spray of blood.
Chapter 85
He’s been shot. I’m trapped in the bathroom with a dying woman and now the man I love is about to join her, and the Grey Man is out there with a gun waiting for me. The terror exploded inside me, wrapping a veil around my ability to reason and causing me to hyperventilate. Any moment I expected to see the barrel of a gun come into view around the doorframe, followed by his familiar face, and then that would be the end of my life. Long seconds stretched out, and finally I was able to rationalise again, realising that I’d heard a click and a vibration, not the deafening roar of a gun firing, and seeing Lee miraculously able to pull himself along the floor back into the bathroom.
‘Shut the door too and we’ll try to keep it pushed closed between us Za…’
He clenched his teeth against the pain and the colour started to drain out of his expression. It was almost impossible to see where he’d been hurt since he was already saturated in Madeleine’s blood.
‘What did he hit you with?’
I helped him the last couple of feet, taking hold of his arm and physically pulling him across the slick floor.
‘A dart or an arrow of some kind…it passed straight through, I saw it embedded in the wall…I think he’s hurt too…he was moving away from me as I fell, but his right arm was hanging down…’
His skin turned a horrible shade of grey and he vomited in his own lap. Not a gun, a crossbow, that’s what the click was, and if he’s wounded then he’s going to have difficulty reloading it.
‘Okay Lee, listen to me now, if you’ve got the strength then call in everything you can to the armed response team. When they finally choose to arrive I want them shooting at everything that moves that isn’t us.’
I pressed the final semi-clean towel in the room into his hand so he could use it to stem his own bleeding and stood back up straight.