I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket and handed it to Hatcher. Hatcher read what was written on it then frowned.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘No joke. What you’ve got there is written permission from Amanda Curtis saying that we can tell the press her daughter is dead.’
‘And why the hell would we do that?’
‘To drive a wedge between the unsubs. They’re already escalating. It’s time to up the pressure.’
‘We can’t say someone’s dead when they’re not.’
I shrugged.
‘It’s unethical.’
Another shrug.
‘We’d be lying to the press.’
‘Which is bad because the press never, ever lies about anything,’ I said.
Templeton chuckled. She tried to hold it in, but it was out there before she had a chance to stop it.
Hatcher looked at Templeton like he’d just noticed her. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘She’s doing the press conference,’ I said.
‘No way,’ said Templeton. ‘Absolutely no way.’ In the space of those five words the pitch of her voice had gone up by half an octave.
‘You’ll do fine.’
‘Read my lips, Winter. No way. I’m not doing it.’
‘Templeton!’ Hatcher said sharply.
Templeton glared at him.
‘Go. Now. I need to talk to Winter. Alone.’
Templeton looked from Hatcher to me, then back to Hatcher again. Her face was tight, lips pursed. The look in her eye could have been anger, or it could have been hate, or fear. It was difficult to tell. She sighed and shook her head, then left the room. Hatcher watched the door close then turned to me.
‘Remember what we were talking about this morning? All that stuff about me being taken off the investigation? If I pull a stunt like this, I won’t just get taken off the investigation, I’ll end up fired.’
I took out my cigarettes and Hatcher flashed a warning.
‘Don’t you dare.’
He looked as serious as he sounded, so I pushed the pack back into my pocket, then moved a pile of folders from the office’s only spare seat and sat down.
‘You’re not going to get fired, Hatcher. Worst-case scenario, you’ll go through a disciplinary and get busted back down to detective constable and bang goes your chance of ever being commissioner.’
‘This press conference isn’t going to happen.’
‘
You
brought me in to advise on this case. Okay, I’m advising you to hold a press conference so you can tell the media that Sarah Flight is dead, and that this is now a murder investigation.’
Hatcher sighed. ‘Have you tried this tactic before?’
‘It’ll work,’ I assured him.
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘These unsubs are devolving. They’re vulnerable right now. If we apply pressure in the right place, then we can destabilise their relationship. Keeping the victims alive is important to the submissive partner. If she believes one of her dolls has died, she’s going to be devastated. The guilt will push her over the edge.’
‘And what’s the risk to Rachel?’
‘It’s negligible.’
‘Define negligible.’
I shrugged.
‘So there’s a risk we could make things worse for Rachel?’ said Hatcher.
‘Of course there is. Every move we make has some risk attached to it. Even doing nothing comes with an element of risk. This can work, Hatcher. You’ve got to trust me here.’
‘Okay,’ said Hatcher. ‘Let’s do it. Maybe being a DC again won’t be so bad.’
‘It’s a lot less responsibility,’ I said. ‘So who gets to break the good news to Templeton?’
‘That’ll be you.’
‘By the way, the old guy who was giving me grief at the briefing, you need to transfer him to whatever your equivalent of Alaska is.’
‘Why? Because he was giving you grief?’
‘No. Because he’s leaking information to the press.’
‘And you know this how?’
‘Because someone’s leaking information, and it’s him.’
‘I’m going to need proof.’
‘No you don’t. As far as your team is concerned you’re God, which gives you licence to smite with impunity.’
Hatcher laughed.
‘You know your team,’ I said. ‘If anyone’s going to leak information, who’s it going to be? That young DC with her whole career ahead of her? Or someone whose career stalled at detective sergeant, and who would do anything to get back at the organisation that screwed him over, particularly if it’s going to earn him a few quid in the process?’
Hatcher sighed then frowned, his tired face folding in on itself like a black hole. ‘I’ll get the paperwork sorted,’ he said.
41
Rachel pressed a hand against the dog flap and felt it give. She pushed hard enough to open it an inch, then gently closed it again, guiding it back into place with both hands, convinced it was going to creak. She leant against the wall, her heart beating wildly. Her lungs felt too big for her chest and breathing was an effort. She closed her eyes to shut out the dark and told herself to calm down, whispered the words under her breath, over and over.
Calm down, calm down, calm down.
It worked. Her heart rate steadied and her breathing got easier.
She replayed the conversation she’d had with Eve in her head. Eve said Adam was out and would be back
soon
, but what did that mean? It was one of those vague terms that could be measured against a length of string.
Would he return in an hour or the next five minutes? Rachel had no idea. What she did know was that sitting here like this, talking herself around and around in circles, was wasting precious time. This could be her chance to escape. This might be her only chance. Whatever the consequences, she had to at least try because if she didn’t she’d just end up torturing herself with what-ifs the next time Adam strapped her to the dentist’s chair.
She pushed the dog flap open, all the way this time. She was aware the clock was ticking, but made herself wait so she could listen for any signs of Eve, or Adam. All she heard was the gurgle of the ancient heating system, and the occasional creak of old wood settling. Way in the distance, she thought she could hear the wind whistling around the outside of the house.
Rachel put her head through the flap, squeezed one shoulder in and then the other. She went through diagonally since there was more room that way, but it was still too tight. She tried to move forward, wriggling from side to side, but she was stuck. Images of the chair and the cane and the knife flashed through her head, one after the other. Bang, bang, bang. Adam would find her stuck here, half in and half out of the dog flap, and then he would punish her.
She didn’t want to think about what he might do because whatever he dreamt up was going to be so much worse than what he’d already done. Rachel wriggled harder, desperate to get free, the plastic scratching her arms and chest, fear driving her through the pain. Then suddenly she was all the way through and lying flat on the cold floor, breathing fast and hard, panic replaced by euphoria.
The corridor was as dark as the room, a degree or two warmer. Rachel crawled across the concrete floor until she found a wall, then stood and followed it along the corridor. The brickwork was rough beneath her hands. She moved as quickly as she dared because she had no idea what obstacles might be waiting to trip her up.
Twenty metres from the door there was a sharp ninety-degree left turn. Rachel stopped and listened for any signs of Eve or Adam before continuing. The flight of stairs a couple of metres on from the turn were cold and rough like the corridor floor. The glint of light that crept beneath the door at the top of them was the first daylight she’d seen since Wednesday afternoon, however long ago that was.
Rachel forced herself to climb the stairs slowly. It wasn’t easy. She just wanted out of here. She could see freedom in that thin glimmer of daylight, she could feel it in the gentle breeze blowing down the stairs. But it wouldn’t matter how close she was to freedom if she fell and broke her neck, so she made herself take it slow. She reached the door and even before she tried the handle she knew it would be locked. Luck had got her this far but it was only a matter of time before that luck ran out.
She tried the handle.
The door opened.
She stepped through the doorway into a narrow hallway with a high ceiling. The house was big and old, just like she’d imagined, that sense of space she’d experienced back in the basement more pronounced. Time seemed to crawl along much slower here than it did in the rest of the universe, reminding her of a museum. Muted daylight streamed in from a window she couldn’t see, and there was cold, shiny wood beneath her bare feet, the boards worn smooth over the years. The smell of furniture polish and oranges filled the air.
Rachel paused and listened for any signs of life, then walked towards the daylight. She turned a corner and found herself in a large, open hall. Off to her right was a wide staircase with a red carpet and ancestral portraits in gilt-edged frames. She did a double take at the painting that hung at the top of the first flight of stairs. The resemblance to Adam was uncanny.
Straight ahead was the front door.
Rachel paused again. Listened. Where was Eve? Upstairs? In one of the downstairs rooms? The kitchen, perhaps? Wherever she was, she wasn’t making a sound.
Perhaps she was hiding somewhere, watching her?
Rachel shook this last thought away. Her paranoia was creating fantasies, making her see ghosts in the shadows. That’s all that was happening here. Her imagination had gone into overdrive, fed by fear and anxiety. Rachel walked quickly towards the front door. She’d covered half the distance when something caught her eye and stopped her dead.
A telephone sat on the small antique occasional table opposite the stairs. The phone was a faded cream colour, old-fashioned but not obsolete. It had a push-button keypad and a springy coiled cable that attached the receiver to the base unit. The wire from the phone was attached to a socket in the skirting board.
Rachel ran over and ripped the receiver from the cradle. Her first thought was to call the police, her second thought was to call her father. She jammed the receiver against her ear. No dial tone, just static. Out of the static came a thin, crackly voice. Rachel recognised it straight away. Her blood froze, her legs gave way, and she slid to the floor with the telephone receiver still pressed to her ear, the words she’d just heard rattling around her head.
‘Hello Number Five.’
42
‘You’re going to do fine,’ I said.
Templeton just glared. If looks could kill I’d be lying on a mortuary slab right now. The brunette wig and brown contact lenses made her look like a different person and the uniform added an air of authority. The wig and lenses were for the benefit of the submissive unsub. When she looked at Templeton she’d think about her dolls. Hearing that one of them was dead would hit hard, and hearing this from someone who looked like one of her dolls would add more weight to the blow. The harder the blow, the more pressure this would place on the partnership. Apply enough pressure to exactly the right spot and you can break anything. Even diamonds break when hit right.
‘You’ll be fine,’ I said.
‘Easy for you to say. You’re not about to be fed to the lions.’ Templeton pulled at the collar of her jacket and shucked the sleeves. ‘This thing’s like a bloody straitjacket.’
Before she could say another word, I opened the door and shooed her through. ‘Break a leg,’ I whispered.
Templeton hit me with another death stare, then strode into the room like a pro, calm and confident, hiding her nerves well. She climbed the steps to the podium and the room fell silent. The place was packed with journalists, every seat taken.
I closed the door and sat down in front of a small monitor. There was only one camera in the room, and there was a twenty-second delay before the footage was filtered through to the news channels. The panic button would kill the feed dead if I didn’t like what I saw or heard. A ten-second delay would have been enough but we’d opted for overkill because there was no room for mistakes here. This was strictly a one-shot affair. For this to work we needed complete control over the information going out, and that meant controlling what went out to the TV channels. Nobody listened to the news on the radio, and by the time the stories appeared in tomorrow’s newspapers nobody cared. TV was all that mattered. If a photograph was worth a thousand words then a moving picture was worth ten thousand.
The press conference had been timed so it would hit the lunchtime news bulletins. As long as there were no major terrorist incidents or superstar deaths, it would be the lead story at the top of the hour, and remain the lead story right the way through to the six o’clock news, and beyond. Maximum impact, maximum exposure.
‘She looks good up there,’ said Hatcher. He was in the chair next to mine, staring intently at the screen. ‘I should get her to do more of these. Particularly when we’ve got bad news to deliver. It’s always easier to hear bad news when it’s delivered by someone with a pretty face.’
‘Works for me,’ I agreed.
Templeton looked straight at the camera and introduced herself as Detective Inspector Sophie Templeton.
Hatcher groaned. ‘Your idea, I suppose.’
‘It adds more weight to the statement if it comes from a DI,’ I replied, eyes glued to the screen.
Templeton began reading from the statement I’d prepared. She ignored the journalists and talked to the camera like it was the only thing in the room. She appeared relaxed. No staring, eyes soft, breathing easy, just like we’d discussed.
The statement was short and to the point. Sarah Flight had died overnight as a result of the brain injuries she sustained while she was in captivity, and the police were now treating her case as murder.
Templeton then went on to talk about Rachel Morris. She gave a detailed breakdown of her last movements from the time she left work all the way through to the time she left Springers, and finished with a standard appeal for any members of the public to come forward with information.
This was the cue for the packed group of journalists to attack her with questions. They’d been told there would be no questions, but they couldn’t help themselves. Templeton handled the situation like she’d been doing this her whole life. She didn’t flinch, didn’t show fear. She just ignored the questions, offered a quick, clipped thank you, then walked off the podium, leaving the room as confidently as she’d entered.