Tania Carver - The Creeper

Phil nodded. ‘Any news on him?’

‘Stable, apparently,’ said Jane Gosling. ‘Hospital talk for not alive but not dead yet.’

‘Right.’ Phil suppressed the urge to sigh again. ‘Any ideas so far? Any theories about links? Leads?’

‘Adele Harrison, Julie Miller and Suzanne Perry all look alike,’ said Anni. ‘Or, rather, all share similarities. Tall, white, dark-haired. Same bone structure and features. Same ages, just about.’

Phil nodded. ‘And Rose Martin too. On that basis you can add her to that list. It looks like that’s his type, his trigger. ’

Nick Lines put his hand up. ‘I think you’re right.’ He said. ‘Compare the way Adele Harrison’s body was attacked and mutilated as well as killed with the way Zoe Herriot was murdered. Like she’s been dispatched. She doesn’t fit the profile so she’s cut and dumped as quickly as possible.’

Several of the team flinched at his words. Nick didn’t elaborate or apologise.

‘We have to make Mark Turner and Fiona Welch our top suspects at the moment.’

‘What about the boat, boss? The soldier?’ said Anni.

‘There’s a lot of pieces that aren’t in place yet. We keep our options open at the moment. But since Ben was knifed in Turner and Welch’s house, we have to assume they’re a big part of it. The university are looking out for them. They’ve been told to call us the second they set foot there. Although I doubt they will. Nick, anything you can tell us from the house?’

‘Not much,’ said Nick Lines. ‘From the stains and the blood spray patterns, it looks like everything happened in the living room. It also looks like a rug’s been removed recently.’

‘How recently?’

‘Since Ben Fenwick was stabbed.’

‘Wrapping Rose Martin up in it?’ said Phil.

‘An educated guess,’ said Nick.

‘Adrian, any neighbours have anything to say?’

Adrian Wren stood up. ‘A woman opposite does say she saw two men loading a carpet into the back of a van in The Beijing car park.’ The house was next to a Chinese takeaway with a piece of waste ground between that the fast food outlet liked to call a car park.

‘That sounds like our team. Make? Model?’

He shook his head. ‘Just something dark. Quite small. Not a big one. No descriptions either. Both in some kind of work clothes, apparently. Woolly hats and sunglasses.’

‘Comedy Blues Brothers,’ said Phil, no humour in his voice. ‘Brilliant.’

‘The van fits with what Mickey’s been following up, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Black Citroën Nemo.’

‘Get some photos, Adrian. Ask her again.’

He nodded, made a note.

‘Fiona Welch,’ said Phil. ‘One of Ben Fenwick’s innovations, I’m afraid. I never rated her, never liked her, never wanted her here. And after that profile, never trusted her.’ He looked round the room. ‘Please feel free to join in with her character assassination.’

‘Mickey felt the same way, boss,’ said Anni. ‘Spoke to me about her earlier. Said there was something about her he didn’t like.’

‘Why didn’t he mention it to me?’

‘Because you’d said you were going to get rid of her. So that, he probably thought, was that. But he did say something else interesting about her, though.’

Phil listened.

‘He said she went to see Anthony Howe last night. After you’d finished questioning him. In his cell.’

Phil frowned. ‘What about?’

‘Don’t know. No record of that. Only of her visit.’

Phil thought for a moment, glancing round the restaurant. It looked comfortable, the kind of place you’d be happy to spend a few hours in if you were away from home. The bar looked the same. It was yet another glimpse into that other world, the safe, comfortable one, the one he could never inhabit.

‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘we’re jumping to conclusions to say that whatever she said to him contributed to his suicide attempt.’

Anni frowned. ‘Why, boss?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe he taught her at university. Maybe he made a pass at her. Some grudge or other.’ He sighed. ‘Why wasn’t her background checked into? Why wasn’t she properly vetted?’

No one answered. The only person who could was fighting for his life in hospital.

‘OK,’ said Phil. ‘In the meantime we keep an eye on the Greenstead Road house. It’s a long shot, but they may return. We’re also still going through it looking for any clue as to where they might be now.’

‘Don’t forget the boat, boss,’ said Anni.

‘I’m not.’

Anni’s phone rang. Phil stared at her, clearly unhappy with the interruption. She checked the display. ‘Mickey,’ she said. ‘I’d better take it.’

She got up from her seat, crossed into the bar.

Phil wanted to keep talking but knew as well as Anni that Mickey wouldn’t be phoning unless it was something important. ‘We’ll just wait a moment,’ he said. ‘This might be urgent.’

Anni returned, pocketing her phone. She sat down. Phil could sense the energy, the adrenalin, coming off her.

‘What you got?’

‘That was Mickey,’ she said, ‘he’s at the boat. There’s been developments.’ She told the team what he had seen, relaying it in almost as breathless a fashion as he clearly had to her.

‘Oh, lucky,’ said Phil, feeling that familiar tingle pass through him. He knew the others would be feeling it too. ‘A breakthrough. Anni, phone him back and tell him to keep tailing and we’ll get back up to him as quickly as possible. I’m guessing that’s Rose Martin on the boat. We’ll get an armed response unit down there as quickly as possible. Even if it’s not Rose, whoever it is we need to get them out safely. I’ll get down there right now.’ He looked round the room. ‘The rest of you get back to your jobs.’ He sighed. ‘Most of you, if not all of you, know that Ben Fenwick and I didn’t always see eye to eye. Or hardly ever, if I’m being honest.’

A small amount of laughter could be heard, breaking the tension.

Phil continued. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted this to happen to him. Or anything like it. It’s awful. What’s happened is absolutely, bloody awful. So let’s get out there and avenge him. Let’s do this for him.’

The meeting broke up.

Rose was terrified.

She lay on her back, on the filthy floor of some falling apart boat, eyes wide open, not daring to move or even to breathe. Like an animal freezing before a predator, hoping that if she stayed still long enough she would be ignored.

His hands were on her. His breath in her ear, raw, ragged grunts. His hands getting faster, moving quickly over her body, roughly tugging at her clothes…

She closed her eyes, trying to expel the vision of his face from her mind, take herself to somewhere she could think. Tried to make some sense of what had happened to her and how best to deal with it, thought back to how she had ended up in this situation.

She hadn’t seen him coming. That much was obvious. If she had, she would have been prepared. And then seeing what happened to Ben, watching him collapse like that. Was he dead? Oh God… All that blood, so much blood…

And now this. She had lain there, terrified, while he spoke to her. At least, she assumed that was what he was doing. She could barely make out any of his words. But that was no surprise. His mouth – his face – was ruined. She had studied him in close up all the time he was ‘talking’ to her. Clearly not Mark Turner. This man had suffered. His face was smooth in parts, pitted and wrinkled in others. Sometimes dead white, sometimes pink and red.

Burns, Rose thought. Bad ones.

As he moved closer she could see veins and arteries below the surface. They looked like fiery little red lines, networked, red hot pipes ready to burst and burn and spray at any moment.