Tania Carver: The Creeper

‘No.’ But her voice wasn’t so emphatic this time.

Anni saw the opening, jumped in. ‘Could you have left the window open and someone got in? Is it possible?’

Suzanne looked up at her, those brown eyes looking suddenly lost. ‘I… I… does it matter?’

Anni shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Suzanne. When something like this happens, we think everything matters.’

She sighed. ‘I don’t know… I didn’t… I can’t… I don’t know…’ She looked once more at the coffee mug.

‘What about the people downstairs?’ Anni had spoken to her neighbours, got nothing from them, ruled them out. But she had to ask. ‘Could they have access?’

‘I don’t see how…’

‘Can you remember going to bed last night?’

‘I…’ Suzanne seemed about to answer in the affirmative but stopped herself. ‘No. I… I woke up this morning feeling really bad, shaky, like I was hungover or something.’ She screwed her face up, thinking back. ‘I can’t… I can’t remember going to bed…’

‘Had you been drinking? Were you hungover?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I just had a bath. Then some chocolate. A glass of wine. Red. Just one. With the chocolate. While I sat on the sofa. Red.’

‘Small glass?’

Suzanne nodded. ‘It’s… on the draining board. The wine bottle is there, too. With the, the cork in it. And then this morning I felt terrible.’

‘Maybe you’re coming down with something.’

‘Maybe. Swine flu. Great. Just what I need.’

‘So, the blind. If you can’t remember going to bed, you might have left it up by mistake. The window open.’

Suzanne frowned. ‘Up? No. The blind’s never up. It might have been open, but it’s never up… and the window… no. No… I didn’t, no…’

Anni looked at her face, checking for truth.

‘Never,’ she said. ‘Never…’

The fear was back in Suzanne’s eyes.

The Creeper loved being close.

It was what thrilled him.

Not that he didn’t enjoy the planning – he did. All the following, the strategising. The courtship. The anticipation. It was all good, but it was all for an end result. Being close.

That was what really did it for him. Being in a relationship. Half of a couple. In someone else’s life. That was the part he loved most. It topped the lot, made everything else worthwhile.

And now he had found her. The one.

He smiled to himself.

He had been searching for her for so long. Everywhere. The town, the countryside. Here and… and there. Waiting to hear her voice, a sign, any of the things that would let him know that she was the one.

His star-crossed lover.

His Rani.

And he had her.

And that made him happy.

There had been false starts. Times when he thought he had her, was sure he had her, only for her to disappear once more, leaving only a husk behind. A husk to be disposed of.

And he had been stupid, been a fool for love. But this one was real. He knew it. Could feel it.

And there she was now, so close to him, a few metres away. He could even reach out, touch her… like he had last night.

But he wouldn’t. Not while that policewoman was there.

He would just wait, be patient.

He lay back, stretched out. Listened to the sound of Rani’s voice coming through the boards.

Waiting for another chance to be alone with his lover.

Phil looked along the quay, checked to see how well his instructions had been implemented.

The road was completely sealed off from the roundabout. Nothing and no one could get in or out. Workers in businesses along the quay had been given a few hours of enforced leisure and gawping. Phil didn’t think they’d mind.

Over the other side of the river and on the bridge, gawkers were gathering. Phil had ordered the erection of a white tent over the body, both to preserve the crime scene and to deter onlookers. As always, he wasn’t sure if doing that didn’t just make them even more curious.

A full team of CSIs was scrutinising the deck of the boat and working their way out to the quay and the road. Taking impressions left on the ground, scraping surfaces, bagging and cataloguing anything that struck them as potentially interesting. Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, the blue-suited, booted, masked and gloved figures reminded Phil of a haz-mat team stopping the spread of a lethal virus. Which in a sense, he supposed, was what they were.

As Phil watched, his hand instinctively went to his ribs. Nothing. No pain. It had been absent for months but it still surprised him.

He had been victim of panic attacks since he was a boy. He knew what had caused them originally – the children’s homes he had grown up in weren’t known for their nurturing atmosphere. In fact, they were at the cutting edge of Darwinism. They were bound to leave some scars, whether physical, mental, emotional or all three. When he had finally settled down with Don and Eileen Brennan, his foster-parents, later his adoptive ones and, ultimately, the only people he dared call Mum and Dad, the panic attacks had ceased. But during his police career they had made return visits. Usually mild, but sometimes crippling. Always at moments of great stress. Like a huge iron fist was wrapping itself round his ribs and squeezing as hard as it could. Squeezing the life out of him.

He knew some officers who would have milked the situation, seen a doctor, taken paid sick leave with union backing. But Phil wasn’t like that. He had told no one, preferring to cope himself.

But he hadn’t had one in months. Not since…

Not since he and Marina had set up home together. Not since he’d became a father.

But he still felt his body for the attacks. Braced himself for their return. Because it was only a matter of time until something happened, some dark trigger tripped and that iron fist would have him in its grip once more. Only a matter of time.

But not today. And not now. Or at least not yet.

Nick Lines, the pathologist, was examining the body in place. He called to Phil.

‘I’m about to turn her. Want to see?’

Phil hurried back up the gangplank, on to the boat.

Nick Lines was only slightly more animated and lifelike than the corpses he worked with. Stripped of his paper suit, and despite the warmth, he stood dressed in a three-piece suit, pointed shoes, his tie loosened at the neck. He was tall, thin and bald; his glasses, perched on the end of his nose, might have looked fashionable on someone else. He wore the kind of expression that might have got him a part-time job either as a professional mourner or the kind of character actor in horror films who warned teenagers not to stray off the path into the woods. This expression, Phil knew from years of experience, hid a razor-sharp intellect and an even sharper – and dryer – wit.

Nick, together with a CSI, turned the body over.

‘Oh God…’

‘Hmm…’ Nick was masking any revulsion he may have felt by appearing to be professionally interested. For all Phil knew, he might have been.

Phil pointed. ‘Are those… hook marks?’

Nick peered at the back of the woman’s body. There were two huge wounds underneath her shoulder blades where something large and sharp had been gouged into her flesh.

‘Looks that way. By the way the flesh has torn, she must have been hung up to be tortured.’

‘Great.’ Phil felt his own stomach pitch. Emotions hurled themselves around inside him. Anger at what had been done. Revulsion. Sorrow. And a hard, burning flame in the pit of his stomach that made him want to catch the person who had done this. He stood up, turned away from the body. ‘So what have we got to go on, Nick?’