Tania Carver - The Creeper

He smiled. Felt relief wash through him. ‘Thank you…’

Don’t interrupt. I don’t care about that now. You have to listen to me. You need to be prepared.

‘I am prepared…’

Good. Listen closely. You need to get out of there. And you need to make it so that no one can follow you. Understand?

He frowned, confused once more. ‘No… what, what d’you mean?’

There are people coming for you.

‘I don’t…’

I told you. Listen. Closely. Right? Good. You need to get out of where you are now. Quickly. Now we discussed this, remember? What you had to do if something like this happened?

The Creeper thought hard. This was difficult. This didn’t feel right at all.

Remember. What we discussed. People are coming to the boat. You need to get out of there and not leave anything behind. What we talked about. What we planned. Remember?

He sat down beside the inert body of Rani. Tried not to look at her. He closed his eyes, forehead furrowed. Thinking. It took some effort, but, yes, he remembered. He told her so.

At last . That wasn’t so hard, was it? We got there eventually, didn’t we?

He laughed, thinking that was what she wanted him to do.

She ignored him. You remember what to leave?

‘Yeah, no problem.’ He wanted to please her once more, make her happy again.

Good. Now-

‘What about you?’

What d’you mean?

‘You. Lying here, on the floor. With your eyes closed. You’re talking to me and you’re not talking to me. What am I going to do with you?’

Just … just leave, leave me there.

‘Like a husk? Another husk? You mean put it with the others?’

No, no time. Just leave it there.

He felt a sharp stab of pain in his heart. ‘But, but you said this would be the one. The one body you were going to stay in. Forever…’

Well, plans change, don’t they?

Her words, harsh. He didn’t like that. It upset him. Made him feel like crying.

‘I’m sorry… I didn’t, didn’t mean to…’

It doesn’t matter. Just leave the husk there and do what I told you. Can you do that?

‘I won’t let you down. Promise.’

Good. Now, when you’ve done that, there’s somewhere I want you to go to.

He listened. She told him. Asked him to repeat it back to her until she was sure he understood.

Good. I’ll talk to you soon.

And she was gone.

He looked down at the husk. Sighed. Felt that stabbing in his heart once again. What a shame. He had thought that this was it. This was them back together forever. He should have known better. Should have known things wouldn’t work out.

Oh well.

He looked round the boat, knowing this was going to be the last time he would ever see it. It didn’t feel like home. Not really. But then nowhere ever did. Not any more. No place felt like home. Not if Rani wasn’t in it.

Felt tears well up. Swallowed them down. Wouldn’t give in to them. Not again.

But he was going to meet her. She had said so. Would this be the real Rani? No more husks? He hoped so. But then he had thought so before and been disappointed.

Still.

His eyes fell on the box in the corner. He smiled. That would help. That would be something to look forward to.

Fire. He liked the fire. It was power.

And he liked having power.

No longer caring about the husk on the floor, but checking it didn’t need another punch to keep it quiet, he crossed over to the box in the corner, opened it. Looked in.

Everything just as he remembered it.

Yes.

Fire was power.

And he was going to use it.

The circus had arrived.

The armed response unit had been hastily assembled in an old abandoned warehouse at the far end of Haven Street, along from King Edward Quay where Ian Buchan’s boat was moored.

It reminded Phil of the kind of desolate, empty, run-down place – all rusting metal supports, crumbling walls, rubble-strewn floors and partially destroyed roofs – that he imagined spies being exchanged in during the Cold War. Or the kind of location in which producers of TV spy dramas held end-of-episode shoot-outs. As he watched the armed response unit check, lock and load their weapons, he hoped that was just fanciful thinking.

He refused to carry a gun. Wasn’t even firearm trained. He disliked guns intensely, in any shape or form. Knives were worse, he knew that, but if he couldn’t disarm a potential aggressor with his mind and wits, or at the most with his hands and stick, he wasn’t being truly effective as a police officer.

He disliked the armed response unit. Thought the whole of CO19 – the Met’s supposedly elite force responsible for training all armed officers in the country – were a bunch of macho, fascist cowboys who hid behind the uniform while committing acts of barely licensed villainy. He was also intelligent enough to know that wasn’t a popular opinion for a serving officer to hold, never mind express, so kept it to himself. Most of the time. But he did admit there was a time when they were needed, a necessary evil. And this was one such occasion.

He snapped the Velcro tapes shut on his stab vest, pulled it down, making sure it fitted snugly but not tight enough to restrict his movements. He turned to the team, saw a bunch of hard-faced men standing there, in the kind of mental and emotional zone reserved for sportsmen and cage fighters. If they were superheroes, aggression would be their superpower and it would explode from their fingertips like lightning.

Their senior officer, Joe Wade, was addressing them.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Here’s the objective.’

He gestured at his laptop, placed on a folding table that had been brought along specially.

‘This boat. King Edward Quay. Out of here and to the left. About two hundred yards along the quay. The target is on the boat. He may be armed. He is certainly dangerous. He may also have a hostage with him.’

‘Detective Inspector Rose Martin,’ said Phil. ‘She was with DCI Fenwick when he was stabbed.’

Wade nodded, acknowledged the interruption, continued. The team were well drilled, well organised. While Wade marshalled his team into sections, Phil tried to calm his nerves. Anni had given him a description of the layout, which he had passed on to Wade. He wouldn’t be entering the boat until Wade’s team had secured it and brought Ian Buchan out. And, hopefully, Rose Martin. Then, with the area secured, he would enter.

Wade finished his address, looked at Phil.

Phil nodded. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I just want to emphasise once more that this man is dangerous. He’s an ex-soldier who brought his training home with him. And he’s been making full use of it in this town recently. Be aware. Oh, and one more thing. This is also a missing persons case. We need him to tell us where they are. So please, don’t kill him.’

A few of them laughed, thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

‘OK?’ said Wade, putting on his helmet, ‘let’s go.’

‘You’ve had some real cowboys in here…’

Marina was sitting at Anni’s desk back in the bar, looking through the reports Fiona Welch had made. She wasn’t impressed.

‘Did no one check this?’

Anni looked at her, uncomfortable. ‘Phil wasn’t happy.’

‘I’ll bet he wasn’t. And he shouldn’t have been the only one. What was Ben Fenwick thinking?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Anni, ‘but he was doing it with another part of his anatomy.’

Marina looked at her, open-mouthed. ‘What?’