Nick Oldham - Psycho Alley

‘Roger,’ the sergeant said sharply. He turned to direct his squad. The door to the basement ran off the hallway, under the stairs. Moments later the lead two firearms officers were ready to enter the basement. ‘Go,’ came the succinct order. The officer nodded and with Glock handguns drawn, ballistic shields in front of them, they tried the basement door — unlocked — reached through, simply switched on the light and charged down the concrete steps into the basement, followed by their back-up team.

It all fell spookily silent. Henry and Donaldson exchanged worried glances, then looked at the team leader who was at the top of the steps.

‘Situation report?’ the officer said into his radio.

‘All clear … hell,’ came the reply.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘You need to get down here … the DCI needs to get down here.’

Henry, his PR tuned to the firearms frequency, heard the exchange through his earpiece, as did Donaldson who had been loaned a PR.

The sergeant turned to Henry, who nodded and eased past him, followed by Donaldson. They went down the steep, narrow steps to the basement, hitting the stench as they descended. The four shocked-faced firearms officers who had made the entry, stood aside for them, allowing a view of the well-lit basement.

Trent’s studio. His lair.

Sophisticated-looking video and DVD recording equipment. Two expensive cameras on tripods. Hundreds of DVDs and videos stacked up by a wall. A mixing desk. Spotlights. And the small stage in the corner of the room which Henry recognized because he had seen it on Cork’s TV set, the one with the girl manacled to a metal ring in the wall.

She was still there, kneeling up to the wall, hanging by her wrists, which were chained to the ring that looked like a towel rail.

She was dead. Her head lolled through her arms, her lower legs starting to show signs of decomposition. She almost looked like she was praying. Her little naked body was stripped of flesh where she had been whipped and tortured.

‘Boss.’ Someone tapped Henry’s arm. He tore his eyes away from the girl. One of the firearms team pointed across to another corner of the basement, the only poorly-lit area. Henry walked across and found a blanket draped over something. He lifted it carefully, then reeled back instinctively before regaining his composure and looking again at the two small bodies on top of each other, decomposing. One was nearly a skeleton; another still had quite a lot of flesh and skin on the bones.

He dropped the blanket, horrified.

‘You guys — well done, but out, now, please,’ he said to the firearms team. ‘The attic needs sorting, please.’ They did not need telling twice, withdrawing silently.

Henry and Donaldson looked at each other.

‘Three dead girls,’ Henry said, unnecessarily.

Donaldson’s jaw jutted.

‘And he’s not here — unless he’s in the attic.’

‘No,’ said Donaldson.

Henry turned to the body of the girls chained to the wall. ‘I don’t think that’s Kerry Figgis. That’s the girl on the Cork’s video … could be the one from Manchester, maybe.’

‘Which means Kerry could still be alive. Maybe she’s with Trent now.’

‘A plus point … and another plus point,’ Henry said, stunned by his thoughts. ‘I know that Jodie Greaves died in the back of that Astra, and she went through hell, but at least she didn’t have to suffer this. Not that it’s any consolation … fuck, just look at these poor kids. Shit.’ Henry was close to tears. ‘He cannot be allowed to escape.’

‘Maybe we’re not too late,’ Donaldson said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Because there might still be a chance of him returning here. I know it’s a long shot, buddy, but just suppose he hasn’t seen us here,’ Donaldson said urgently, making chopping gestures with his hand to emphasize what he was saying. ‘These unfortunate kids aren’t going anywhere, so is there anything lost in shutting up the house, getting the door repaired — there’s a joiner with us, isn’t there? — and maybe waiting a few more hours. Whaddya think? Kerry isn’t here, so it’s not as though we’ve totally lost her yet; you did the right thing coming in, now let’s continue playing out our luck. You never know. He might just come back, whistling a happy tune.’

Alone in the darkness, he was aware of the sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart, even the noise of his eyelids coming together as he blinked. All magnified, all giving away his position, or so it seemed.

He looked around the living room, his eyes now well adjusted to the dark, the heavy curtains cutting out most of the illumination from the street outside. It was a normal room. Three-piece suite, TV, DVD, pictures on the walls. A normal room in a normal house in a normal street in Blackpool — a far from normal town. But hadn’t 25 Cromwell Street been a normal address? Yet what had Fred West’s home revealed? A trail of multiple murder stretching back over many years.

At least this house had only had its current owner in for two years. There would not be a legacy of lifetime killing here, just that of forty-eight months. What Trent could have achieved in that length of time was pretty terrifying, though. Three corpses in the basement for starters. Would more be found?

Sitting there, one floor above, Henry was certain that more bodies would be discovered.

A scraping noise made him stop breathing, listen intently.

Nothing. It was nothing.

As much as he could, he relaxed in that normal room.

His thoughts stayed with those bodies, the remnants of three young girls, murdered by the hands of Louis Vernon Trent and probably George Uren. Their terrible fate made Henry surge with anger. Kidnapped, abused, probably filmed, kept alive for how long? Months, possibly. Then murdered. His eyes moistened as his imagination ran riot. They had been given no chance and no hope. Plucked from the streets, from surroundings they knew well, felt safe and comfortable in. But in an area in which two ruthless predators swooped to survive; firstly by targeting old people, stealing from them, terrifying them and destroying their lives in the process; then pouncing on the young and ending theirs just to feed their perversion.

Henry knew he was the last hope for all those victims. If he missed Trent this time, he would never see him again, of that he was certain. He had disappeared for several years once already, but then come home to build a lair in which he lived with impunity. If he could do it on his home soil, he could do it anywhere. He would learn by his mistakes and would never be found again, and he would still go on living at the expense of the defenceless.

A car drove by. Its headlights sent brief rods of light through the chinks in the curtain.

Henry stayed still, checked his watch. It was a few minutes after midnight, into a new day, and although he had been there for less than an hour, he felt that the chances of Trent returning were ebbing away. Part of him believed Trent would not show, because he was a feral animal with highly developed senses that kept him one step ahead of the game. If he hadn’t already gone, Henry was sure he would intuitively know that his lair had been invaded and would not come back.

Henry had bustled everyone off the property, got the joiner in to do a quick repair to the front door, and the house was back to square one, on the face of it — with the exception that Henry was sitting in the living room, and everyone else, including a bleating Karl Donaldson, had been withdrawn. Henry had been insistent with Donaldson, who said it was foolish just to have only one person in the house. He and Henry had almost had a stand-up row about it, before Henry agreed to a suggestion made by the American which was a bit of a compromise. The nearest plain police car was at least a quarter of a mile away. Others were even further away. Their personal radios were all on a single talk group and ordered not to transmit anything unless urgent.