Steven Dunne - The Disciple

‘No doubt,’ nodded Drexler as he and McQuarry emerged from the undergrowth and approached the line of motor homes sitting alongside the twenty-foot rock wall that made up one side of a natural basin. ‘This is a clearing.’ He mopped his brow. The air in this bowl was oppressive, the breeze apparently unable to penetrate the dense foliage surrounding the amphitheatre on three sides.

The vehicles had been carefully parked against the wall of rock and were in various states of decay, the oldest on the far left, all the way to the newest on the right. Some were physically intact and others had clearly been in some kind of collision, whether it was just a dent or, in the case of the newest vehicle — a yellow VW camper with California plates — a hefty crash.

‘The yellow camper you see there belonged to the Bailey family,’ said Dupree. ‘The last family to disappear.’

‘Colorado, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona.’ McQuarry muttered, as she examined the motor homes’ plates. ‘Guess we’re on board, Mike.’ She approached the VW camper and tried the door handle. It opened and Drexler and Dupree saw her reach inside briefly. She straightened up again holding a rag doll with yellow string for hair, then turned to her partner, a sombre look on her face. She looked at the ground, surveying the well-dug soil. ‘Not a lot of vegetation growing in the ground, is there?’

Drexler followed her eyes down, looking at his own feet. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed when the penny dropped.

‘You think …?’ Dupree took a few seconds’ pause as he and the two agents began to step backwards, away from the vehicles to the edge of the clearing, as though walking on hot coals.

Grant stirred the remains of her starter and pushed it away. A waiter made to remove it so she pulled it back towards her. When Hudson returned from the toilet and sat back down, she took a sip of her sparkling water.

‘Have a lager, darlin’. We’re on exes, remember. Make the most of it.’

‘I’m not an MP, guv. Water’s fine.’

Hudson shrugged and ordered another Kingfisher. ‘At least give the case a break.’

Laura Grant smiled like a patient mother with an errant child. ‘He’s still our guy, guv, I’m telling you. He didn’t turn a hair when you said it was murder — all that hooey about “what brings you up from Bromley”. He knew from minute one why we were here and where we were from — which means he knew Harvey-Ellis was dead when he walked in.’

Hudson nibbled on his roti bread, nodding at Grant’s starter. She shrugged her assent and Hudson attacked her mushroom puri.

‘Sure he knew. But it doesn’t mean anything. There’s the internet. Maybe Terri or Mrs H phoned him…’

‘He said he hadn’t spoken to them for a long time.’

‘He may have lied. But it’s not enough.’

‘He’s got no alibi.’

‘That doesn’t put him in Brighton, Laura. We’d need a lot more to put pressure on a detective inspector. Assuming we wanted to…’

‘Assuming we wanted to? Why wouldn’t we?’

‘You heard him, luv. Harvey-Ellis was a sex offender — a paedo, strictly speaking. Good riddance, most people would say. We say it every day about the scum we’re forced to deal with.’

Grant sighed. ‘I suppose. It’s just he was so damned cocky about it. It’s not normal.’

Hudson raised an eyebrow. ‘So you didn’t like him. Or don’t you like the fact that you did like him?’

Grant looked up from picking poppadom crumbs off the linen tablecloth. Her pretty face became surly for a moment, then eased. ‘I can’t deny Brook’s got … charisma.’ Hudson smiled. ‘But do I find him attractive? Er, not likely. He’s almost as old as you, guv.’

Hudson’s smile thinned. ‘Thanks a bundle.’ He looked around at the decor of the smart Indian restaurant just down the road from the Midland Hotel. ‘Nice curry house, this. Good find, Laura. The food’s great.’ Hudson folded the final forkload of mushroom into his mouth and sat back with a sigh.

‘You know, there is one thing in his favour,’ said Grant.

Hudson nodded, trying to clear his mouth to speak. ‘Yeah. Twilight Sleep. That really threw him.’

‘It appeared to throw him, guv. He could still have been faking it.’

‘But why would he? Someone using The Reaper’s MO — it’s a big deal to Brook.’

‘Maybe he was just surprised that we got onto it so quickly.’

‘You’re not going to let this go, are you, luv?’

Grant paused, tipping the rest of her bottle of sparkling water into her glass. ‘You know guv, as a woman I probably shouldn’t say this, but I know about rape, I’ve worked cases, I’ve seen…’ a moment of remembrance darkened her countenance for a second ‘…I’ve seen the victims and what it does to them. And, honestly, I don’t give a shit about the affair with Terri. Fifteen or not, Harvey-Ellis did not coerce that girl into bed. Okay, he may have seduced a silly little girl whose self-importance got the better of her judgement, but he didn’t hold her down and she wasn’t drugged. I’ll admit he deserved a tug for it but as far as I’m concerned, he didn’t deserve to die. And if people think they can play God and take other people’s lives because they think it’s justified, then they’re going to have to answer to me.’

Hudson stared at Grant, who merely glared at the tablecloth tight-lipped. After a few moments of silence, Hudson took a long pull on his Kingfisher and nodded at her.

‘Fair enough.’

Drexler waited while McQuarry finished speaking with the satellite office in South Lake Tahoe. By the end of the conversation, Drexler knew that a small army of forensic pathologists armed with the latest equipment would be mobilising. In a few hours the entire site would be alive with people wielding state-of-the-art technology and expertise, working under protective marquees looking for bodies of the victims of the newly dubbed ‘Ghost Road Killer’.

When found the bodies would be processed and tested, photographed and analysed, before going to the portable mortuary. And, assuming the latest victims had more than mere skeletons to tell the story of their deaths, there would be a further battery of tests as well.

When she’d finished speaking on Dupree’s car radio, McQuarry rejoined Drexler and they followed the sheriff back to the station building. An empty ambulance now stood outside, the crew inside waiting with a gurney for the body of Billy Ashwell. As they entered, two Crime Scene Investigators were standing ready to take Billy’s weight as another prepared to cut him down. As the two CSIs wrapped their arms around the boy’s lifeless trunk, something fell to the floor from the dead boy’s pocket. ‘What’s that?’ asked Drexler.

‘Looks like some kind of flower to me,’ answered Dupree.

‘It’s a red rose petal,’ said McQuarry, stooping to examine it.

The CSI released Billy’s legs and more deep red petals fell to the ground. One of the CSIs followed the trail back to Billy’s trouser pocket, which had been forced open by the attempt to get him down. He pulled at the fabric so the sheriff and the agents could see that the pocket was full of the same dark red petals.

‘Zuzu’s petals,’ said McQuarry to nobody in particular.

Drexler and Dupree turned to her. ‘Zu who?’

‘Zuzu. The little girl in It’s A Wonderful Life!’ she said looking back at them. ‘The film. James Stewart? Rose petals in his pocket?’ They didn’t seem to understand her. The sheriff arched a puzzled eyebrow. She shrugged her apology. ‘Sorry. Drive-in major.’

Brook was late setting off for home after his shift, having made a conscious effort to clear his backlog of paperwork. It was partly that things seemed to be pretty quiet at the moment, the colder weather being credited with a decline in drink-fuelled violence, and partly a result of his meeting with Chief Superintendent Charlton.