Peter James - Looking Good Dead

Message from Kellie.

His hand was shaking so much he could barely steady the cursor on the attachment. He double-clicked.

The attachment seemed to take forever to open. Then suddenly the entire screen went dark. And Kellie’s face appeared.

Harshly lit like a solo performer on a stage under the glare of a single spotlight, she was staring straight ahead, out of darkness. Still wearing her evening dress from last night, she was bound hand and foot and roped to a chair. A silver pendant Tom had never seen before hung from a chain around her neck. There was a large bruise below her right eye where it looked as if she had been punched, and her lips looked swollen.

She spoke in a choked, stilted tone, sounding as though she was attempting to recite from a memorized script.

Tom stared at her, totally numb with shock, as if this was not real, was just a bad joke, or a bad dream.

‘Tom, please watch me carefully and listen to me,’ Kellie said in a quavering voice. ‘Why have you done this to me? Why did you ignore the instructions you were given not to go to the police? They are now punishing me because of your stupidity.’

She fell silent, tears flooding down her mascara-streaked cheeks. Steadily the camera zoomed in tighter and tighter on her face. Then even tighter, tilting down, favouring the pendant on the necklace. Until the necklace filled the screen completely.

And the design engraved on it was clearly visible. It was a scarab beetle.

‘Don’t tell the police about this film, darling. Just do exactly what they tell you. Otherwise it will be Max’s turn next. Then Jessica’s. Don’t try to be heroic. Please do what they tell you. It’s…’ Her voice faltered. ‘It’s the only chance you and I have of ever seeing each other again. Please, please don’t tell the police. They will know. These people know everything.’

Kellie’s voice ripped through his soul like barbed wire.

The screen went pitch black. Then he heard a sound. It started as a low whine, then steadily got louder and higher, more and more piercing. It was Kellie, he realized. She was screaming.

Then silence.

The film was at an end. The attachment closed.

Tom vomited onto the carpet.

Nick Nicholl drove the unmarked Vauxhall out of the security gates of Sussex House and floored the accelerator. Emma-Jane, on the radio, gave instructions to the Control Centre operator.

‘This is Golf Tango Juliet Echo. We need uniform backup in the vicinity of Freshfield Road. The incident is at Number 138, but I don’t want anyone there to see or hear the car until I say so – that is very important. Understood?’ She was shaking with nerves. This was the first serious incident she had been in control of, and she was conscious that she might be exceeding her authority. But what choice did she have? ‘Can you confirm?’

‘Golf Tango Juliet Echo, dispatching uniform backup to vicinity of Freshfield Road. Requesting total silence and invisibility until further instructions. ETA four minutes.’

They were racing down a long, steep hill. Emma-Jane glanced at the speedometer. Over 70 mph. She dialled the number that Mr Seiler had given her. Moments later he answered.

‘Mr Seiler? It’s Detective Constable Boutwood; we are on our way. Is the van still outside?’

‘Still outside,’ he confirmed. ‘Would you like that I go and speak with the driver?’

‘No,’ she implored. ‘No, please don’t do that. Please just stay indoors and watch him. I will stay on the line. Tell me what you can see.’

The flash of a Gatso speed camera behind them streaked around the car. Still maintaining his speed, DC Nicholl continued down the hill, accelerating even harder as he saw a green light ahead of them. The bloody thing changed to red.

‘Run it!’ she said to him. She held her breath as he edged over the line and made a sharp right turn, cutting dangerously in front of a car, which hooted furiously at them.

‘I am still seeing the white van,’ Mr Seiler said. ‘A man inside it.’

‘Just one man?’

They were driving along a dual carriageway, a 40 mph limit, the speedometer nudging ninety.

‘I only see one man.’

‘What is he doing?’

‘He has a laptop computer open.’

A second Gatso flashed.

‘You’d better be right about this,’ Nick Nicholl whispered. ‘Otherwise my licence is toast.’

Street lights sped past them. Tail lights appeared like in a DVD on fast-forward. More lights flashed at them, angry drivers.

Ignoring her colleague, she was totally focused on the informant. ‘We’re only a couple of minutes away,’ she said.

‘So you want me outside now?’

‘NO!’ Her voice came out as a shriek. ‘Please stay inside.’

Nick Nicholl braked, ran another red light, then made a sharp left up Elm Grove, a steep, wide hill with houses and shops on either side. The sign harmony carpets above a shopfront flashed past.

‘What can you see now, Mr Seiler?’

‘Nothing has changed.’

Suddenly the radio crackled. ‘Golf Tango Juliet Echo, this is PC Godfrey. Uniform Delta Zebra Bravo. We are approaching Freshfield Road. ETA thirty seconds.’

‘Stop where you are,’ she said, suddenly feeling incredibly important – and very nervous of fouling up.

They passed the gloomy buildings of Brighton General Hospital, where her grandmother had died of cancer last year, then made a lurching, tyre-squealing dog-leg right into Freshfield Road.

Emma-Jane glanced at the street numbers – 256… 254…248… Turning to Nick Nicholl, she said, ‘OK, slow down; there’s a mini-roundabout ahead. It’ll be the other side of that.’

As they drove on she suddenly saw the white Ford Transit about 200 yards ahead of them, its tail lights glowing red. And now her heart really began to race. Within a few seconds she could read the number plate.

GU03OAG

She hit the radio button. ‘Uniform Delta Zebra Bravo. There is a white Ford Transit outside Number 138 Freshfield Road. Please intercept.’

Then she turned to Nick Nicholl. ‘Go for it! Pull up in front! Block it!’ She unclipped her seat belt.

Within seconds they were sliding to a halt, angled in front of the van, and Emma-Jane had her door open before they had even stopped moving. She clambered out and grabbed the driver’s door of the Transit.

It was locked.

She heard a siren. Saw blue flashing light skidding across the black tarmac. Heard the Transit’s starter motor and the revving of its engine. Her arm was yanked almost out of its socket as the van jerked backwards. She heard the splintering crunch of metal on metal and glass. Then her arm was jerked forwards as the van accelerated, ramming the Vauxhall. The air was filled with the howling sound of an engine over-revving, the acrid reek of burning tyres, then a shriek of metal as the Vauxhall lurched sideways. She heard Nick shout, ‘Stop! Police!’

Then another scream of bending metal. She hung on for grim life.

Suddenly her feet were swept away. The van was accelerating clear; it swerved sharply to the left and her legs trailed in the air, then to the right. Towards a line of parked cars.

She felt a moment of blind terror.

Then all the air was shot out of her. She felt a terrible pressure, then heard a dull crunching sound like breaking glass and metal. In the seconds of agony before she passed into oblivion, her hands giving up their grip, her body rolling into the gutter, she realized it wasn’t glass and metal that had made that sound. It was her own bones.

Nick saw her lying in the road and hesitated for a moment. Glancing in his mirror, he saw the marked police car a long way back. Ahead of him, the Transit’s tail lights were disappearing down the hill. In a split-second decision he accelerated after it, shouting into his radio, ‘Man down! We need an ambulance!’