Питер Мэй - Lockdown

The table was littered with fist-sized wads of black hair. A pair of scissors lay discarded amongst the cuttings.

Lyn stared back at her, her face changed quite radically by the altered hair. For a moment she wondered if it was possible that she had done it herself, and somehow forgotten. But even as she entertained the thought she dismissed it. And she knew with an absolute certainty that while she had been in the shower, someone had come into the house and cut the hair on the child’s head.

No matter how insane that seemed, the evidence was there before her eyes. And it scared her to death. There was a chance that whoever had done it was still there. She was shaking uncontrollably as she reached for the phone, and dropped it on the floor. She retrieved it with difficulty and with trembling fingers dialled MacNeil’s mobile. She heard it ring. And ring. And ring. And then his voicemail kicked in. She was about to hang up in despair, when she decided that she should leave a message anyway.

Her own voice sounded strange to her as she spoke, trying to control her hysteria. ‘Jack, there’s someone here in the house. Please, come quickly. I’m scared.’ And she hung up and clutched the phone to her chest, and thought she had never been so frightened in her life.

MacNeil waited as the switchboard patched his call through. Then he heard Dawson’s voice. ‘DS Dawson.’

‘Rufus, it’s Jack.’

‘Hi, Jack. How’s it going out there?’

‘I think I’ve found where the kid was living. A house in Routh Road in Wandsworth. A rental property. According to the neighbour it was occupied for the last six months by a family, possibly French, called Smith.’

‘A likely story.’

‘They had a little Chinese kid with a cleft lip. I’m sure it’s our girl. But the parents were European. We need to find out who owns the house. The neighbour thinks it’s let by an agency. Find out who the agent is and get them out of bed. I want to know who’s currently renting the house, or who had it last.’

‘I’m right on it.’

‘Good man.’ MacNeil gave him the full address.

‘Jack...’ Dawson paused, something clearly on his mind. ‘About tonight...’

‘Rufus, I’m sorry.’ MacNeil pre-empted him.

‘No, I’m sorry, Jack. We all are. Bad enough what happened without...’ His voice tailed off. ‘Shit, we all feel really bad about it.’

‘Don’t. You didn’t know. And I appreciate the thought. I really do. Tell the guys thanks.’

He hung up and sat in the dark cocoon of his car, staring down the length of Trinity Road towards the prison. He’d heard that the flu had gone through the prisons like wildfire. Nature’s own form of capital punishment. Indiscriminate, all possibility of appeal denied. Nothing was moving out there. It was perfectly still. No sound. No cats, no barking dog. No traffic. He could almost have believed he was the last man alive. It felt like he was.

‘Scotland the Brave’ demolished the silence. He glanced at the screen on his mobile. A voicemail notification. There was a message for him. He hesitated for just a moment, then decided not to listen to it. Whatever it was could wait. He had more pressing business.

He walked back down Routh Road and stood gazing up at the house. It was where she had spent the last six months of her life. Very probably where she had died. She had walked these streets with a little satchel, to and from school every day. Eyes averted, perhaps, to avoid the stares of the people she would pass on the way. What kind of teasing and cruelty must she have suffered at school? Even the teachers would have found it difficult not to let their eyes be drawn. How sad that everything else about her — her personality, intelligence, character, temperament — would have been blighted by a single physical defect. How sad that so much is judged on appearance, rather than substance.

He went through the gate into Le Saux’s garden. He had warned Le Saux that it might be better to turn off his security lights, just for tonight, if he wanted to avoid being repeatedly disturbed. The blue door into the old bomb shelter opened into darkness. MacNeil felt his way through it, eyes adjusting to the little light that fell in from the street behind him. There were gardening tools, and watering cans and plant pots. It smelled earthy damp in here, and the chill cut right through his heavy outer coat. At the far end a door opened into the back garden. It was even darker here. No light made it through from the street out front. A high brick wall separated the two gardens. MacNeil felt along the top to see if there was glass set into the cement. But all he felt was soft spongy moss. He braced himself and jumped, pulling himself up, the toes of his shoes scraping for footholds, until he got one leg over, straddling the wall for a brief moment before dropping down on the other side, and into the garden of number thirty-three. He crouched in a short length of paved alleyway that ran along the side of a huge modern conservatory built out from the back of the house. And he listened to see if he had disturbed any of the neighbours. Le Saux had taken his advice. The security lights had stayed off, and there was no hint of activity in any of the neighbouring houses.

What he was about to do was illegal. But to get a warrant now, in the middle of the night, given all the circumstances, would have been next to impossible. It was unlikely he could even get a magistrate out of bed. If he found something in the house, then someone else could always come back with the proper paperwork and search the place legitimately. But MacNeil wasn’t prepared to wait. He was strangely driven. Not only by the fact that in just five hours he would no longer be a police officer. But by a compelling sense of urgency. A feeling that time was somehow of the essence. The murder of the two boys at the flats in Lambeth. The execution of Kazinski in Soho. The carefully arranged corpse of Jonathan Flight in South Kensington. Everywhere he went people were dying. People that someone was very anxious to keep quiet. The killer’s sense of urgency had transmitted itself to MacNeil, and he was determined to press on now, regardless of the niceties or the consequences.

Somewhere beyond the veil of clouds that masked the night sky, a nearly full moon was trying to force its way through. But only the merest trace of moonshine permeated the black folds of rain-laden nimbostratus. An icy wind rustled through the long, dead grass that choked the garden, rattling the leaves of evergreen shrubs left to grow ragged and wild.

MacNeil pressed his face against the glass of the conservatory and tried to see inside. But the dark was impenetrable. He skirted around its edge and caught his shin on a heavy marble planter and cursed violently under his breath.

Which was when he heard the movement in the grass. Bigger than any gust of wind might have made, more substantial than any domestic animal or urban fox. He stood motionless, listening. There was someone there. He could feel the presence, was almost certain he could hear the person breathing, staying very still, perhaps waiting for MacNeil to make the next move. Although he could not see the figure in the grass, whoever it was could probably see him. He decided to get pro-active. ‘Who’s there?’ he called, and thought how foolish it sounded. As if anyone was going to tell him!

But his words spurred a sudden movement off to his left in the shadow of the undergrowth. He heard the rapid whoosh-whoosh of dead grass against running legs as a figure darted towards the back fence. He could barely see the intruder, a light, shadowy figure, someone quite a bit smaller than himself. MacNeil went after him, throwing himself through the wilderness of the back garden, abandoning any attempt at stealth. Just short of the high wooden fence that ran along the back of the garden, he grabbed a handful of what felt like jaggy tweed, and both he and the intruder fell hard amongst a pile of discarded plastic plant pots next to a dilapidated potting shed. The plastic whined and cracked and snapped beneath their combined weight. Whoever he’d caught squirmed and wriggled below him, tiny squeals of panic issuing forth in the dark. And then a light suddenly exploded in his face, blinding him. A torch. He grabbed the hand that held it, and its beam skewed off into the night. Another hand scratched and clawed at his face until he grabbed it, too, and turned the torch on to the face of his attacker.