Neil White - LAST RITES

Sarah swallowed back tears and small moans of fear escaped.

‘I want to see the end flicker across your eyes so clearly that I can feel it too,’ he continued. Sarah could hear him licking his lips, and then he let go of her and turned to leave the room.

When he'd gone, Sarah saw that he'd left no food. And her clothes were gone. She was naked. No blankets, no bed, the incessant beam of the headlights illuminating the room and her feet cold in the wet dirt.

Then she heard the speakers pulse back into life, and the heartbeat sound filled the room once more as she sank back against the wall, sliding downwards, the stone cutting into her back, her cries mixing with the repetitive thumps.

Rod Lucas looked down at the addresses on his lap, the two other victims of recent explosions, and they were all on his patch, a rural area around Pendle Hill. Although he had worked in the towns nearby earlier in his career – Blackley, Turners Fold – he had spent most of his career patrolling the tight lanes around the hill. He understood the crime in his area, mostly diesel thefts or large brawls in remote pubs, country boys settling their disputes in the old-fashioned way. The explosions were different. They seemed planned, targeted.

He was outside one of the addresses. He checked his list against the number on the house, peering through the mud smeared on the windscreen of his Land Rover, and stepped out onto the pristine new tarmac of a modern housing estate. He looked along and saw a succession of green lawns, square and flat. As he walked towards the door, faux Georgian, with wooden panels and a frosted glass arch, he heard only the hard smack of his boots on the paved driveway, the curved streets quiet. It took just one knock to get the door to open.

‘Hello?’ said a female face from behind a security chain, young and cautious.

‘I'm Inspector Rod Lucas,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about the explosion in your garden last week.’

‘You don't look like the police.’

Rod looked at his outfit. He couldn't argue with that. He was still wearing his pruning clothes, a checked shirt and grubby corduroys. He pulled out his wallet and showed the Lancashire Police crest.

The door closed for a moment, and Rod heard the rattle of the security chain. When the door opened fully, the face at the door turned into a teenage girl running down the hall. College girl was Rod's guess.

‘Mum?’ she shouted. ‘There's a policeman to see you.’

The girl turned round and pointed to a room at the front of the house. ‘Go in,’ she said. ‘Mum won't be long.’ When Rod smiled, she blushed and then skipped into a room at the back of the house.

Rod opened the door to the living room, and he was surprised. He had expected a modern look; laminated flooring, coal-effect fire, maybe a large television. Instead, it was similar in style to Abigail's cottage, like a Gothic lair, with a heavy black chandelier and dark red walls. The fireplace was high and open and made of dull grey stone, more suited to a castle than a modern box in a faceless estate.

He turned around when he heard the door open, and in walked a woman in her early forties, her hair dark and long, crimped into waves, wearing a long linen dress, her feet bare.

‘Isla Marsden?’ Rod queried. When she smiled whimsically, he said, ‘I'm here to ask some questions about the recent explosion in your garden.’

‘It was in the shed,’ said Isla, her voice soft, an almost dreamy quality.

‘It's happened to someone else,’ said Rod. ‘Except that someone was hurt today.’ When Isla didn't respond, he said, ‘It was an old lady called Abigail Hobbs.’

Rod saw the flinch, just a widening of her eyes, before Isla quickly brushed her hair from her face, a reflex action, and resumed her faraway smile.

‘Do you know her?’ he asked.

Isla made a bad show of thinking about her answer, and then she shook her head. ‘I don't think so.’

‘Her cat died, and Abigail is in hospital, hurt quite badly. Are you sure you don't know her?’

Isla shook her head again.

‘Do you have any more ideas about who might have caused the explosion?’ he asked.

Again, Isla responded with just a shake of the head, and then she said, ‘I thought I had to ask you that question,’ her voice defensive.

‘We're trying our best,’ he said solemnly. When she didn't answer, he nodded and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Marsden. I'll keep in touch.’

As he walked out of the room, heading for the front door, he paused. ‘It's funny, though, Mrs Marsden, about the coincidence,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

He turned round and saw that her composure had slipped. He looked down at her hand. ‘You share the same taste in jewellery.’ As her cheeks flushed, he pointed at her right hand. ‘You even wear it on the same finger. Third finger, right hand. The screaming face, silver on black. Abigail has one too.’

As she looked at him, her eyes worried now, Rod nodded at her.

‘Thank you for your time,’ he said. ‘Call me if you want to talk,’ and then he clicked the door closed as he went back to his vehicle.

I was heading for the college, trying to shake off my unease about my private life. I wanted to speak to Katie again, to find a reason why Luke's friend had described Sarah's relationship with Luke so differently. I remembered that Katie said she had lectures, so college seemed like a good place to start.

I didn't normally feel old. I was thirty-four but had kept my hairline, just speckles of grey spoiling the dark waves, but suddenly I felt a generation gap as I hung around the college building. It was an offshoot of one of the Manchester universities, a seven-storey concrete slab in the middle of Blackley, next to a one-way system, so that lectures were disturbed by posing young men driving the loop, watching the girls and playing music at distorted levels, making the shop windows rattle as they went past. Young students with rucksacks and attitudes stared at me as I looked around, their faces obscured by hoods, their legs stick-thin in baggy denims. The security guard was chatting up the young female students, his chest puffed out, feet apart.

Katie had said she was studying history, so I made my way inside and searched for the history department. It didn't have much of one, not what you could call a faculty, just lectures taking place on different floors, marked out by timetables printed on notice-boards. I walked the corridors but I couldn't see her.

I headed out and decided to take a drive past the house. I struck lucky. Katie was just locking up the house as I drove up the street, and she looked startled as I scraped my wheels against the kerb, squeezing behind a scruffy green Fiesta. When I jumped out of the Stag, she relaxed and smiled. ‘Back so soon?’

‘I've got a few more questions,’ I replied.

‘Well, I was just going out.’

‘Let me take you,’ and I went to open the passenger door.

Katie looked up and down the street before throwing her bag into the passenger footwell and climbing in.

‘Where do you need to be?’ I asked.

Katie thought for a moment, and then said, ‘College will do.’

‘Again? How many lectures do you have a day?’

‘I need to go to the library, that's all,’ she replied. When I didn't respond, she turned towards me and asked, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Just more about Luke and Sarah,’ I replied. ‘There are a few things I can't get straight.’

‘What like?’

I set off driving, the Stag struggling up the steep hill. ‘You told me before that Luke and Sarah were close, that Sarah loved him,’ I said. ‘It would explain a jealous rage, I suppose, the knife in the chest, but Luke's friend tells it differently. He talked like it was a casual thing on both sides. That makes a rage less likely. So which one is real?’