Shaun Hutson - Captives

Simple?

She almost smiled.

It was anything but simple.

She realised that the longer she played out the charade the more damage it would do to Scott when the game finally ended. But after what he had said the previous night, how could she end it? Carol rubbed her face with both hands and shook her head.

No way out.

She glanced at the drawer and its lethal contents.

Perhaps there was a way.

Perhaps.

The journey back to her own flat seemed to take an eternity.

She sat on the tube staring absently at her fellow passengers, who either returned her gaze uncomfortably or gazed around, reading the advertisements over the seats. When there was no one opposite her Carol found herself confronted by her own image again. At one station a couple of youths got in and sat opposite her, the taller of the two eyeing her constantly as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. As they got out, the tall one leant close to her and muttered something about a blow job. They disappeared along the platform as the train moved off.

Carol walked from the station to her home, fumbling in her handbag for the key, finally letting herself in.

The room smelled of yesterday's food and she went around opening windows to dispel the odour. She'd taken a bath at Scott's place so, with a few hours left before she had to get ready for work, she made herself a cup of tea and sat down in front of the television.

It was then that the phone rang.

'Hello,' she said, putting down her mug, hissing as she burned her fingers on the hot china.

'Welcome home.'

She recognised the voice immediately.

'What do you want?' she said, her voice catching.

'Just to let you know I'm still watching.'

'What do you want?' she shouted, fear and anger now rearing up within her.

'You'll find out.'

The line went dead.

Carol slammed the receiver down and sat staring at it for interminable seconds, as if expecting it to ring again. Her hands were shaking so violently that she slopped hot tea onto her skin. The pain made her drop the cup which promptly sent the warm fluid soaking into the carpet. Carol watched as it spilled, unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

She lowered her head, cradling it in her hands.

Tears trickled down her cheeks as she began to cry softly.

THIRTY-NINE

The man had vomited, a reaction neither Gregson nor Barclay had observed before.

When relatives came to identify the bodies of their loved ones they usually fainted, burst into tears or just silently acknowledged the fact that it was- their kin lying on the slab. Clive Wilson had taken one look at the pulped features of his daughter and doubled over, vomiting copiously on the floor of the pathology lab.

'Do we take that as a positive identification?' Gregson said as the man was helped from the room by two uniformed men.

Barclay was unamused by the DI's quip.

He merely pulled the plastic sheet back over the dead girl's face and motioned for two of his assistants to replace the body in its cold locker.

'Wait,' Gregson said. He took hold of the cover and pulled it down again, studying the cuts, bruises and patchwork of contusions that had disfigured the girl.

'Shouldn't you be taking care of Mr Wilson?' said Barclay.

'Finn's up there. He'll deal with it. Besides, I'm a policeman, not a fucking social worker,' Gregson said flatly, his eyes never leaving the body. Finally he pulled the sheet back and motioned for Barclay's assistants to continue. They lifted the body and slid it back into the locker, where it would be kept for the next two days until funeral arrangements had been made. Those final forty-eight hours would also give Barclay the opportunity to check the corpse once more for anything he may have missed, such as fibres, prints or anything else that might give a clue to the identity of her murderer. After that the body would be handed over to an undertaker and New Scotland Yard's responsibility would be discharged.

Paula Wilson's clothes had been put into a plastic bag, each item removed from the sealed forensic bags, along with what little jewellery she'd been wearing at the time of her death. These would be returned to her family.

Gregson stood beside one of the slabs, glancing down at the puddle of vomit left by Clive Wilson. The acrid smell permeated the air.

'You'd better get that cleaned up,' he said to the pathologist, who regarded him irritably, as if the thought hadn't occured to him.

'Have you finished in here now?' Barclay wanted to know.

'No. I want to see the two bodies. The killers,' the DI told him.

'Why, for Christ's sake?'

'Humour me, will you?'

Barclay crossed to one of the lockers and slid it open. Encased in a rubber bag like some kind of monstrous pupal life-form, the body appeared. Barclay undid the zip far enough to reveal the blackened remains of the features. Gregson stared at the charred corpse then glanced at Barclay and nodded, indicating that he wanted to look at the second corpse. The pathologist repeated the procedure so that both incinerated bodies were in view.

'Still no progress with identifying them?' the DI asked.

'Not with the first one; he was burned as badly as anything I've ever seen,' Barclay confessed. 'The second one, though…' He allowed the sentence to hang in the chill air. 'I found part of a thumb print on the inside of Paula Franklin's left thigh.'

'Why the hell didn't you say something earlier?'

'Because I wasn't sure.' He sighed. 'I'm still not one hundred per cent sure but I thought that ninety-five was better than nothing. I sent the print down to photographic, they're going to work it up.'

The pathologist stood looking at his companion, watching how intently he gazed at the scorched remains of the two dead men.

'What is it about them, Frank?' he said, finally. 'Why, the fascination?'

'Because they're mysteries to me, and I don't like mysteries or unanswered questions. But there's something else, too. I've got something nagging away at the back of my mind. Something to do with these two men. They both used MO's I've seen before.'

'That's not so unusual, is it? Copy-cat killings are nothing new,' Barclay said.

Gregson didn't shift his gaze.

'Does Finn know your theory?' the pathologist asked. Gregson shook his head.

'It's best he doesn't.'

'Why?'

'Because if he knew what I was thinking, he'd probably suggest I was locked up.'

FORTY

'… Police stated that there were anywhere between five hundred and a thousand protesters but that the march was peaceful…'

Jim Scott sat in his office, feet propped up on the desk, his eyes fixed on the TV screen. It flickered every now and then but not enough to bother him or to break his concentration. The black and white images were of a large group of people moving through central London, most of them carrying placards that the cameras managed to pick out.

STOP OVERCROWDING PRISONS NOT ZOOS

Scott looked on impassively.

'… The march was led by the Right Honorable Bernard Clinton, MP for Buxton, whose constituency houses Whitely Prison…'

There was a close-up of a man in his late forties, dressed in a grey jacket and a large overcoat. The fur of the hood matched the white of his own hair. The man was chatting to people on either side of him and looking at the cameras every now and then. Reporters stepped in front of him, thrusting microphones forward.

'What do you hope this march will achieve, Mr Clinton?' asked one.

'Prisons in this country have been overcrowded for too long,' the MP replied. 'Whitely is probably the worst example. It just so happens that it is in my power to do something about it, or at least to make the Government aware of the problem.'