S. Bolton: Dead Scared

‘A five-mile trip out of town to a village called Boxworth. Stayed in the high street for ten minutes, then went back into town and parked outside Evi Oliver’s house for a few minutes. Back to the hospital and then on to Queen’s Road. Didn’t move from there for the rest of the night.’

‘Guv, can you have someone find out who lives in Boxworth near where she parked? See if any names ring a bell?’

‘Anything else?’

‘What’s she been up to today?’

‘This morning, no movement until 10.17 a.m., when the car was driven out of town,’ continued Phillips. ‘She went towards the Bell …’

‘Bell Foundries Industrial Estate. Unit 33,’ said Joesbury. ‘She saw Scott Thornton going inside earlier in the week. Please tell me she didn’t.’

‘She parked on the B1102, about half a mile away. Stayed there for eighty minutes, so it’s anybody’s guess what she got up to. After that, she drove out to Endicott Farm again.’

Bell’s place again. Could she not stay away from the twat for five minutes?

‘Then what?’

‘It was there for nearly thirty minutes, then went back to St John’s. Which is where it remains.’

‘She’s at St John’s?’

‘Car is.’

‘Can you get George looking for her?’

‘He’s already on his way to pick you up. I’ll get someone else to do it.’

‘Guv, I need something else. That phone we gave her yesterday. Can you give me its recent use?’

‘You’re stretching my technical skills, buddy. Hang on.’

Joesbury waited, hearing Phillips call to one of the clerical staff. Then, ‘One incoming text late last night,’ said Phillips. ‘Can’t give you the details, just the number it came from.’

‘Nobody should have been texting her. Nobody had that number but me.’

‘It was from you.’

Joesbury leaned back against the Perspex wall of the kiosk, telling himself that throwing up right now would do nothing to improve the situation. ‘Late last night I was bleeding on to a hospital pillow,’ he managed. ‘Somebody was using my phone to text Lacey. Anything else?’

‘An outgoing text late this morning, that one also to you. I assume you didn’t get it. And one more, a couple of hours later. An incoming call this time from a listed number.’

‘Nobody had her number. No one could call her but me.’

‘Hang on, I’ve got it. Here we go. She was called by a local GP. A Dr Nicholas Bell.’

Silence.

‘You still there, Mark?’

WHAT I REMEMBER next is being in my room at St John’s. I was in bed, my arms wrapped tight around Joesbury’s teddy, wearing my usual night-time jogging pants and vest. For a second, everything felt so normal it seemed the only crazy thing in the whole world was me. I felt tired, seriously hungover, and as though my limbs would shake if I tried to move, but otherwise OK.

Without thinking, my eyes went up to where I knew the camera that had been filming me had to be and that’s when I knew everything had changed. The camera wasn’t there. It couldn’t be. The pipework that must have hidden it wasn’t there. The cosmetics around the washbasin were mine but the mirror was different. The one screwed to the wall of my room had a tiny chip in it at the top right-hand corner. This one was whole and perfect.

I pushed back the duvet and sat up. The floor wasn’t right, either. It looked cleaner and newer and the wall behind the bedhead wasn’t plaster but a much softer, warmer substance. Plywood.

I was not going to panic. I was going to think. Difficult, with such a thick, fuzzy head, but not impossible. Just take it slow.

Nick! What the hell had they done to Nick?

I couldn’t help Nick if I panicked. Take stock. I was in Unit 33 and they’d recreated my room out of plywood, just as they’d done for Jessica. What had she said? My room but not my room?

I was going to hold it together.

This was about scaring me, about getting more gruesome footage for their sick films. They didn’t want me dead yet. I had a massive advantage over the other girls who’d been here. I knew where I was and how to get out. And these bastards did not know me. They could not know what scared me. They’d have something in store that would be unpleasant, but I could deal with it. I’d squeal a bit, pretend to be more freaked than I was. Let them get their footage. And all the while I’d be looking for my chance.

First things first. What had they given me? I remembered being held from behind by Castell and Thornton pushing the needle hard into my neck, then a vague recollection of being carried down the stairs. Nothing after that. A powerful sedative would be my best guess, and it had to be starting to wear off now that I’d woken up. I’d be slow and sluggish, far from my best, but still basically OK.

I got to my feet and felt the room tilt. When I felt I could handle it, I reached over the bed towards the window. The curtains were drawn and I just knew there was something behind them I wouldn’t want to see. Telling myself I could deal with it, I took hold of one curtain and pulled it gently back.

Oh, Jesus!

I’d fallen back against the wardrobe door. There was a dark space in my head that was swelling like a balloon. I was not going to lose it. I was not. It was going to take more than a horrific photograph to make me do that. When I could face it, I made myself look again at the dreadful image they’d fastened on the wall of this fake room, exactly where the window should have been.

It was easier the second time, when I knew what was coming. In fact it was nothing I hadn’t seen many times before. They’d found and blown up a post-mortem photograph, taken over a hundred years ago, of a murdered woman. The poor creature lay on the bed of her rented room in London, hacked beyond recognition.

Three months earlier, I’d worked a big case in London in which women were killed as coldly and as brutally as the one in this photograph had been, and now these bozos thought this was what would scare me the most.

They weren’t even close.

I walked back to the bed and sat down for a while to get my breath back and clear my head. I was going to have to leave the room. See what they had waiting for me outside. I would do it in a second. Just another second.

There was blood, trickling down the wall.

I’d closed my eyes. It’s not real blood, it’s not real blood, they did this to Evi, freaked her out with fake blood. It will be paint, theatrical blood, whatever. I was going to walk over there, run my finger through it, write FUCK YOU in very large letters on the wall and when I got my hands on that bitch Talaith Robinson I was going to show her exactly what a great quantity of blood looked like and it would be her own.

I opened my eyes again to find the blood had gone. I got up anyway and walked over to check. The wall was white and clean.

OK, this was more serious than I’d thought. They’d given me some sort of hallucinogen. I pulled the curtain back again. The photograph of the murdered woman was still there. I reached out, touched it. It was real. The real image had sparked a connected hallucination. Well, at least I knew how it was going to work.

Jesus, to have been through this without the knowledge I had.

No time now to worry about what the others had gone through. I was prepared. I was going to cope. On legs that felt weak and shaky, but did what I told them, I crossed the room, pulled open the door and looked outside.

I saw a dimly lit space, narrow and disappearing into blackness. The walls were of old brickwork, the ceiling low. The painted plywood boards I’d seen in a storage room earlier had been for me.