Dead Scared (29 page)

Four cheerful pings as emails arrived. The first from the accounts department, the second from his younger brother. The third to arrive was from DC Flint. Joesbury clicked it open and blinked at the sheer amount of text in the message. She’d sent it just forty minutes ago, which meant she’d gone straight back to her room and started work on it immediately. He began reading.

The most ordinary of sounds can twist themselves round when they enter your dreams, or so I’m told. Not being a dreamer, I have little experience of such things, but I’ve heard, for example, that the sound of milk bottles being put down gently on a doorstep can, in the dreams of the sleeper upstairs, take the form of bones rattling; that the gentle rat-a-tat of the postman can sound like a troll trying to break its way into the house.

It was the opposite for me that night. The sound I heard in my dream wasn’t threatening. It was quite pleasant in its way, but when I woke and heard it properly I knew immediately it wasn’t raindrops that I could hear running down the window pane. It was fingernails, scratching against the glass.

I lay there, my heartbeat getting faster, telling myself it would be a joke, just another student prank. All I had to do was sit up, open the window and shove the bozo off his ladder.

Except I couldn’t move.

Halfway through Lacey’s account of the academic soirée at that tosser Bell’s country pad, Joesbury’s smile had disappeared. He got up, crossed to the coffee machine and pressed the button for double-strength espresso, knowing she was trying to wind him up and knowing also that it was working.

‘We expected you an hour ago,’ said the boss’s voice behind him.

Joesbury muttered something about an accident on the M1. ‘Car came up zilch,’ he added quickly, referring to the car Lacey’s three assailants had escaped in three nights ago. ‘Registered to a canteen worker in her late fifties. Didn’t even know it had been “borrowed”.’

‘Student prank then?’

‘Almost certainly. Soaking barely clad young women happens a lot, from what I can gather. And they’d never have targeted her this quickly.’

Phillips circled his forefingers on his temples as though easing a nagging headache. ‘Well, it’s a long shot they target her at all,’ he said.

Joesbury said nothing. He’d argued that himself more than once.

The coffee was poured and both men moved away from the machine.

‘You know, guv, if we go public, it ends. Once the authorities and the students themselves know what’s been going on there, it can’t go on.’

‘If we go public, we’ll never catch them. They’ll move to another town and start the whole thing again. There’s too much money involved for them to give up. And that’s not to mention the unholy row we’d have with local CID if we accuse them of missing umpteen unlawful deaths but haven’t a dicky bird to back it up.’

‘Ever occur to you that local CID might be involved?’ said Joesbury. ‘Every so-called suicide neatly wrapped up, all the supporting evidence in place, every box ticked. What are the chances of that in the real world?’

Phillips was silent for a moment. ‘Well, that would widen the goalposts a bit,’ he said.

‘Width of the whole fucking field,’ said Joesbury.

For several minutes I thought my room was darker than usual. Then I realized I just couldn’t open my eyes. A little way to the right of my head, where the window ledge served as a bedside table, I could hear the scratching sound. In my head I could see thin, bony fingers, long, yellow fingernails, the hand clenched like a claw as it was drawn down the glass once more. In reality I could see nothing. My eyes just would not open.

I tried to make a sound. Just the smallest noise in the back of my throat to prove I was still in control of my body. I could hear nothing except the relentless scratching. Then the sound of scratching stopped. It was replaced by that of the window catch being forced from outside. Then that of the window opening.

I could feel cold air on my face, then something else that could have been the curtains being blown against me. Then, worst of all, a creaking of metal, the friction squeak glass makes when it’s touched, then a soft bump. The sounds of something climbing in through the window.

‘I’ll have someone look into it. See if any of the locals have form. Or if any of them are flashing cash around.’

Phillips returned to his office and Joesbury to Flint’s report. Oh, for fuck’s sake, white horses and falcons! Who did the twat think he was? Robin Hood?

Joesbury sighed. It might take him fifteen more minutes to finish the latest episode of
War and Peace
and type a quick response, and then he could go. He was due to see his son the following day for the first time in three weeks. Spending any time at all with Huck these days was getting increasingly difficult. Which was ironic really, given that his supposed neglect of their child was one of the reasons why his wife had left him.

Joesbury read through to the end and realized he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He highlighted a chunk of text and forwarded it, marked urgent, to his boss. When he saw PP slip his reading
glasses
on to see the screen, he stood up and crossed the room. He opened the door without being invited in. PP glanced up.

‘She’s getting too close,’ said Joesbury.

No response. PP looked down at the screen again.

‘We should pull her out,’ Joesbury tried.

‘Give me a sec,’ said PP.

Joesbury gave him two. ‘She knows about the video of Danielle Brown on YouTube. She’ll have it figured out in days,’ he said.

‘Days might be all we need,’ PP replied. ‘This Dr Oliver’s a worry, though.’

Joesbury stepped forward and leaned on the desk. ‘Well, exactly,’ he said. ‘I really don’t have a good feeling about these practical jokes and disappearing emails. If Oliver’s getting dodgy emails, someone could have infiltrated her system. If they know she’s been feeding us information, she could be at risk.’

The other man leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘If someone’s accessing Oliver’s files and if there are emails from Flint among them, the whole op could go belly up.’

‘We should get her out of there.’

Phillips’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘DC Flint or Dr Oliver?’

‘Both. Dr Oliver can take a couple of weeks off sick. Laura Farrow can quietly disappear.’

PP leaned back in his chair. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Nearly nine months’ work and these two bloody women could blow the whole thing apart.’

‘No disrespect, guv, but I didn’t want to send her there in the first place.’

‘Let me think about it. Go home. I’ll call you in the morning.’

The thing was inches above me, choosing its moment. I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there. Like a bad smell, like the howling in the wind, like the fingertips on the back of your neck, there was no denying it. I reached up, my hand claw-like, scratching and tearing. Except I touched nothing. My hand hadn’t moved from where it lay on the bed. I could not move.

The silence was broken by howling. Howling like wolves, like
banshees,
like demons. It rang through the night until I thought my head would burst. Then a sound like thunder. Relentless hammering, over and over again. I was lifted up, high into the air, and flung across the room. I landed hard and knew it would hurt if I lived through the next few seconds.

The thing above me lowered its head and I felt hot breath against my face. I knew teeth were a split second away.

‘Tox! Laura! What the hell’s going on?’

Voices I knew. I could see again. The nightmare took a pace back. I was in the study room that Tox and I shared, crouched on all fours like a toddler that had given up on the whole gravity business. The dog, shaking, but holding it together a whole lot better than I, was licking my face. And the hammering of thunder had been the sound of the other girls banging on the door, wondering why on earth they’d been woken by a barking and snarling dog.

Saturday 19 January (three days earlier)

WHEN THE KNOCK
sounded Evi almost didn’t get up. She’d had too little sleep the night before, finally dropping off a couple of hours before dawn. The pain she’d woken to had been the worst in years and her medication, so far, wasn’t helping. She’d spent the last hour in an armchair by the garden window. The patch of sunlight was soothing, the warmth helped the pain and she was beginning to feel she might doze off again. Now there was someone at the door.

The banging began again. Not a hesitant, trying-its-luck sort of sound. This was the knock of someone determined to have attention. Evi got to her feet.

Laura Farrow, the undercover police officer, was on her doorstep and Evi’s first thought was that she looked dreadful. There were dark circles beneath eyes that seemed to have shrunk in her face. Her mouth was paler and smaller. It was the first time Evi had seen her without make-up or so plainly dressed. Normally, Laura made an effort with her appearance. This morning, she’d just thrown on jogging clothes and trainers.

The second thing she noticed was that Laura hadn’t come alone. Wrapped around her right hand was what looked like the belt from
a
dressing gown. Attached to the other end of the belt was a dog collar. With a dog in it.

The dog’s white-tipped tail was waving like a flag and excitement shone out of its big brown eyes. Considering they hadn’t met before, it was looking remarkably pleased to see Evi.

‘We need to talk,’ Laura said.

‘You have a dog,’ replied Evi, not moving from her spot just inside the front door.

The detective glanced down, as though only just remembering the dog was there. It looked like a greyhound, sleek and slim, with a long, thin nose. Its black coat had white markings. It turned its head from Evi to look at Laura, ears perked. It almost seemed to be waiting for her to speak. Then it looked back at Evi. The movement of its white-tipped tail slowed.

‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘Do you mind? I tried to leave him in the car. Twice. He starts howling every time I walk away. I think he’s house-trained.’

In the greater scheme of things … Evi stepped back and led Laura and her dog to the sitting room. Evi took the armchair she’d just vacated and nodded to Laura to take the other. The dog began to explore the room, sniffing under chairs, in corners, behind the TV.

‘If he cocks a leg I’ll be mortified,’ said Laura, watching its progress nervously.

‘You and me both,’ said Evi.

It didn’t. It completed its tour of the room and found the patch of sunlight at Evi’s feet. One ear up, the other down, sighing deeply, it settled down, lying like a sheepdog, with legs tucked beneath it, its attention shifting from one woman to the other, as though waiting for an instruction. Or for a ball to be thrown.

‘How come you have a dog?’ asked Evi.

‘Long story,’ said Laura. ‘I know we’re not supposed to meet today but things are worrying me. You don’t look too good, by the way, sorry to be blunt. Has something else happened?’

Evi held back from telling Laura she didn’t look great either. When she’d taken the lead off the dog, her hands had been shaking. And her pupils were unusually large and bright.

‘No, nothing new,’ Evi said. ‘I rely on painkillers most of the time. A skiing injury some years ago. Sometimes they take a while to kick in. So, what’s worrying you?’

Laura tapped the first finger of her left hand with the first on her right. She had a list. ‘First of all what you told me last night,’ she said. ‘About all the weird stuff that’s been happening to you. Seems to me there are two possibilities. The first is that you’re nuts.’

Evi didn’t like the small stab of something that felt a bit like guilt and a whole lot more like vindication that poked her in the stomach. ‘That term’s considered a bit old-fashioned in professional circles these days,’ she said, trying for a relaxed smile and knowing she just looked prim.

‘I think you have issues,’ said Laura, ‘which is probably not a technical term either. I think you’re edgy and jumpy and I think you’re verging on a serious depression, which could be a result of living with too much pain, but I don’t think you’re nuts.’

Not sure whether to be annoyed or amused, Evi looked the other woman full in the face. Laura held eye contact but her hands were still unsteady. And her breathing seemed accelerated, as though she’d run to get here. ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ said Evi. ‘So the other possibility?’