Needing (10 page)

Oliver thought of their parents, frantic with worry for however long their children had been missing. Of the police, busy now matching each child to every missing persons report. Visiting those parents. Breaking the news that their previously cute little one had possibly killed. “Fuck, this is such a mess.”

“It is. Bet you wish you didn’t hear voices now, don’t you.”

Oliver nodded. He didn’t need to answer verbally. Didn’t want to. If he did, everything he felt inside would tumble out. Like how he’d coped with this all his life, borne the ridicule of his family for being such a freak. God knows how they’d have taken it if he’d told them he was gay as well. Heart Attack City, he suspected. Did they see him in the newspapers, on the news, as the same freak? Or did they now wish they’d been more understanding? He was famous, kind of. People knew his face, stopped him sometimes, shouted insults at others. Fuck, he just wanted to live a quiet life, but fate had had other things in mind from the day he was damn well born.

He sighed, gusting out a breath full of resignation. He was stuck as he was whether he liked it or not. Couldn’t ignore the voices any more than he could choose not to breathe. It just wasn’t happening.

“You okay?” Langham asked, glancing over with a look of concern.

“Yeah, was just thinking.”

“Of?”

“The past. Now. The future.”

“In what way?”

The truck took another slip road, one that rose up to join an overpass.

“Me, being the way I am. Wishing I wasn’t. Wishing I was normal.”

“Fuck, and my question brought that up for you. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Nothing I don’t think about by myself from time to time anyway. I mean, it’s hardly something you can ignore, is it. I could go to some channeller, get them to teach me to tune the dead out, but I’d only beat myself up over who the spirits could turn to then.”

“Catch-22.”

“Yep.”

“Look,” Langham said, pointing out the windshield. “The truck’s heading towards Lingbrough.”

Oliver peered ahead. “Figures. If they stop there, unload somewhere, wouldn’t surprise me. Quiet village. Houses few and far between. Not the type of place to be spotted by a nosey community. Heard that place has snobs living there. No one wanting to be friendly with anyone else.”

“Perfect hideout.”

“Yeah.” Oliver glanced back to see if they were being followed. They were, by a beat-up, old-style Ford Escort van, a nineties job that looked as though it’d be better off on the scrap heap. A
red
van. His guts bunched. “Your undercover back-up tend to drive red rust buckets?”

“No.” Langham stared in the rear-view mirror for a second. “Fuck. Reckon that’s Alex Reynolds?”

“Who the fuck knows. This is the first time I’ve been involved directly with one of your cases so I don’t know how this shit works. Find the body, report to you and go home, that’s me. I don’t get to see all this bullshit usually. But, not being a total thicko, I can see how it probably is him. How Jackson might have called him to tail the truck. So now he’s going to know we’re onto them.”

“Just thought the same myself. If Alex has been watching us like I think he has, he’d have already clocked my car way before now. So Jackson will also know what we’re up to. Fucking great.”

Oliver looked back again. “No sign of any other cars behind the van either.”

Langham snatched up the radio, asking where the fuck back-up was. Told three miles behind. “Well, they ought to put their foot down on the pedal, then, because we’ve got Alex Reynolds on our tail.” He hooked the radio back on the dash and said, “I don’t fancy him behind doing the same to us as he did to you when you’d found Louise. Wouldn’t put it past him either. Fucking wig, mask and all. Those weird eyes his brother told you about.”

Mark Reynolds had said Alex hadn’t acted like he usually did. Those drugs had a lot to answer for. As did the man who had ordered them to be made and distributed with intent to make people kill. Jackson. What a fucking arsewipe. Another thought hit him then. Maybe Jackson was just a middle man, the one with the means to make the drugs. What if someone else had approached
him
with the drugging idea? Someone with a shitload of power who wasn’t to be ignored if you knew what was good for you?

He huffed out a long breath, the air vibrating between his lips making them tingle. This was way bigger than he’d imagined, and being here now in the thick of it didn’t seem such a good idea. Yet he’d insisted he was tagging along with Langham to every lead. For some reason, this case had got to him more than the others—maybe because Louise had contacted him
while
she’d been being killed and not after.

He didn’t get to ponder that further. Alex pulled alongside them.

And rammed his van into the side of Langham’s car.

“Oh fuck, not again,” Oliver said, leaning forward to stare out of Langham’s side window at Alex. “This bloke is fucking
mental.
”

“There are a lot of them about,” Langham said, holding tight to the wheel to keep the vehicle on the road. He glanced sideward, then gunned the accelerator, gaining a car-length’s space between their back and his front. “And they don’t tend to give up easily.”

Langham’s statement was proved true with a shunt to the rear of his car. Oliver pitched forward, flung his hands out to brace himself on the dash. His broken finger throbbed at the contact, and he grimaced.

“If that bastard breaks another of my fingers, or something else of mine, including you, I’ll kill the fucker.”

“By the looks of things, he’s going to give it a good go.” Langham drove faster, almost catching up to the truck. “I’d better move, in case the truck is ordered to stop and we go up its arse, Alex going up ours. I don’t fancy being inside a concertina sandwich, do you?”

“Not really, no.”

Oliver closed his eyes, praying this would all end soon—with good results. Relief poured into him at the sound of sirens, and he looked through the back window to see that help had arrived, that other officers had finally got their arses into gear and put some speed into their pursuit. Four unmarked vehicles followed, one overtaking Alex to slip between Langham’s car and his, two boxing him in either side, and one at the rear. Langham glanced in the rear-view and, seeing Alex was taken care of, breathed out his own relief.

“So now what?” Oliver said, hoping the back-up would also take care of the truck.

“We carry on following them,” the detective said, nodding ahead.

Shit.

Chapter Nine

After Langham had driven around for a couple of minutes to throw the truck driver off the fact that they’d been following them, and had almost been run off the road by Alex, once again, Langham wedged his car inside some high-as-a-house bushes, one of the back-up vehicles beside them. As they sat observing a large house situated in expansive grounds down a lane just off the motorway, awaiting further back-up, Oliver took a moment to calm down. News had come via one of the officers in the next car that Alex Reynolds had been apprehended, a clawing, insane mass of anger that had taken six officers to subdue. Oliver was glad it hadn’t been up to them to arrest him—fucked if he would have been able to help Langham without shitting himself. He wasn’t a softy, but something like that was way out of his comfort zone. He was only human, after all, and with no training under his belt, he’d have been more hindrance than help. It could have all ended so differently too. Alex could have turned weird-eyed on them and killed their arses.

He shuddered and took the binoculars Langham handed across to him.

“You have a turn. My eyes are crossing.”

Oliver peered through them, momentarily freaked by the closeness of what he saw. The truck was parked directly outside the house, a sprawling monstrosity that spoke of high maintenance and a shedload of cash. The men were nowhere to be seen, no doubt inside, secreting the drugs and whatever the hell else they’d removed from Privo. The cops en route were trained to get inside and round the inhabitants up, secure the truck and its contents, and Oliver thanked fuck for that.

Langham’s mobile rang, startling Oliver so the binoculars banged his brow bone. He lowered them, rubbing the sore spot, and glanced at the caller display. Shields. He smiled as Langham jabbed the speakerphone button.

“Yep?” Langham closed his eyes for a second, probably steeling himself for whatever the other detective had to say.

“Langham?”

“Who else?”

“Wasn’t sure if your
friend
there would be answering. You still outside the house?”

“Yep.”

“The team not arrived yet?”

“Obviously not, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“As soon as they do, I need you back here.”

“What for? Can’t you cope with Ronan Dougherty’s flat and Mark Reynolds’ site by yourself?” Langham rolled his eyes and smirked.

“Not amusing, Langham. That’s sorted. Dougherty’s dead, as you suspected. Arms hacked off, face slashed. Mark Reynolds. Dead. In the field like
your man
said. Officers are dealing with it all now.”

“So? What do you want?”

“Like I said. You. Back here.”

Oliver was feeling all kinds of irritation, so God knew what Langham felt. Langham clenched his teeth and drummed his fingers on his thigh.

“Paperwork?” Langham asked.

“You wish,” Shields said, his oily tone grating yet slick at the same time. “No, we’ve got another couple of bodies. Different to the others.”

“Shit. So there’s someone else out there. Unless Alex offed them before he followed us, changed the way he does things to throw us off.”

“He’s too up himself to do that,” Shields said. “He’d have wanted us to know it was him, that he was one step ahead. In control. No, this is an amateur. A bloody messy one at that. And I know who the hell we’re looking for, too.”

Oliver suspected Shields wanted Langham to beg for the answer. Wanted them both to know he was in the lead now, the one dishing out orders.

“Right,” Langham said. “Won’t be long. The team will be here in a minute. It’ll take us about twenty to get back. Where do you need us?”

“‘Us’? No, I need
you.
”

Langham sighed, but quietly, so Shields couldn’t hear. “Oliver comes with me.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Very funny, Shields, but that’s your filthy mind talking. You know what I meant, and like Oliver said, if you keep making innuendoes…”

“Right. I need you at fifty-four Bridgewater Road, back in the city. Soon as you can. You have to see this scene to believe it. It’ll give you an idea of just what we’re dealing with.”

“What? Don’t you mean who?”

“Well, yeah, it’s a who
and
a what. A damn demon, if you ask me. Can’t have been right in the head before she took the drugs.”

“She? Jesus…”

“Yeah, she. A four-foot, pigtailed blonde.”

“You’ve seen her? Know her?”

“Yep, I’ve seen her. She’s one of those damn kids from Alex’s basement. Gave an officer the slip just before they made it to the police van that’d take them to hospital. Feisty little bitch, too.”

“Fuck. This just keeps getting better.”

“Yeah, well. Nothing we can do but find her before she kills someone else. And when you get here, you’ll see how much she enjoys it too.”

* * * *

Oliver stood beside Langham on the pavement outside fifty-four Bridgewater Road. A sense of desolation took over him. This wasn’t your average home. Just looking at the state of it told him that. Snot-smeared windows, where kids had been staring outside, or maybe they had a dog who relished slobbering on glass. A front door with red peeling paint, the letterbox rust-spotted, the numbers five and four wonky beside it. Unkempt garden, abundant with weeds and household debris—a TV with a smashed screen and a chest of drawers with the handles missing. A supermarket shopping trolley too.

Jesus Christ.

He imagined the homes either side would lean away from their companion if they hadn’t been part of a terrace. The stench wafting out of the open front door was enough to put anyone off entering. Age-old shit and urine, over-cooked cabbage, all combined into an aroma that almost had Oliver gagging. And this was winter. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the smell in high summer.

Shields barrelled towards them, out of the house and down the cracked concrete path, a white handkerchief pressed to his nose. Oliver took a minute to enjoy the man’s obvious distress.

“Oh, Jesus,” Shields said, blinking rapidly and stuffing the hanky in his suit pocket. “Not only is that a horrendous kill, but that
house
…” He shuddered, swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Looks like no one
ever
cleaned.”

“Tell me what you know. About the girl,” Langham said.

“Abused kid, by all accounts. Neighbours say she wasn’t looked after properly. Didn’t need them to tell me that. Stayed up all hours, left alone most of the time while the parents were out on the piss. And when they were home they were pissed then too. Damn shame. Neighbours hadn’t even been aware she was missing, just assumed she’d been kept off school like she had in the past, not allowed out, that kind of thing.”

Shields took in a large breath, his facial expression showing he fully expected the air to be rank. When it wasn’t—or evidently not as bad as it was inside—he smiled with relief.

“Parents report her missing?” Langham eyed the house with a critical eye, tic flickering beneath it.

“No. Apparently, the girl—”

“She have a name?”

“Yes, Glenn Close. Can you believe that? She turned into a bunny boiler just like her namesake too.”

Oliver wondered how Shields could joke like that. Yeah, he knew cops had to, in order to get through the day, the horrific things they dealt with, but Oliver’s heart had been twisted with the knowledge that drugs had made this little girl commit murder. That her life had been one of neglect and without love prior to her taking those drugs, only for her to be catapulted into a different kind of horror. Poor kid.

“Go on,” Langham urged, clearly impatient. He tapped his foot, ran a rigid hand through his hair.