The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) (3 page)

He turned back to them, gestured to the warehouse.

‘Shall we go inside? That’s where the story continues.’

They eagerly followed him.

Malcolm smiled. He had them just where he wanted them. So what if he played up the exciting aspects? Give the people what they want. Oh yes.

There was no way his walking tour could fail now.

‘Go on then, open it.’ Tom stared at the door handle as if it would grab him back if he touched it. Josh, having spoken, just stood and watched. Waited.

Tom turned to him. ‘You do it.’ Even the darkness, sudden and deep, couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes. It glistened like a timid flame.

Josh looked at Kyle but the other boy was saying nothing. He looked back to the door. He wasn’t scared. Or at least not as scared as the other two. And that gave him strength. He almost smiled. ‘You know what happened in here?’

The other two said nothing. Breathed hard. The trees had all but cut off the noise of the road. Beyond he could hear the movement of the river, ponderous and slow, like the water had come to a coagulated, stagnant standstill.

‘Just open the door,’ said Tom. Kyle seemed to have lost his voice completely. ‘Open the door and let’s get it over with.’

‘Scared? Think the cage’ll still be there? The cage of bones.’ Josh continued, not giving them time to answer. ‘I don’t. People will have come in by now. Nicked bits of it, if the police didn’t take it all away. But if there’s some left, that’ll be great, won’t it? Get a trophy? One of the bones. Might even be a human one…’

Tom and Kyle were shivering now. Josh was enjoying himself.

‘Let’s go,’ he said and opened the door.

He stepped inside, flicking on the flashlight on his phone. He swung the beam around. The place was a tip. From the trash, empty bottles and cans and calcified remains of human waste, someone had been living there. He moved slightly further in. Something crunched under his feet. He looked down. A syringe. Suddenly he didn’t want to go any further. He felt for the first time that he was actually trespassing, going somewhere he shouldn’t be. Not because it was scary, not because of ghosts or anything, but because there might be someone there who could actually hurt him. Someone real.

He turned back, looked at the other two. They had tentatively followed him in. They were swinging their own phone flashlights around.

‘Is that…?’ Kyle pointed to a calcified mass.

‘Yeah,’ said Tom. ‘Shit…’

‘We should leave,’ said Josh. ‘We’ve got this far, we should go.’

‘I’m not afraid of some fucking tramp.’ The other two looked at Kyle, surprised by the sudden anger in his voice. ‘I’m not. Three of us, one of him. So what? Let’s fuckin’ have him.’ Kyle swung his flashlight round, actually looking for someone.

Tom and Josh looked at each other. Both seemed amazed and taken aback at how suddenly allegiances had changed. It had been two against one all night. But now it was a different two, a different one.

Kyle stepped forward into the room. Floorboards creaked beneath him. ‘Come on, let’s find the fucker.’

He set off into the house.

Josh and Tom shared a look once more. From off inside the house, they heard the sound of Kyle descending wooden steps.

‘Come on,’ said Josh, ‘let’s —’

Kyle’s scream silenced them.

Damien was lost to everything except his own pleasure, his own gratification.

Claire rode him hard, pushing right down, pulling right up again, and again, and again. And he loved it. All thoughts of morality, his wife and kids, his job, his life, were gone. Nothing existed outside of this moment.

He felt himself building up to his biggest finish for years. Eyes open, round, the irises totally circular. Most men closed their eyes as they climaxed, but not Damien. His widened. His wife had once said, before she stopped caring, when he came it looked like he died.

But now he was getting ready, eyes bulging, face contorted. Nearly there…

And then he saw it.

‘Jesus…’ he screamed.

Claire took that as encouragement, rode him even harder.

Beneath her Damien squirmed, tried to get away.

‘Jesus Christ… Jesus, it’s… fuck…’

He put his hands on her, pushed her backwards. She resisted, not wanting to move, as into the moment as he was. She stared down at him, anger in her eyes. ‘Wrong time to get a fucking conscience, Damien…’

He pushed her away from him, stood up. ‘It’s…’ He stood there, trousers around his ankles, rapidly diminishing erection, clothes stained and torn from the forest floor and, unable to move, pointed.

Claire, her underwear half pulled off, stockings ripped, with an expression that indicated she clearly wasn’t happy with Damien, followed his gaze.

‘Shit…’

Night vision had revealed it to them. Right beside where they had been and neither had noticed. The transgression Claire had desired, right above them. And suddenly she didn’t want it any more. Neither of them did.

The body hung from a branch of a nearby oak tree. The noose tight, the head at an angle showing the neck had clearly been broken. Jeans, leather jacket, plaid shirt, boots.

That was what they saw. That was enough.

Barely pausing to gather up their discarded clothing, Claire and Damien turned and ran.

And didn’t stop till they reached the car.

‘If I can just get this door open, ladies and gentlemen…’

Malcolm pulled hard at the rusted, corrugated metal barrier at the side of the warehouse. It refused to budge, the brown, flaking metal sharp enough to dig into his hands. Tetanus, thought Malcolm. That’s all I need.

‘They said… they said they would leave it open for us… unlocked…’

One of the crowd stepped forward, the big guy with the footballer’s wife type on his arm. He grabbed the door from Malcolm and, almost one-handed, pulled it open. The crowd gave a round of applause. The man bowed.

‘Must have, must have loosened it for you…’ Malcolm laughed as he spoke. The crowd laughed politely in return.

‘Right, let’s get inside.’

He stepped forward. They followed him, one by one. He spoke as he walked.

‘It was in this very warehouse, ladies and gentlemen, that Fiona Welch kept her captives imprisoned. Boxed up, terrified to speak, to move, even. She fed them dog food to keep them alive.’ A few reactions to that fact. Just what he had expected. He was beginning to enjoy this.

‘If I can find the switch…’

He felt on the wall for a light switch, tried it. Nothing.

‘Right, no power. Just as well I brought this…’ He took out the most powerful torch he had been able to afford, switched it on, swung it over the faces of the crowd. ‘Much more atmospheric, isn’t it? Let’s move forward.’ He swung the torch ahead of him.

They all walked to the centre of the warehouse.

‘As I said, it was here that the victims were imprisoned. And it was on that metal gantry that…’

He stopped talking, stared straight ahead. The torchlight dropped.

‘Shit…’

The crowd looked to him, looked around in the gloom. Malcolm didn’t move.

They began to get restless. Was this part of the walk? Was someone going to jump out of the shadows and scare them? Even box them away?

The big man who had opened the door stepped forward, touched Malcolm on the shoulder. Malcolm jumped and screamed. He pointed the light to where he had been looking, the metal gantry.

‘Shit…’

The others followed the beam of light. Hanging from the gantry, a noose around his neck, was a man. Dressed in leather jacket, plaid shirt, jeans. The angle of his neck told them that he was long since dead.

‘Oh God… oh God…’

Panic erupted from the crowd. People didn’t know what to do. They milled, looked at each other. Scared, stunned.

‘This is… this is not supposed to happen…’

Gradually their fear came under control as the crowd realised what they were witnessing. Someone suggested they call an ambulance. Someone else decided it was too late for that. The police, then. Yeah, the police.

Then began a discussion as to whether or not they were actually at a murder scene and should they touch anything?

Malcolm was no use. Whatever short-lived authority he had had was now completely gone. He just stared straight ahead. Lost.

Someone called the police.

And in the meantime the crowd, no longer scared but now strangely exhilarated by their accidental discovery, recovered enough composure to get out their phones and take selfies with the body.

Tom and Josh stared at each other, eyes wide with terror. They were both frozen to the spot, unable to move, not knowing whether to run away from Kyle’s scream or towards it.

Kyle screamed again. And again the boys didn’t move.

Then they heard the sound of footsteps, hard and clattering, coming up the wooden cellar stairs in an ungainly rush. They swung their torches towards the noise. Kyle came belting towards them.

‘Get out… out…’

His words galvanised them and they turned, made for the door.

Out into the woods, away from the house.

They tripped over roots, branches, each other. They scrambled towards the metal fence, the safety of the path beyond, civilisation beyond that.

Once through the fence and on the path Josh found his voice.

‘What did you see?’ he asked Kyle.

The other boy didn’t answer. Just stood there, staring straight ahead, breathing heavily.

‘What was it?’ Josh asked again.

Kyle looked between the two of them. Josh didn’t think he had ever seen such fear in someone’s eyes. He doubted he ever would. He hoped he never would.

‘Kyle…’

Kyle closed his eyes, shook his head. Opened them again.

‘It… it was a body… a man… just… hanging there…’

‘Hanging? How? Like, like… what?’

Kyle turned to him, spitting the words out. ‘On a rope… on a fucking rope… round his neck, dead… fuckin’ hanging…’

And then Kyle did the last thing Josh would have expected of him. He began to cry.

And neither he nor Tom blamed him.

T
he three of them stared at the board. No one spoke. On the board were three pictures, blown up, copied photos. All showing identical images but none of them the same.

Each was an enlarged photo of a tarot card. The Hanged Man. And on it, written in the same black, block capital handwriting, a name.
PHIL
BRENNAN
.

Before the board were three people. Detective Inspector Phil Brennan of the West Midlands Police Major Incident Unit. The MIU handled all the big cases. Their designated title changed with every departmental reshuffle but their intended objective remained the same. They were the murder squad by any other name. His superior, DCI Alison Cotter. And Marina Esposito, their criminal profiler and Phil’s wife. None of them spoke, just examined the images before them. Studied them closely, hoped they would give up their secrets.

Cotter broke the silence. ‘These cards have been examined over and over. Nothing. We can only match the handwriting if we have something to match it to. We don’t. The same with DNA. Nothing there. No matches. Whoever placed them there wore gloves at the very least.’

‘I’ve looked into the meaning of the card too,’ said Marina. ‘The Hanged Man. Number twelve in the Major Arcana of a set of tarot cards, if we’re assuming it’s based on an occult set used for divination.’

‘What else would it be?’ asked Cotter.

‘Tarot used to be used for card games in Europe, decades ago. Now they’re just for telling the future. The Hanged Man,’ she said, pointing, ‘is hanging from the tree of life. Upside down. His head in the roots of the world, the underworld, us, his feet in the heavens.’ She looked at the other two, back to the pictures, finger gesturing. ‘He looks calm, relaxed. Like he’s there by choice, or at least the hanging’s not bothering him. See here, he’s attached to the tree by his right foot. His left leg is bent at the knee, tucked behind his body. His arms are behind his back. All done casually.’

‘Is that supposed to mean something, him doing that?’ asked Cotter.

‘I think so, yes. Or at least readers can write something into it. But look at the colours, what he’s wearing. That means something too. His trousers, leggings, whatever, are red. This apparently represents passion, the human body. Physicality. His upper half is blue, representing high ideals. And he’s got a bright yellow halo around his head. Some kind of spiritual achievement? Holiness?’

‘What a load of bollocks,’ said Cotter.

Phil said nothing.

‘Maybe,’ said Marina, ‘to you and me, but not to the person who placed it there. And there’s more. It’s the card of ultimate surrender. Of martyrdom, sacrifice to the greater good. Of getting rid of old patterns of behaviour, of change. Seeing the world from a different angle.’

‘Well, you would if you’re hanging upside down,’ Cotter said.

‘Want to know more?’

‘Like what?’

‘The card’s ruling planet is Neptune, the planet of self-sacrifice and idealism…’

‘I think that’s enough for now, thanks.’ Cotter, shaking her head, looked at the board once more, back to the other two. ‘Of course, while we’ve found out what the card supposedly means and all that, interesting though it may or may not be, there’s a massive elephant in the room we’ve not yet addressed, isn’t there?’

Phil felt their eyes on him.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Me.’

‘T
hree dead bodies,’ continued Cotter. ‘Males, Caucasian, aged late thirties. All dressed similarly. All found hanged. All with the same tarot card in their leather jacket pocket, the Hanged Man, and the same name written on it.’ She fixed her gaze on him. ‘Yours, Phil.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, not knowing what more he could meaningfully add.

‘And I’m assuming the locations all mean something?’ Cotter asked.

‘They certainly do.’ He gestured to the board. ‘Want me to…?’

‘Please. Talk me through it.’

He stood up, walked over to the board that had been taken from the incident room and set up in the corner of Cotter’s office. They were keeping this on a need-to-know basis. The rest of the team hadn’t yet been informed. And they wouldn’t be; not until they had more idea about what – or whom – they were dealing with.

There were photos of the three hanged bodies. One outdoors in a forest, strung up from a thick branch. One hanging from a metal strut in an old warehouse. One hanging from a crossbeam in a dark, cramped cellar. Multiple images showed their faces, bodies, clothes, in detail. All wearing similar clothes to what Phil was wearing at that moment: brown leather jacket, plaid shirt, jeans, boots. All with similar haircuts to Phil’s. Facially there was no resemblance. But physically there was. Same height, same hair colour. In the shadows they could have passed for him. Phil couldn’t look at them for too long. It was unnerving, to say the least, seeing yourself hanging there. Dead.

‘The first one, in the forest. It’s Wrabness.’ He looked at Marina. ‘I don’t need to tell you about that.’

Marina shook her head.

‘You probably know about this already,’ he said to Cotter.

‘Well, obviously I’ve heard, but it’s better if you tell me.’

Phil nodded. ‘There was someone targeting full-term pregnant women. Cutting out their unborn babies and attempting to claim them as their own.’

‘Jesus, that’s… really sick.’

‘Yeah,’ said Phil, wincing, mind slipping back into the case. ‘It was. And sad too, believe it or not. Tragic, really.’

‘But you caught the perpetrator.’

‘Oh yeah, or rather Marina did.’

Marina shuddered. Remembered the underground cavern, the desperate escape, the screwdriver as makeshift knife plunged again and again into her deranged assailant.

‘Our first date,’ she said, hoping humour could counteract the memory.

‘So it’s not just another case. It’s somewhere that holds meaning to you,’ said Cotter.

‘Not just for Phil, both of us.’

Cotter nodded. ‘And the next one? Which one is that, if we’re going chronologically?’

‘Here,’ said Phil pointing to the body hanging in the warehouse. ‘This one. This was where I encountered Fiona Welch.’

‘Ah.’ Cotter knew all about her. The psychologist who had attempted to try her torturously sickening theories out using a disfigured, rage-fuelled, psychopathic ex-serviceman.

‘The real one,’ said Phil.

Someone claiming to be her had recently broken free from a psychiatric hospital, gone on a killing spree then disappeared. But not before besting Phil physically and promising to see him again. But Phil knew it wasn’t the real one. Because he had watched the real one fall to her death.

‘And is this both of you again?’

‘No,’ said Marina. ‘I had nothing to do with that. I was… away. Sorting something out.’ She glanced at Phil, found his returned smile reassuring.

‘So it’s just you, then?’ Cotter asked.

‘Just me. And then there’s the third one.’ He pointed to the photo of the body hanging in the cellar. ‘This is where we found a feral child, chained up in a cage made from bones.’

Cotter stared at the pair of them. ‘Did you just come to work here for a holiday?’

‘You think the stuff I’ve dealt with since I’ve been here counts as a holiday?’

Cotter nodded. ‘Point taken.’

‘There was an added layer to that one,’ said Marina.

‘Really?’ Cotter raised her eyebrows. ‘Can’t wait to hear this one.’

‘Involving Phil’s background. His childhood.’

‘Right.’

Phil nodded, not wanting to relive the unpleasantness. ‘It was… a pretty harrowing experience. I don’t want to go into it now.’

‘What if it’s relevant to the enquiry? To what’s been done to these men?’

‘Then I’ll have no choice but to confront it again. And I’ll tell you all about it, don’t worry. If I need to. But at the moment it’s… well, I hope it’s not relevant.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Cotter. ‘But this was targeted at you. I think we’re in no doubt about that now. So if needs be we’ll have to start looking into your childhood.’

Phil nodded once more, clearly unhappy, but knowing it was necessary.

‘The question is,’ said Cotter, ‘what do we do next?’