The Nightmare Place (16 page)

I was through it first, moving into a small entrance area. Glancing to the left, I saw the kitchen, the tiled floor greasy and the air misty and opaque, as though something had been burned in there a long time ago and the air had never cleared. A cheap blind hung down at an angle over the window, letting the sunlight through it like a batwing.

There seemed to be only one other room down here, a living room to the right. When I saw it, the feeling of wrongness intensified. The carpet was a faded swirl of pinks and browns and yellows, organised in ornate patterns, and the settee and chairs rested on elegant wooden feet. The textured wallpaper was a Braille of beige curls and crowns, interrupted only by the ancient three-column gas fire hanging from one wall by metal brackets, like a half-detached circuit board. Adam Johnson was in his early thirties, but this was the living room of a pensioner.

The staircase led up in front of me, curling around to the left, growing darker as it went. I started up, the door team fanning out below me into the kitchen and front room. Despite my certainty that the house was empty, I took the bend carefully, raising my arms in front of me, ready to deflect any attack with my elbows. None came. The upstairs landing had three rooms off it. Two doors were open, one revealing a dirty rectangle of bathroom, the floor thick with plastered-down whorls of hair, while the other led into Johnson’s bedroom.

I leaned through the doorway. It was impossible to take it all in at first glance. The room was too full: a confusion of cluttered possessions. Johnson’s single bed was against one wall, dividing the rest of the space into a horseshoe shape tightly packed with belongings. My gaze picked out details. An awkward construction of shelving filled with trinkets and toys, empty bottles, odd figurines. A wardrobe without doors, the top bulging down under the weight of the suitcases and half-crumpled boxes stuffed in above, pressing up against the ceiling. A mess of strewn clothes and snaking cables on the floor. An old television, grey plastic, shaped like an astronaut’s helmet. An antique wooden dresser, the drawers all open to different lengths, like bad teeth. And then the posters stuck to the wall above the bed.

They were old and faded, and not really posters at all, but pages cut from magazines; one long side of each was feathered from awkward scissoring. I recognised that technique, as it was one I’d used myself as a child, cutting out pin-ups. Johnson’s were typical of a teenage boy: they showed beautiful women in exaggerated poses. Bikinis. Pouts. Thin bare legs leading up to impossibly tiny waists, like half-open compasses. One was a large image of a woman’s face, her black eyeliner running around her eyes, as though smeared by crying and rubbing, her perfect lips slightly parted. Sunlight had faded the bottom corner, and the paper had curled around the drawing pin he’d used to attach it to the wall, like a tiny hand around a nail.

I stepped back out on to the landing. One of the door team was perusing the final door up here.

‘Padlock,’ he said.

‘Let me see.’

He moved, taking a couple of steps back down the staircase. When he was safely out of the way, I aimed a solid kick against the door, close to the lock, breaking it open in a crunch of splinters.

‘I could have done that,’ he said.

‘Yeah, and so could I.’

I stepped into the room.

Christ.

The curtains were closed in here, and the room was filled with a meagre blue light. It was the same size as Johnson’s bedroom, but practically bare. The only item of furniture was an armchair, positioned with its back to the nearest wall, so as to face the one opposite. The rest of the room was empty and spotlessly clean.

I stepped in, saw the wall and immediately felt sick.

Looking from the display to the armchair, it was easy to imagine Johnson sitting there, perhaps for hours on end, with no extraneous possessions to distract him from the view. I crossed the room slowly. Beneath my feet, the carpet felt lush and bouncy. There was no itch of dust in the air in here, just a tingle of electricity from the space being so off-kilter, an obvious physical manifestation of someone’s bizarre inner world.

The far wall had been divided into square spaces, drawn neatly on to the plaster with a pencil. Each one was about half a metre wide and high, and had a single nail driven into the wall at the top. One had been painted entirely black, and some were empty, but twenty or so were in use. In those ones, a key hung from the nail, and a name had been scrawled on the plaster beneath it. I scanned them, recognising some as belonging to the women in our case. But there were far more keys here than victims.

Below the names, he had used drawing pins to attach pieces of paper. Some of the squares were so full that the pieces overlapped. There were printouts of women, photographed from a distance. Sheets of notepaper covered in writing: a small, tight script that was hard to read, but which I could tell contained observations and details on their behaviour. My gaze flitted across dates and times, comments, even what looked like short poems.

But it wasn’t just paper tacked to the wall. There were also items of women’s underwear, socks, rings, gold and silver chains. Mementos, of course. All of them. Things he’d stolen from people’s houses, either after attacking them or in the weeks beforehand, when he’d been inside their houses without them knowing. When he’d let himself in and out as though he was a part of their lives …

A possibility suddenly occurred to me, and brought with it a slice of panic – a visceral, physical sensation in my stomach. The squares that were in use were spread around the wall rather than lined up, perhaps in a pattern that meant something to him, so there was no way of telling which one was
last
. I had to scan them all quickly, crouching down, searching the squares closer to the carpet …

And there I was.

Zoe Dolan
. My own name, written carefully on the plaster.

Below it, there were no secret photographs of me. Perhaps he’d been worried I might recognise him, that I’d be paying special attention as a cop. But there
was
a photograph. It showed me as a teenage girl, standing beside my mother, one gangly arm lifted so my elbow could rest on her shoulder, a cocky expression on my face. My mother looked smug too, smirking almost, beneath the tilted beret she wore.
Think you shouldn’t mess with me? Wait until you meet my daughter.

It was from the album I kept in my bedside drawer.

Beside it, I recognised the piece of black underwear he’d tacked to the wall. But I only glanced at that for a second, my attention returning to the photograph. For some reason, that annoyed me far more.

Chris crouched down beside me.

‘Oh,’ he said.

I could hear the awkwardness in his voice, and feel the sudden tension of his body, as he recognised what he was seeing. Then I realised that the door team would come in here shortly and see this. That other officers would follow. For a ridiculous second, I resented them all.

‘He’s been in your house.’

‘Obviously he fucking has.’

It’s not Chris’s fault
, I told myself. But the protectiveness in his voice infuriated me, and I had to fight the urge to turn around and hammer my fists at him. I half wanted to tear my underwear off the wall too, but forced myself to stand up instead, direct the anger at Adam Johnson. Because I
wasn’t
embarrassed, and I wasn’t going to let anyone make me be.

‘Zoe …?’

He’s been in your house.

‘My key’s missing.’ I turned and walked out of the room. ‘He’s there right now.’

Twenty-Six

Jane lay very still on the bed, her whole body immobilised by the fear. Aside from the shivers, which rolled over her in regular waves.

He’s going to kill you.

She listened to the sounds of him moving about downstairs, hearing thuds and bangs. They gave no clue as to what he was doing, so her mind conjured horrors. She heard the rattle of a kitchen drawer being yanked open, and the terror she was feeling intensified.

Knives. Forks. Corkscrews.

It didn’t seem possible for her to be any more afraid, and yet it kept happening. Because this was him. The man who had raped and mutilated those women, killed the last one, told her all about it over the phone …

And he’s going to do exactly what he described in the calls.

She didn’t even know where she was. Once properly inside her flat, the man had quickly overpowered her. It had been ludicrous, really – she’d never stood a chance against him, because of his size, but also because she’d been too startled to fight. It had all happened so fast. Holding her in place on the stairs, his knees either side of her arms, he’d immediately stuck the tape over her mouth, then rolled her over on to her chest and wrapped more of it around her wrists, and then her ankles.

The whole time, the front door was ajar behind him. Until he’d flipped her over, she’d been able to see the cars going past, and she could still hear them. There’d be people. She’d tried to cry out, but the gag had muffled the sound.

‘Right.’

He had sounded out of breath. Scared – upset, even. And that was when she’d recognised his voice.

She
had
started fighting then, but by that point it was useless. He was monstrously strong, and with her hands and feet bound, there was no way of making an impact. He’d just scooped her up and carried her outside into the sunlight like a man taking his bride over the threshold.

Help me
, she’d thought. Because it was absurd: the world was bobbing around her, and she’d seen several people nearby, some of them staring back with eyes as wild as hers must have been. She was being abducted in broad daylight, and nobody was doing anything, and that was ridiculous. But then, all these people’s ordinary days had just been interrupted by the incongruous sight of a huge man carrying a tied-up woman out of a house. They had no idea how to react at first, and so they didn’t, and those few seconds were all the man needed.

While inside her house, he’d left the door of his car open and the engine running. Once outside again, he’d laid her down on the back seat, then pushed her legs inside. The door had slammed, hitting the soles of her feet, and she smelled warm leather and an air freshener like off fruit, and saw an
A to Z
stuffed in the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. A moment later, it had bulged towards her as the man got in, still breathing heavily.

‘Hey,’ someone was shouting. ‘What—’

But the driver’s door slamming cut the sound off. A couple of seconds later, the car had rocked and then they were moving: heading off quickly, the tyres screeching. Somewhere behind them, a horn had blared.

The whole thing had only taken a minute, maybe less.

As the man drove, Jane had concentrated on not rolling into the footwell. That was easy enough, but trying not to panic was much harder.
You’ve been kidnapped
. For a short while, she decided that couldn’t be true, because it didn’t make any sense, but reality settled in quickly. She’d been kidnapped by
him.
The memory of what he’d done to those women came back to her. The way he’d described it. The words he’d used. And then she couldn’t fight the panic any more.

Unable to scream, she had started to cry. She wanted her father, whatever he might say to her. She wanted to turn back time and do everything differently.

Please let me go. Please don’t hurt me.

I can’t do this.

I don’t want to.

The man was still clattering around downstairs. Every noise he made sent a blare of terror through Jane’s body.

She forced herself to roll over, towards the edge of the bed closest to the door. Even with her hands and feet bound, if she wriggled on to her stomach, she thought she’d probably be able to manoeuvre herself off – get herself into a standing position. But what was the point? Fighting was out of the question, and she couldn’t walk, never mind run. Where would she go anyway? Into another room, perhaps, but certainly not downstairs. She wouldn’t be able to get outside …

That was when she realised what he was doing.

Once again, the terror stepped up a level.

He’s fortifying the house.

Even if nobody had directly intervened outside her flat, someone must at least have got his registration number. It would have been reported, which meant someone would be looking for her now. When they realised who she was, and her connection to the case, the police would guess who had taken her. And the man must have known that.

Which meant that this time he wasn’t trying to get away. He was anticipating the police turning up here – wherever
here
was – and he was barricading the pair of them inside while collecting the things he was going to use to hurt her. That was his plan – that neither of them was going to leave this house alive.

Oh God.

And then she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

They were huge, heavy sounds. Out of instinct, she rolled back across the bed, only just stopping short of falling off the far side.
I stuffed her down there when I was finished with her
, she remembered, and those words, coupled with the sound of the bedroom door opening, sent her rolling over one more time. She tumbled off the side of the bed, landing hard on the floor.

‘What?’ the man said. She couldn’t see him, but he sounded concerned. ‘No. Wait. Don’t do that.’

Jane heard him heading quickly around the bed. She’d landed on her side, facing underneath it. Two cats stared back at her, directly beneath the middle. And centimetres from her face, between her and them, there was a claw hammer.

She could have wept. With her hands tied together behind her, there was no way she could reach it. So it was like a taunt, and she started crying again. A second later, she felt herself twisted on to her back and saw the man looming over her, impossibly large, filling the world.

‘Come on. I know you’re scared, but it will be okay. Honestly it will.’

Jane kicked up at him. Bracing her back against the floor, she summoned a surprising amount of force, landing both feet into a gut that was softer than she’d been imagining. The man grunted, and half fell over on top of her. She was screaming through the gag, but it just came out muffled and nasal.

‘Don’t,’ he was saying. ‘Please.’

But she kept twisting and kicking with her legs. Now that he had hold of her, though, she didn’t have the distance to generate any kind of strength to the blows. Just like back at her flat, he hoisted her up with ease, and put her back on the bed, propping her up in a seated position on the pillows against the headboard.

‘There. Is that comfortable?’

She shook her head quickly.

‘I’m sorry.’ He ran one hand through his hair. ‘It’s the best I can do right now.’

The overhead light glinted in the beads of sweat on his forehead. While he’d been downstairs, he’d taken off the sunglasses, and she could see how wet and flushed his cheeks were. His eyes were too small for his face, and were ringed with red, as though he hadn’t slept properly, or had been crying.

He started to say something, but then, in another room, a phone began ringing. His head jerked to one side, in the direction of the noise, but all he did was listen. After about twenty seconds, it went quiet. The man moved to the corner of the room by the window, and very carefully lifted the edge of the curtain to look outside. Jane saw his gaze moving here and there, and then he replaced the curtain and stared off to one side for a few moments, blinking rapidly.

‘Right. Right.’

He stepped back around the bed and walked over to the set of drawers beside the door. On top of them, there was a kitchen knife. As he picked it up, the blade caught the overhead light and glinted. He turned back to the bed, the expression on his face incredibly sad.

Behind the gag, Jane felt herself beginning to hyperventilate. It was impossible to get enough air in through her nose, and her chest was heaving. Breath whistled in and out, in and out.
Don’t be sick, don’t be sick
. But at the same time, what did it matter? Perhaps it would be preferable to die like that, choking on her own vomit.

The man sat down on the bed, by her feet. Instinctively, she pulled her knees up, retreating as far as she could. But he didn’t seem to notice. His concentration was focused on the knife in his hands. He kept turning it over and over. Jane couldn’t keep her eyes off it. The reflection of the light flashed and faded, flashed and faded.

‘They took you away from me,’ the man said.

She shook her head, not understanding.

‘From the helpline,’ he said. ‘I needed to talk to you last night, and you weren’t there.’

How does he know that?

Perhaps he could have worked out she wasn’t available by calling often enough, but that wasn’t what he was saying.
They took you away from me
. That meant he knew the helpline had let her go. But
how
could he know that? And how on earth had he found out where she lived?

‘You weren’t there.’

Finally, he turned to look at her. She forced herself to look back. His eyes were so tiny and pink that it was impossible to work out what might be going on behind them. They didn’t even seem to have any whites to them.

‘That’s all I want. Someone to listen. I want you to listen to me now.’

He
was
crying, Jane realised. Just a little.

‘I want to tell you about the monster,’ he said.