The Nightmare Place (19 page)

Thirty-One

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry for what I’m going to do to you.

It kept coming back to Jane at odd times, what Adam Johnson had done to her. She had expected to revisit it in nightmares, but for the last couple of days her sleep had been sound. Perhaps the memories weren’t deep enough down for that yet. Instead, it emerged during the day. She would be sitting on the settee, or preparing a meal, or trying to work, and she would find her body was suddenly still, and she was reliving the events in her mind.

I’m sorry.

When it was obvious that Adam Johnson had finished talking to her, she’d been terrified, convinced that he was going to kill her. He’d stood up, sobbing to himself, then moved to the head of the bed beside her, holding the knife. She’d tried to roll over, but he’d put his free hand on her – gently – and stopped her. She could still feel the pressure there.

Hold still.

His voice had been so soft that she’d done what she was told. Johnson had leaned down again, and carefully cut the tape holding her ankles together.

Roll over.

A second later, her hands were free.

As he stepped away, Jane had scrabbled back into a sitting position by the headboard, then stared at him, wide-eyed, as he walked to the base of the bed.

Thank you.

He’d stood there for a long time, with his eyes clenched shut, before suddenly raising the knife to his throat and violently cutting it. His body had dropped instantly. As he lay there, half on the bed, half off it, Jane had listened to the hideous noise of the blood leaving his body, like tap water gurgling down the sink, and thought:
oh God, oh God, oh God.

She heard it again now, then flinched, brought back into the present by the sound of the doorbell.

She shook the memories away and checked her watch. It was a little after twelve, and whoever was downstairs was her first
visitor
of the day. God, she’d actually started to imagine it might be over. The last forty-eight hours had been a gradually diminishing scrum of press attention that had kept her constantly on edge. The phone rang endlessly, though she’d stopped answering it on the first day; she had no idea how they’d got her number. And the last time she’d opened the front door, she’d been confronted by a man with a camera for a face, angling back across the pavement to get a shot of her. For a second, she’d been taken back to that day, when Adam Johnson had attacked her at the bottom of the stairs. She’d closed the door quickly, and ignored it ever since. A trimmed-down photo of her had appeared in the papers anyway.

The doorbell again.

Leave me alone.

And yet she got off the settee and moved to the top of the stairs.

The thought had been building: perhaps she
should
talk to the press. Because it was clear the
police
weren’t taking her seriously. After everything she’d been through, and all the details she’d given, there had been no follow-up calls, and nothing in the papers about the man Johnson had told her about. The monster. The implication was clear enough. They didn’t believe her – or him, at least. They were probably just glad to have the case closed.

It wasn’t that easy for her, though. Just as with his calls to Mayday, Adam Johnson had passed knowledge to her, and it sat like a stone in her chest. She had tried to give it to the police, but they wouldn’t take it from her. What was she supposed to do? It was a desperate feeling. As much as she might have wanted to leave it alone, she knew that she couldn’t. If she did, the knowledge would only ever get more and more uncomfortable.

The front doorbell rang again.

What are you going to do?

Jane hesitated.

And then she decided.

I’m going to go downstairs. I’m going to open the door wide. And I’m going to tell the media exactly what Adam Johnson told me
.

Perhaps it would spur the police into acting. The press would demand answers, and wouldn’t be fobbed off as easily as she’d been. The idea of making herself the focus of attention was terrifying, and it would be the most confrontational thing she’d ever done in her life, but it needed to happen.

You can’t do this
.

Yes I can
, she told her father’s voice.
Because I have to
.

Jane began trotting down the stairs. Go quickly; don’t hesitate. She was halfway to the door when the letter box clicked open, and she saw a couple of fingers protruding in between the brushes.

‘Jane?’ The voice was muffled. ‘It’s me. It’s Rachel. Are you there?’

Despite her decision, relief flooded through her. The press could wait.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hang on.’

It was only early afternoon, but Rachel had brought a bottle of red wine with her.

‘I thought you could maybe do with it,’ she said.

Jane surprised herself by not even pausing, never mind arguing. An hour later, sitting at her kitchen table, they’d got through most of the bottle, and she had told Rachel everything.

‘Shit.’ Rachel sat back in her chair. ‘I’ve been following the news. Obviously I have. But there’s been nothing about this. I mean, the police haven’t said anything.’

Jane shook her head. They’d drunk the same amount of wine, but whereas Rachel seemed relatively untouched by the alcohol, Jane could feel herself getting more than a little fuzzy.
Midday drinking
. Maybe it wasn’t for her after all. She pushed the current glass slightly away from herself.

‘The police don’t believe me.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, they probably
believe
me. But they don’t seem to be taking it too seriously. They don’t believe
him
, is what I’m saying. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got their killer, and he’s dead, and that’s that.’

Rachel considered it.

‘Are you sure they’re not right?’

Jane started to answer, but then thought about it. It wasn’t the first time she’d considered it. The whole reason she’d gone to the police in the first place was that she’d believed Adam Johnson when he was calling her, but it had turned out that everything he’d told her over the phone was a lie. Who was to say he’d been telling the truth in Zoe’s bedroom? And yet she was convinced he had been.

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘He was telling the truth – clearing his conscience before he … did what he did.’

‘So why the phone calls?’

‘In a weird way, they
were
true. To him, anyway. This other man had told him all the details, and in his own head, he was responsible for that.’

‘Because he was.’

‘Yes. Kind of, anyway. But you should have heard him, Rachel. Seen him. As bad as it had been before, I think maybe the murder pushed him over the edge. He was so upset. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m sure.’

‘Hey, hey. Okay. That’s good enough for me.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘But assuming it’s true, that means this other guy is still out there.’

‘Yes.’

‘So what happens when he goes after someone else?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he won’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe he’ll just think he’s in the clear now. Johnson’s dead. So if he stops, it would mean he’d get away with it, wouldn’t it?’

‘Men like that don’t just stop. Trust me.’

Jane thought about it, then nodded, feeling miserable.

‘At least the police would
have
to take it seriously then.’

‘Yeah.’ Rachel gave a hollow laugh and lifted her glass. ‘But then it’ll be too late for someone, won’t it?’

Jane picked up her own glass again.

‘What about you?’ Rachel said.

‘Me?’

‘How are you holding up?’

She hesitated. Because aside from reliving the moment of Adam Johnson’s death, Jane was surprisingly okay. She remembered the terror she’d felt in the car, just after he’d taken her, and then in what had turned out to be Zoe’s bedroom, but that was all growing distant now. Every day seemed to cover the memory with a thicker blanket, muffling it. She could remember wishing she’d kept herself safe, and that she would have done anything to go back in time and wrap herself back up in her father’s cotton wool, but even that seemed almost like it had happened to another person.

Maybe she was made of sterner stuff than she’d thought.

‘I’m all right, actually.’

‘Really?’

‘The main thing that bothers me is that perhaps there was something I could have done.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Jane shrugged. ‘Something that would have stopped him killing himself. But then that’s stupid, isn’t it? It’s like Richard always said: we’re not here to intervene. And that’s what it was, really. A Mayday conversation.’

‘A pretty fucking extreme one.’

Jane sipped the wine, raising her eyebrows. ‘Mmmm.’

‘But there was nothing you could have done.’

‘Maybe not.’ There was no
maybe
about it, of course. She could possibly have rushed him while he was standing there with the knife, but who could blame her for not doing that? And she’d been gagged. There was no possibility of reasoning with him. ‘But there is something I can do now. Because the police aren’t taking me seriously. I’m thinking about going to the press.’

‘What? Why?’

‘To tell them about this other guy.’

Rachel was shaking her head, so Jane pressed the point.

‘It’s just like you said. What if he hurts someone else? It feels like Johnson has made me responsible for doing something about that.’

‘No, no, no.’ Rachel was still shaking her head. ‘That’s the
last
thing you should do. I mean,
think
about it, Jane.’

‘Think about what?’

‘Your house has been on the news, you know? Your name is out there. How do you think I knew where you lived? It took about five seconds searching online.’

Jane sipped some more of her wine. She hadn’t thought of that.

‘What I mean,’ Rachel said, ‘is that this guy could easily do that too. He knows that Johnson abducted you from your home. The papers are reporting the Mayday angle – the fact that he called you and talked about the crimes. What might he be thinking? You don’t want to be drawing attention to yourself.’

Jane didn’t say anything.

‘It’s not safe here anyway,’ Rachel said, putting her glass down firmly. ‘You can’t stay here.’

‘I don’t have anywhere else to go.’

Rachel stared at her for a few seconds, exasperated, then reached out and put her hand over Jane’s.

‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘Of course you do.’

Thirty-Two

When a bad thing happens in someone’s home, the place can sometimes end up tainted as a result. That makes sense to me. Space that previously felt safe and secure has been tarnished and undermined; the warmth in the hearth goes out. And sometimes, what happens in a person’s house is so serious you wonder how they
can’t
move. I knew that two of our surviving victims were already resident at new addresses. Their old houses had simply become inhospitable.

‘I can’t afford to leave,’ Sharon Hendricks told us now, as though reading my mind. ‘The market’s fucking collapsed, and I’m just having to hang on. Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more than to get out of here. I hate this fucking place.’

Sitting across from her in her front room, I smiled politely. Under different circumstances, either Chris or I might have pulled her up on the language, but not today. In an attempt to validate what Adam Johnson had told Jane Webster, we’d searched through the files for crimes that matched the description he’d given, and what had happened to Sharon Hendricks last year was one of the few real possibles we’d come up with. That meant raking up an event in her past I was certain she would prefer was left buried. If I were her right now, I’d probably swear too.

I knew very little about her life subsequently, only that she had left her job at Eyecatchers, the beauty shop where she used to work. She still looked like the kind of woman I’d encountered in my few forays into such places: twenty-six years old, slim, with jet-black hair, and undeniably beautiful. She was thinner – more gaunt – than she appeared in the case-file photographs, but her hair was carefully styled, and she had a serious amount of make-up on, even though she hadn’t been expecting us and didn’t seem to be on her way out anywhere.

But traces were visible. There was a real steel to her now; I doubted it had been as strong before. While her body language was somewhat jittery and nervous – knees together, slightly hunched, smoking constantly, her cigarette hand darting here and there – there were constant flashes of
don’t mess with me
in her eyes. They came across as angry, but there was a sense of pleading there below the surface.

She spoke quickly: no mess, no nonsense.

‘My father helped me with the deposit. It was only a couple of years ago, just after I finished university. We looked around together, and I loved this place the moment I saw it. You would, wouldn’t you? It was supposed to be perfect. And now …’ She gestured around with the cigarette. ‘Well, I just fucking hate it.’

Her father. That figured. Obviously she wouldn’t have been able to afford this house – a decent semi in a good neighbourhood – on her own. I’d been given grotty police housing when I started out, then saved up judiciously for my first real place, and it was nowhere near as nice as this. I tried to imagine having a parent rich enough to help me buy a house. But that was old resentments surfacing, and I reminded myself that this was hardly the time for them.

‘Can’t he help you out now?’

‘He could, yes. He offered to.’ Her face went hard at that. ‘But I decided I didn’t want him to.’

It was an obvious full stop on that line of conversation – and again, fair enough. As much as she hated living here, I could understand her thinking that way, that maybe she didn’t want to rely on a man after what had happened, even one close to her. Not wanting to feel that power being wielded, however benign her father’s intentions might be.

‘So,’ she said. ‘This is about what he did to me?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. It would be good to get some closure. To know that the bastard’s dead. God knows I’ve killed him in my head enough times. Adam Johnson. Be nice to give him a name.’

‘We’re just pursuing a lead right now. We don’t know for sure he was involved at all. It’s only a possibility.’

‘So what do you want to know?’

‘We’ve read the case file,’ I said. ‘But it would help to hear your own recollections of what happened that night. If that wouldn’t be too painful.’

She shrugged, stubbing out her latest cigarette. Then she stood up and walked to the far end of the room – to the doorway that led into the small entrance hall. Chris and I followed her over. She gestured vaguely at the bottom of the stairs by the front door.

‘This is where it happened.’

We already knew most of it.

In the hours after the attack, Sharon Hendricks was understandably distraught and had difficulty making an official statement. A clearer and more detailed account had emerged the following afternoon. Having her go through it again now, over a year later, felt cruel, but it was important. I was curious to see whether anything had changed – if she’d remembered something new.

But the story she told us now was practically identical to the one given at the time. She talked quickly, and without apparent emotion. She used the word
I,
but her tone of voice was decidedly third-person throughout, as though the events had happened to someone else. They had been locked away: memories that would now emerge only from oblique angles, or in nightmares, or spoken out loud like a story that wasn’t real.

She had been on a night out with friends in the city centre. It was a works do for the beauty shop: six young women breezing from bar to bar in a cloud of perfume, buying rounds from a kitty. Sharon had chatted to several men that night, but that wasn’t unusual – a group like that was bound to attract attention – and it had all been good-natured. There hadn’t been any altercations or trouble, and nobody stood out in her mind as having been strange or pushy. Subsequently, all the individuals who could be identified from CCTV coverage in the bars had been eliminated from the inquiry.

At the end of the evening, Sharon took the night bus home. It was about two o’clock in the morning. There had only been two of the group left by that point, her and the manager, and they lived at opposite ends of the city. Sharon lied about having enough money for a taxi for herself, not wanting to borrow from the boss, and ended up taking the bus instead. It was very busy: lively with drunks. Again, there had been no trouble. The camera footage had been reviewed, and nothing untoward was spotted: nobody had bothered Sharon, and no male had seemed to be paying her undue attention. Other passengers had got off the bus at the same time, but her stop was also covered by CCTV, and nobody had followed Sharon as she headed up the hill that led to her street.

The walk took her along a winding road at the bottom of the field opposite her house. It was dark and quiet, but there were little cottages on the left-hand side, and the area was well lit. She’d walked it countless times, she said, so it felt safe to her. And it was.

As she approached her house, Sharon didn’t glance at the field, which would have been pitch-black at that time. Keys in hand, last drink a way behind her, she was distracted: already thinking about what might be in the fridge for a snack when she got in. She walked up the short path that led to her front door, unlocked and opened it, and that was when he attacked her.

‘He pushed me forwards,’ she said. If anything, she sounded even calmer now. ‘I remember that clearly: that it wasn’t like in the movies. When someone gets picked up with a hand over their mouth? I’ve noticed that since, and they always get pulled backwards slightly. Always kick their heels a bit and scream. But it was more like a rugby tackle. And I didn’t have a chance to scream. I didn’t even know what had happened. He pretty much smashed me straight through the front door.’

I glanced out of the front room window at the field opposite. There were trees there, close to the road, and a man could easily have been lurking behind one, all but invisible in the dark. Just waiting for an opportunity. Finding one. I imagined him sprinting, quick and silent, across the street, then barrelling her inside. Sharon was a tiny woman. She wouldn’t have stood much of a chance against an average man, never mind one the size of Adam Johnson.

If it was him.

‘I was stunned by it. But I do remember. He was very calm and controlled. He just closed the door behind him, and put the chain on.’

She paused. For the first time, she looked upset.

‘And then?’ I asked gently.

‘And then … by then, I’d stood up. He was big. Dressed all in black, and he had some kind of mask on.’ She made a circular motion in front of her face. ‘I made to move to try to get into the front room, but he punched me in the face. I’d never been hit like that before.’

The blow had spun her around, so that she’d landed face first on the stairs. The man had then continued to assault her, punching her in the arms and sides, along with blows against the back of her head. He’d repeatedly grabbed her hair and smashed her face into the rough fabric of the carpet. At some point, he landed a far more focused and deliberate blow to the side of her head, which had rendered her unconscious.

‘I woke up after a bit. I don’t know how long I was out for. But the man was gone. The chain was off and the door was open a bit. I couldn’t believe it. I sat there for a while, just shaking. Because it wasn’t real.’

She took a deep breath.

‘But then, yeah. It turned out it was.’

I wanted to give her a few moments to compose herself, but Chris had already taken the photograph from the back of his notebook.

‘Do you recognise this man?’

Sharon looked at it and nodded.

‘It’s the man from the news. Obviously.’

‘What I meant is—

‘No, I don’t recognise him from that night. I already told you. He was wearing a mask. Do you think I haven’t watched the TV and thought about it? I think about it
every single day and night
.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Don’t be.’ She looked at me. ‘
I’m
sorry I can’t be any more help. I wish I could.’

‘You’ve got nothing to apologise for.’

‘I try not to think about it, but sometimes I can’t stop myself. He seemed to hate me so much.’ She took out a cigarette and lit it, her hands shaking slightly. ‘I remember thinking the same thing that night too, while he was hitting me.
What have I done to make this man hate me?
’

‘What do you reckon?’ Chris said.

‘I reckon you should let me show people photographs in future.’

‘Okay. But do you think this is the attack Johnson was talking about?’

‘I don’t know.’ I sighed. ‘I just don’t know.’

We were standing on the street behind Sharon Hendricks’ house, looking up the back garden towards the rear of the property. There was a low fence: easy to get over. There was a triangle of washing lines further up the garden. A security light over the back door.

‘It fits with his story,’ I said.

‘It does.’

‘But there are differences from the other crimes.’

‘Similarities, too.’

I nodded. Sharon Hendricks was definitely our man’s
type
, the level of violence was comparable, and nobody had been arrested for the attack, which suggested to me it had been committed by a stranger – someone the original investigating officers had been unable to connect to Hendricks. But all our official victims had been woken in the night and attacked in their beds. The doors were found locked, with just that single window open. And our victims had been raped, whereas there had been no obvious sexual element here.

At the same time, those discrepancies still fitted with Adam Johnson’s story. The
monster
wouldn’t have had access to Johnson’s keys at that point, so would have needed to either break or force his way in. And it was possible that, having subdued Sharon, the man had gone to get a drink from the kitchen, spotted Johnson halfway up the back garden, and immediately left the scene.

I stared up the garden towards the back of the house, imagining that.

It was possible. It did fit.

Chris said, ‘Of course, just because Johnson got the details right, it doesn’t mean he was telling the truth, does it? Doesn’t mean this other guy actually exists. It could have been Johnson that did it. The other guy – the monster – could still be a total invention.’

‘True.’

He was right. Whether the assault on Sharon Hendricks was linked to our series was one question. But even if it was, we still had no evidence for the involvement of a second individual. As things stood, all we had was Johnson’s testimony, and second-hand at that.

I stared at the back of the house for a while longer, thinking about the ways our surviving victims had described their attacker. The size of him. The terror. The hate coming off him in waves. And the way the crimes had been escalating.
A safety valve
, I’d suggested to Drake, when he’d asked why this possible second man would tell Johnson everything. But of course, if that were true, the man would now have lost that along with access to the keys.

The other guy – the monster – could still be a total invention.

‘I hope so,’ I said.