Under a Silent Moon: A Novel (47 page)

“Breathe, damn it! Andy!”

As soon as she was certain he could get air, she started chest compressions, but his body bounced on the mattress, flailing underneath her clasped fingers. She had to get him off the bed. She took hold of the knife again, hacking at the black cords that secured his wrists to the bed. The first snapped quickly, and she moved to the other arm. By the time she was sawing at the cord tethering his right ankle to the bed, the blade was blunt. The cord frayed, then gave way. The last one took the longest and in the end she gave up, abandoned the knife, and pulled at his arm to drag him off the bed with one leg still tied.

He was so heavy and inert that at first she thought she would not be able to move him. Finally she dragged the corner of the bedspread and he came with it, slithered to the floor like a dead fish.

Now she could do it. His chest was slathered in blood, and it was only when she started the compressions with all her weight behind it that she realized it was her hand the blood was coming from. “Andy!” she shouted, as much to reassure herself that he was still there.

Was she imagining it, or was his skin a more normal color? And now she could hear steps on the gravel outside. “Get in here!” she roared. “I need help! Get in here now!”

The sound of boots on the broken glass in the kitchen. “In here!”

She didn’t look round but she knew they were there, both from the sound and from the muttered “Jesus!”

She didn’t want to stop, not for a second, until she knew Andy’s heart was beating strongly and wasn’t going to stop; didn’t want to see their expressions as they took in the naked officer, the cords tied tightly around his wrists and ankles, one still attached to the corner of the bedstead.

And it was only when one of them said to her, “Stop, guv, let me take over now,” and his colleague, who had been radioing for an ambulance, pulled her gently to one side, taking her hand and raising it, pressing tightly against her palm, that she saw through the tears that the cut to her hand was deep.

13:02

“I’m sorry about your hand,” Andy Hamilton said.

He was sitting upright on a trolley in the back of the ambulance, wrapped in blankets that were barely enough to cover him. Two hairy shins faced in Lou’s direction. She was on the jump seat the technicians used, her hand bound up in a great wad of bandage, holding it still as she’d been instructed.

“It’s okay,” she said.

The paramedics were about to cart them both off to hospital to be checked over, but Hamilton was recovering by the minute.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him.

He gave her a look. Stupid question, of course. She’d never seen him brought so low.

“What was it?” Lou asked.

“She must have drugged me. I think it was the sweetener tablet—I thought she’d put it in her cup.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant, what was that bloody box for?”

“Oh, that. I read about them. It’s called a smother box.”

“Sounds charming. You into all of that sort of thing, then?”

“Not anymore.”

Lou’s phone was ringing. It was Sam.

“Ma’am. The nominal has stopped at an office block on London Road, just past the hospital. Lots of businesses in there, according to the sign. You want me to go in? I would have intercepted her outside but—”

“Don’t worry, Sam. I don’t want you to tackle her without backup. What’s the building called?”

“Constantine House. It’s the second turning left after the hospital. Opposite the entrance to Sainsbury’s.”

“Wait for me there. Don’t move unless she does, right?”

The back doors of the ambulance opened and the paramedic came back in. “Let’s get you both strapped in, then, shall we? Time to go to hospital.”

But Lou was already clambering out.

“Lou,” Andy called.

His use of her first name was what made her stop.

“Be careful,” he said. “She—I think this is all just like fun and games to her. She doesn’t give a shit.”

Lou responded with a smile he probably didn’t deserve. “I’ll bear that in mind. Can I borrow your car?”

13:15

Hamilton’s car was surprisingly clean and tidy. She’d had to pull the seat forward about three feet in order to reach the pedals, and it wasn’t easy with a bandaged hand, but thankfully it was an automatic—gear changing would have been a challenge too far. Lou sped off in the direction of the one-way system through the town center, praying that the traffic would have cleared.

She had got as far as the one-way system when the sirens started. Two marked cars overtook her at the lights and a third turned into the main road from East Park Road, all of them going at top whack and heading in the direction of the hospital. If she’d been in a job car she could have turned on the lights and followed them, but Andy’s people carrier was designed for safety, not for speed.

Swearing at the cars in front of her, she went as fast as she dared until finally she could see the hospital buildings on the left, the supermarket ahead. There were blue lights everywhere and police cars parked haphazardly on the road, another inside a small car park by a squat, square office building. She pulled into the car park.

Black-uniformed officers were gathered in a crowd in one corner of the car park, but they all looked relaxed and they were starting to disperse, heading back to their abandoned patrol cars.

Lou got out of the car and went over to them. Sam Hollands was holding open the door to one of the patrol cars as an officer built like a tank helped a blond woman into the backseat. Though handcuffed, she was clearly still trying to put up a bit of a fight.

“You sure you don’t want to wait for the van?” the officer was saying to Sam.

“Not if it’s in Newhall, Steve. It’ll take too long.”

“Get your hands off me!” the woman was yelling.

The gentle helping hand became a shove. “Keep that up and you’ll end up on the floor again, and we don’t want that, do we?”

“Ma’am,” Sam said, seeing Lou approach. She had a graze on her cheek and dabbed a tissue at it. When she raised her hand, Lou could see a nasty-looking bite mark on her hand.

“Jesus, Sam, what the hell happened?”

Sam indicated the door of the office building. “It’s a nursing agency,” Sam said. “Turns out she was here to collect her payslip but there had been some mix-up with it. She came out just as I finished talking to you, and she was in a bit of a grumpy mood.”

From the backseat of the car, a high-pitched shout. “You have no idea,
no idea
how much fucking trouble you lot are in! How dare you!”

“Fortunately I had my radio to hand,” Sam carried on—as calmly as she would be a year or so later, reciting from her contemporaneous notes in the witness box: “As while attempting to arrest her she resisted and bit me, so during the assault I was able to call for emergency assistance. PC Steve Johnson here has been particularly helpful.”

PC Johnson was still standing beside the car in case the occupant decided to kick off again.

“Good job we’re handy for the hospital,” Lou said. “As soon as we’re done here you’re going to get that wound cleaned up. You might need jabs.”

“I’m assuming she hasn’t got rabies,” Sam said. She hadn’t lost her sense of humor. “I’m up to date with my tetanus and hep C.”

“You bit yourself, you crazy bitch!”

“That’s enough,” Johnson said. “You need to calm down now.”

“Shut the fuck up!”

Lou looked down at the woman through the car window. Her face was red and contorted with rage, her blond hair messed.

“Would you stay there, a moment?” Lou asked Steve Johnson. “I’d like to have a quiet word with our suspect.”

“Ma’am? You sure?”

Lou opened the front passenger door and climbed in, shutting it behind her. She turned in the seat and faced the woman, whose hands were cuffed awkwardly behind her. She looked like she was calming down, her skin returning to a more normal color. She was breathing hard, her eyes a cold, pale blue.

“You’re Suzanne Martin?” Lou asked.

“Who the fuck are you?” she responded.

“My name is Detective Chief Inspector Louisa Smith, and before you get carted off to the nick and we start the long and arduous process of making sure you’re safe and comfortable while we interview you, I wanted to tell you something.”

“I know who you are,” Suzanne said. “You’re his boss, aren’t you? Well, no wonder he has a problem with following simple instructions.”

“I’m usually a very fair person,” Lou said, her voice even. “But let me tell you that in this case what I’d really, really like to do is drive this car somewhere isolated with you inside it, and rip you apart with my bare hands for what you’ve done to my officers. I will do everything that’s in my power to make sure we get you convicted and put in prison for a long, long time, and when that happens I will crack open a bottle of something and look forward to you getting everything you deserve while you’re in there. Do you understand?”

Suzanne’s lips were a thin, tight line.

Lou had expected some sort of a response but when none came she opened the car door and climbed out, shutting the door behind her. Sam was chatting with Steve Johnson and the other patrol officer who’d arrived in the car, a young woman who obviously knew Sam by the way they were laughing together.

“Are you two able to book her into custody?” Lou asked.

“I’ll go with them,” Sam said. “I made the arrest.”

“Only if you go to the hospital straight afterwards,” Lou said.

“I will, I promise. How’s Andy?”

“He’s going to be okay,” Lou said. It would only be a matter of time before details of Andy’s rescue would filter out—no doubt distorted into a far more amusing and humiliating version of the truth—but she would not be the one to start that particular ball rolling.

She watched as the car pulled out and turned back to Andy’s family wagon, noticing for the first time the child seats in the back, the grubby-looking pink fluffy rabbit in the footwell. She picked it up and nestled it into the smaller of the two car seats, debating whether to strap it in and realizing that she wouldn’t have the first clue how to do it.

Epilogue
Thursday 8 November 2012

09:56

Lou had been sitting outside DCI Neal Farrar’s office for twenty-five minutes and it wasn’t as though she didn’t have other stuff to do. She looked at her watch—again—and was considering maybe coming back later just as the door opened and he beckoned her in.

“Neal,” she said, shaking his hand. “I appreciate this. Thank you.”

“How’s the hand?” he asked.

“Twelve stitches. Pinches a bit, otherwise fine. Thanks for asking.”

“I don’t think there’s much I can tell you, Lou, you know that.”

“I still don’t understand. He’s my DI. He was completely pivotal to the investigation.”

“The suspect’s been charged, I understand?”

“Yes, she’s been charged. The search team went back in there yesterday and found Polly’s DNA. Not much of it. Flakes of blood on the hallway carpet. And they found what was left of Polly’s phone in the dustbin. Smashed to pieces, even the SIM. And there’s plenty on her laptop about her particular kink.”

“Suffocating people?”

“They call it breathplay. Every possible way to almost kill someone by cutting off their air supply. Of course, she thought she could always bring them round again, thanks to her medical knowledge. Taryn Lewis told us that her father said Polly seemed to think Suzanne had killed people before, overseas. That might be why she felt the need to come back to the U.K. We think she met Polly while she was traveling, and came here to find her. We’re looking into the time she spent traveling, now. She was working as a private nurse in Dubai just before she came back to the U.K.—in a bit of a hurry. I’m hoping I might get a trip in the sunshine out of it at least.”

“Well, you know where to come if you need backup.”

“Funny, you’re about the fifteenth person who’s said that.”

“What about Fletcher-Norman?”

“He’s still saying nothing to us about Suzanne. Maybe now she’s in custody, he will feel more comfortable talking about her.”

“Interesting case, isn’t it? Have you ever come across someone like that before?” Farrar leaned back in his chair, swiveling gently from side to side.

“Never. Neal, she’s unbelievable. She hasn’t shown any sign of remorse, at all. She seems to find the whole thing slightly amusing. Scares the shit out of me, if I’m honest. Andy was lucky to get out of there alive.”

“You do realize that Andy Hamilton’s behavior all through this investigation was a major cause for concern, Lou? It needs to be looked at thoroughly, and while that happens he has to be suspended.”

“It will have a positive outcome, though, won’t it? Please tell me he’s not going to lose his job over this. He’s a good officer, even though he might come across like a right fuckwit sometimes.”

He managed a smile. “I know. But there are plenty of officers out there who are good at their jobs without compromising matters with witnesses. It was unnecessary, wasn’t it?”

Lou felt like telling him about it all, about the affair she’d had with him herself. How he’d lied to her. How when he’d turned up on the first day of Op Nettle, her heart had sunk because she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. And so she didn’t trust him—her own DI—didn’t listen to him, didn’t give him anything decent to work on. Therefore anything that had happened to him, his decision to take risks, go it alone—surely that had been her fault as much as his? And if he was suspended for a lapse of judgment, then surely she should be, too?

She stood up then and said her goodbyes. “You’ll call me if there’s anything you need? A statement? Anything?”

“We’ll get round to that soon enough, don’t you worry.”

Lou found an empty office and used it to call Hamilton’s mobile.

“Hello?”

“Andy, it’s me. How are you?”

There was a long pause. “All right, I guess. How are you?”

“I’m not supposed to call you. I’ve just been to see Neal Farrar in Professional Standards.”

“Ah. Was that a good idea?”

“I’m trying to help, you big twat.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”