A Tapping at My Door: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (The DS Nathan Cody Series) (20 page)

‘I have my moments. Off you trot. And remember, you only have to call if you get scared of the dark. Don’t just stand there and wet yourself, like you did last time.’

‘No worries. I’ve got my plastic incontinence pants on tonight. They’re already half full.’

Whitland grimaces. ‘Too much information, PC Kearney.’

Smiling, Kearney takes the right turn, heading back towards Sheil Road.

There’s nobody here, he thinks. The streetwise kids in this neighbourhood have a nose for trouble. They’ll have scarpered ages ago. And even if we do catch them, the most we can do is tell them to go home.

He plays his torchlight over the walls as he walks, studying the graffiti. Someone called ‘Robbo’ seems to have enjoyed announcing his presence at some point in time. Pity about his lack of artistry though.

Could do better myself, thinks Kearney.

There’s a fridge here, with its door hanging off. Reminds him he needs to defrost his own, before Debbie has another moan about not being able to get at the fish fingers without crampons and a Sherpa.

He reaches the corner. A left turn here will take him around the courtyard, to meet up with Whitland. But straight on is a huge mound of rubbish. Not interesting in itself, but was that a noise it made?

He thinks it was. A rustling sound.

He turns the torchlight on it. Starts to walk towards it. Mostly just bin bags, but there’s a tall, narrow cardboard box here, standing on its end. It’s big enough to hold a person.

Kearney gets closer. He hears a car and a lorry go past on Sheil Road. Not much else. His gaze is fixed on the box.

It’s going to be empty, he thinks. Bound to be. Why would someone be hiding in a cardboard box in the middle of an entry at this time of night? That would just be ridiculous.

But then he thinks he hears another noise, accompanied by the tiniest of movements of the box. And so he’s withdrawing his baton, getting ready to whack someone if they insist on playing this game, because this is not funny now, this is starting to irritate me and yes, if I’m honest, scaring me a little, so come out now you little bastard before I take your fucking head off your shoulders.

The box is sodden with the rain from earlier. Kearney sees now that it is open, but that the open side has been turned to the wall. Between the box and the wall is a gap of a few inches.

I should say something, he thinks. I should order whoever is in there to come out now. But that would be stupid, because there isn’t anyone in there, and even though there is nobody around to see or hear me, I’m going to feel a right dick talking to an empty box.

There is nobody in there, all right? Nobody.

And then he’s reaching out. Before he allows his reason to play it safe by countermanding the order, he is reaching out and sliding his fingers into that gap and grasping the box and yanking it away from the wall.

Movement. Lots of movement. Falling and tumbling. A jumping, too. Something not caused by mere gravity. Something that has life and animation. Something that comes directly at him with great speed.

Kearney yells. Leaps back. Legs pedalling furiously to get him away from that thing, that . . .

Cat.

It’s a cat. You see that, Kearney, you idiot? That tiny little ball of fluff now doing sixty miles an hour down the jigger? It’s a moggie, you div. There wasn’t anything in this box other than a cat having its supper. Which you knew all along, didn’t you? You said as much, so why the hell did you have to be such a knob?

He shines his torch on the garbage that was hidden by the box. It’s clear that one of the bags has been shredded by the cat’s claws. Among the crap that has spilled out of the hole is a chicken carcass. Still shiny and wet, it looks to have been left there fairly recently. A nice find for a hungry animal.

Sorry, puss.

He comes away with a smile on his face. Debates whether to tell Whitland about the cat. Decides he will. She will tease him mercilessly, but he quite enjoys it.

The noise of sheet metal is a monstrous roar in the stillness.

He clicks his radio button. ‘Andrea. You there?’

She responds immediately. ‘Yeah. Stop panicking. One of the garage doors hasn’t been shut properly. Just checking it out. Found anything?’

‘Nah. Let’s call it in and head back.’

‘Okay. Give me a minute.’

He resumes his circuit of the walled courtyard, scanning the backs of the houses as he goes. Something squelches underfoot, and he’s convinced he’s just trodden in dog shit. So that’ll be nice in the car on the way back.

Another metallic groan, followed by an almighty clang. He doesn’t react this time. It’s just Whitland closing the garage properly.

He scrapes his shoe along the floor, hoping to remove at least some of the muck, then continues on his way. He turns the next corner. Whistles a tune through his teeth. Reaches the opening to the courtyard.

Empty.

A row of closed garage doors to the left of him, another to the right, and a whitewashed wall opposite. Nothing else. No kids, no PC Whitland.

‘Andrea?’ he calls. Then louder: ‘Andrea? If this is a wind-up . . .’

But still nothing.

He clicks his radio button. ‘Andrea? Are you still on scene? Where are you?’

He gets white noise.

And now his heart is thumping again. This isn’t right. He hates practical jokes, but at the same time he hopes this is a prank. He hopes she is about to jump out and frighten the living daylights out of him so at least he can get this over with. But Andrea doesn’t do practical jokes. It’s not her style.

He spins on his heels, trying to solve this mystery. Wondering where the hell Andrea has gone. Is she giving chase? If she’s in pursuit, surely she would have called it in. She wouldn’t just—

A noise. To his right. A tap against the metal door of one of the garages. It’s very slight, like someone brushing against it by accident rather than trying to attract attention.

Kearney whips out his baton. Steps cautiously towards the door. Someone is hiding on the other side of it. Not a cat this time. Definitely not just a cat.

He’s not sure what to do. This is too weird. Andrea wouldn’t be hiding in there – she just wouldn’t do that. But if she’s not in there, then where the fucking hell is she? And if it’s not Andrea, then who is it?

He debates calling for backup. Yeah, he could get a vanload of hairy-arsed coppers in riot gear standing alongside him while he opens the garage door. And then he could suffer the teasing and laughter when all he finds there is a pink Fiat Panda with fluffy dice in the window.

Because that’s all this is, he tells himself. You misheard. Nobody’s in there. So let’s just fucking prove it, shall we?

He bends at the knees, his eyes fixed on the door. One of his joints cracks in complaint. His breathing becomes a flutter. Because his left hand is carrying a torch, he has to tuck his baton under his arm while he reaches for the door handle.

He counts to three. Tries to muffle the doubts and fears echoing around his brain.

He twists the handle. Throws the door up with as much force as he can. Takes a backwards leap as he retrieves his baton and readies himself to strike out with it.

There
is
someone here.

But it is someone who presents no danger to Kearney.

His partner lies on the concrete floor, gurgling and quivering.

Kearney knows she is hurt. Knows it is bad. And suddenly he is on automatic pilot, calling on all his experience and training to deal with this. He covers the distance to Whitland in a single bound it seems, and he thinks, but is not sure, that he is calling her name. And when he gets to her he realises to his horror and frustration that there is not much he can do for her. He tells her otherwise, of course, and he wishes it
were
otherwise, but a voice in his head keeps telling him he is too late. He spent too much time chasing after cats when he should have been at his partner’s side. He lifts her head and cradles it on his lap and tells her it will be all right, that he will look after her, and after every such faintly believed promise he yells frantically into his radio for assistance, praying that they will get here in time, even though that concept has no meaning here because he knows time has run out. And while the hot blood continues to pump out of her neck at an ever-decreasing rate, and her breathing becomes ragged and her body goes into violent spasm, he continues to reassure her, continues to tell her that she should hang on because help will be here soon and they will fix her up. They will fix her up good and proper.

They arrive quickly and they arrive in force. A call like this takes top priority. Sirens split the night. Lights bring a blue dawn. They descend on the scene with terrifying urgency. And then it is as if they are rendered suddenly ineffectual. Because they see, they recognise, they accept. They do not need the tears of their colleague to confirm the truth so apparent.

It is a while before anyone notices the dead bird lying next to the body of PC Andrea Whitland.

25

The birds seem happy. Delirious, in fact. Their wild fluttering and flapping appears a joyful celebration.

Of course, it could be just a frightened reaction to his own dancing, singing and clapping.

He
did
it.

He took two of them on. Not one, but two.

He wasn’t sure he could cope with a pair. Wasn’t even sure he could cope with one on duty. They must be more alert then, surely? Walking around in uniform, they must be constantly attuned to signs of trouble.

He almost called it off. When he peered through that alley gate and saw two of them get out of the car, he nearly went home. It seemed too much, too dangerous.

But you didn’t, did you? You held your nerve and you went for it. In for a penny, in for a pound. All that research, all that driving around, all that sneaking about to find the perfect location for an ambush – it would have been a waste to throw it all away.

It could have gone so wrong. What if the coppers had stuck together? What if they had both come into the garage? What would he have done then? Wait it out under that tarpaulin, hoping they wouldn’t find him? Or leap out at them and hope that the element of surprise would give him enough of an edge to overpower them?

Stop worrying about it. Doesn’t matter now, does it? It worked. You got one. Stupid bitch. She had no idea. Didn’t even have time to scream. No voice.

Like the songbird.

It’ll be singing now, though. In bird heaven. Celebrating. It won’t mind now how brief its life was. It will finally understand that it has fulfilled a purpose. It has proved its worth a thousand times over.

The police will be going crazy. It will be as though he has gone up to a wasps’ nest and hit it with a big stick. They will be buzzing madly, desperate to locate the source of the attack. They will want to lash out, to sting, to kill.

But they will do it without logic. They don’t have enough data to reason about this properly. They don’t know what this is all about. They have but a fragment of the whole picture – a square inch of a much larger canvas – and they will be trying to base all of their suppositions and all of their plans on that unrepresentative sliver. They will get nowhere that way.

It’s amazing how pathetic and incompetent they are.

Of course, things will become more difficult now. The cops will become a lot more defensive and cautious. They don’t know where or when the next strike of the stick will be.

But that just makes it all the more interesting.

All the more fun.

26

There is fear in this room. Fear and confusion and a soul-sucking sense of inadequacy. Cody has never seen anything like it before. Not in his own colleagues.

From Blunt comes the heat of anger. Not at her troops, but at the situation. She takes the loss of another police officer as a personal attack, even though she probably never met PC Whitland. That’s just the way Blunt is. The case is hers. She is charged with finding the killer, and yet the killer has just struck again. Cody can understand why she would find that so hard to swallow. He imagines he would feel the same if he were in charge.

‘Three police officers dead,’ she says to them. It doesn’t need saying – they all know this – but she feels the need to hammer it home. ‘And we don’t seem to be any nearer to catching this guy. Am I wrong? Well, am I?’

She scans the upturned faces. Nobody dares respond. To do so would offer a target to her full wrath.

‘Just what the fuck is going on here?’

Again, Cody knows this is not meant as an insult aimed at the assembled detectives. She is not questioning their competency; she is simply expressing her exasperation that progress on the case is slow. At least, that’s what Cody hopes she is saying.

She takes a moment. Cody hears her draw deep breaths.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘What you all need to realise is that the eyes and ears of the world are on us now. Everyone is looking to us to solve these murders, today if possible. We’ve been promised resources. Manpower and overtime aren’t a problem. What is a problem is that I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere. If anyone here can convince me I’m wrong, then I’d love to hear it.’

Cody speaks up. ‘I thought we
were
getting somewhere. Everything pointed to a connection with the Vernons. But this latest murder . . .’

‘There has to be a link,’ says Blunt. ‘All the signs say this is the work of the same killer. The post-mortem hasn’t taken place yet, but Dr Stroud’s view is that the method of killing is very similar. A blow to the head followed by a knife attack. Plus, of course, the bird left at the scene.’

‘Only one cut this time, though,’ says Cody. ‘A single slash across the throat. The previous victims had multiple stab wounds. And Whitland’s eyes were left intact.’

‘Time pressure. Whitland’s partner was just around the corner. The killer didn’t have time to piss around with the body. He took a big enough risk as it was, and that worries me. This officer was lured to her death while on duty. She had a partner with her and a radio to call for assistance, and still he carried out the murder. He’s getting bolder with each killing, and if he hasn’t finished yet . . .’