Dead Bad Things (2 page)

  The street outside was empty at this hour, even the most hardy of drunks and homeless people having found somewhere to curl up and sleep off whatever ailed them. The rain was heavy; it made a loud hissing sound as it pelted against the brickwork of the big Victorian terraces that lined both sides of the wide street. Not too far away, the urban greenery of Roundhay Park lay shrouded in darkness, and Sarah thought about how easy it might be for someone to slip away unseen across the grass and into the trees… someone who had been doing wrong on her watch.

  The radio crackled – a sharp, staccato echo of the rain outside. Benson reached out and turned down the volume. "You ready?" he stared at her, as if he were looking for something – some sort of clue to her wellbeing – in her eyes.

  Sarah nodded. "Let's go. It's probably a fucking hoax call. You know what they're like round here – I'll bet it's just some snotty accountant getting his own back on a neighbour who's in a higher tax bracket."

  Benson laughed as he opened the door, but the sound of the rain drowned out his mirth. Sarah got out of the passenger side, hunching her shoulders in an instinctive protective gesture. It didn't work; she was soaked through in a few seconds. The rain was cold. The chill went right through her.

  "Fuck," she said, tilting her checkerboard bowler down over her forehead. "I need a coffee."

  "What's that?" Benson was leaning over the roof of the car, his head cocked to one side. He looked like an inquisitive rottweiler.

  "Nothing," said Sarah, shaking her head. Then she walked around the car and joined him, resting one hand on her hip, near the ASP expandable baton which hung from her belt.

  The moon was a smudge in the black sky, and there were very few stars clustered around it. The rain seemed to be in the process of erasing everything else from the sky, as if it were trying to drown the world. The thought chilled Sarah even more than the low temperature and she tried to bury it. The last thing she needed when she was out on patrol was to spook herself like this. It had been happening more and more lately, her mind creating phantoms from thin air, and she had to put a stop to it.

  Nobody would trust a scared police constable, particularly a scared
female
police constable. It was something she had been forced to learn quickly, this type of casual prejudice: a simple harsh fact of life on the modern police force.

  She followed Benson – who was the senior partner, despite having only three months more experience than Sarah – and watched the roll of his shoulders as he swaggered through the rain. Sometimes he seemed like an unstoppable force, a clenched fist on two legs.

  The rain churned angrily in the gutters, forming foaming streams along both sides of the road. Litter swirled in the black water – a ripped cardboard coffee cup, a stained fast food carton floating like a little boat, and several sodden pages from a discarded newspaper. Sarah could just about make out the name Penny Royale printed in bold text at the top of one of the pages. It was a case she had not been directly involved with, but six months ago, when the torn and battered body of the young girl was found in bed at her parents' home on the Bestwick estate, the child's death had sent shockwaves through the entire community.

  Sarah's Achilles heel was cases involving murdered children, and she found it particularly difficult to remain in control of her emotions when, as in the Royale case, it seemed like the parents (both still missing) had been responsible for the killing. She wished that someone would find them, preferably dead. The world would not miss such shoddy, murderous parents. The world mourned dead children, not scumbag adults. And it mourned them far too often.

  Benson pulled up abruptly outside one of the terraced houses. He raised a big, knuckly fist and rapped briskly on the wide wooden door. Then, realising that the heavy rainfall might make it difficult to be heard, he knocked again but harder this time – like he really meant it, she thought.

  Benson, Sarah knew, had his own weaknesses. She had no idea what they were, but had glimpsed them rising above the surface on a couple of occasions, like a shark's fin breaking water for a moment before vanishing again beneath the waves.

  Slowly the door opened and a small, pale face peered out through the gap between door and frame. "Yes?"

  "It's the police, madam. Did someone make an emergency call?" Benson took a step back, off the doorstep, as if aware of his naturally intimidating presence.

  "Oh, yes. Yes." The door opened wider to reveal an elderly woman standing in a narrow hallway, her dressing gown pulled tight around her hefty frame. "I'm sorry… my husband works nights. I worry." She smiled, as if this explained everything.

  "That's OK, madam. Was it you who made the call? Are you a Mrs Frances Booth?" Benson took out his notebook and flipped it open, ducking into the doorway to keep the paper dry.

  "Yes. That's right. I was… well, this might sound a bit daft, but I'm concerned about the old dear next door. Mrs Johnson." The woman stepped back, into the hallway. "Would you like to come in?"

  "Thank you." Benson stepped inside and Sarah followed, remaining silent. She smiled and took off her hat, inspecting the interior of the house as she did so. Expensive wallpaper, quality carpets, framed prints of good quality art on the walls. It was a nice place; a place where money dwelled.

  "I really hope I'm not wasting your time."

  "Oh, I'm sure you're not – it is Mrs Booth, isn't it?" The woman nodded, almost eagerly. "We were in the area, anyway." Benson's tone was light, friendly. He excelled at putting people at their ease, despite his bulk and the scars on his cheeks. Sarah always found it strange that the public warmed to him so quickly and easily, but then she usually remembered that he had the same effect on her. Two days after meeting, they had jumped into bed together. The occasional sex was something they were both slightly wary of taking any further, but she always thought it a good example of how he was able to take a person off guard and slip in behind their defences. She frowned at the memory, but then suppressed it before Mrs Johnson noticed.

  Business first; pleasure later. Much later – probably when she was all alone and relaxing in a nice hot bath. The kind of pleasure Benson offered would have to wait a bit longer.

  "So, why are you so worried about your neighbour, Mrs Booth? Please tell us everything you can." Benson paused, letting the woman gather herself before telling her story.

  "Well," she said, folding her arms across her large chest. "Mrs Johnson – Celia – goes out every day without fail. She takes a walk to the park and gets her shopping on the way back, you see. Every day. Since her husband died – he was a dentist. But I haven't seen her for two days, and so I started to be concerned. I started to worry." Again she smiled nervously, clearly afraid of coming across as a paranoid old hen or a timewaster.

  "Please… continue. Be clear and concise, if you can." Benson wrote something in his notebook. Sarah nodded at the woman, urging her on.

  "I didn't tell anyone in case Celia was ill or something, so I just went round there to check on her – you know, like a good neighbour. There was no answer. This was, oh, yesterday lunchtime. There was no answer when I knocked on the door, but I heard movement inside. Well, I say
heard
, but… it was more a sort of feeling that there was someone inside, watching me." Her slippered feet shuffled on the carpet. She bit her bottom lip. "I am being daft, aren't I? I am, I know I am. Daft."

  "Of course not. You're being very sensible, Mrs Booth." Now it was Sarah's turn. She stepped forward, opening her arms and moving them away from her body – a gesture of trust, just like she'd been taught at university. "This isn't daft at all. You did the right thing. I only wish everyone could be as civil-minded as you. Our job would be a lot easier." Sarah smiled with her mouth shut, trying her best to be reassuring. She didn't like to smile; wasn't used to it.

  "There's something else." The woman glanced at the floor, and then back up again, right into Sarah's eyes. "An hour ago I went outside. I don't sleep well when Charles isn't at home – Charles is my husband – and the cat wanted to be out. I was in the back garden and I popped my head over the fence. Just to check. To be sure. To see if there was anything…" She faltered, unsure of herself now that she had begun to get to the meat of her tale. "You know."

  "Something not quite right? Is that it?" Sarah chose her words carefully; she was sensitive to the woman's anxiety.

  Mrs Johnson nodded quickly, as if she hoped that nobody would notice. "Yes. That's exactly it." She blinked. Her eyes were large and moist.

  "And what did you see over there?" Benson looked up from his notepad, trying his best to seem casual yet clearly on edge. His hand gripped the cardboard cover. His large knuckles bled out to white.

  "There's a window panel missing in the back door. Just the one, but it was definitely gone. Like someone had removed it. The only reason I noticed was because the damned cat leapt over the fence and started sniffing around the door. I had to call her back before she went inside."

  The rain made swishing noises outside the door; inside, somewhere at the heart of the house, timbers gently creaked and popped.

  "You just wait here, Mrs Johnson, and we'll check this out. Put the kettle on, we'll be back in a few minutes. I'm sure there's nothing wrong, but it's good that you called us. We can have this sorted in no time." Benson slipped the notepad back into his inside pocket. He zipped up his jacket and turned to Sarah, nodded, then waited for her to lead the way.

  "Oh, I hope she's OK." Mrs Johnson seemed poised on the verge of panic.

  "She'll be fine. Don't you worry, now. Put the kettle on and we can all sit down to a nice cup of tea. Two sugars for me, none for Constable Doherty." His diversion tactic was smooth; it always worked a treat. Mrs Johnson followed Sarah into the kitchen at the end of the hallway and began to fill a kettle from the tap. "Two for me," said Benson, smiling flatly. "None for my partner."

  The key was in the back door – something Sarah hated to see. Didn't these people realise that a kid or a junky with a skinny arm could reach through a skilfully shattered window pane and grab them? She turned the key and opened the door, stepping back out into the rain. It seemed colder and lighter at the back of the house; the rain felt as if it were trying to turn into sleet. Or snow.

  "Over the fence," said Benson, overtaking her and grabbing a timber upright. "You first – I'll get something to stand on, just in case I bring the thing down."

  Sarah nodded, turned and hauled herself over the fence, bringing up her legs in a single swift movement and vaulting over the flimsy wooden panel. She heard Benson still on the other side, rooting around in the garden for something to aid his progress. Then, suddenly, his head and shoulders appeared above the lip of the fence. He climbed over slowly, trying to keep his weight off the panels as he used the step-ladder to clamber up and over the nearest support post. In seconds he was standing next to her, one hand resting on her shoulder.

  "The window panel. See it?" She pointed down near the ground, at the missing panel. There was no broken glass to be seen; whoever had done this, they had done a professional job and cleaned up after themselves.

  "Yeah." Benson moved towards the back door. His voice was low, almost a whisper. "Yeah, I see it."

  There were no lights on at the rear of the house. The windows were dark, and covered with either heavy curtains or blinds. The door was old, the lower half consisting of a series of glass panels and the upper part made up of a grubby section of UPVC that looked so thin a child could have kicked it in. A dog was barking nearby, from another garden located somewhere over the back fence. The sound was harsh and incessant, and it began to unnerve Sarah. She hated dogs – they were stupid and vicious and in her opinion their owners were little better.
Dumb animals
for dumb people
, she thought.
Everybody dumb together.

  Benson placed his fingers on the door handle. The door opened smoothly. He turned and looked at her, his eyes wide. He nodded. Just the once. His scars shone in the meagre light from the nightlights and security lights mounted on the external walls of neighbouring properties.

  Sarah instinctively grabbed her baton, removed it from her belt, and flicked it up and out so that the weapon swiftly extended to its full length. The brief ratcheting sound was too loud in all that silence; even the dog's manic barking failed to mask it. But there was no movement, nor a single sound, from within the house. It
felt
empty.

  Even after just a couple of years on the force, Sarah had developed the knack of sensing whenever potential danger was hiding nearby. It was one of the first skills you learned when you worked the beat, and possibly the most valuable.

  There was no-one here, she was certain of it, but that didn't mean the house was safe. Far from it. Because she could sense something else in there, an altogether more unsettling presence: something still and quiet and so very wrong.

  In that tense and drawn-out moment, standing there on the threshold and staring at the back of her partner's head, Sarah became convinced that somewhere in the house they were going to find a dead body.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

The kitchen was dark. The only light in there was coming from outside – generated by the streetlights and the drizzly layer of neon pollution that hung above the city streets. There was not even a sliver of light showing beneath the internal door. Benson went in first, checking the area for intruders. It became immediately clear that there were none in the vicinity, so he relaxed his shoulders and dropped his hands to his sides.